Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

Oh no! I forgot to pack my crappy old mop!
The movers got here this morning at 7:30. I was in a deep sleep after going to bed at 4 am. They were super fast and got it done by 11. One guy did most of the work and the other guy was kind of the boss. The worker guy slung everything with a strap and would carry up to three or four boxes (of books!) on his back down the stairs. It was shocking. At least it’s kind of chilly outside so it wasn’t too sweaty for them. I feel like I’m about ready to fall over dead even though I just pretty much sat on the floor and read an old magazine I found under my bed when they moved it.

In answer to Elizabeth’s comment, I think that did used to be a working fireplace, because if you examine it you’ll see it’s poorly plugged up. This building is really, really old. There’s an engraved date on the brownstone two doors down that dates it from right after the civil war. Since this tiny apartment has always been packed to bursting with furniture and books, I’d forgotten about some of the details of the amazing woodwork in here, done back when people knew how to build things and generally gave a shit. The dust bunnies were added strictly for atmospheric effect, since I always kept this place immaculate.

So, yes, I’m about to leave Brooklyn, NYC, the whole deal for good for Portland, Oregon. I know everyone already knows this, but I didn’t want my readers in Japan to be confused. So lately, especially, my thoughts have been very fuck-you-NY in general. And while I could do a whole site about the trials and worries of living here, I’m more concerned about the way I’m going to mis-remember all of this in a couple of years. I think the conscious mind prioritizes what’s pissing it off to be matters in the present tense. And that the past takes on this golden hue of sunny happy memories. And frankly, that annoys me. It somehow belittles the actuality of being in Brooklyn on a Sunday afternoon in the end of September, 2003.

So here are three things I want to remember along with all the happy memories…

Exhibit A: The air exhaust fan above the entrance of Castillo de Jagua Restaurant, corner of Flatbush Ave and Park. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, this fan PUMPS out the smell of greasy pork. I swear, the place could be closed, the building could be bombed or burnt down and this smell will always permeate this area. It’s some kind of natural wonder. Now I love pork. But I walk past this place from two to twenty times a day on average so I’m pretty sick of it. And you can walk past it and turn your head and hold your breath and when you start to breathe again the porky smell is still clinging to you twenty feet away. It’s true! It’s like this cloud that clings to you like the stink around Pigpen in Peanuts. I’ve never eaten here. Couldn’t imagine actually going inside and was shocked and confused when new-neighbors Bobby and Rachel were telling me how delicious it was. All I could do was let out a long ‘nooooooooooooooooooooooo.’

Exhibit B: The homeless guy who pan handles in front of Natural Land, Flatbush Ave. I know it totally blows my credibility that he was not standing there when I took this picture because this guy is ALWAYS there (though sometimes he has a freelancer filling in). Now I know there are lots of homeless people in NY (and the numbers are rising dramatically, the Times reported this week) and certainly Santa Monica, CA had a very, very aggressive homeless population, but this one guy is just so especially in a class of his own. It’s not that he’s mean or crazy, but incredibly ingratiating. So fake nice it drives me up a wall. And he always tries to start a conversation. Jeremy always thought this guy’s niceness was veiling his incredible evilness. I’m not sure. But I can’t walk past him without him calling me by a nickname. Recently, I was going to the gym on this block and he said, ‘hey Arnold Schwartzenegger, nice muscles!’ It makes me want to die. I know I sound like an asshole for hating a homeless person. You’d just have to walk this gauntlet once and you’d understand.

Exhibit C: Corner of Prospect Place and Carlton. There’s a stop sign at this intersection of these two small streets in my quiet neighborhood, but you’d think you were crossing the freeway because cars fly down this street and barely screech to a halt in time just before mowing down whatever sucker is trying to cross the street. I’ve never understood this, though brilliant Rachel (who drives) suggested that it’s because this street runs parallel to slow-as-molasses Flatbush. And since there’s no traffic on this street, it serves as a really good shortcut if you’re headed towards downtown Brooklyn. It makes perfect sense to me because the other streets in the immediate neighborhood (short of Flatbush) are pretty sleepy and the cars are mostly driving slow, looking for a place to park. Since this intersection is right in front of my house I’m always thinking, ’slow down, jerk!’ at whatever driver is doing 90mph with no sign of stopping. And a lot of people don’t, so you’ve got to be super careful.

Fine. I’m glad I got this off my chest.

This is a real cat. I was walking down Atlantic Ave this morning and stared at this thing sitting on the welcome mat in front of a pet store. What kind of lonely, demented person dyes a cat pink? And it’s not even a good job. Notice how the color gets a little splotchy on the head and back leg. Where are the PETA people when you need them?

Another disturbing seasonal window display from King’s Pharmacy.

Dean Street.

I’m not sure if this was meant to be a tombstone.

Definitely the most interesting article in the Sunday Times this week was about how Americans are so fat now that there’s a whole off shoot industry in fat people people burial services, especially extra large coffins. And it mentioned the International Size Acceptance Association, who have a great website.

“I don’t carry a digital camera everywhere I go shooting pictures of my other dumb hipster friends and putting them up on my dumb hipster photolog site,” (yeah, Katherine!) says one angry blogger in a Sunday Styles piece that eviscerates Vice Magazine and its reign of influence. Jeez, I feel bad for anyone when Sunday Styles come gunning for them. I’ve enjoyed Vice’s Dos and Don’ts fashion commentary and David Cross’s column and am glad I can still read it online when I can no longer get the magazine for free.

For me, this is the White Whale of NYC ice cream trucks!

So we never made it to the Frying Pan for my going away party due to some work complications that kept me sitting by the phone, but about six or seven of us hung around the office and partied there. Usually, we have a pretty well stocked liquor supply, but tonight this translated into a six pack of room temperature beer, 1/3 bottle of red wine and two bottles of rum. I was extremely flattered that people were willing hang out on a Friday night and drink rum with me. Jeez, that stuff is instant nausea! Despite that we ended up getting quite trizzy on The Captain.

Afterwards, I went to Williamsburg to see Les Savy Fav with Mike. It was pretty impressive actually. I thought it was going to be all standoffish and pretentious. But the lead singer just basically ripped off most of his clothes and freaked out on stage. Pretty exciting stuff, since he looked exactly like Paul Bartell.

Like most of you, I’ve been obsessively listening to Outkast’s ‘Hey Now’ for the last couple of weeks. So I bought the CD tonight and the Andre disc loaded fine, but the Big Boi CD (Speakerboxxx) crashed my computer every time I put it in. I’ve heard of this happening, but alas, never thought I’d ever buy anything a record label would bother encoding. I haven’t given up yet. But does anyone know how to get around this?

There was some discussion about where to have my going away party at work. It’s going to be really, really hard for them. Some suggestions included renting out the Four Seasons, the Rainbow Room, Radio City Music Hall or maybe just renting helicopters and having races around the city. I said, ‘C’mon yall, I can’t condone spending a hundred thousand dollars on a send-off.’ Bobby and Rachel mentioned The Frying Pan, which is the name of this boat docked near the Chelsea Piers, where they’ve built an outdoor bar and a stage. I checked it out tonight and it was really kinda cool and mellow. Since my going away party in LA (for work) was at a nautical-themed bar (the Galley in Santa Monica, highly recommended! — though Montero’s Bar in Brooklyn Heights has to be the grandfather of all nautical bars) then this seemed appropriate. Actually, I really hate this kind of shit. It’s bad enough when you’re at work and they’re dragging out one birthday cake after another.
When I left LA, I got this going away card from my co-workers and one of them wrote something really nasty. Earlier today, a coworker showed me a group email from his girlfriend’s office that addressed somebody leaving and it was the most spitefull thing I’d ever seen. It was full of comments about how shitty this woman dressed and the writer used a lot of big words and included URL links to their definitions on dictionary.com. I hope this doesn’t happen to me. I know I wear crappy shoes to work. So I won’t be offended.

Finally, my life-long voyeur fantasy has come true with the unveiling of a new brand of sunglasses with an embedded digital camera inside. This reminds me of the other night when Rachel and I were riding the subway together and talking breathlessly about all the electronic crap we absolutely must have. I guess I should add a PDA to that list, not so much for the ability now to (again) covertly take photos, but to use it to wander around cities and pick up people’s personal pdPAL maps, which is just about the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of. In addition to that, now you can pick up audio tours on your cellphone at talking streets. Jeez, the audio touring market here is really booming. There was an article about the Soundwalk tours in the Sunday Times. I’ve kinda half enjoyed/half felt patronized by this stuff. All this appreciating and celebrating of NY before it vanishes to either ‘progress’ or the actions of the United States’ enemies has really solidified into a particular brand of NY weltschmerz. But hey, if you’re gonna hop on this band wagaon, check out the Open House New Yorktours in October. I just want to check out Ellis Island, backstage at Radio City Music Hall and the Municple Hall of records and then I’m done with NY.

Finally, I really liked the design your own bag feature on the Freitag site. I’m not a big fan of these expensive canvas bags made in Europe from old boat and truck taurpaulins, but I really dug the Flash site that allowed you to choose a canvas and drag the pattern where you wanted in said canvas to custom make your bag. I wish everything I bought were this interactive.

H&H Bagels on the Upper West Side. Something about this image reminds me of the visual work of David Byrne.

Electric Chicken, a lesser-known early 90s Miami Bass single inspired by this sign.

I’ve seen this poster around for years (it was all over Chicago, too) and really want to know more about this woman. Surely, this can’t be her 15 minutes.

Some cool things I’ve seen lately: Surveillance Camera Outdoor Walking Tours (these are the same people that used to put on little plays for various surveillance cameras (genius!)) and the facts about the guy that does those space invaders tile graffitti all over Manhattan.

In midtown this morning, I got to see the Takashi Murakami sculptures before the hurricane blew them down. People were so jumpy this morning because it was windy.

This reminded me of those McDonald’s statues you see in front of some of their restaurants. A giant statue of Mayor McCheese in front of Rockerfeller Center would have been way more satisfying.

Though I think it’s interesting that this artist’s anime-inspired Louis Vuiton bags have crosssed over so successfully into Ghetto Fabulous NY fashion. I never would have put anime and GF together. It’s pretty hilarious.

I also checked out the show at the International Center of Photography. There’s a great survey show now. One of my favorite things was a series called, ‘Hello Stranger’. The photographer sent letters to people living in ground floor apartments in NY, Shanghai, etc. asking them to pose by their window at a certain time. Then she came by and took their picture. They never met.

How have I never noticed this place before? It’s right across the street from Town Hall, where my favorite Monk album was recorded. I thought about applying for a job there just to get the uniform.

I had dinner with Rachel and Bobby tonight (not at Yummy Taco, featured) but at the Yemen Cafe on Atlantic Avenue.

The Circle of Lies

7 pm. The Sheep Meadow, Central Park. The website said this would be a prime place to see the 1000 foot verticle Ring Of Fire over the reservoir. The scene was very idyllic and the park started to fill up with people, all excited and in good spirits.

7:30 pm. Okay, starting to rain a little bit. Nothing bad, though. Then immediately stops. Then little drip drops here and there. I’m sitting on an embankment of large granite rocks with about maybe fifty people behind me. It’s a sloping shelf that gives you a good view of the whole meadow. Then somebody shouted out, ‘Ack!!! Bats!!!’ And there were about seven or eight small bats flying over head. I was pretty impressed how well those little things can fly, since I’m used to seeing only rubber bats in 50s horror movies bobbing up and down on strings. These real bats were doing loops making abrupt nose dives and basically showboating for the crowd. But one swoop got a little too close and everybody on the rocks all screamed in unison. Aaaaaaaahhhh! Somebody shouted, ‘They’ll go away if you throw sand at them!’ But there of course wasn’t any around. With only seconds away from starting, the skies opened up and it started POURING.

Amid the confussion of the deluge, it was like everyone forgot why they were there and so it was kind of shocking when the first group of fireworks went off. Everyone on the rocks, smug with their vista, immediately started running towards the meadow (also full of people), since the explosions were all happening behind us. You couldn’t see any of the fireworks, just hear it. It was actually really scary and confusing.

The main thing was: you couldn’t see shit! There were some scattered green explosions slightly above the tree line in the direction of the reservoir. Then it stopped.

Nobody seemed to think much about it cause it was raining so hard. Like maybe they had to stop it for a second cause of the rain.

Then it stopped completey and everybody just stood around like, ‘c’mon, c’mon… give us the ring of fire….’ Some people started to leave, but mostly, folks were like, no fucking way, we didn’t stand in this rain for THAT. It was pretty sub, sub Macy’s 4th of July fireworks. Ultimately a park ranger type guy came around telling everyone to scram because they were locking up the park. The crowd was getting rowdy. The ranger was getting defensive: ‘well, I was at the reservoir, and I saw action!’ So everybody kind of slumped away, soaking wet, having seen nothing.

I did the final Soundwalk this morning: Dumbo. The less said about it, the better. It was sad to walk by ‘Between the Bridges’, which granted has fallen off a lot this last year, but doesn’t deserve to get ripped down. It was a favorite place for a lot of my friends for a while and where Jeremy had his 27th birthday.

The one interesting factoid I picked up was that the the guy who lives in this fantasy apartment is the original re-devloper of Dumbo. After making a mint gentrifiying Soho in the sixities, he came here in ‘78 and bought up everything. It was almost reassuring to know some broker doesn’t live in that apartment.

Afterwards, I wandered around downtown Brooklyn and to my amazment discovered the Transit Museum had re-opened!

I think this was one of the first days and it was full of MTA workers and their families talking about these old trains.

It was shocking to see how much smaller and homlier everything used to be…

Some of the really older trains (1915-1920) had these practically wicker sofas inside. I think people must have been thinner cause they had the original turnstile and it was way too small for people these days.

This control panel was for an old draw bridge. Oh, I wish I had this in my house!

Outside there were buses used by the city through the years (all in mint condition, like the trains inside!). The older buses also seemed REALLY small as well.

Also: If you’re able to get to Central Park tomorrow night, check out Light Cycle by Cai Guo-Qiang . If this terrible photoshop image is any indication, it should be memorable.

Johnny Cash is dead at 71. Check out Mark Romanek’s brilliant music video for Cash’s cover of ‘Hurt” (watch it with a hankerchief! it’ll make you cry! cry! cry!). While driving through Ohio in the beginning of August, Jeremy, Katherine and I heard Terry Glass’s interview with Cash about his early years. I think Cash was up for an MTV award this year, but didn’t win.

The John Ritter death is even more shocking.