the clerk at the post office gives H and F's letter back to me; there's no point in stamping it with the meter, since there's no postal service from america to israel. i carry the letter back to their apartment, where a little purple bag hangs on the front door's knob: it's a bottle of DKNY perfume, a gift. they have asked me to knock instead of dematerializing when i drop off their groceries so that they can give me 'the little something' in person, and i thank them profusely. they ask if i'm going home to work, what do i do, and i tell them i'm a writer. "do you write for the times?" just once. "you must live in my father's apartment!" F's family was among the original tenants when our apartments were built in the late '50s; the woman who purchased his father's place from him loved their immigration story so much that she was going to pitch it, per H. not me, i live in the building right across the street, but it is a wonderful story. i congratulated them on their six children, 30 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
the cashiers at trader joe's are always fascinated by what the neighbors request, as am i. H and F have (mostly) pumped the brakes on chocolate-covered macaroons and are now enamored with raw fermented sauerkraut (five large jars in the last two weeks). they also wanted six large onions; "they're really up to something," the cashier noted. "and so are you! what are you making?" minestrone. "what is minestrone?" it's— "is it italian peasant soup?" yeah, pretty much.
Showing posts with label lower east side. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lower east side. Show all posts
09.16.14
YE OLDE TRAMP-FOR-DAYS FOTOMEME (origin here): 6 things i see every day
the freedom tower mural at henry m. jackson playground, across the street from our local fine fare (which reopened during the lower east side blackout after sandy when the owner saw people lining up outside the steel shutters; runners with flashlights would take orders and venture back into the dark aisles to fill them). you can see the actual freedom tower a block or so later down east broadway.
st. mary's, where hearses park for funerals during the week and the sidewalk is full of worshipers after ten o'clock mass as i pass on the way to the wild bird fund on sundays.
for about a month we shared the street with a film crew for the cobbler ('[adam] sandler plays a lonely new york shoe-repairman who senses that he’s let life past him by. but when he discovers a magical family heirloom that allows him to literally “walk in another man’s shoes,” he embarks on a great adventure with far-reaching ramifications.') no word on whether or not sandler's character, like the actual shoe-repair guy, also makes shabbos keys for our neighbors (who can't carry house keys on the sabbath but can "wear" them as tie clips or belt buckles).
the mural-bird in the alley west of the great wall, the first chinese restaurant on the south side of grand street en route to chinatown. i feel like his name would be alvin or nelson.
if you look to your left when you get to this tag you'll see STEAMS BUNS, one of my favorite lower east side awning-slogans. if you keep going down essex and hang a right at delancey you'll hit another, AS OLD AS HILLS, just before the williamsburg bridge.
i couldn't keep the staircases straight for the first several weeks i took the subway to and from the office; i get turned around easily, and street names and directions slip away from me like wet bar soap. i go right if i emerge in front of the orchard mural, and left if i'm in front of the leaping fish. right orchard, left fish. right orchard, left fish.
the freedom tower mural at henry m. jackson playground, across the street from our local fine fare (which reopened during the lower east side blackout after sandy when the owner saw people lining up outside the steel shutters; runners with flashlights would take orders and venture back into the dark aisles to fill them). you can see the actual freedom tower a block or so later down east broadway.
st. mary's, where hearses park for funerals during the week and the sidewalk is full of worshipers after ten o'clock mass as i pass on the way to the wild bird fund on sundays.
for about a month we shared the street with a film crew for the cobbler ('[adam] sandler plays a lonely new york shoe-repairman who senses that he’s let life past him by. but when he discovers a magical family heirloom that allows him to literally “walk in another man’s shoes,” he embarks on a great adventure with far-reaching ramifications.') no word on whether or not sandler's character, like the actual shoe-repair guy, also makes shabbos keys for our neighbors (who can't carry house keys on the sabbath but can "wear" them as tie clips or belt buckles).
the mural-bird in the alley west of the great wall, the first chinese restaurant on the south side of grand street en route to chinatown. i feel like his name would be alvin or nelson.
if you look to your left when you get to this tag you'll see STEAMS BUNS, one of my favorite lower east side awning-slogans. if you keep going down essex and hang a right at delancey you'll hit another, AS OLD AS HILLS, just before the williamsburg bridge.
i couldn't keep the staircases straight for the first several weeks i took the subway to and from the office; i get turned around easily, and street names and directions slip away from me like wet bar soap. i go right if i emerge in front of the orchard mural, and left if i'm in front of the leaping fish. right orchard, left fish. right orchard, left fish.
02.03.14
there was a fire at the delancey street station this morning, so i walked through chinatown to catch another train. i could make like the crowds and slush and rolling into the office looking like alice cooper were terrible, but who am i kidding? this weather is fantastic.
12.05.13
We could eat grapes half the morning like Goethe
hunkered against an obelisk,
waiting on the proper angle for the season
to see the Sistine sun-kissed,
or we could slip a coin in the device
that illumines another masterpiece
in a sordid chapel (but soon again
dark shrinks it to a gleam of grease).
(ange mlinko, from "revelations," granta 125)
10.14.13
101 in 1001 {III}: 037 read three library books [ongoing]
II: RIVINGTON WAS OURS: LADY GAGA, THE LOWER EAST SIDE, AND THE PRIME OF OUR LIVES, BRENDAN JAY SULLIVAN. hats off to the new york public library for hooking me up with books i don't want to purchase and install at my apartment and am unlikely to find at my office! it served me well with jon ronson's psychopath test and served me even better with rivington was ours, a DJ/bartender's casual memoir of life among the beautiful people, lady gaga in particular, on the lower east side (i.e. our 'hood) circa 2006. my only real beef with library books thus far, standard used-book potential for bed bug infestation aside,* is that i have to read them straight through right away to avoid late fines, which is sort of annoying when, say, one wishes to skitter between an old copy of gilead from one's mother-in-law, the big ol' vampire novel one lugs back and forth on the subway to decompress over the course of the week one is shipping the december issue at the office, the new yorker, and the isadora duncan autobiography that makes one wonder if one speaks english as well as one thought one did.** that said, i'm not sure one is meant to linger over sullivan's prose.
and what of the lower east side? as we all know, memoirs of this sort are all secretly or not-so-secretly love letters to the city itself, right? sullivan spills a bit of ink describing his fragrant commute through "big trouble in little chinatown" on the way to the B/D station at grand and chrystie (like a lot of people who spend the evening on the lower east side, he doesn't actually live there), a bit more on an afterparty for the killers at motor city (good night sweet bar: and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!), and quite a lot on an awkwardly-telescoped vespa ride through central park to gaga's parents' place on the upper west side (of course he has a vespa). that last passage in particular feels like filler, and it is; brendan jay sullivan wants you to know how well he knew lady gaga and how highly other people think of him, and that's about it. there's nothing wrong with wanting those things, but if one is to be a writer's writer, one would want the former to be someone else, yes? this is my theory.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 if you are a book-borrower, what sort of books do you borrow? do you find you need to rush through them?
02 who is shakespeare's finest character?
03 have you ever referred to a chinatown as "big trouble in little chinatown"?
04 if a pop star told you she'd heard you're well-endowed, would you mention that in your memoir?
05 is it ever OK to give chapters song-lyric titles?
*bed bugs love used books, people. if you bring one home, do yourself the favor of throwing it in the oven at 115 for an hour (they also die at temperatures below 26 degrees, but most freezers don't get that cold).
**holy shit, isadora duncan.
***spoiler: not much.
****"[M]y third-time's-a-charm full-length manuscript The Confessions of Mercutio—a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. To tackle the great work, I took Shakespeare's finest character and Romeo's best friend, a longwinded drunk with a knack for getting into situations, and gave him free reign of Verona."
II: RIVINGTON WAS OURS: LADY GAGA, THE LOWER EAST SIDE, AND THE PRIME OF OUR LIVES, BRENDAN JAY SULLIVAN. hats off to the new york public library for hooking me up with books i don't want to purchase and install at my apartment and am unlikely to find at my office! it served me well with jon ronson's psychopath test and served me even better with rivington was ours, a DJ/bartender's casual memoir of life among the beautiful people, lady gaga in particular, on the lower east side (i.e. our 'hood) circa 2006. my only real beef with library books thus far, standard used-book potential for bed bug infestation aside,* is that i have to read them straight through right away to avoid late fines, which is sort of annoying when, say, one wishes to skitter between an old copy of gilead from one's mother-in-law, the big ol' vampire novel one lugs back and forth on the subway to decompress over the course of the week one is shipping the december issue at the office, the new yorker, and the isadora duncan autobiography that makes one wonder if one speaks english as well as one thought one did.** that said, i'm not sure one is meant to linger over sullivan's prose.
On our first date I was so nervous that I blurted out, "So, Nikki, tell me, what are your hopes and dreams?" I had hoped to disqualify her, to hear she was boring or stupid or in graduate school. I had hoped to find just one reason that I could quit staring at her, to stop imagining how much of my life I'd change just to make room for more of her in my world.***sadly, though the beautiful nikki is a lingerie entrepreneur and not a grad student, she isn't nearly compelling enough for sullivan (per gary shteyngart [who in turn must have lost a terribly high-stakes poker game to have had to deliver such a blurb],"a writer's writer. yes, he's that good."), who prefers to spend his hours out from behind the bar or the turntables with gaga, a young "musician" with extremely compelling eyes ("Her eyes sparkled like disco balls." "Her eyes were glowing like bright factory windows, her mind inside chugging along, excited by the noise of production." "She had an emptiness in her eyes and if you looked you wouldn't find her." "Her humorless eyes were pools that hovered just below thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit."). despite the sweet nothings they exchange at sullivan's obligatory twenty-fifth birthday party at the hotel chelsea (sigh), nikki leaves him to his karl lagerfeld-esque imagery ("I remembered the crisp air and the expressionless leather on all of our friends' jackets") and his lovelorn nights of blistering art theory with gaga ("If you thought she was a bit dumb, it was probably because she thought you were not that bright and didn't try to say anything over your head.")
She told me she was waiting tables ever since she quit designing lingerie for a bigger company. Now she wanted to start her own lingerie company with a partner who'd worked for Victoria's Secret. They would launch in February.
When she turned the question on me, I answered truthfully about my secret writings.**** Afterward we looked into each other's eyes like two lost sailors who first sighted land.
and what of the lower east side? as we all know, memoirs of this sort are all secretly or not-so-secretly love letters to the city itself, right? sullivan spills a bit of ink describing his fragrant commute through "big trouble in little chinatown" on the way to the B/D station at grand and chrystie (like a lot of people who spend the evening on the lower east side, he doesn't actually live there), a bit more on an afterparty for the killers at motor city (good night sweet bar: and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!), and quite a lot on an awkwardly-telescoped vespa ride through central park to gaga's parents' place on the upper west side (of course he has a vespa). that last passage in particular feels like filler, and it is; brendan jay sullivan wants you to know how well he knew lady gaga and how highly other people think of him, and that's about it. there's nothing wrong with wanting those things, but if one is to be a writer's writer, one would want the former to be someone else, yes? this is my theory.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 if you are a book-borrower, what sort of books do you borrow? do you find you need to rush through them?
02 who is shakespeare's finest character?
03 have you ever referred to a chinatown as "big trouble in little chinatown"?
04 if a pop star told you she'd heard you're well-endowed, would you mention that in your memoir?
05 is it ever OK to give chapters song-lyric titles?
*bed bugs love used books, people. if you bring one home, do yourself the favor of throwing it in the oven at 115 for an hour (they also die at temperatures below 26 degrees, but most freezers don't get that cold).
**holy shit, isadora duncan.
***spoiler: not much.
****"[M]y third-time's-a-charm full-length manuscript The Confessions of Mercutio—a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. To tackle the great work, I took Shakespeare's finest character and Romeo's best friend, a longwinded drunk with a knack for getting into situations, and gave him free reign of Verona."
03.03.13
In the first few days [of his winter alone in western antarctica in 1934, admiral richard byrd's] only complaint was that he had forgotten to bring a cookbook. Never having had to cook anything for himself before, he was hamstrung. He wrote in his diary about the 'Corn Meal Incident' in which he overdid the amount of corn meal in a pan and induced a volcanic reaction. 'It oozed over the stove. It spattered the ceiling. It covered me from head to foot. If I hadn't acted resolutely, I might have been drowned in corn meal.' He grabbd the pan, rushed it to one of the storage tunnels and slammed it down, where it continued to spew until it froze.
Byrd recounted these incidents insouciantly to the men back in Little America on his thrice-weekly radio calls. He could hear their actual voices but he had to reply laboriously, spelling out his messages with the dots and dashes of Morse code. His men teased him about his incompetence with the code, especially when he was asked to broadcast a message live to the Chicago World's Fair, to be relayed via Little America and then somehow translated into a firework display. 'If the fireworks are supposed to spell out what you send,' his friend Charlie Murphy told him over the radio, 'then Chicago is in for the wildest display since the fire.'
(gabrielle walker, from antarctica: an intimate portrait of a mysterious continent)
12.23.12
season's greetings, all; i hope your toes are precisely as warm as you would like them to be.
11.30.12
The scholars spent little time rehashing the legendary première. The event is familiar even to those who know little of modern music: the boos, the whistles, Stravinsky leaving in a rage, Nijinsky yelling out beats, Gertrude Stein watching a man smash another man's top hat with a cane, Florent Schmitt's cry of "Shut up, bitches of the seizième!"
(alex ross, "primal scream," new yorker 11.19.12)
06.20.12
joe and his new iphone are a cavalier and his horse: they gallop through battle as one and then find the best pizza nearby, or something. i, on the other hand, have downloaded but a single app and have managed to coat my device with a thin film of absinthe-scented beeswax (one must wash one's hands after applying lip balm and prior to setting one's alarm clock, it seems). that said, i will grudgingly admit that it's now super-easy to take photos of garbage (and i dearly love taking photos of garbage). i will give you that and only that, robot overlords.
07.15.11: the dirty dozen {twelve things i pass on my walk to work}
01 doughnut plant
02 carnegie hall
03 the pickle guys
04 lee's art shop, home of fine plastic animals
05 great wall chinese (WATERMELON, BONELESS DUCK, LIVE LOBSTER ANY STYLE)
06 zafis luncheonette
07 abrons art center, home of the steampunk haunted house
08 church of st. mary (bingo saturday sunday 7pm)
09 pizza school
10 morning glories
11 jerry seinfeld (twice)
12 a pit bull wearing a fur coat (once, but i can't stop talking about it)
01 doughnut plant
02 carnegie hall
03 the pickle guys
04 lee's art shop, home of fine plastic animals
05 great wall chinese (WATERMELON, BONELESS DUCK, LIVE LOBSTER ANY STYLE)
06 zafis luncheonette
07 abrons art center, home of the steampunk haunted house
08 church of st. mary (bingo saturday sunday 7pm)
09 pizza school
10 morning glories
11 jerry seinfeld (twice)
12 a pit bull wearing a fur coat (once, but i can't stop talking about it)
05.23.11
we entertain small knots of people on a reasonably regular basis, but i can count the actual parties i've hosted on one hand: the jen and i had an alice's adventures in wonderland party in our room over the high street when we lived in england, joe and i accidentally threw a new year's eve party at our place in hell's kitchen when everyone met up at our house and never got around to leaving, and we had a poker night which sort of functioned as a housewarming for our new place about a year ago. neither of us is fond of making a big deal of birthdays, see, and our friends are such fine holiday-party-organizers that i'd hate to disappoint them with, like, inferior halloween counterprogramming. harold camping's rapture, though - that could be mine.
{homemade kirk cameron and debbie harry votives & blessed mother candle (courtesy of amanda) by me; peeps on our roof by george}
we entertain small knots of people on a reasonably regular basis, but i can count the actual parties i've hosted on one hand: the jen and i had an alice's adventures in wonderland party in our room over the high street when we lived in england, joe and i accidentally threw a new year's eve party at our place in hell's kitchen when everyone met up at our house and never got around to leaving, and we had a poker night which sort of functioned as a housewarming for our new place about a year ago. neither of us is fond of making a big deal of birthdays, see, and our friends are such fine holiday-party-organizers that i'd hate to disappoint them with, like, inferior halloween counterprogramming. harold camping's rapture, though - that could be mine.
date: Wed, May 18, 2011 at 10:54 AMall of the people came to our party, internet! okay, our friends who were still in barcelona didn't come to our party, but two friends-of-friends came unexpectedly, so i'll claim perfect attendance anyway! i got to use all of my creepy glassware (who knew i'd been thrifting for a rapture party all this time?) and everyone liked the cookies and steve didn't eat anyone! we watched a monsignor who looked like a honey-baked ham and interpretive dancing on the (muted) catholic channel, the moon rose into the mist over the same old brooklyn, and i was very happy.
subject: the end is nigh
good morning, all! the joe and i have been kicking around the idea of having a thing at our apartment for awhile now; i've also been reading about the rapture and have learned that many civilizations consider our having a party to be one of the last signs of the apocalypse. i was just telling steve the other day that kirk "left behind" cameron and i are birthday buddies, and he responded by reciting thessalonians in a guttural voice:
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are on the Lower East Side and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall have wine and cheese and those weird cookies you make. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and probably we'll have a good view of something spectacular happening to Brooklyn, what with this balcony.
what: beholding the rapture at joe and lauren's
when: this saturday, 5/21; texts vary on whether festivities begin at 6pm PST or 6pm everywhere, so let's split the difference and say 8pm local time
where: [our apartment]
per steve, we'll have wine and cheese and a variety of baked goods; we've also supplemented our bar with apocalyptic spirits. feel free to supplement that in a world-ending manner of your choosing, or to bear faith and faith alone. hope to see you there!
be pure, take a tour,
LMO and JMS
{homemade kirk cameron and debbie harry votives & blessed mother candle (courtesy of amanda) by me; peeps on our roof by george}
08.30.10
much is afoot, you guys. THUNDERTOME, secret project, and GRAVITY'S RAINBeh posts are all on the horizon; until they rear their ugly heads, here's (an extremely mixed metaphor and) a big ol' photo of joe on our roof.
much is afoot, you guys. THUNDERTOME, secret project, and GRAVITY'S RAINBeh posts are all on the horizon; until they rear their ugly heads, here's (an extremely mixed metaphor and) a big ol' photo of joe on our roof.
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