Pour the wine

I am the most important person in New York

2010-10-10T18:25:00.002-04:00

Or at least I feel like it, when I part ways on the street with my boyfriend and his pooch. Because she cries, cranes her neck and howls (while he stands there impassively and sips on his iced coffee) and it pierces through the ambient Manhattan noise, and ricochets around the skyscraper canyons. Hurried businessmen and -women stop, turn, look for the source of this tortured wail, and then follow the direction of its plaint up the street, to me, grinning, blushing, hurrying to the train, fishing for my metrocard.

SIGH

2010-09-09T22:55:00.002-04:00

We can talk about why 9/11 is my most hated time of year, or we can just watch this video together.

Six storeys underground in a bank

2010-06-09T11:32:00.000-04:00

So, one day I went to the Federal Reserve. I mean, I lived across the street from its hulking stone mass and its armed guards and its barricaded entrances for an entire year. And then one day, much more recently, I went on a tour of the inside. The tour was utterly bizarre. This is, of course, post-2008 financial collapse, which gives the cheerful, educational colouring books and filmstrips boasting about our financial system a rather uncanny glint. The highlight is when they take you six storeys down to the gold vault, and you get to walk through a 6-foot thick steel door and peer through the metal mesh fence at the stacks of ingots. The individual vaults all belong to foreign governments or private holders, but they won't tell you whom! Fun fact: all official weighings are still done with mechanical, and not electronic, scales. When the tour ends, you are treated to a bag of shredded dollar bills.

And then, a few weeks later, I accompanied a friend to the very same depths underground in Chase Manhattan Plaza, directly opposite the Fed. He had to retrieve something from a safety deposit box. This requires being escorted by a bank official, through turnstiles, into a service elevator, through vault doors and into a reinforced room. You sign a ledger. The official takes you into the maze of safety deposit boxes. Some are big, some small, some have spinning locks like an old safe, some just have keys, as did my friend's. Two key holes, in fact, which you and the bank official have to unlock simultaneously. The metal sleeve comes out, still concealing its contents, and you take it to a private booth to deal with its contents. When you are finished, you repeat the process in reverse.

HA where?

2010-06-08T00:11:00.004-04:00

My stalker and I (will explain later) have a shared fascination with obscure street names in Manhattan. I mean, everyone knows Broadway and Delancey and Houston and the Bowery, but Cherry Street? Attorney Street? Corner of Jefferson and Henry, anyone? Beach Street at St John's Lane? We can play this game because we like to walk around WDT (that's waydowntown, yes we invented that and yes you can use it). I mean, you sort of at least have to play this game below Houston, where the grid ends and the streets get name-names and not numbers. The best neighbourhood for it is perhaps Two Bridges (my favourite neighbourhood - so obscure, so...off the radar), on the far east side of the island between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. We have a running joke about hopping in a cab and casually telling the driver "Um yeah, going to X Street and Y Way thx."

Well I have found the ultimate, my friends. The intersection of Wui plaza and Teddy Gleason Street. I defy you to find it on a map. It even mystifies Google. Bahahaha.

UPDATE: Teddy Gleason is gone!

Backing up: This strangest intersection in New York was discovered on Tuesday night, around midnight. We happened to walk past that same spot the very next night, and found that the sign for Teddy Gleason Street had disappeared! Just then, a mysterious man emerged from a parked car under the street lamp to which the street signs are attached.

“You two! I remember yous from last night.”

“What the hell happened to Teddy Gleason?” we ask.

“The sign – they knocked if off,” he says, gesturing at a pair of ATCO trailers parked on WUI Plaza, evincing some kind of construction taking place during the day. He said it like he’d been waiting to tell us all day. “It’s layin’ on the ground around here somewhere.” And he proceeded to look for it, like he was going to…give it to us?

“We found out who he was,” we say. “He was the president of the Longshoreman’s Union.”

And then, simultaneously, the mysterious man said “President of the Longshoreman’s Union and all he got was this little street?” and my stalker said “They named a street after him just cuz he was president of the Longshoreman’s Union?”

SMS Highlight Reel, vol 28: impromptu vacations

2010-06-06T16:10:00.006-04:00

"3 seats left. You in? Bahamas."

Drinking out of coconuts poolside, taking the jitney to the collection of shacks that serve fresh conch ceviche, walking on the beach, swimming in the ocean and basking in the sun and then going up to the air-conditioned room to lie on clean sheets and watch CNN. Also: watching 20-year-olds with fake tits and belly button piercings parade around in leucite heels and string bikinis - apparently we were there just in time for the "American Dream Model Contest." The non-idiomaticness of that title was oh so apt.

Mirth vs. mirthlessness

2010-05-31T22:09:00.001-04:00

My favourite humans are those who do not take themselves too seriously. Illustrating the opposite pole is the Serbian artist Marina Abramovic, who had an exhibition at the MoMA that involved...being admired while sitting in a chair? Also, a retrospective of her "art," the recurring theme of which seemed to be: "OMG the naked human body!" It soon became clear that all of Abramovic's admirers take themselves too seriously also, because - for instance - when they had to squeeze between two naked models in order to get to the next gallery room, none of them - not one - like, giggled. Ugh, we do not share a world.

Also, Orlando Bloom was there with some incredibly hot chick, and they were getting their own guided tour amidst the crush of visitors. And people did not notice them and kept bumping into them with their bags, hee.

Sigh, and then date and I had drinks outside on some rooftop bar and then went to Nougatine for dinner (address: One Central Park West) and then walked around the park after dark. Rough life.

Prague conference

2010-05-15T03:42:00.005-04:00

I got invited to an invitation-only conference in Prague. There were lace curtains and frescoes and doors with keyholes. I printed my talk out on A4 paper (it's like 8.5 x 11 on a diet). Between talks coffee was served in porcelain cups for a 20 kroner piece. Important people listened to what I said and asked me questions about it. I stayed in the villa, on the conference grounds. It looked... like this:

A tale of two delis

2010-05-11T16:00:00.001-04:00

Admin I sit next to at work: "That place is kinda pricey."
Me: "I don’t know, I can get a bagel, lox and cream cheese there for $2.95."
Admin: "It’s probably cheaper at the Bagel Buffet."
Me: "Nope. Don’t believe you. $2.95 is cheap. Not lox cream cheese, lox and cream cheese."
Admin: "Nah, Bagel Buffet would be cheaper."
Me: "Which one is that, anyway?"
Admin: "13th and 6th. We used to call it the smelly deli. They had a vent to the outside so you could smell their bacon all day."
Me: "Weird, I’ve never seen that place and I'm at that intersection all the time."
Admin: "You could walk right by it and miss it."
Me: "Well I still don’t think it’s gonna be cheaper."
Admin: "Hey, [office assistant], call Bagel Buffet please and aks them how much is a bagel with cream cheese and lox."
Office Assistant: "I don’t know - you have to habla espanol at Bagel Buffet."
Admin: "Don't worry, they speak American dolla."
[calls]
Office assistant: "Oooh, you're not gonna be happy, [admin]."
Admin: "What did they say?"
Office assistant: "They said $7.50."
Me: "Hah."

Katherine was here!

2010-05-10T23:40:00.004-04:00

Damn it, I need a PA

2010-04-26T17:09:00.006-04:00

A personal assistant, yes. Not because I am important (I am not important), but because by the time I finish working, going to class, and riding the subway all day I have just enough time left over to answer emails and put more things in my daytimer. In other words, forget studying or reading or writing these damn conference papers, or even getting all my mundane little tasks done. Yeah, that's what I need, one of those PAs like the ladies on the Upper East Side or West Village have. Return these library books for me. Update my cv and find me the email address for the editor of the Times real estate section I DON'T CARE HOW. Drop this picture off at the framer's and drop this cheque off at the landlord. Finish this fee board application and buy my sister a birthday gift (by the way, you're late, her birthday was April 8th). And, of course, pick up more diet coke and ramen.

Takin' it from the streets

2010-04-21T10:15:00.007-04:00

One night after a few glasses at Loup, on my way to the subway home, I came upon an abandoned coffee table on 13th street. Beautiful, solid wood construction and just like new. I carried that table up and down stairs, through subway turnstiles, onto the 1 train and off again, and up two flights in my building, where I knocked on my neighbour's door (well after midnight, I am sure) and asshhkked her if she wanted it. She did!

The other night after a nighttime stroll my friend and I came across an abandoned Billy bookshelf on Chambers street. It was covered in dust but in surprisingly good condition, and the former owner had even gone to the trouble of bundling the shelves with twine. I pulled all the shelf pegs out and stuck them in my pocket, and we carried it off into the night. Some twenty blocks later, my neighbour had a new bookshelf, too.

He's standing right behind me, isn't he?

2010-04-18T10:13:00.001-04:00

Things continue to happen in twos in New York.

I brought my mom and her friend Cathy, who were in town visiting me, to Loup, and explained that this was our after-class haunt (and hence where my mom got me a $100 tab as a Christmas gift), though celebrities sometimes pop up here, perhaps because it is so low-key. Just then Michael Douglas walked by and took a seat at the table over my right shoulder. (Which means he would have got a good view of when the bartender came over to give us props, hehe.)

Saturday I "tabled" (vended) all day at the Anarchist Bookfair, with my publisher-friend who was in town for that reason, and at some point we ended up engaged in conversation with a passerby about what a clown Zizek is, har har har, until I realized that he (Zizek) was standing at our table perusing our books.

Hot dog guy and coffee cart guy are friends!

2010-04-05T20:52:00.010-04:00

My coffee guy had to move his cart across the street because of the tearing down of the New School Graduate Faculty building (a matter of some controversy, if you recall). Now his cart is right next to my hot dog guy! I actually don't visit my coffee guy so much anymore (I get free coffee at work, which accounts for some 90% of my job satisfaction), but I'm up to about two hot dogs a day.

Passover vs. Easter

2010-04-04T22:36:00.000-04:00

Sarah is one of my favourite Jews, not least because she will invite all of us to her seder and give us photocopied Haggadah handouts so we can participate.

She is a vegetarian, so this is her version of a shankbone:

Apparently Passover is a whole week long! We closed it out (same guest list) with a big, ham-centered Easter dinner cooked by yours truly (I forgot to take a picture before we decimated the banquet).

Conference In Chicago

2010-03-29T23:36:00.004-04:00

Because my mom came along, we stayed in the nicest damn hotel. No crashing on futons for me.

Also because my mom was there, we took a lot of cabs (Chicago is windy!). But we also took the El. That damn train feels like it's going to tip over. I prefer my trains underground, thank you.

And because my mom was there, we ate deep dish

But we also ate tapas and sangria and crab salads and prosecco

Finally, because my mom was there, I got to do wonderful touristy things and not just conference-y things (which were, admittedly, also great), like check out the Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Oak Park

And have a drink at the top of the John Hancock building, and then wander through downtown

Now, my mom came with me a conference once before. The very first time I got a paper accepted to a real, grown-up (non-student) conference, she and my dad flew us all down there, and rented a car, and got a hotel room (and stocked it with wine), and even sat through my talk - my mom, in her gold sketchers and gold earrings and leopard print top, my dad in his Nexen Engineering promotional windbreaker and his Colt Engineering promotional golf shirt. It was absolutely lovely.

Now admittedly, we dowdy academics dress like caricatures of ourselves too. But not this time, friends. Because this time, when I arrived to find myself underdressed for the cold, my mom went and bought me scarf. And the only one she could find (SO SHE CLAIMED) was loud gold paisley just like hers.

The two of us walking around with our big, Texas beauty queen hair and our gold scarves? We were several El stops away from the University before I put that thing on, lemme tell you.

Going to Chicago

2010-03-26T23:22:00.000-04:00

Email conversation between me and my mom:

Manhattan vs. Brooklyn

2010-03-19T09:48:00.001-04:00

Some of my friends live in Manhattan, but more live in Brooklyn, because it is cheaper, on account of being a little to the right of the centre of the universe, and not having quite the same vibe, or energy, or number of coffee carts. Don't get me wrong, living in Brooklyn involves very little sacrifice. You can live in the cute hipster Brooklyn neighbourhood, or the quirky warehouse neighbourhood, or the gentrified, family-populated neighbourhood, or the somewhat sketchy neighbourhood, or the really homogeneous ethnic neighbourhood. In fact, people who live in Brooklyn will go on and on about how great (charming, convenient, homey, interesting, up-and-coming) their neighbourhood is. Sure. But when someone invites you to their birthday drinks at their neighbourhood Brooklyn pub, and you're at the mercy of the single goddam train that goes there, and unable to hail a cab back, all you can think is "pay the extra two hundred dollars and live in the city, asshole."

Census

2010-03-18T23:22:00.002-04:00

I filled out my census form. I opened it and filled it out and mailed it right away like it was Christmas morning. I like the idea of there being a record that I lived here. In 200 years, someone mining data will happen upon this and wonder, "There used to be a Lower Manhattan?"

Monday was cold and rainy

2010-03-15T23:38:00.001-04:00

It's still the case that our good friend passed away on the ides of March. I don't think either she or we realized we'd think of her this much.

Haha this is video is terrible, and I can picture the two of us arguing about it.

Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen

2010-03-08T20:38:00.001-05:00

People here are pretty creative with their panhandling spiels. Obviously. You need a good narrative and a good gimmick to grab the attention of most cynical, iPod-sporting New Yorkers. There's the guy who imitates the train announcements and bells (his wife died in a fire ten years ago and he has three kids to support), the kids selling candy for their sports team, the mariachi bands, the veteran hobos who really work the crowd and make dirty come-ons at the female passengers.

And then there's this sort of recursive honesty that goes on: I'm not selling candy for a basketball team, I'm just trying to get some money. There's the guy with the sign that says he's collecting money for beer. Or the woman who says she's tired of prostitution. (Okay, that woman gets to me. I want to set her up with an apartment on Park Avenue.) Or the guy who plays bongos on the subway and says that he used to walk the streets with a gun, now he walks the streets with a drum. I always love that. The veiled threat of pointing out "Hey, I'm not out there beating people and robbing people and stabbing you in the fucking gut if you don't give me a dollar please?"

Subway Begging - watch more funny videos

Spoiled. Rotten

2010-03-06T17:19:00.004-05:00

This keeps happening: I go to dinner with a friend or colleague and they pick up the tab. And good food, too! Steak tartare and creme brulee and lobster bisque. Multiple course affairs with preprandial cocktails and wine with dinner and coffee after. I cannot even describe how much I love this. In fact, I try - I sort of squeal and clap and it makes the other person uncomfortable.

So that's the graduate student Lebensform, you guys. I'm either cleaning out my pockets for a $1 hotdog or choosing a wine pairing for my gigot.

Potato Peeler Grifter Saga, Continued

2010-02-21T17:02:00.005-05:00

You remember this guy (RIP). His daughter is now following in his footsteps. She's good, too. I love participating in the obscurity of this. "Remember watching the ball drop on New Year's Eve in Times Square?" No. Remember that family of potato peeler grifters in Union Square? Yes.

Now get back to work

2010-02-19T17:30:00.013-05:00

I'm thirty years old and I live in New York, which pretty much means I can do whatever the fuck I want. Like spend the afternoon at the new David Chang restaurant in Midtown and then at the top of 30 Rock, just for fun, because you can, because it's Friday, you ain't got no job, you ain't got shit to do (that's not true: you do have a job, and you have a lot of shit to do).

But seriously, they need to update their maps.

Apartment saga, continued

2010-02-17T22:41:00.001-05:00

My rent complaint is finally getting settled. More on that later. But in the meantime, I found out all kinds of fascinating things about the woman who used to live here, the one who paid $95 rent when the apartment was still set up tenement-style. The landlord doesn't know for how long she lived here - their records only go back to 1965 - but she was living here then. Which means that she lived here when this neighbourhood was still populated by families and little local businesses, and possibly when the El still ran down Greenwich Street, and before several square blocks were rased for the World Trade Center. She would have witnessed the building of the twin towers, and the evolution of her quaint neighbourhood street into Sodom South. And when September 11 happened, she was evacuated, as was all of Lower Manhattan, and according to the superintendents and the landlord she was "very elderly" at the time, and "never returned." In fact, the city didn't give my landlord the go-ahead to allow tenants to return until the spring of 2003. At some point that year, the woman's family asked the landlord permission to enter her apartment and remove her belongings, and at some point that same year (before or after, no one recalls), she passed away. I think about her utter confusion the day the towers fell, the diremption of her universe, the final chapter of her tenancy here written by that horrific act around which the entire world's politics then pivoted, let alone New York's history. Her name is still on my mailbox; I've never changed it.

SMS Highlight Reel, vol. 26

2010-02-15T21:27:00.011-05:00

I an drunk.

"come meet the majority leader"

You, me, cab? Yes No
(circle one*).
*note: failure to circle means yes.

I want you to know that the suspense is killing me.

What is the grounding principle of the first critique, again? (purposiveness is the grounding principle of the third)

Where you at? I'm outside your door with a half dozen roses.

AfterPARTy. Gonna pick a fight with kid rock

Guess what? Bill fucking Murray was at Loup last night. My co-workers talked to him.

Jeez woman, you ever deliver good news? It's always stuff like "The Times thinks you're a terrorist" or "Guess what? I'm on my period."

Holy shit there's going to be a lot of cheese and crackers there tonight. and i mean that both literally and in the derogatory and racist way.

Je vous ...? 4 letters.

THIS IS GOING TO KILL ME

i bow to your talent to slip in a fucking BOMB.

Omg! That is him! Holy shit!

I say "claro que si" though I can't get the netflix in time I don't think

Collin robinson just launched a new house and the first book is on Sarah Palin. Plus he apparently throws great parties.

Me too! Its been forevs! Im scared we will giggle all through class since all the giggles have been pent up

I cant tell if thats a sad cry or a cry me a river cry

Eh yo brooklyn eh

1458 your mom ave. Your Mom, YM 696969

Omg. I just met two of the cutest guys. They told me to come by 9th st coffee house. I told them I studied phil & they didn't flinch, it's on. We should go

Way to be! Way to be!

Am seeing [name] tonight. I am a weak, weak woman lol. How's the paper?

guy died on my train

You tell me if this comes across as impassioned or perfunctory: wanna get drunk and fool around?

We meeting for gut bombs or what?

Sawed off shotgun should be fine. It's right above the bedford nostrand G stop.

This text message warrants no response from me. I walked through the SNOW.

You are the worst kind of human being. Is the date with the 23-year-old tonight? P.S. You're gonna intimidate the Jaegermeister outta him.

IM PUMPED TO GET PUMPED

I am lurking on g-mail chat.

Listen, do you want me to be pretty or do you want me to be not pretty? Because i can come not pretty. Actually that's a lie i would never do that.

On my way. Dont drink anymore til i get there!

So [name] came home with me last night. We still on for pilates?

We're cabbing over. Where is wine?

Wait til u see the video

Cocoa

2010-02-14T10:17:00.008-05:00

I have something that most New Yorkers don't: a neighbour. My good friend moved into the building about six months ago, and I can't tell you how ideal it is to have precisely that arrangement for the simultaneous intimacy and separation (roommate = too much; no neighbours = too isolated). We regularly - almost daily - get together and make cocoa and talk about boys, academia, our neuroses...

Must see tv Thursday

2010-02-11T16:16:00.006-05:00

So Thursday I went to a taping of The View (long story) with a friend. Now that I have been to two tapings of shows, I am pretty sure I "get" it and never need to do that again. The best part, however (besides the swag - apple martini mix and face moisturizer!), was when a producer for the show stood directly in front of me (just because of where my seat happened to be located, on the aisle) and looked me directly in the eyes and barked commands into his headset. This went on for several minutes, and he never broke eye contact.

Then I got to work, and a guy I work with happens to be an actor, and this week he had a brief speaking role on As The World Turns (as a Russian ship captain, lol), and we huddled around the computer and watched his scenes. Awesome. So awesome. Uncanny.

Ugh, get off of my cloud

2010-02-05T20:49:00.012-05:00

I have a date place - a place I suggest for drinks, especially on a first date. It's small and intimate and has good music, played quietly enough that you can still converse easily.

A few weeks ago I let a friend in on my date spot, and she took a guy there. Tonight she had a date with a different guy, who she also arranged to meet at this spot. Only thing is, when she got there, date number one was sitting at the next table, obviously on a date himself. He stole her date place! Which means he stole my date place.

Of course, this being fractal New York, the small city infinitely redoubled back upon itself, the city of eight million people you will keep running into, they had the luxury of simply ignoring each other. Which they did.

The Campbell Apartment

2010-02-02T22:13:00.003-05:00

This is one of those worst kept New York secrets, but damn is it a nice place for an after-work drink. Actually, the crowd was strictly business and not tourist.

The best part was the email by which my friend arranged to meet me there:

"Exit Grand Central via the grand staircase on the west side leading to Vanderbilt Ave. Upon exiting, turn left, walk 50ft, and reenter Grand Central through the glass doors on your left. Climb the stairs to the Campbell Apartment."

Universe, what?

2010-01-31T23:00:00.002-05:00

Today I went for brunch at a friend's place. Really, really good brunch - she says she's a little bit country and a little bit Columbian, so there was hot chocolate with cinnamon, vegetable fritata, biscuits and gravy, and cheese grits. When I was leaving, I had to wait for her to finish saying goodbye to some other people first. One of those other people looked at me and said, "You look familiar." It turns out we went to junior high together. Like, we were in the same class and everything, way back in YYC.

Later on I was on a date with this guy. We started talking about both having gone to the ticker tape parade for the Giants, me because I am a social anthropologist, and he because he worked in the Financial District at the time. I asked him where he watched it from. He said, "You know that big red cube in front of Zuccoti Park?" It turns out we were standing right next to each other. (He was not one of the guys I was quoting in my blog post.)

Home by midnight Saturday night = voicemail hilarity Sunday morning

2010-01-31T11:59:00.000-05:00

"marianne! it's max, the show's over, gimme a call. what are you, asleep? it's 2010, man. figure it out. fine. gimme a call. bye."

"you're trying to act like you're all out and shit? lemme tell you something, man. i got some kind of fucking international party going on in here. russians, columbians, texans, all kinds of fucking like, congas and shakers and shit. anyways. all that's, you know, incidental. i gotta fucking get up in the morning. i'm brushing my teeth and going to bed."

Things that happened a million years ago

2010-01-28T23:41:00.006-05:00

Time passes slowly in New York. Don't get me wrong: the weeks and months fly by with the same nauseating speed as they do anywhere else, but somehow the things that happened a mere year ago here seem light years away. I guess this is the fractal thing again (New York's infinite expansion inward). A lot happens in 24 hours, and it's all different. You change and the city changes even faster (no more CBGB, no more Tavern on the Green). Heraclitus knows what I'm talking about.

Of course, that is why I am here. I'm not opposed to husbands and houses and babies. But I can't handle knowing where I am going to be in five years.

The sky is falling

2010-01-25T22:03:00.005-05:00

There are flash flood warnings and 70 mph winds in New York right now. Several blocks of my neighbourhood were closed (not affecting me) because construction debris was blowing off the Frank Gehry skyscraper they're building on Beekman street and smashing through cars. Both cars and pedestrians were prevented from leaving or entering the area.

And hey guess what? My ceiling is leaking again. Meh, that's okay - they still haven't repaired it from the last time, and this will just make that a bit more urgent. (Says the super: "Oh shit. You have bucket?")

The nicest compliment I have ever received

2010-01-24T14:15:00.001-05:00

Spacey guy I work with: "Hey, do you like Dorothy Parker?"
Me: "Yeah sure, I think she's hilarious."
Guy: "Well you remind me of Dorothy Parker."
Me: "I do?"
Guy: "Yeah, one time I saw you at that place on 6th Avenue and 12th or 13th or whatever."
Me: "Bar 6?"
Guy: "Yeah, maybe. I don't know. You were sitting outside. And you were waving this cigarette around and holding court, just surrounded by this whole group of guys. Just like Dorothy Parker."
Me: "Wow. I mean, I take that as a huge compliment."

Working my way onto that list

2010-01-23T17:50:00.001-05:00

On MLK day I went to a protest - a vigil actually, outside of the Municipal Correctional Center (right there in my nabe) because that is where a U.S. citizen has been held in solitary confinement for two and a half years without trial. Hell, even the protests in New York are high profile. Cindy Sheehan turned up, as did Dar Williams and Chris Hedges.

I have a lot of time for Cindy Sheehan, both for being nothing like the distraught mother the media portrays her to be, and for providing some of the most relevant testimony about the Iraq war in the last nine years:

"This is a picture of Casey when he was 7 months old. It's an enlargement of a picture he carried in his wallet until the day he was killed. He loved this picture of himself. It was returned to us with his personal effects from Iraq. He always sucked on those two fingers. When he was born, he had a flat face from passing through the birth canal and we called him ‘Edward G' short for Edward G. Robinson. How many of you have seen your child in his/her premature coffin? It is a shocking and very painful sight. The most heartbreaking aspect of seeing Casey lying in his casket for me, was that his face was flat again because he had no muscle tone. He looked like he did when he was a baby laying in his bassinette. The most tragic irony is that if the Downing Street Memo proves to be true, Casey and thousands of people should still be alive."

Girls interrupted

2010-01-22T17:47:00.001-05:00

My girlfriend and I went on a "study date" on the LES. We spent most of the time doing work, but every once in a while you have to come up for air and complain or gossip about boys. Apparently this is irresistible to guys within earshot, as we were interrupted not once but twice.

Once:
Friend: "Ugh, this stack of Kant papers is killing me."
Me: "Yeah? Give some to me."
Random guy: "Hey, sorry to interrupt - are you guys in philosophy?"
Me: "Yes."
Random guy: "Okay, I have a question. I'm reading Caesar's Commentary on the Gallic Wars, and - what's it called when someone draws some conclusion about something, like based on past evidence?"
Me: "An inference. Or an inductive generalization."
[I won't bore you with the logic lecture that followed.]

Twice:
Friend: "So the Russian texted me again. What do I do? Do I text the guy back? Not text him? What do I say?"
Random guy: "How many times did you go out with him?"
Friend: "Once. But then we texted a few times afterwards."
Random guy: "Yeah, you don't have to text him back."
Friend: "Really?"
Random guy: "If you've gone out fewer than three times, you don't have to return his calls or texts. On the other hand, if you've gone out with a guy three or more times, and then you just disappear, that's a problem, because at that point he's made an investment and now he's left wondering what happened."
Me: "This sounds right. Write this down."

Fuel oil delivery

2010-01-21T14:43:00.005-05:00

You see this fuel oil caps embedded in the sidewalks all over the place here. Most of the time they look ancient, and no longer serviceable, having been ground into the concrete by 100 years of passing boots and dog paws. Besides, is that even a thing anymore? Fuel oil delivery? To what, a big tank in the basement? Is there a coal chute too? Haha.

Well apparently it is still a thing:

UPDATE: Apparently I was sort of right (about it being antiquated).

Midnight screening of Showgirls at IFC

2010-01-17T23:33:00.006-05:00

Why has no one told me about this movie? I mean, I've heard of it, but why has no one grabbed me by the shoulders and shaken me and yelled "Go see this movie!"? This may be the best movie I have ever seen. It was totally worth paying $12.50 for despite its being fifteen years old (none of this is sarcasm, by the way - I know it's hard to tell sometimes on a blog). I mean, just when you thought a line wasn't going to be crossed, it was crossed. "It must be weird not having people--" haha, I can't repeat that! My parents read this thing!

IFC, by the way, is an indie cinema house in the West Village. As we stood in line, it looked like the screening was going to be a total sausage fest, which would be understandable given all the full frontal nudity, but it turned out to be that other kind of sausage fest, namely a gay and tranny fest, and lemme tell you their screen talkback was priceless. In fact, I want to make midnight screenings of it with (gay) audience participation an annual tradition. This is some Rocky Horror Picture Show -calibre shit. (Wine pairing: a screwcap bottle of five dollar vinho verde.)

Supporting the tiny New York art scene

2010-01-16T22:35:00.003-05:00

Gallery opening! On the LES, and it was so small that it felt perfunctory actually walking over to a piece. And then taking one step to your right and looking at the next piece. And then rotating 90 degrees and looking at the next piece. Etc.

Movie premiere! At some theatre in Midtown. A black & white Polish film noir, the kind of thing I would never have gone to of my own accord, but really enjoyed. Not enough to stay for the Q&A with the director (instead: drinks at the St. Rege!), but still.

Book launch! Also on the LES, in a great little performance space. A friend had just published her first book of poetry, and read an excerpt (along with two other new authors). I even caught a reference to something that happened when the two of us were hanging out together.

"Gotta go - I'm meeting [friend] and [friend] for science and drinks"

2010-01-06T22:38:00.006-05:00

Winter break was great. I mean, possibly the best Christmas I have had as an adult. It was all steak and crantinis and mimosas and crab legs and fried perogies and card games and hockey tickets. And the best gifts ever.* And it was great seeing my friends, and finding out I can still drive (150 km/hour), and being remembered by the salacious old bartenders at the Garneau. So I was reluctant to get back, where it's all argue-with-the-landlord this and shove-people-on-the-subway that. But tonight my friend reminded me of why we live in New York. First Wednesdays of the month at the Natural History Museum, admission is free in the evening, drinks are only five dollars, and a hip scientist-in-residence will tell you interesting stories about the fish in the Congo river. And the cute DJ will give you his card and the cute party photog will take your picture more than once. Haha.

*Absinthe. A $100 bar tab at both of my haunts. Caviar. New luggage. And something so funny I can only show/tell you in person.

Putting the super in...

2010-01-05T21:42:00.004-05:00

When I got back to New York it was as cold outside as it had been in Calgary, and in that kind of weather my apartment is fuh-reezing. So I called the landlord and asked him to turn up the boiler and he ended up sending the super to my apartment. Actually, two supers - they often show up in pairs, and always Russian. I was in a bad mood because I had been putting out fires since I had arrived back in town (work, school, banks, credit cards, the Department of Housing, etc. etc.), and when they rang my doorbell I was literally on the phone with visa and unpacking and had the shower running (it takes a few minutes to warm up) trying to get ready for work. So I was kind of short with them. And they tinkered around with my radiators (which I had already told the landlord work perfectly fine) and spoke Russian, of which I could glean just enough to know that they weren't complaining about me. And then they wandered over to my sink and I rolled my eyes and shut off the shower and sat down and started catching up on emails. It turns out they were fixing my sink (again), just because they remembered that it breaks all the time. And they told me that the boiler in this building can't be turned up anymore, but they knew of an electric heater lying around somewhere and would bring it by this week. That kind of gratuitous niceness kills me every time.

T-boned

2010-01-02T19:29:00.005-05:00

Starting the new year off right! My friend and I got smashed up at an intersection right by where I used to live, in Edmonton (while on a drive down memory lane). Because the streets were slippery with snow, we got carried sideways rather than absorbing the impact and so weren't ultimatley hurt. See if you can tell by our accident reports which one of us is a millwright and which one of us fancies herelf a philosopher and writer.

"Driving east bound on 100 ave. When driving through inter- section 103 st we were hit by a SUV that ran a red light. The vehicle was driving south."

"9:04 pm - we were driving east on 100th ave. As we entered the intersection of 100th ave and 103rd street, a jeep coming southbound crashed into us on the driver's side. We had the green light so he must have had a red light. Our light had been green for a while because shortly after he hit us I remember it turned yellow. He did not slow down or veer or react at all - just ploughed into us. I recall another car being stopped at the light, facing south on 103rd, in the right lane. This guy was in the left lane and breezed on by that stopped car. When the other driver got out of his car, he accused us of running a red light, but quickly retracted when he saw that we had a witness (a cab driver). We exchanged insurance info and he left before police arrived."

Club seats

2009-12-30T13:45:00.000-05:00

Oooh, we went to the corporate VIP version of the hockey game. This means parking about ten feet from the door and dining on prime rib and crab legs and cabernet in the Avison Young club and then taking your front row seats where waiters come by and crouch on the steps and ask you for your drink order. And then skipping back to the Avison Young club between periods where you have another, pre-ordered drink waiting (they're really efficient about the whole drinking thing). From seats that close you can definitely tell which players are good-looking. Great vantage on the rhubarb, too.

I got an article accepted for publication!

2009-12-22T20:23:00.001-05:00

It's a "postgraduate" journal (which I think means mostly student papers), but it is affiliated with Oxford! Yaaaay!

Actually, it's that paper.

Thanks to PSWIP, who helped me edit it!

So what did you do during the crazy snowstorm of '09?

2009-12-19T18:01:00.007-05:00

I tried flying home early, which meant spending two full days at LaGuardia (and then one night in Toronto), and subsisting for two days on terrible coffee and sandwiches, and finding a nice corner of the departure lounge with an outlet, where I could drag out all my notes and articles on Freud and Derrida and write my Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction paper.

And in between those two days at the airport (with cab rides to and from) some friends came over with wine so I really didn't have to leave the house at all. I heard it was a mess out there, though.

It finally happened!

2009-12-17T23:14:00.005-05:00

You know those shitty ATMs that litter Manhattan and as a result of which, if you live here, your identity gets stolen from time to time (because you do use them, against your better judgement, because you are lazy)? You know, the ones chained to the outside of the bodega, because god knows the bodega isn't going to accept your credit/debit card, except for purchases over twenty dollars or some nonsense, but how much would you have to hate yourself to spend twenty dollars at a bodega? The ones covered in stickers and dog shit, that charge a two dollar withdrawal fee on top of your own bank's own $3 fee (I've never understood that - what, is the bank pouting that you took money out somewhere else just because you happened to be drunk in Alphabet City and really needed cigarettes and it was close and convenient)? So those ATMs always include the helpful security tip to wait until all your cash is dispensed before taking it, because the bills might get stuck coming out of their cheap dispensing device. And on account of that I always throw a glance at the one outside my building to see if someone forgot a twenty. And today somebody did! Free money.

Do I have to not fix everything around here?

2009-12-16T23:42:00.007-05:00

After sleeping for 15 hours (man, was I tired and sick), I dragged myself out of bed and through the shower to my appointment at the Genius Bar, i.e. the tech support at the fancy Apple Store in Chelsea. You see, my computer had died the night before - in that most enviable way of simply going to sleep and never waking back up. And all of my grades were trapped inside. And let me tell you, babies, this was one of those times - probably the only time - that the problem was solved with a simple ctrl+alt+caps lock+power button. Boom, back to life. Grades saved.
"You should probably back up, though."
"Yes. Yes, I will."

Then I went home, only to smell gas in the hallway of my decrepit apartment building. I called the landlord and he was only mildly interested.
"We took care of that this morning."
"Well, apparently not, because the smell is back, and it's really strong."
"Ok, I'll send the super around again."
"Look, I don't know how to say this, but I've met the super, and... I'm just gonna call ConEd."
Which I did, and of course they asked me to wait outside the building for 45 minutes to let them in, and then I had to walk around with the guy while he used his EKG meter to detect dangerous fumes (oh by the way, at this point of course the smell is completely gone), and then after the shift change let a second ConEd guy in to do the same, at which point I snapped and said "Look, I have a paper to write. Here's my landlord's number. He's really the one who should be dealing with this. I don't know whether there was a fuel delivery today, or whether something has been done to the boiler. I don't know if the businesses downstairs use gas, or where the meters are, and I can't let you in to anyone's suite. Can you please just call him?"
"Whoa, okay lady, alright."

Sigh.

Cockroach update

2009-12-12T23:56:00.002-05:00

So the cockroach is gone. Like I said, I was just gonna wait until a male friend came over. Well, one such friend locked himself out of his house and called me for refuge at 5:30 am on Sunday when none of his roommates would answer. I told him he had to get the cockroach.

"That's still there?"
"Yes."
"I read that post!"
"Well, now you have to take care of it for me."
"Sure, okay. I don't even mind - it kind of feels like meeting a reality tv star."
"And take out the garbage bag you put it in."

I passed my oral comprehensive exams

2009-12-11T00:06:00.000-05:00

That's another hoop you have to jump through in the marathon on the way to the PhD (oops, mixed my metaphors). I went last that day, and my examiners said it was a "perfect way to end the day"; in fact, that it was "a model of how oral exams should be done" and that I had even "restored their faith in this institution's academics." I then went and got drunk for 9.5 hours. Wine is to the philosopher as soap is to the working man.

What we talk about when we talk about philosophy

2009-12-05T00:24:00.001-05:00

The ladies and I went to SPEP to find our future ex-husbands. We took the train, we brought six bottles of wine, we stayed in the conference hotel (I love staying in the conference hotel), we brought aerosol cheese and saltines, we attended some of the talks, we skipped some of the talks, we attended all of the wine and cheese receptions, we refilled our glasses in our hotel room, we passed notes (2009 version: writing a draft of an SMS and showing it to the person), we checked out our prospects, we turned down our prospects, we walked across the Potomac and ate an amazing brunch (Eggs Chesapeake: an eggs benedict with crab cakes instead of back bacon), we took the train home. We took pictures.

About that

2009-12-04T07:50:00.009-05:00

Sometimes I will read pages and pages of my own blog (aka my internet diary). I'll skip to two years ago, and read a whole series of posts, and I'll get a vivid sense of what was happening then, what I was going through, who I was. Not that I ever publish the significant stuff, but what I do put down works well as a mnemonic device. It's like when you watch a movie adaptation after having read the book. If someone just asked you to rattle off the book, you wouldn't remember half of it. But if you watch the movie, even if you read the book years ago, you notice every little change, and remember everything that was left out.

So we broke up recently. It's difficult. But it wasn't right, and we knew it. And one of the reasons I knew, for my part, was because he never read my blog. He didn't read it, and that always bothered me. Sure we talked about it, and he had his reasons, and he would even read some bits if I asked him to, but it wasn't something he wanted to do. And that was something I could never come to terms with.

Omen Omener Omenest

2009-12-02T00:32:00.009-05:00

The night that I got back, it was after midnight when I finally got home and I hadn't eaten all day while travelling so I grabbed the nearly-empty bag of avocado oil potato chips from the top of the fridge and crawled into bed and fell asleep watching tv on the internet. In the morning I woke up and walked over to my suitcase and flipped open the lid... and found the bag of chips, the stay-fresh clip reattached to it, sitting there amongst my clothes and toiletries.

The mom from the Sixth Sense knows what I am talking about.

The second day I got back I was blowdrying my hair and saw something approaching from the corner of my eye and screamed (that's reason enough) and then realized that it was a cockroach - one of those big brown fuck-you New York cockroaches, what I have never had in my apartment, and immediately (screamed again and) grabbed the National Geographic sitting on top of the laundry hamper and whacked the fucking cockroach to pieces (screaming and screaming), and then could not - could not - bring myself to get near it again to pick it up and dispose of it so I just slid the magazine over (still screaming a bit) to cover the corpse and that's where both are still. It will just have to wait until the next time I have a male friend over. I almost asked the FreshDirect guy to take care of it for me this morning.

And today, my third day back, I was walking up the stairs and encountered my across-the-hall neighbour talking to my downstairs neighbour because the latter had just been broken into and robbed. Cleaned out. And apparently it's not the first time that has happened in this building.

So that's great. Does that mean I'm done, because things happen in threes? Or does that mean that my home is warning me, sending omen after omen about some impending doom?

The most disgusting thing in New York

2009-11-07T23:46:00.000-05:00

You will need to sit down.

I was waiting for the subway, and I notice some movement on the tracks. It's a rat (bing: that's grossness level 1), and it's dragging something, struggling to hoist it over the next tie, onto the rail; the haul periodically falls back into the gutter, the rat pauses, stuggles and drags it up again (2). The haul, as it turns out, is another rat (3). A dead rat (4), flopping lifelessly up and over and down the obstacles as the live rat drags it along. In fact, the dead rat itself looks oddly like two dead rats intertwined at the tail or at the rump - but that, it turns out, is because it is really a single rat that has at some point been split by a passing subway wheel, its two halves attached now only by a few bits of flesh, like some open-faced rat sandwich, like a butterflied rat, flopping open and closed and open and closed as his friend drags him along the rails (um, 5?). By now of course I am absolutely horrified, and also mesmerized, and horrified, and mesmerized, and also wondering why the live rat is doing this - is this some kind of comrade in arms thing? Soldier down, have to drag him back to the rat's nest and give him a proper burial? What is the evolutionary adaptiveness of that, exactly? This rat risking his life on the same rails that felled his brother? I soon get an answer, though: the reason live rat is pausing periodically is not just to gather his strength, but to lean down and nibble on the splayed entrails of dead rat, nom nom nom, drag a bit further, pause and eat, repeat.

And (6).

Random people who recognize me

2009-11-06T22:23:00.000-05:00

One is the rasta at the Trader Joe's wine store - not that I even go in there that often (honestly). I used to think he just liked to flirt; I (meaning my hair) get a certain reaction from Caribbean men, but sure enough he would single me out even when I wasn't his customer, maintain a certain continuity of conversation, remark on when he hadn't seen me in a while.

Another is the guy in the booth at the downtown/Brooklyn R/W stop. He always waves or smiles or something. Again, I wasn't sure for a long time whether he was really recognizing me or just being outgoing, until he acknowleged me on street level one day when I saw him on his break, grabbing something from a deli. Now, this guy is oddly (for the MTA) young and somewhat hip and something about him screams creepy/pathological. One time, I was getting on the train late at night to go to Brooklyn, I swipe my card in the turnstile and let myself in, kind of deliberately ignoring the booth, and from behind me I hear him lean over, press the microphone button and softly intone "Have a good night..."

And finally, we have the guy who mans the newspaper stand facing the doors of building I come out of when taking a certain shortcut. This guy I actually did think recognized me, as he would always instantly acknowledge me when he saw me, and it does only take about five seconds for me to pass by his stand. Sometimes he would even call out a "How are you?" and so one day I decided to stop and chitty chat for sec. He asked if I worked around here and I said no but I lived nearby. After a few seconds I said goodbye and the next week when I saw him I stopped again, only to have exactly the same conversation ("Do you work around here?"). Annoyed, I started walking away, to which he said "Wait, how can I see you again?"
"I'll walk by again."

Snippets

2009-11-05T09:05:00.012-05:00

Me [having just grabbed a 6-pack from the cooler]: "Could you exchange two of these for the ones you have on ice? They're not very cold."
Random customer: "Exchange em all! Exchange em all."
Me: "Well, I'm not going to drink them all right now."
Random customer: "Imma drink em with you. Imma get two more six-packs and meet you outside."

Woman in elevator with me, to man in elevator with me: "I was hoping to catch up with you! I want to yell at you."
Man: "Oh?"
Woman: "I saw you walk across 15th street on your cell phone without even looking! There was a cab coming, you know. You're lucky you didn't get hit!"
Man: "S'alright."
Woman: "No it's not alright! You have to be more careful."
Man: "S'alright."
Woman: "Tsk. You're too young!"
Man: "My sister gave her life for this country, so if I go... I don't mind."
Woman: "You have to be more careful."
Man: [getting off elevator] "You take care, ma'am."
Woman: "No, you take care! Hahaha."

Me: "Could I get a chicken kabob?"
Vendor: "You want it on a pita?"
Me: "Yes, please."
Vendor: "You want onions? tomatoes? lettuce?"
Me: "All of that. And do you have, like, white sauce?"
Vendor: "I don't have like white sauce, I have white sauce."
Me: "Uh, heh, okay then. Could I have some?"
Vendor: "Those other guys, who have white sauce in a bottle like this? [grabs squeeze bottle of hot sauce]. That's just mayonnaise."
Me: "Oh yeah?"
Vendor: "They don't have real white sauce. They don't know how to make it. They're not Greek like me. See? Look at this [opens metal cover]."
Me: "That looks great. Lots of cucumber."

The World Series

2009-11-05T09:05:00.007-05:00

When we arrived at Eric's to watch the game (actually to eat nachos and watch youtube videos and giggle), there were several fire trucks - and news trucks - outside the building across from his on 104th street. Later, during the game, we googled what had happened, and found out that a woman had died in a fire on the third floor. And hours later when we left, and walked back down 104th street towards the 1 train, at that very moment the M.E. wheeled the body bag out on a stretcher right in front of us, opened the back of the M.E. van, and loaded it in. Lemme tell you, the M.E.'s van is no hearse, and it's no ambulence - the body goes on a shelf beneath a bunch of chemicals and next to a bunch of instruments.

SMS Highlight Reel, vol. 25: Dating

2009-10-17T10:31:00.000-04:00

On my way to my dinner date and i feel like fucking puking

I told my friend at suny that im going to spep for sex and he said all the conferences are unhandsome sausage fests!

secretly, I want to sing to you and make you cry

Apparently they are clueless! One does not wear a skin tight dress or pass out in a guys bed for naught

just went on the WORST 45 min date. mf tried 2 kiss me 4 times! he wasn't ugly but c'mon. i don't know if i can stomach anymore serial dating*

Well, me too. Dinner was delicious, and, well, I really like being around you.

Yes. Dress sexy. If it changes anything I'm high too.

I asked my ethics class. They say tell the truth. I say make excuses why u can't hang until he gets the hint

Somehow, the filthy things you say make you a big sweetheart

I'll wear the shoes

Nothing should be more important to you than last minute movie plans initiated by me.

I was put into a position. didn't want to seem like leaving WITH you. I'll call if your still up

He just ate my fucking face in a cab*

Oh nothing. Just what's a guy like me without false pretenses?

donde? una bebida?

I've been enjoying this long courtship.

Go to dinner with me tomorrow night.

home now whenever you're ready to roll up. proseco waiting if so desired

Come. Just a plain ticket. You have no reason to be devastated. You're amazing. I'm a boy who knows it. Just come.

Glad you made me stay, but I wish you were here.

Say no more. I LIVE for words like those! Besides, midnight rendez(s)-vous with hot ladies is kinda my thing.

I want you to be my date tonight. You won't regret it.

exactly. well it just says, "I love you"

*This must be stopped.

Netflix

2009-10-15T13:18:00.001-04:00

Continuing with the theme of having everything delivered to your door, another New York must-have is NetFlix. For you Canadians, NetFlix is a movie rental delivery service. Depending on your subsription level, you can have one, two, or five movies delivered to your mailbox at a time, an unlimited number of times per month. They come with postage paid return envelopes. You rate movies and it recommends others you might like. I'm basically using it as a romantic comedy generator. It is SO great.

Brooklyn Psychosis

2009-10-11T22:39:00.006-04:00

is the name of your next band.

No, listen. On the corner of Nevins and Schemerhorn in Brooklyn, there is a boarded up empty lot. Someone with a jiffy marker (no, three jiffy markers: one blue and one black and one red) is slowly filling up that blank plywood with a perfect illustration of psychosis. Words. Numbers. Places. Names of organizations. Simple equations. Ten equals eight. No, ten equals ten. Fischer (with a "c"). The telephone number for the New York Times. Canada. North Korea. Albany. 489841. 3 stars athens. The book of Corinthians. The book of genesis. UBS Fian Service. 8897889. 89996. Sex. 986659. Michelle Jackson. Toys - food - sneakers. Do not move. Wrong way. We want in.

Saturday night in NYC

2009-09-28T14:37:00.008-04:00

Going out on a Saturday night feels like punishment - surrounded by NYU students, the bridge and tunnel crew, fratboy traders and other nine-to-fivers, bad dates, etc. Who wants to share the bar/restaurant/sidewalk with that? Plus, the subway only runs once an hour (and it's skipping your stop).

On the other hand, staying in on a Saturday night feels like punishment. Like you're the last human on earth without friends, like you're under house arrest, like you're fifteen and grounded. Four hours of watching bad tv and reading failblog (cuz god knows you're not going to get any work done - it's Saturday, ffs!).

The only solution is to go to someone else's house and drink their booze and eat their food. And perhaps settle the Kant vs. Hegel debate with finger puppets.

Why is there a tupperware container full of homemade meatballs on 13th street?

2009-09-28T14:35:00.005-04:00

You mean you don't know?

I hate that chick

2009-09-27T13:26:00.006-04:00

That chick on her iPhone, blithely unaware of her surroundings. The one with the heavy bangs, wearing rubber boots and a kaffiya (nailed it, congratulations, that is exactly what you are supposed to wear "this season"*). She's at most twenty years old, but I'm sure she has some fabulous connected internship somewhere, which she either gets paid obscenely well for, or not at all (whatever, at any rate she lives off her parents' dole). That chick doesn't even need to have disdain for you - whence would anything of the sort arise in her financially lubricated glide through the city and through life. There are WAY too many of that chick in New York. Ugh, and why is she always in line at Starbucks in front of me?

*I think I got that right. Did I get that right?

SMS Highlight Reel, vol. 24: Interrupted text messages saved to drafts folder

2009-09-08T20:12:00.000-04:00

Something about the crying and the a

Lol. Seriously are you just sitting

Cuz I'm not there. If I were there, they'd be about someone else.

Well I'd let you but you've gotta

And even though you said that I will meet you for a glass of wine somewhere in the proximity of Union Square

A bathtub and a fireplace

2009-09-06T12:48:00.008-04:00

A bathtub and a fireplace are the holy grails of New York apartment living. Ironically, my apartment used to have both, which I found out when I went to the Tenement Museum, since it gives tours of an old, derelict tenement on the Lower East Side, which happens to be identical in blueprint to mine. The apartments used to be railroad style (one room is reached through the other, without a hallway), with a fireplace in the front bedroom, a bathtub and a fireplace in the kitchen, followed by a back bedroom with no window. There were two shared toilets per floor. That my apartment used to be set up in this way was confirmed for me by a neighbour on the first floor who has lived here for ages; she knew the "nice old Polish lady" who used to live in my place when it was rent-controlled at $95.86 a month, and still had the bathtub in the kitchen. "I remember when your apartment was being renovated," she says. I can still see the remnants for myself - the two drywalled outcroppings on my wall hiding fireplaces, the window onto nothing where the hall toilet used to be.

Now he'll just need more therapy

2009-08-25T16:00:00.000-04:00

Roy: So I was talking to my therapist, and she said that -
Me: Wait, your therapist is a woman?
Caroline: Haha
Roy: Yeah. Why?
Caroline: That's pretty Freudian, Roy.
Me: Yeah, Roy.
Roy: What do you mean?
Me: Well it makes the whole transference thing a little easier I guess.
Caroline: Haha
Roy: And you know what?
Caroline: What?
Roy: My therapist's name is Linda. And my mom's name is Linda.
Me: BAHAHAHAHAHA!
Caroline: HAHAHAHA!
Roy: I didn't realize that at first.
Me: Hahahaha
Caroline: hahaha
Random Guy: haha!...... Oh, sorry, I couldn't help but overhearing. That's funny.
Me: Is your shrink a man or a woman?*
Random Guy: A man.
Me: See, Roy?

*It's New York, so you don't have to ask whether someone sees a therapist.

Oh, hi

2009-08-24T22:21:00.001-04:00

Hey, when you've been in a long-term relationship with someone, especially if it has spanned most of the time you have lived in a city, the city begins to resonate with them; they are written all over it. But now imagine having that in New York, where the city's frequencies are already so intense, so impressioning, now what? Especially given the New York geography that dictates that places endlessly be accidentally rediscovered.
Me: "Where is this shindig tonight?"
Friend: "Art bar, in the West Village. Have you been?"
Me: "Pff, I don't know."
Friend: "What do you mean, you don't know?"
Me: "I mean, I'd say no, but then I'll get there and be like, 'Hey, I've been here before!'"

Sexy, this is your hangover cure

2009-08-23T17:27:00.006-04:00

You're never smoking or drinking again, right? Right. Well in the meantime, this will fix you. I am so nice I pick it up and bring it over in a cab.

Stage one: Blueberries or strawberries to antioxidize all your broken cells and reintroduce the idea of eating as innocuously as possible.

Stage two: Grease to stifle the churning in your stomach and soak up any remaining alcohol.

Stage three: one of those really spicy Nong Shim noodle bowls from the bodega to schvitz out all those toxins.

I'm working it out

2009-08-12T13:55:00.002-04:00

So, as I've mentioned, my relationship with the city has evolved into a kind of dialectical arrangement where I both need to be here and need to be away enough to want to be here. One of those "aways" is the beach, and my friends and I have taken to going a couple of times a week. Another is the driving range at Chelsea Piers. Driving them into the sunset from the third or fourth floor, now that's nice. As soon as you hit one, the tee drops and sets up another shot automatically. On and on for a couple hundred balls.

What's left

2009-08-11T22:20:00.005-04:00

As soon as I moved to New York, my mother started clipping every New York article she came across and saving them for me in the top dresser drawer of the room I sleep in during my visits back home. I find that now, when I read "things to do in New York" or "hidden gems" or "must-sees" or "best brunches" or "off the beaten tracks" or "best deals," half of them I have already discovered (visited, seen, eaten) for myself, and half of them I have never heard of. And I get equal delight in both: being in the know, and realizing that the city is infinitely discoverable, that it will always outpace me no matter how fast I chase it.

photo source

SMS Highlight Reel, vol. 23

2009-08-10T11:33:00.000-04:00

was there at least a sexy part!? * Ah. Shit. I left my credit card at the bar. * do it. I'll have a cold gazela waiting * Why do nyu students dress so horribly? theres a woman here in jogging shorts and stilettos. wtf. * i want you back. the russians cant keep you. * I'm walking up broadway, on the west side of the road. Where you at? * Jim Jarmusch. St Mark's. * Ok it's a cave. * heat + meat = eat tomorrow at hewes and harrison. * RIP Ed McMahon. Bye-ooooo! * I.m driving i'll be there it twenty, thirty, dep level, last doors. my glasses dogged, I.m hurrying so much * o my god i just licked the phone. * We just got back from the ER. Multiple fractures. She got some morphine, so we're going to try and go out for a bite. * You're early, so i might be late. * would you eat bad chinese take out? * went to loup last night despite myself. the guy who wrote blade runner tried to alpha male me. * You are a bad influence. The rayanne to my angela.It could take me years to get out there! You would be long gone! I know you already have one foot out the door * We're coming! We're coming on june 11! * correction: a bench on 105th * Oh man! I took the train w the lady w the kitten in a bag! Too cute. * Nap that ass and text later. * No. Place your bets at park place. Go for the filly. * If you bring tomato juice and tobasco, We'll be set. * Stars are beautiful and plentiful here. * Did you forget that you're the prettiest girl in all of New York? * something else. not sure what. get here soon i need to get outta here. * sweeeeeeet! beeees! * Did you ever get those socks I sent you last year? * it didnt turn into a russian porno i hope * Some tarps caught on fire in a bin somewhere and set off the site alarm so we're having to gather outside at the muster point. * Bottom half of my head: tomato. Top half: white kidney beam. * just peed In a coffee cup in the back of a staten islan bus. long ass ride! * Add me to face book and invite me to your party. * you look sexy walkin away in those shoes

My New York Resolutions

2009-08-08T13:14:00.014-04:00

Every time I leave New York, I realize how exhausted I am. This summer I made some resolutions for saving my sanity (I do have eight years left on my degree, after all). Here, I will share them with you.

1. Peel off early. Come on, you know how this ends. Twenty more dollars down the drain and then a subway ride home drunk, ugh. Just leave the party. Better yet, sometimes don't go out at all. Just stay in and indulge in your guiltiest pleasures (your guiltiest pleasures are Y&R, jigsaw puzzles and vinho verde).

2. Always Be Doing shit on the train. Like watching movies on your iPod. (Amazing. It's like going to the cinosh every time you get on the subway.) Or reading Winter's Tale and other absorbing, transporting fiction. Or sudoku and ken ken in the free dailies (Metro and AM New York).

3. Take a car service to the airport. Forget trying to drag your luggage to the right street corner and hail a cab going the right direction because chances are there suddenly won't be any, or they'll all be going off shift or whatever. And taking public transport is admirable, but come on. (Note: even with a car service, Newark is completely out of the question. Fuck Newark.)

4. Order Fresh Direct. It's cheaper than other grocery stores and someone else carries it up the stairs for you. Besides, there is nothing cozier than having provisions (extra TP, breakfast food, food for entertaining, meat in the freezer).

5. Slow the fuck down. Switching from the local to the express and back again just to skip those twelve stops doesn't save that much time, and the waiting in between kills. Besides, the local train always has seats. Also important is just walking with the flow of traffic when you're not in a hurry. Incidentally, the way to make people get out of your way on the sidewalk is to walk in a straight line but look like you're not paying attention to where you're going - either by keeping your head down, or looking up at the sky or whatnot.

6. Leave town. Always take those invites to suburban New Jersey or Long Island or Westchester County. Go to where it smells good and people barbecue in a yard instead of on a rooftop. Especially in summer.

Wrote something

2009-08-04T21:48:00.003-04:00

for my friend Shaun's new website. You can read it here.

I'm back, back in a New York groove (but not according to this asshole)

2009-08-03T16:16:00.008-04:00

When I was re-entering the country, the customs agent at Logan airport asked me where I was staying in the US. I told him right now I was on my way to a wedding in Worchester, but that I lived in New York. He said, "You don't live in New York."

Huh?

"You don't live in New York. You study in New York. You don't live there."

Now, I have spent enough time fucking around with immigration matters to know that the word "Resident" is a technical term, but I'm pretty sure I fucking LIVE in New York. Cuz if I don't LIVE in New York, I sure paid a lot of fucking New York rent last year. For someone who doesn't LIVE in New York, I sure know a lot about the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, L, and R trains. And unless I LIVE in New York, I don't know how you can account for the three hundred dollars I owed in NEW YORK taxes this April, or why I have a standing order at Café Loup, or who is eating all the groceries at [###] Greenwich Street, or what this Duane Reade fob is doing on my keychain. GR!

This is how we do

2009-08-01T22:09:00.012-04:00

This is the drive to the lake. That's canola. It's even brighter yellow IRL. Todd thinks it's very "David Lynch."

This is the lake.

This is putting on goofy shit from the closet.

This is a food staple at the lake (to carry you between breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, happy hour, dinner, and roasting european wieners on the fire).

This is cribbage (alt: Nertz).

This is dinner.

This is hitting balls at the spit of land on the far side of the lagoon. "Spitballs," as we call them.

This is distraction from the fireworks and the Perseid meteor shower.

The Cheapest Food in New York

2009-07-22T19:23:00.033-04:00

The current issue of New York Magazine is all about "Cheap Eats." To them, this means getting in and out of a restaurant for $25. Pardon my T9, but dual you, New York Magazine. The summer months are lean, at least for my friends and me. I have compiled the following list of hot food for under $2 just for us.

Papaya Dog is my favourite of the hot dog chains. It has hot dogs (even chili dogs!) for under $2, not to mention the cheese fries

Speaking of hot dogs, you can get all kinds of food for under $2 at hot dog carts like beef patties, pretzels, knish, kabobs

Speaking of carts, you can get all kinds of food for under $2 at coffee carts:
coffee and pastries are only 75c
a hard-boiled egg is 50c
a bagel with cream cheese $1.25

For that matter, at pretty much any deli you can get a bagel with cream cheese (I like everything bagels cuz it seems more like a meal) for under $2

One thing that is getting harder to find is a slice for under $2, although a friend from out of town got one for $1 on St. Marks (although he said it was awful)

However, you can get all kinds of food for under $2 in Chinatown: pork buns are 50c, six dumplings are $1 (this means 12 dumplings are $2!), hot and sour soup is $1

In the Financial District, you can get $2 sushi at Bento Nouveau, insofar as all of their sushi is half price after 7pm

Anytime of day, however, you can get $2 falafel at Mamoun's near NYU (and $1 falafel at Cinderella in the East Village)

Hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, and onion rings are all under $2 at The Patriot (and the slutty bartenders will buy you shots)

But best of all, worth the train ride, are all the Puerto Rican and Mexican delights in Bushwick. Tacos are $2 at the Tortilleria - lots of meat and pretty filling

And there is an Empanada stand at Knickerbocker and Myrtle - $1

Pupusas (stuffed with beans, cheese, pork, etc.) are mostly under $2 at El Salvador Restaurant

A bit further afield, you can get Russia's/Uzbekistan's/Ukraine's version of meat-stuffed dough from table vendors on Brighton Beach Avenue for only $1.25

Or India's version, back in the city at Washington Square Park: samosas are $1 from the NY Dosa cart

I even made a google map:

View Cheapest Eats in a larger map

Brighton Beach

2009-07-21T10:31:00.003-04:00

We went to the beach. The beach is only a subway ride away! This being Brighton Beach, it made me miss the Ukraine. To quote the black guy walking around selling beer, "Peeba peeba peeba! Halodny peeba, folks."

Timmy's!

2009-07-15T13:59:00.004-04:00

Timmy's has opened up in New York! (Sorry it couldn't get its act together in time for your visit, Christian and Lindsey.) I have tried to explain to my American friends (note the ingratiating decor) the phenomenon that is Tim Horton's - the double-double, the ice capp, the boring chicken salad sandwich, and so on. When I used to work at the Calgary airport at five in the morning, and I got in line for a cup of coffee at 4:50 am, I couldn't make it to the front in time to start my shift. And there were six locations in the airport alone. Dunkin Donuts sells one billion cups of coffee a year (population of USA: 300 million). Tim Horton's sells 2 billion (population of Canada: 30 million). And so on.

Anyway, it has been reviewed in the Times, the Post, the New York Daily News, etc., all of which give it sort of mediocre, wtf?-type reviews. Hahahahaha, newspapers. THAT'S THE THING.

Francis Bacon at the Met

2009-07-12T13:59:00.001-04:00

I can't believe I waited this long to go to the Met. Admission is $20 suggested donation, and they don't give you any attitude if you only hand over $2, although that didn't stop me from hastily adding "I just paid rent with a credit card!"

I could spend every Saturday in the Greek and Roman sculpture garden alone, but there is wing after wing of breathtaking gallery space (I recognize a lot of the sponsors' names - Kravis, Astor - from my work), opulent drawing rooms showcasing 18th century furniture, stone buildings stitched together by sunlit atria. We were there to see the Francis Bacon exhibit, which absolutely floored me (I guess I am finally learning to look at art), but get this uncanny tidbit: he often incorporated the image of the screaming nurse's shattered glasses from Battleship Potemkin into his portraits (it's at the end of this clip, if you're that impatient).

Tw0 Rect0r Street

2009-07-11T13:59:00.001-04:00

On Wednesday after I got back, when I left for work in the morning the building across the street was sealed off and swarming with cops. It turns out a woman who worked there had gone missing - she was seen going in for her shift, and never coming back out. For days no one knew where she was, but police were certain she was still inside, because this being the WTC-area, every entrance is covered with closed-circuit cameras. I thought about her a lot over the next few days - how if she was still alive, she must be praying to God that someone would just look harder, look again for her - and I felt like it was somehow my responsibility in particular, as a woman in the neighbourhood, as her neighbour overlooking the place she went missing.

Well, she was found, unfortunately not alive. Then came the CSI trucks, and the media vans, and the street is plastered with Crimestoppers posters, although the police know the murderer is a freight elevator operator who worked in the building.

Briefly: Romania

2009-07-07T21:59:00.008-04:00

We toured another little reconstructed village. This one had kitties!

The "People's Palace" is the second largest building in the world, a temple to Ceausescu's megalomania.

He and his wife would do things like make the workers tear down entire completed marble staircases and rebuild them... five times. All of this was related with a cheerful lilt by our young local guide, the unspoken punchline to every such story being, "And then we shot him!"

Speaking of which, we also saw the location of his last stand. As soon as I got home I looked up the video on YouTube. This is one of the most poetic sixty seconds I have ever seen. The crowd goes from cheering for Ceausescu and chanting his name, to spontaneously booing and hissing as soon as he starts talking. Look at his face when he realizes what is happening. He escaped from the rooftop by helicopter, only to be apprehended hours later. Extra volunteers for the firing squad had to be turned away.

Travel fatigued, Kate and I got a bit silly.

A man on the tour turned to my mom and said, "You've got to marry those girls off." HAHAHAHAHA! Wait, what does that mean?!

We had dinner at a lovely old restaurant in the centre of town. I ordered schnitzel, mushrooms, and cigarettes.

And then the cossack joined us for dinner! Man, that was great.

While in Bucharest we stayed at the Hilton Athenee Palace hotel. I love staying in hotels, especially like this.

And then, at two-thirty in the morning on the final day of the trip, we gathered in the lobby and boarded our bus and left.

Briefly: Farewell to our ship

2009-07-05T21:50:00.001-04:00

We were a hit with the crew.

Briefly: Odessa

2009-07-05T20:05:00.002-04:00

Odessa was a free port for centuries, very cosmopolitan, its modern version built in grandiose marble and limestone by Catherine the Great, which managed to survive Stalinist redecorating, I think because the city is honeycombed.

The famous Potemkin steps were built gradually wider towards the bottom, which makes them longer than they actually are when viewed from below, and look perfectly parallel when viewed from the top. I guess this means I am going to have to break down and watch that Eisenstein movie now.

Cathy makes a point of taking pictures of things coming out of her head, because that is the kind of thing that would drive her dad crazy.

The streets are lined with wonderful restaurants and shops. We people-watched in a square for a while.

Then we went for dinner and ordered stuff life this.

Smalets, it turns out, is lard seasoned with dill and garlic, frozen and sliced and served with toast.

The portions weren't as small as we thought they were going to be. This meal is a lot of the reason I got so fat on this trip.

Briefly: Bakhchisaray

2009-07-04T20:23:00.001-04:00

Bakhchisaray is the centuries-old Tatar capital of the Crimea. We toured the Khan's 12th century palace.

And saw the fountain of tears, as memorialized by Pushkin.

But! On the way there a flash flood happened, and the streets turned to rivers, and as we were approaching one intersection, a brilliant, greenish flash of light exploded right in front of us. Followed by another one. It turned out that a utility pole had slumped against another, and the cross wires were igniting. A woman ran over to the bus, looking at us piteously through the door. Eventually the driver opened it, but it turned out all she wanted was to make sure we were okay, that we hadn't been electrocuted by the fireball.

Briefly: Yalta and the Crimean Coast

2009-07-04T19:39:00.001-04:00

The Crimean Coast is famous for the charge of the light brigade

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Which our guide read to us in its entirety as we drove through said valley.

It is also famous for Livadia Palace, where the treaty of Yalta was signed

And for its unique climate, supposed to be good for health, enjoyed in the many health spas or "sanatoriums."

It was exceptionally hot and humid. I dipped my feet in the Black Sea, bringing the total to: Dead Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean, Caribbean, Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic.

Briefly: Sebastopol

2009-07-03T19:06:00.000-04:00

Arright, so by now we have sailed all the way down the Dnpr or Nypr (whichever way you want to pronounce it) and are on the Crimean peninsula.

First stop, Sevastopol, the capital of the Black Sea fleet. I had no idea that Sebastopol was in the Ukraine (nor Yalta). As it turns out, the Crimea is mostly ethnically Russian and Crimean Tatar but was gifted to the Ukraine by Krushchev during Soviet times.

We were greeted by these guys:

Took a tour of this diorama (my new favourite diorama)

Were entertained in the evening by these guys

Saw a lot of these guys

Once again, Mom and I (this time with several people joining us) took as many chances as we could to run away from the boat and eat caviar and "Diversity of fishes" and "Vodka appetizer" and champanski.

Briefly: Kherson

2009-07-02T21:51:00.001-04:00

In Kherson we disembarked and took a smaller boat to a sleepy dacha village where Valentina fed us zucchini pancakes, and bread and cheese, and pickled herring, and tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden. More importantly, there was a lot of toasting with her homemade chestnut hooch, chased with her homemade plum juice. To your health, to your journey, to the host, to hospitality, to your visit [hic], to your journey home, etc. I brought some back.

Briefly: Zaporizhzhya

2009-07-01T21:05:00.002-04:00

Ok, you can't understand the Ukraine trip, or how it will resonate in our minds, without knowing what happened in Zaporizhzhya. After a brief trip through the city proper, including my first access to the internet so far (did you hear that Michael Jackson died?!), we went to a cossack village and watched a little show they put on for us. Now, I don't know what these guyses day jobs are, but they certainly look like they spend a lot of time outside labouring in the fields, and they can ride a horse upside down and/or backwards, and fling a sword around and cut things in half while speeding by on horseback, and break the branches off a tree from 30 feet away with a whip, and so forth.

Unfortunately most of Mom's pictures betray her impeccable timing.

And they're surly and drink a lot of vodka. Fuuuck. I'd cook and clean all day in a thatch and clay house if that was what was coming home.

(Oh Todd is SO mad at me.)

Briefly: On the Boat

2009-06-30T20:43:00.000-04:00

We played a lot of cribbage in the green room

A lot of the scenery looked like this, dachas and sleepy fishing villages

But a lot looked like this, remnants of the Five Year Plans

The official highlight was passing through several locks: the boat enters a little manmade channel and the gates close behind it; water is drained (or raised) until it reaches the level on the other side of the dam; the forward gate is opened and we drive (drive?) away.

The only good food we got on the boat was the one day they actually served us Ukrainian cuisine. The rest of the time it was your standard fish/bifteck/kotelet with potatoes and overboiled vegetables. I don't take this to be a function of being in Eastern Europe, or of being on a boat, but of the need to cater to the lowest common denominator of 65-year-old.

Briefly: Kyiv outskirts

2009-06-29T20:11:00.002-04:00

This model Ukrainian village was put together with houses collected from around the country.

I could live there.

In the afternoon we went to Babi Yar.

This is the Jewish monument:

This is the local monument, to the children:

This is the fucking Soviet monument:

Your standard soldier-machinist-mother triad. Yes thank you, communist party, that captures it perfectly.

Briefly: Kyiv II

2009-06-28T19:37:00.001-04:00

Ok, we are ready for tourism (it was a guided tour - hence the lanyards. Kate and I were the youngest people on it by decades).

This church was 1000 years old, with multiple layers of frescoes. The Soviets would have torn it down, like they did the 1000-year-old church that used to sit opposite it, but local scholars convinced them it had a lot of "scientific value."

Lemme tell you, seventy-plus years of Soviet rule did nothing to attenuate the religious fervour of the Ukrainians. We visited the equally old "caves monastery" and crept around catacombs with tapers, and had to manoeuvre around all kinds of people holding their sick babies and rocking and whispering, or kissing the coffins of the mummified saints and crying.

Lighting a candle for Baba and Dido:

We were supposed to go see a choir that night, but Mom and I begged off to fill up on red caviar and champanski, cuz we ain't dumb

Briefly: Kyiv

2009-06-24T18:40:00.001-04:00

Airport exasperation shot (EWR - YYC - FRA - KBP)

Our cabins (actually, this is Mom and Cathy's suite; Kate's and mine was a bit more modest)

Hitting the grocery store for provisions: those lemon- or anchovy-stuffed olives you can get all over Europe, and champanski (23.2 hryvnia, or $2.32 a bottle)

Actually, we stopped off for champanski on our way back to the boat

The sun deck of the MS Princess Dniepr

My mom is in town

2009-06-12T15:54:00.003-04:00

Tuesday

Me: "So right over there - see that elevated train track? - that is the new Highline park. We can either go there and wander around for a while, or we can go and have a caesar salad at the Redhead, but that's in the other direction."

Mom: "Hm... caesar salad at the Redhead."

Me: "Ok well let's walk this way through the Meat- packing district, because you've never been, and it's kind of nice and hip and full of celebrities. See? Like that guy. He's probably famous. Over there, getting out of that car."

Mom: "He is famous."

Me: "Really? Who is he?"

[Guy passes next to us, being fawned over by attendants.]

Me: "Who is that? You know who he is?"

[My mom waits for him to be out of earshot.]

Mom: "That was Quincy Jones."

Me: "Oh! Cool."

Mom: "Rashida Jones' father."

Me: "I didn't know Rashida Jones was Quincy Jones' daughter!"

Friday

[My mom and I are standing on Smith Street in Brooklyn. Christian has just gone into the Rite Aid and Lindsey is phoning come to check on Vance. A guy walks by us.]

Me: "You know who that was, don't you?"

Mom: "Who what was?"

Me: [pushing her] "That guy right there. Go look! Go catch up to him!"

Mom: "Marianne, no! So who was it??"

Me: "The gay husband from The Real Housewives."

Mom: "Really? Oh my god it is."

Me: "How's that for a celebrity sighting?"

Mom: "It is him! Oh wow. He's probably going home - they live in Brooklyn!"

Me: "Yeah."

Mom: "Wow, that's really him."

Anthamatten vs. Whoever that guy was

2009-06-05T15:46:00.011-04:00

Now, I don't usually watch fights, especially not in person, and especially not involving my own friends, so before going to Eric's event at the Capitale I took him out for a nice brunch and made him explain to me exactly why it wasn't going to be traumatizing to watch and exactly why he was definitely going to win and exactly what kind of wine they have on hand at the Capitale. The Capitale, by the way, is where your friend's parents went to that wedding last year:

Alright, so watch the video and then we'll talk about it.

The fight was called a TKO at some point in the second round, which why there was no third round. Yes, the in-between-round girls are pretty great. I like how Eric looks like a serial killer when he raises his arm in victory because watch this:

A little death and a little grief

2009-05-28T11:36:00.010-04:00

So Todd moved. Not too far from where he was living, but as I have explained, that makes a big difference: everything (deli, dry cleaner, hardware store) is everywhere, so the city is big internally, and your life and your routine become very local. Which means that in moving he is (I am) leaving a whole world behind: Zahadi's and that incredible green grocer on Atlantic, Borough Hall subway stop and the quiet walk down State Street. And a certain neighbour - speaking of locality, the most rooted man I have ever seen. A hobo, in the old fashioned sense (minus the transience) - he simply lives outside. In fact, he lives on a very small stretch of a certain street; for all intents and purposes he has an address. I most often see him outside the funeral parlour, I think it's because the reception area looks like a living room, and the lights are always on inside. He's not always there, but you're not always at home either. And he has, for all intents and purposes, a job: he sweeps the sidewalk and binds the newspapers and sorts through the trash. I think the neighbourhood takes care of him - I know he's welcome at the bodega on the corner. Sandwiches and coffee and newspapers? One time we tried to offer him a slice of our pizza, having needlessly bought a whole pie (cuz if you ask the pizzeria for their abandoned orders at the end of the night they will sell them to you for cheap), and he declined, politely, explaining that he had just had a sandwich, he was really full, thank you, he just finished it now.

After a year and a half, we knew the looks of each other, and I would acknowledge him if he looked up. The thing is, he is most often looking down, in fact hunched very close to the ground - sometimes I think he sweeps just so that he can lean over - sometimes he even just stands there and slowly lowers himself to the ground, rocking, trying to sink into the earth - not drunk, not altered, more like Oedipus, like he is carrying the burden of a profound grief or regret, and he is waiting to be taken away by the gods, relieved.

Forget it, dear reader, it's Chinatown

2009-05-22T13:17:00.002-04:00

Today I saw a guy walking down the street in Chinatown - let me preface this by saying that there are two Chinatowns. There is the Chinatown of Canal St and Mulberry St which is basically a Potemkin village for the tourists (handbag? rolex? handbag?), and then there is the area on the far east side of the island, sometimes referred to as "Two Bridges" because it is between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, which, holy shit, is a different world (if you are tired of this world or your life in it, just go there for a few hours. Mark Helprin knows what I am talking about). If you try to go into a store in real Chinatown, they will just sort of shoo you out, either because they're not interested in your curiosity, round-eyes, or because they just don't speak a word of English, so whatever it is you're looking for they can't help you.

But you can get helped at the grocery store built right into one of the pillars of the Manhattan bridge, and there is a lovely produce market lining the very narrow sidewalk leading down to it.

S'wanyway, I was walking down the street, with my pound of ginger (that's the quantity they sell it in; it comes out to five or six big sticks; I think it cost $1.50), and who crosses my path but this guy, carrying a black duffel bag in one hand, and a semi- automatic handgun in the other, strutting with a purpose, cutting a path through the ginger peddlers and the grocery shoppers. He was accompanied by a guy dressed in a sort of official-looking security guard outfit (Ricky's, $39.99), who also had a gun, but in a holster around his waist. Now, I always assume in this situation that this must be normal, it's just me who finds this insane, I'm the Canadian who is weird about guns, but everyone on the street was stopping and turning and looking too (it probably didn't help that these two guys were the only black people on the street). I wonder where the money came from. I wonder where it was going.

106 Greenwich St

2009-05-21T17:45:00.009-04:00

This is my building. I finally found out when it was built: 1900. "The tenement buildings along Greenwich Street were dark and noisy because of the Ninth Avenue El, which ran along Greenwich Street. While sitting on the fire escape, one could almost touch the train tracks. When the el was torn down sunshine shone in the apartments. The building at 106 Greenwich Street is still standing, and its apartments continue to be occupied by tenants."

That's where I live, right there. Can you believe it? No you can't. It's pure fantasy. Like this story about someone who used to live at my address.

THIEVES ROB A TAILOR'S SHOP IN MAIDENLANE - A FREE FIGHT WITH PISTOLS IN A FIRST WARD DEN.
New York Times (1878, 20 October, p. 5)

[click to enlarge]

Detective brothers? Pantaloons? Low groggeries? I love how people would just "free fight" the cops.

How much do conductors make?

2009-05-12T11:32:00.001-04:00

So coming back from the end of line today, I met a conductor just coming off shift. His name was I don't remember, I am terrible with names. He sat next to me and we chitty chatted about baseball. He told me where to get the best meat patties (Kingston Tropical Bakery, underneath the 2 train at 226th street). He also told me how much conductors make.

...

Wait for it...

...

$25,000 a year. Wtf? I asked him about their union and obviously he says it sucks, although they do have very good benefits. He is applying for an operator (i.e. train driver) position, because they make 29 grand.

Oleg Roitman

2009-05-10T22:28:00.009-04:00

So we got into a cab and our cab driver turned out to be this guy. He is from Ukraine and tell him your birthday please, and he will tell you what day of week you were born. Tuesday! Also lots of jokes about how "you get married? One more prisoner of war!" I asked him if he meant men and women both and he said "only men" and I asked him who does the dishes in his house.

A few years ago, the New York Times wrote an article about him, which he has plaque-mounted in the cab, and he makes you read in its entirety (don't worry, you have time - he tends to take the long route).

In the time that I moved to New York, cabbies have been forced to accept payment with credit / debit cards and to put tv screens in the back of cabs, both of which they protested. Well, this guy's cab has no tv and he complained when friend tried to pay with a credit card, so we paid cash instead. He also asked us for way more than our fare, and when we only left him a 20% tip he yelled "Fine, next time don't take my cab! Ride with stupid regular cab driver instead!" Hm. Awkward.

Here's the most priceless part, however. He has a website (just a link to his NYTimes article, actually) and it is: www.geocities.com/mentalmathandcatlover/taxi.html.

Ah, the Q train

2009-04-28T22:26:00.001-04:00

It's like the racial harmony train. It's fifty percent hispanic, fifty percent Chinese, fifty percent black, fifty percent Russian - you get the idea. My prof, who rides it home, told me one night he saw two little old Chinese ladies (or yodas, as Lainey calls them), a hasidic man, and a black man all slumped against each other, sleeping on their way home. If someone told you about this taking place anywhere but the Q train, you would be justified in skeptically ridiculing such a false and tokenish tableau, but on the Q train it actually happens.

New York math

2009-04-27T00:25:00.008-04:00

Now, I figured out, shortly after moving here (I was sixteen - I got drunk lots), that any place in New York was safe, insofar as any place at all, you could hail a cab, twenty-four hours a day, which would take you to your doorstep, where your doorman would see you in. I stopped taking cabs after a while when I realized that I had no money, no money at all, and inasmuch as I couldn't afford my rent, my tuition, or a $1.50 cup of coffee, I couldn't afford a seven dollar cab ride. Speaking of coffee, I have gone through flush phases of buying my coffee at Starbucks or at Joe, and buying it from carts, where it costs precisely seventy-five cents. At this point, the MTA only runs one train per track per twenty-four hour period, so taking cabs has become de rigeur, especially since at my neighbourhood pubs (I have six or seven), I only pay about two dollars a drink, which leaves me drunk and still flush.