It was 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning when I began my biweekly scamper across the width of Columbia University’s campus. I had just finished up my class on the early English novel and I had five minutes to walk the five blocks and go up the eight flights that would lead me to my genetics class. I was always late to genetics, which was all right by me because it was far and away my least favorite class that I was registered for in the fall of 2001.
As I reached the black, iron gates that separate Columbia from Broadway Avenue, I was surprised to find that all but one of the six was closed. As I walked through the open gate, I caught sight of yellow police tape that was prohibiting entrance into the 116th Street Subway station. More than the average number of people chattered away frantically on their cell phones on that particular morning.
A bit frazzled from the between class rush, I stumbled into the classroom to find my normally pleasant, thirty something Canadian professor speaking in a tone that was quite different from his usually ho-hum cadence.
“What happened?” I asked naively.
He explained that two airplanes had flown into the World Trade Center. After the first one had hit, him and a colleague had gone up to the building’s roof and seen the smoke. That’s when a second plane hit the other tower. I was surprised, but I don’t think that his concise description fully conveyed the magnitude of what had transgressed. I started piecing together the shut gates and the blocked subway station.
He made an attempt to go on with class, but we were all distracted. Some administrator stopped in and somberly informed us that classes for the rest of the day had been canceled and that we should return to our dorms. The professor let us go. I returned to my building and found about fifteen people huddled around a T.V. watching the same four minutes of footage that was being broadcast over and over again.
It was frightening to watch. This was five miles downtown from us, these were streets every one of us had walked on. It looked like a volcano had erupted amidst a concrete jungle, covering everything in grey-white ash and destroying and preserving different beings and objects at its whim. The attack on the WTC was no volcanic eruption, though. Volcanoes don’t fly passenger planes into buildings, they don’t aim to kill innocent people.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Saturday, December 30, 2006
All of the Songs You Hear Don’t Know They Have a Purpose
Music and college seem intrinsically linked. I know so many kids who have discovered everyone from John Coltrane to R.E.M. to Henryk Gorecki during their tenure at an institution of higher learning. Unlike most freshmen, by the time I arrived at Columbia in August of 1998, I was already well versed in the realm of indie rock. It might have been the only topic where I was truly ahead of the learning curve.
I’ve discovered friends, boys I’ve dated, and redeeming aspects of enemies through a common love of an indie band on some obscure label. Shows became my social space of choice, mix tapes become the ultimate expression of caring. I’ve been overjoyed with friends to the sounds of Beulah (only the first record!) and contemplated why life sucks so damn much to the dramatic screaming of Fugazi and Cursive.
The New York music scene was a big reason I wanted to go to school in NYC in the first place. And throughout my time in New York, music played a really important role. During the times that I was most unhappy, I seldom listened to it. During the times when I was happiest, I felt like I was discovering a new, amazing band every week. Music has formed a sprawling soundtrack to my life.
Considering how many stories I have told in this booklet, it’s kinda amazing how little I’ve written about music. It might be because I write about music all the time for other publications or because I have a hard time doing the music I love justice in the form of the written word.
Whatever it is, the following four stories are examples of the way that music and experience are thoroughly intertwined in my life. Each story is about one of my favorite New York City bands, but it is also about more than that. It is about music as a comfort, as a bond, as a distraction, as a meeting place, and as a source of heartbreak. Or to steal a line from Jeff Tweedy:
I’ve discovered friends, boys I’ve dated, and redeeming aspects of enemies through a common love of an indie band on some obscure label. Shows became my social space of choice, mix tapes become the ultimate expression of caring. I’ve been overjoyed with friends to the sounds of Beulah (only the first record!) and contemplated why life sucks so damn much to the dramatic screaming of Fugazi and Cursive.
The New York music scene was a big reason I wanted to go to school in NYC in the first place. And throughout my time in New York, music played a really important role. During the times that I was most unhappy, I seldom listened to it. During the times when I was happiest, I felt like I was discovering a new, amazing band every week. Music has formed a sprawling soundtrack to my life.
Considering how many stories I have told in this booklet, it’s kinda amazing how little I’ve written about music. It might be because I write about music all the time for other publications or because I have a hard time doing the music I love justice in the form of the written word.
Whatever it is, the following four stories are examples of the way that music and experience are thoroughly intertwined in my life. Each story is about one of my favorite New York City bands, but it is also about more than that. It is about music as a comfort, as a bond, as a distraction, as a meeting place, and as a source of heartbreak. Or to steal a line from Jeff Tweedy:
“Music is my savior/I was maimed by rock and roll.”
I. Clem Snide
December finally rolled around and the end of the semester of my discontent was in sight. I’d found that frequent attendance of rock shows and hanging out with different people was a sufficient remedy to tear-filled phone calls home and adamant assertions of wanting to quit school. One Sunday night, I invited along two of my friends to see an Omaha band called the Good Life open for a Brooklyn based quartet called Clem Snide at the Mercury Lounge.
I had only heard of Clem Snide once before they stepped on stage. But, while I watched them set up their gear, I was already compelled by a couple of things: for one, they had a stand up bass and a cello in the lineup, for another they were all dressed in frayed, thrift store suits, and a third, their lead singer had that dorky-coolness that I admire in anyone who is capable of pulling it off without seeming to be a poser.
I had told my two friends that we would stay for a couple of Clem Snide’s songs and if the band was no good, we could leave. But, after listening to two of the band’s alt country/punk rock arrangements, I knew that I would be staying.
Clem Snide appeared capable of everything that I love about rock music. The songs were arranged in the most timeless way, drawing upon influences like Hank Williams and Buddy Holly. But, the lyrics could only come from a too smart suburban youth raised in the 1980’s.
Who else would ever write a songs with the title: “Joan Jett of Arc”?
To my ears, the songs were magical. They blended together tight musicianship with lyrics that were sometimes smart ass-y, sometimes nostalgic, and often lonely.
Everything about Clem Snide’s performance that night in December impressed me, but the song “I Love the Unknown” was what really blew me away. And time and time again, I recall the way I felt as I stood in the crowd listening to the song unfold in all its catchy, punky, countrified glory. And during the final verse, Eef Barzelay’s affected twang proclaimed: “The doctor asked him what he was afraid of, just what was he running from. He said it’s not a fear of success or closeness, just of going through life feeling numb.”
I could certainly relate.
II. The French Kicks
The first time I heard the French Kicks was when I saw them play a show in Chicago during the summer of 2001. Their performance was sandwiched between the art school/prep school rock of The Walkmen and Royal Trux-er Neil Michael Hagerty. The other two acts were good, but the French Kicks’ sound just made me so damn happy. It made me want to dance, it made me want to cheer, it made me want to kiss their bass player really badly.As a side note, I should say that I am a total manizer (which was the only equivalent of a womanizer that I could come up with.) I like boys (a lot of them in bands), and I don’t really feel ashamed to admit it or comment on them. I mean come on, some boys play in bands just so chicks will dig them, and guitars are just monster fallices anyway, right? As I’ve explained to many a disgusted male rock fan before, I don’t like a band because a musician in it is hot. I like a band because they make good music, if they have a hot member that’s just an added perk.
After smiling straight through the Kicks’ live performance in Chicago, I immediately went out and acquired both of their EPs which proved to be just as solid and fun as their live performance. I spent the next couple of months praising their jangly guitar rock both verbally and in print as well as asserting the band’s physical cuteness.
When I returned to New York City, I kept a watchful eye out for live performances. The College Music Journal Music Marathon was rescheduled, as a result of the events of September 11th (more on that experience later), for mid-October. With the country still uneasy and many a band unable to work around their tour schedules, the festival took on a more New York-based feel, highlighting some of the best music my fair city had to offer.
So, on the first night, the French Kicks along with four or five other bands, rocked out on the stage of the Knitting Factory main space. I attended along with my friend Tania who after listening to my endless praise of the Kicks, encouraged me to go up and chat with the band, or more pointedly Lawrence, the bass player for whom I harbored a seventh grade crush.
Now for all my experience attending shows and interviewing bands, I have never felt comfortable with approaching a band after a set. So, despite my love of Lawrence, I was too much of a scaredy cat to approach him to say a ridiculously lame sentiment like “nice set”.
I was even too much of a wimp to ask Josh Wise, one of the band’s guitarists, for the set list he was about the throw away. Fortunately, Tania had the guts and saved it from the trash can.
The evening was still young and a couple of other bands went on to play amusing sets. In addition, folks at the show were nice, and once again I found the ubiquitous Robert Christgau (rock writer extraordinaire for the The Village Voice) standing right beside me. To further support my chicken-livered trend of the night, I was too scared to tell him how much I respected his work.
The show ended and around 1:30 a.m. I was standingupstairs in the lobby of the Knitting Factory while Tania was downstairs using the ladies’ room. Leaning against the wall, bleary-eyed and tired, I watched Lawrence (yes the Lawrence) ascend the stairs and he was looking at me. Probably because I was staring at him. I mustered up the courage as he approached, smiled and said, “You guys sounded really good tonight.” He stopped dead in his tracks, shyly smiled and asked, “You stuck around for our set?” I laughed a bit and excitedly replied, “stuck around for it?! I came here tonight to see you guys play!” He looked genuinely psyched. I went on to say “I caught you all in Chicago this summer and I went out and bought both EPs.” Now he was just plain shocked and we preceded to chat for a couple of minutes about the tour with Neil Michael Hagerty, future touring plans and the forthcoming full length.
As Tania ascended the stairs, he realized that she was the friend that I was waiting for and added, “well, we’ll be playing in New York more in November. You should really come to the shows. It’d be cool to see you there.” I told him that I would keep an eye out and thanked him again for a great set. Tania and I left the Knitting Factory giggling like thirteen year olds as she inquired about Lawrence and my wedding plans.
III. Interpol
One of the most amazing things about music is how a certain record or song or band can be intrinsically connected with a particular person in your life long after you have ceased to interact with that person. This is particularly true for me with regard to boyfriends and people I have dated, even casually. I can think of two songs that I can no longer listen to (one by Pavement, one by the Afghan Whigs) because of boys that I was involved with. But, I was determined to reclaim lower east side, sine wave rockers Interpol for myself.The first and only time that I have seen the band perform was at Brownies during the third night of the CMJ Music Marathon. Lead singer Paul Barnes is not only one of the prettiest boys I have ever seen (I’m not attracted to him in the least, but his prettiness is kinda overwhelming) and his voice sounds an awful lot like Joy Division’s Ian Curtis.
It was on this evening that I preceded to meet a boy named Tom who I would (to synopsize our relationship briefly) date, get screwed over by, get contacted by, and get screwed over by again. Being jerked around once is one thing, having a boy do it to you twice is quite another.
That night, I was sitting in my “regular” spot on the left side of Brownies, with earplugs in canal. During the evening, I chatted with a couple of people attending CMJ, a couple more who I knew from work, and some band members who I had seen play the two prior nights.
I was at Brownies that night to see The Walkmen and Zero Zero, and planned to hop aboard the subway after those two sets to catch Clem Snide and Bill Janovitz across the river in Brooklyn. I never made it to Brooklyn that night. Rather, I ended up hanging out with this Tom who I had met at the show. He was sitting right beside me for nearly an hour before we started chatting and joking around.
The Walkmen played a so-so set, but I was enjoying hanging out with Tom and decided to skip the cross-river jaunt (I’d seen Clem Snide play that weekend already, anyway). Instead of leaving, I stayed to check out the night’s two remaining bands.
Interpol stepped on stage, clad in black suits, and the quartet preceded to release a series of eerie, compelling songs into the air. I was pretty impressed by their set.
One of the strangest things that I have ever experienced at Brownies (or any show, for that matter) happened that very night. Four marines, probably stationed in NYC as a result of September 11th, drunkenly stumbled into the low key, downtown hipster bar during the final band’s set. The band, My Favorite, was a gay friendly, keyboard heavy act that had a much diminished audience dancing away in front of the stage. One of the Marines got rather boisterous and harassed the band and fellow show goers. From what I could discern, one guy in the audience made an off hand comment to the leatherneck, and next thing we knew, the Marine jumped the guy. A bouncer came over with a club and beat the brawny cadet off of the other guy and the four members of America’s armed forces were escorted from the tiny rock club.
Tom and I laughed and speculated about the happenings as the show came to a close. He asked me if I wanted to grab a drink (it was a Friday night and only 1:30 a.m.) and I agreed and we spent the next two hours talking at a coffee shop down the street until they kicked us out. We exchanged numbers and started going out for a short while. And then he stopped calling.
Very cliché situation. And I felt very odd. I wasn’t looking for a serious relationship, but I had liked him more than I liked most anyone I had seen in quite a while. He was smart, funny, strange and good looking.
Anyhow, I got over it. And then about a month later, I opened up my mail box to find a strange envelope inside. It was obviously from someone I knew, because of the way that it was addressed. But, there was no return address, and no note inside. Just a photo of Interpol clipped from a magazine.
I put two and two together and solicited my brother for some advice. He said that if I liked Tom, I should send him an e-mail. I’m not sure that I still liked him at that point, but the experience was so “after school specially” that I couldn’t resist.
I dropped him a clever e-mail which stated, “I got this strange envelope in the mail the other day-no return address, no note, just a clipping of Interpol. Is it from you or should I be concerned that someone else is stalking me through my most obscure musical tastes?”
A couple of days later he replied with an e-mail that read, “hmmm...” I didn’t reply after that and concluded that he was a bastard.
It could have ruined Interpol for me, but I made a concerted effort to not let that happen. When I stumbled upon their self-released EP in my local record store, I bought it immediately. I refused to let a boy who was a dick to me twice sabotage a good rock band.
IV. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
I hope everyone has a Ted Leo. Not the man or his music in actuality, but something that makes each and every person as happy as Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ music makes me. Because his music makes me want to dance around the room, pound the downbeats with my hand, sing at the top of my lungs and share it with everyone I know.
During the summer of 2001 I had acquired a copy of his full length, The Tyranny of Distance, but I had never really given it enough listens to realize just how amazing the songs actually were. I’m sure that part of what contributed to my ignorance is the poor production quality of some parts of the record. The only way that I can describe it is like an over-exposed photograph, the drums just white everything out.
Anyhow, after a long summer in Chicago, I recognized that the Pharmacists were playing with a couple of other cool bands at Brownies the very weekend I returned to New York City.
One of my closest friends, Meg (who later cultivated a love for Ted that runs even deeper than my own. She actually ended up talking to him at a show, but out of pure nervousness her admiration for the musician turned into an awkward sarcasm which concluded with Ted Leo telling her that she was very intimidating) and I made our way downtown to an awfully crowded Brownies. She took off before his set, but I found myself surrounded by an array of friends (including Brian and a couple of other folks who worked where I interned) who I hadn’t seen for a couple of months.
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists won me over on this very night. They opened the evening with Ted playing a couple of Ted Leo songs alone with his electric guitar. And then in the midst of the amazing song “Timorous Me” the band emerged and rocked out. They performed before a full house, including Ted’s parents and brother. The crowd sang along, danced, and had endless fun as the band kept us yearning for more.
They performed every song that they knew as a band. And when they were done, the lead singer from one of the earlier bands got up on stage and begged for more. Out Ted came with an electric guitar and played a beautiful version of Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.”
I almost cried...
Sometimes things come full circle naturally. The final weekend of my college career, I found myself staring at the Village Voice deciding which of two appealing Sunday night shows I wanted to attend. At the goading of Meg, and the realization that some things are just quintessentially New York (for me, at least), I decided to catch Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at North Six in Brooklyn.
It was my last show in New York City.
We hopped aboard the subway and acted in the goofy way that we often do. Meg reflected on some of her recent boy drama, I enumerated the things that needed to happen to make the evening ideal.
Now, Meg and I know each other’s idiosyncrasies and one of mine is that after spending a whole year studying skeletal anatomy, and having a near obsessive interest in the plasticity of the human form, I can’t help but notice people with really unique or over-developed cranial features. I had a professor who said that when you get really good at skeletal anatomy, you’ll find yourself staring at a person and defleshing them trying to figure out how their bones are arranged. Though it’s a totally gross habit, I find myself doing it sometimes when I am sitting on the subway. Unfortunately for Meg, I often feel the need to comment on these things out loud. She’s become used to it, but she never fails to remind me just how creepy the whole thing is.
After creeping her out yet again about a guy with a huge supraorbital torus (read: brow) we emerged from the subway in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the land of attractive scenester types. Upon entering the venue, the first person I saw was Brian. The evening was already off to a nice start because I hadn’t seen him in quite a while and really wanted to before I left New York for good. I cried out, “Hey stranger!” He gave me a big hug and asked if I had come to see Ted Leo. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Ted and the boys were great that night. His banter was more likable than ever. At one point, the drummer missed a big drum crash, but a planned “monsters of rock” guitar leap by Ted and the other guitarist took place anyway. After the song, Ted explained that they were “subverting the dominant rock leap norm.” I think four people laughed, Meg and I were two of those people.
During the final song, the mic stand fell over. But, Ted Leo is too rock and roll to care. When he needed to sing, he just picked up the mic and gyrated about the stage vocalizing like some 1970’s rock star, only sincere. When he needed to play guitar, he threw the mic down and danced around the stage, strumming like a madman.
One of my favorite NYC bands, one of my best friends, and a last meeting with one of my favorite people I’ve met over the years. It was the perfect last show. It was the kind of night that I wish could have lasted forever. Unfortunately, I had a genetics exam to study for.
Friday, December 29, 2006
A Lesson in Eugenics & The Punk Rock Human Blockhead
It was the weekend before my final semester of school was to commence when my friend Lauren and I decided to venture to the beaches of Brooklyn, to the land of boardwalks, fried fish, cotton candy, and the Cyclone Roller Coaster. We fled the smelly, sticky subway platform into the frigidly air-conditioned car and we were on our way to Coney Island.
Now, to understand my interest in Coney Island, you need to understand a bit about my uber-geeky academic interests. Lauren and I had met the semester before in a class called Anthropology of Media. In the class, each person was required to undertake a research project related to media and write up a paper of approximately 15 pages. From a topic that had arisen in another class, I became really intrigued with circus freaks. And according to my professor, my background in science made me the ideal person to investigate the way science played out in the media. But, instead of focusing on current research, I harkened back to the time between the two world wars when the eugenics movement took hold of the American imagination. If you don’t know anything about eugenics, it was a concept devised by a British scientists named Sir Francis Galton. After the rediscovery of Mendel’s work on genetics (and before Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA) Galton propagated the belief that there was a correlative, causative effect between a single gene that was passed down from parent to child and a visible trait (for instance, one gene controlled eye color). If you know anything about contemporary molecular genetics (and why the hell would you unless you were a monstrously nerdy person like myself) you know that virtually every trait expressed in humans and most other eukaryotes is controlled by a whole bunch of genes.
Galton called his theory eugenics and it caught on quick, especially with folks who weren’t in favor of blacks or poor immigrants who were having lots of kids. For my project, I became really interested in what the American Eugenics Movement defined as normal and abnormal relating to the way a human being should look. So I focused my attentions on a photographic archive that had been gathered in the 1920s at the Eugenics Record Office. Because the scientists involved in the movement had been so interested in normalcy and aberrance, and because they office was located on nearby Long Island, they took a special liking to the fairways of nearby theme parks like Luna Park located on Coney Island. By the time I actually visited the contemporary version of Coney Island, I was well versed in the locale’s history which made it all the more interesting to me. That, and of course, the quarter games of skeeball.
When we arrived at Coney Island, we spent some time walking the boardwalks, chatting with a young woman who silkscreened some really cool t-shirts and snapped some photographs. We found this old, stucco building that was trimmed with amazing detailing of ships and sea deities. Lauren and I concluded that the abandoned building would make a really awesome seaside rock club. And after eating some fish, riding the Flume, stocking up on more film, and playing skee ball for over an hour, there were only one thing we had to do to make the day complete.
The thing that I really wanted to see was America’s last remaining sideshow. Lauren knew this and agreed to attend it with me. We sauntered into the darkened performance area and grabbed a seat on one of the wooden bleachers. At the sideshow, 11 acts cycle through continuously and viewers can come and go as they please. There was a snake enchantress, and a geek (who couldn’t eat any chicken’s heads because it’s illegal, but did get sandwiched between boards of nails), an electric woman, a contortionist, and a “killer” clown (the only genetic freak, a midget).
And there was one other guy. The M.C./performer is known as Tyler Fyre and he was a Renaissance man-a sword swallower, a magician, a fire eater, and a human blockhead. Now, not only was he talented in a plethora of ways, but he was charming and, well, hot. It’s kinda strange to think of someone as attractive as he pounds a three inch long nail up his nose, but he was this young guy wearing Doc Martens with flames stitched on them and eating fire with the Cramps playing in the background. He wasn’t your average sideshow performer. He was the punk rock human blockhead. And after seeing him perform, I walked around for nearly two weeks telling friends that I had a massive crush on one of the sideshow performers at Coney Island.
Now, to understand my interest in Coney Island, you need to understand a bit about my uber-geeky academic interests. Lauren and I had met the semester before in a class called Anthropology of Media. In the class, each person was required to undertake a research project related to media and write up a paper of approximately 15 pages. From a topic that had arisen in another class, I became really intrigued with circus freaks. And according to my professor, my background in science made me the ideal person to investigate the way science played out in the media. But, instead of focusing on current research, I harkened back to the time between the two world wars when the eugenics movement took hold of the American imagination. If you don’t know anything about eugenics, it was a concept devised by a British scientists named Sir Francis Galton. After the rediscovery of Mendel’s work on genetics (and before Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA) Galton propagated the belief that there was a correlative, causative effect between a single gene that was passed down from parent to child and a visible trait (for instance, one gene controlled eye color). If you know anything about contemporary molecular genetics (and why the hell would you unless you were a monstrously nerdy person like myself) you know that virtually every trait expressed in humans and most other eukaryotes is controlled by a whole bunch of genes.
Galton called his theory eugenics and it caught on quick, especially with folks who weren’t in favor of blacks or poor immigrants who were having lots of kids. For my project, I became really interested in what the American Eugenics Movement defined as normal and abnormal relating to the way a human being should look. So I focused my attentions on a photographic archive that had been gathered in the 1920s at the Eugenics Record Office. Because the scientists involved in the movement had been so interested in normalcy and aberrance, and because they office was located on nearby Long Island, they took a special liking to the fairways of nearby theme parks like Luna Park located on Coney Island. By the time I actually visited the contemporary version of Coney Island, I was well versed in the locale’s history which made it all the more interesting to me. That, and of course, the quarter games of skeeball.
When we arrived at Coney Island, we spent some time walking the boardwalks, chatting with a young woman who silkscreened some really cool t-shirts and snapped some photographs. We found this old, stucco building that was trimmed with amazing detailing of ships and sea deities. Lauren and I concluded that the abandoned building would make a really awesome seaside rock club. And after eating some fish, riding the Flume, stocking up on more film, and playing skee ball for over an hour, there were only one thing we had to do to make the day complete.
The thing that I really wanted to see was America’s last remaining sideshow. Lauren knew this and agreed to attend it with me. We sauntered into the darkened performance area and grabbed a seat on one of the wooden bleachers. At the sideshow, 11 acts cycle through continuously and viewers can come and go as they please. There was a snake enchantress, and a geek (who couldn’t eat any chicken’s heads because it’s illegal, but did get sandwiched between boards of nails), an electric woman, a contortionist, and a “killer” clown (the only genetic freak, a midget).
And there was one other guy. The M.C./performer is known as Tyler Fyre and he was a Renaissance man-a sword swallower, a magician, a fire eater, and a human blockhead. Now, not only was he talented in a plethora of ways, but he was charming and, well, hot. It’s kinda strange to think of someone as attractive as he pounds a three inch long nail up his nose, but he was this young guy wearing Doc Martens with flames stitched on them and eating fire with the Cramps playing in the background. He wasn’t your average sideshow performer. He was the punk rock human blockhead. And after seeing him perform, I walked around for nearly two weeks telling friends that I had a massive crush on one of the sideshow performers at Coney Island.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
It Came to Me in a Flash
I changed things. I started writing for a bunch of online sites. I befriended, via e-mail, a guy named Jason who worked for a record label that I was really into. I realized that I only needed 34 credits (entirely doable in two semesters) to graduate and decided that I was going to graduate from college early. I only registered for classes that sounded intensely interesting and they all proved to be. I started looking for an internship/job that had nothing to do with academics.
Spring proved to be much better than the fall. I acquired a cool internship at an online indie music store which had a marketing company and a record label. I spent two and a half days a week in their SoHo office pulling, packing and stocking online orders or doing leg work for the marketing folks. It was mindless work, but most everyone was pretty cool and they were all into independent music, cinema and publications.
During the time that I worked there, the manager of the store/shipping operations left the company to travel around Europe. The guy who had worked under him took over his position. In the first month and a half that I had worked there, I don’t think we had said much to each other beyond pleasantries and work related questions and answers. But, when Brian became my “boss”, we soon developed a good natured friendship over teasing, tape guns, and noisy instrumental post-rock.
A retarded monkey could probably have done my job most of the time. But, I really liked doing it. My obsessive compulsive and hyper-competitive tendencies were channeled into pulling, packing, labeling, and postaging as many orders as I possibly could in one day. And most of the time, there was a cool soundtrack playing in the background.
Things were looking up and my internship played a big role in it. I was back on track, liking all my classes, going to shows, meeting new people, not calling home every day just to cry to my mother.
To get to work, I used to take the 1/9 train downtown to Houston Street. From there, I would walk about 6 blocks east to Wooster where the office was located. I usually listened to headphones on my daily commute, checking out my newest acquisitions (since I wasn’t paid at my internship, I consistently acquired promotional CDs). But, for some godforsaken reason, despite my headphone wearing, men on Houston Street liked to make lewd comments at me during my walks to and from work.
I must explain something. I am entirely not hot. I used to think that only hot girls got harassed on the street, but men in New York City are not particularly picky about who they make lewd comments to. It seems that if you have two legs and breasts and you will be harassed. Two legs might not be a requirement.
I’d been working in SoHo for nearly three months when spring began to break. It was around 5:15 p.m. and the sun was still low in the sky, warming the brick and glass buildings on Wooster Street with its basketball-colored glow. I stepped out of the green door frame that surrounded the entrance to the building and, with headphones in ear, headed south.
I don’t know why I decided to walk west on Prince Street that day, but I did. And I must have been only 30 feet away from the office door when I noticed a kinda crazy and dirty looking man walking toward me on the sidewalk.
Now, defining crazy in New York City is a precarious thing. I’ve seen loads of people walking about, seemingly talking themselves, only to realize that they have those stupid cell phones with ear pieces. And I am pretty sure that if I saw former Modern Lovers front man and solo artist Jonathan Richman on the streets of New York City I would think he was a mental ward escapee. But, this guy on Wooster Street was definitely not right in the head.
I don’t remember what I was listening to, but I do remember that it was loud enough so that whatever this guy said to me as I drew near to him, was indistinct, but audible. I must have only been five feet in front of him, when he reached inside his fly and whipped out his penis.
As the flasher continued to voice indistinct messages at me, I walked by, quietly laughing at the absurdity of the event to myself.
Spring proved to be much better than the fall. I acquired a cool internship at an online indie music store which had a marketing company and a record label. I spent two and a half days a week in their SoHo office pulling, packing and stocking online orders or doing leg work for the marketing folks. It was mindless work, but most everyone was pretty cool and they were all into independent music, cinema and publications.
During the time that I worked there, the manager of the store/shipping operations left the company to travel around Europe. The guy who had worked under him took over his position. In the first month and a half that I had worked there, I don’t think we had said much to each other beyond pleasantries and work related questions and answers. But, when Brian became my “boss”, we soon developed a good natured friendship over teasing, tape guns, and noisy instrumental post-rock.
A retarded monkey could probably have done my job most of the time. But, I really liked doing it. My obsessive compulsive and hyper-competitive tendencies were channeled into pulling, packing, labeling, and postaging as many orders as I possibly could in one day. And most of the time, there was a cool soundtrack playing in the background.
Things were looking up and my internship played a big role in it. I was back on track, liking all my classes, going to shows, meeting new people, not calling home every day just to cry to my mother.
To get to work, I used to take the 1/9 train downtown to Houston Street. From there, I would walk about 6 blocks east to Wooster where the office was located. I usually listened to headphones on my daily commute, checking out my newest acquisitions (since I wasn’t paid at my internship, I consistently acquired promotional CDs). But, for some godforsaken reason, despite my headphone wearing, men on Houston Street liked to make lewd comments at me during my walks to and from work.
I must explain something. I am entirely not hot. I used to think that only hot girls got harassed on the street, but men in New York City are not particularly picky about who they make lewd comments to. It seems that if you have two legs and breasts and you will be harassed. Two legs might not be a requirement.
I’d been working in SoHo for nearly three months when spring began to break. It was around 5:15 p.m. and the sun was still low in the sky, warming the brick and glass buildings on Wooster Street with its basketball-colored glow. I stepped out of the green door frame that surrounded the entrance to the building and, with headphones in ear, headed south.
I don’t know why I decided to walk west on Prince Street that day, but I did. And I must have been only 30 feet away from the office door when I noticed a kinda crazy and dirty looking man walking toward me on the sidewalk.
Now, defining crazy in New York City is a precarious thing. I’ve seen loads of people walking about, seemingly talking themselves, only to realize that they have those stupid cell phones with ear pieces. And I am pretty sure that if I saw former Modern Lovers front man and solo artist Jonathan Richman on the streets of New York City I would think he was a mental ward escapee. But, this guy on Wooster Street was definitely not right in the head.
I don’t remember what I was listening to, but I do remember that it was loud enough so that whatever this guy said to me as I drew near to him, was indistinct, but audible. I must have only been five feet in front of him, when he reached inside his fly and whipped out his penis.
As the flasher continued to voice indistinct messages at me, I walked by, quietly laughing at the absurdity of the event to myself.
Monday, December 25, 2006
An Epiphany in Three Parts
I
The fall of my third year at college, I lived in a sterile (except for the leaking toilet that perpetually stained the carpet in my room which was right next to the bathroom) fifteen year old building where the keys weren’t the metal jobs most people have to lock up their apartments or houses, but rather plastic credit cards that slid into a slot on the door. It always made me feel like I was living in a hotel. I lived in this university owned two story apartment with four other girls, and on occasion the world’s only cool cat, Quibby.
The best part about the apartment was the fact that there was tons of space. This made it an ideal place to play host to numerous friends (peripheral and close) who straggled into New York City for a visit. It also sometimes set up a strange dynamic because I was really different than my roommates, or at least I liked to think I was. Being the indie-rock listening, anthropology student diverged from the generic pop-listening, pre-med and economics majors that lived all around me. But, I would soon realize that the lacuna was not as vast as I made it out to be.
II
My family first got hooked up on the internet back around 1993. I immediately found myself spending way too many hours in front of the glowing Macintosh screen (things haven’t changed too much) and exploring the very new technology of AOL and chat rooms. Back then (in the good old days, ha!) a person could sign onto AOL on consecutive evenings and find the same group of screen names inhabiting the same chat room. There was a sense of community much more so than there is now that the whole internet “fad” has become a way of life.
Anyhow, I was playing devil’s advocate (a favorite chat room past time for a smart, pretentious 14 year old) with some other folks when a question popped up in the room: “Any misanthropes in here?” Officially the coolest thing I had ever seen written online. I couldn’t resist and I sent an instant message to the kid behind the name. His name was Chad and he was a year older than me. He lived halfway across the country in Annapolis, Maryland. And the more we talked about music, books, etc. the more we liked each other. So, a friendship was formed
Every once in a while we would talk on the phone. When I would go away for the summers or he spent a semester of high school in Germany we would write epic letters about our experiences. I turned him onto Jeff Buckley, he began proclaiming the inevitable greatness of Radiohead upon his first listen to The Bends.
For a while, we didn’t talk. I know we got into a fight and I’m pretty sure I started it. But, neither of us can remember what it was over.
In college our friendship was reinvigorated by high speed internet connections and we talked often about meeting up. It didn’t happen until September of 2000. Nearly six years after we had started our friendship, Chad (along with his friend, Scott) came to New York for the CMJ Music Marathon and they stayed at the apartment. On the evening they arrived in town, he called at 11:30 p.m. to say he and Scott had arrived on campus. Excitedly, I went out to find my long time confidant, somewhere on the campus’s main walkway. I’d never even seen a picture of him.
But, the minute I laid eyes on him, I knew exactly who he was. We hugged and then I led him and his friend to my building where they dumped their bags and we went in search of a movie to watch. It felt more like a reunion than a first meeting.
Chad’s visit was about 3 days long and our time together was very sporadic. Scott and he spent most of their time at shows and movies, so we only hung out in the mornings or late at night. Usually we’d just sit in my room, smoke pot, listen to music and shoot the shit.
One night, we were sitting in my room and I was telling Scott and Chad about the anthropology lab where I spent about 6 hours each week working with human and primate skulls. Scott inquired, “Does it bother you to know that those skulls were once part of people?”
“I’ve never really thought about it,” was my reply. It bothered me that the thought had never crossed my mind.
III
Over the years, I’ve learned that I need to have lots of stuff to do all the time. When I have too much free time, I get bored and when I am bored, I start to realize how crappy things actually are, or worse yet how I feel.
So there I was near the end of my twentieth year realizing that I was so happy just hanging out with cool and smart like-minded people. People who read because they liked to and only learned about what interested them.
But, I wasn’t like Chad and Scott any longer. I was living my life for some inevitable future. Somewhere along the line, I had stopped being the excited young person living in New York City with virtually no responsibilities. I no longer read the newspaper. I ceased to search out new music to listen to. I had stopped questioning why I was studying a particular topic or going a particular place. I had started to just do.
I was like a 60 year old many going through the motions, waiting for that day to retire and forget about the horrible job that I had done for all those years. Only I wasn’t sixty, I was twenty. And things weren’t ending they were just beginning.
A series of things became clear to me: I was sick of school, I was burnt out on science classes, I hated New York City, I wanted different friends, I didn’t want to be a paleoanthropologist, I didn’t want to go to the bar, I didn’t want to go to class.
Things had to change.
For the first time in my life, or at least the first time that I was aware of, I felt really shitty. Every day for nearly a month, I would call home and my dad would ask me if I was all right. I could hear the concern in his voice and I would hold it together, hearing Stephen Malkmus singing in my head: “Write it on a postcard/Dad, they broke me/Dad, they broke me.” But, when my mom would get on the phone I’d fall apart.
I needed to change things. When you don’t want to get out of bed, you know that things need to change.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
The Cult of Celebrity
The notion of celebrity is really bizarre. Maybe I just feel that way because the people that I consider “famous” are folks who upward of the 99% of the world has never heard of let alone would recognize on the street. If I saw writer/director Wes Anderson or DNA discoverer/Nobel Prize winner James Watson strutting through NYC, I’d be impressed. But, most of my actual sitings elicited little response beyond recognition.
However, often when I told people that I went to school in New York, they’d ask me if I have ever seen a “famous person”. And actually, I’ve compiled quite a back catalogue of sitings. So, what follows is a list of people that I’ve seen and where I’ve seen them. Some of them are “full blown” celebrities and some are just members of my own personal cult of celebrity. (Note: this list excludes band members I’ve met at shows or people I’ve interviewed for work.) Listed in temporal order:
Madonna-I was working on a Chuck Schumer’s 1998 U.S. Senate campaign and the headquarters was located at 53rd St. between 8th and 9th Avenues. Apparently Madonna has a pad on CPW near 53rd Another worker on the campaign rushed into headquarters all out of breath and proclaimed “I just walked past Madonna!” We all gathered around the window and watched her mail a letter at the post office across the street.
James Brady-Okay, this one might be a little bit of cheating. While I was working on the same senatorial campaign, former Press Secretary James Brady rolled his presidential-assasination-attempt-surviving self into headquarters. It was pretty amazing to meet a man who had a bill named after him. It was even more impressive that a member of the Reagan administration was throwing his weight behind an uber-liberal Brooklynite for Senate.
Jerry Orbach-To earn extra money, I bartended and cater waitered at private parties through a student-run agency at school. The character actor and star of Law & Order was at a birthday party for these two women who lived on the Upper West Side. I was walking around picking up empty glasses and napkins and I asked the room if anyone needed their drink freshened up. He was sitting with his back to me and turned around and asked if he could get another club soda and lime. Whenever he needed another drink, he’d ask the other party-goers if they’d seen me.
Kevin Corrigan-You might not recognize the name, but this guy is in tons of movies (Slums of Beverly Hills, Henry Fool, Buffalo ‘66, Detroit City Rocks to name a few) and that Fox television show “Grounded for Life” (which I’ve never actually seen!) I was in Tower Records on Broadway at 66th Street and he was looking at CDs.
Lance and J.C. of N’Sync-This one was actually really amusing. My parents came to visit me and I headed downtown on St. Patrick’s Day to meet them at their midtown hotel. As I walked up to the hotel, there were hordes of little girls screaming and I glanced over and saw Lance
Bass and J.C. Chasez (frightening I know their last names!) getting into a limo. When I entered the lobby of the hotel, a group of middle-aged adults then began asking me who it was outside that all he little girls were screaming about. As Bill Clinton used to say, in informing them, I was building a bridge to the 21st Century!
Joey Fat-one of N’Sync-For some reason, the boys of N’Sync just keep following me around. It was a Friday night during summer and my friend Michelle and I were walking around Times Square lamenting how ironic it is that tourists always make it a destination cause all it harbors are chain stores. A wave of squeals passed through the crowd and I looked up just in time to catch sight of Joey Fatone (aka Fat-one, cause he is in fact that fattest of the N’Sync members) walking by. All I could do was laugh. Three members sighted, two to go.
Robert Christgau-Actually, I’ve stood next to this amazing rock critic/writer at a couple of shows in the last year or so. But, the first time was when Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks performed a live show at the Bowery Ballroom in January. Christgau was standing next to me making comments to his female companion about how amazing Malkmus’s guitar playing was. Despite my disagreement with regards to that performance (and Malkmus’s solo career in general) it was incredibly fascinating to be situated next to one of the people who truly inspired me to write and listen to a wide range of music in the first place.
Reggie Miller-My brother and I sited the Indiana Pacers guard as we sat outside of Lucky’s Juice Joint on Houston Street during a warm May day. It wasn’t particularly exciting, but it happened.
Tom Cavanaugh-the title character on T.V.’s “Ed” and I crossed paths at 68th and Broadway as I was heading to the movies. He was dressed like he had just come from the gym. Maybe he had just played basketball with Reggie Miller.
Campus Sitings: Over the years, there have been some famous students, guests, and faculty who I have seen on Columbia University’s campus including: Conan O’Brien (who visited my freshmen year floor after giving a talk in the building’s basement), Julia Stiles, the kid from Third Rock from the Sun, Anna Paquin, Vice President Al Gore, and Monica Lewinsky (who apparently goes by the name Monica Lewis in class!)
However, often when I told people that I went to school in New York, they’d ask me if I have ever seen a “famous person”. And actually, I’ve compiled quite a back catalogue of sitings. So, what follows is a list of people that I’ve seen and where I’ve seen them. Some of them are “full blown” celebrities and some are just members of my own personal cult of celebrity. (Note: this list excludes band members I’ve met at shows or people I’ve interviewed for work.) Listed in temporal order:
Madonna-I was working on a Chuck Schumer’s 1998 U.S. Senate campaign and the headquarters was located at 53rd St. between 8th and 9th Avenues. Apparently Madonna has a pad on CPW near 53rd Another worker on the campaign rushed into headquarters all out of breath and proclaimed “I just walked past Madonna!” We all gathered around the window and watched her mail a letter at the post office across the street.
James Brady-Okay, this one might be a little bit of cheating. While I was working on the same senatorial campaign, former Press Secretary James Brady rolled his presidential-assasination-attempt-surviving self into headquarters. It was pretty amazing to meet a man who had a bill named after him. It was even more impressive that a member of the Reagan administration was throwing his weight behind an uber-liberal Brooklynite for Senate.
Jerry Orbach-To earn extra money, I bartended and cater waitered at private parties through a student-run agency at school. The character actor and star of Law & Order was at a birthday party for these two women who lived on the Upper West Side. I was walking around picking up empty glasses and napkins and I asked the room if anyone needed their drink freshened up. He was sitting with his back to me and turned around and asked if he could get another club soda and lime. Whenever he needed another drink, he’d ask the other party-goers if they’d seen me.
Kevin Corrigan-You might not recognize the name, but this guy is in tons of movies (Slums of Beverly Hills, Henry Fool, Buffalo ‘66, Detroit City Rocks to name a few) and that Fox television show “Grounded for Life” (which I’ve never actually seen!) I was in Tower Records on Broadway at 66th Street and he was looking at CDs.
Lance and J.C. of N’Sync-This one was actually really amusing. My parents came to visit me and I headed downtown on St. Patrick’s Day to meet them at their midtown hotel. As I walked up to the hotel, there were hordes of little girls screaming and I glanced over and saw Lance
Bass and J.C. Chasez (frightening I know their last names!) getting into a limo. When I entered the lobby of the hotel, a group of middle-aged adults then began asking me who it was outside that all he little girls were screaming about. As Bill Clinton used to say, in informing them, I was building a bridge to the 21st Century!
Joey Fat-one of N’Sync-For some reason, the boys of N’Sync just keep following me around. It was a Friday night during summer and my friend Michelle and I were walking around Times Square lamenting how ironic it is that tourists always make it a destination cause all it harbors are chain stores. A wave of squeals passed through the crowd and I looked up just in time to catch sight of Joey Fatone (aka Fat-one, cause he is in fact that fattest of the N’Sync members) walking by. All I could do was laugh. Three members sighted, two to go.
Robert Christgau-Actually, I’ve stood next to this amazing rock critic/writer at a couple of shows in the last year or so. But, the first time was when Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks performed a live show at the Bowery Ballroom in January. Christgau was standing next to me making comments to his female companion about how amazing Malkmus’s guitar playing was. Despite my disagreement with regards to that performance (and Malkmus’s solo career in general) it was incredibly fascinating to be situated next to one of the people who truly inspired me to write and listen to a wide range of music in the first place.
Reggie Miller-My brother and I sited the Indiana Pacers guard as we sat outside of Lucky’s Juice Joint on Houston Street during a warm May day. It wasn’t particularly exciting, but it happened.
Tom Cavanaugh-the title character on T.V.’s “Ed” and I crossed paths at 68th and Broadway as I was heading to the movies. He was dressed like he had just come from the gym. Maybe he had just played basketball with Reggie Miller.
Campus Sitings: Over the years, there have been some famous students, guests, and faculty who I have seen on Columbia University’s campus including: Conan O’Brien (who visited my freshmen year floor after giving a talk in the building’s basement), Julia Stiles, the kid from Third Rock from the Sun, Anna Paquin, Vice President Al Gore, and Monica Lewinsky (who apparently goes by the name Monica Lewis in class!)
Saturday, December 23, 2006
A Dog Walk in the Park, No. 2
During summer in Manhattan, most of city’s wealthiest inhabitants flee to the Hamptons. This leaves the heavily pounded pavement a little less crowded and provided me with pleasant morning and afternoon walks to and from my summer job at the museum. Everyday, unless it was raining, I would undertake the two mile walk, altering my route a little to rent a video, walk by the Puerto Rican markets, or stroll alongside Central Park.
This particular summer was (dramatic newscaster voice) the “Summer of West Nile.” The virus had first appeared in New York in 1999, but during the summer of 2000 approximately 9 people died in New York City as a result of the virus and the media helped to shape it into a full-fledged epidemic. The CDC and a team of researchers based out of the very museum that was employing me had figured out that the virus was transmitted from birds to certain species of mosquitos who in turn would transfer the virus to humans via their itch and bump producing bites.
One of the perks of interning at the museum was the weekly curator lectures. The fifteen or so student-interns working on various projects throughout the museum would meet every Wednesday afternoon in the lounge where along with a nice spread of cookies, coffee and soda, we were treated to a lecture on a curator’s research. We heard about research on leeches and whales and conservation in Viet Nam. And one week, the woman who was the head of the museum’s research on West Nile filled us in on the scientific facts and the political/media hype of the whole “epidemic”.
For the average, relatively healthy human being, West Nile manifests itself in the form of flu like symptoms, but for the very old and the very young it can have fatal consequences. The CDC and the NYC government, headed by the since-knighted Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, decided that the best way to deal with the threat of West Nile was to spray the hell out of New York City. So, late at night, you could hear the high pitched wheezing siren of trucks driving up and down the streets of New York releasing chemical clouds into the environment for the supposed good of the human inhabitants. The theory seemed flawed to me. The curator seemed to concur with my opinion.
Needless to say, I’m pretty sure that the extreme flu like symptoms that I developed at one point during the summer were the result of West Nile Virus. I was bed-ridden for three days, with my savior/friend Michelle sporadically calling to check on me and delivering grocery bags filled with bagels, cup of soup and Gatorade fruit punch.
Ah, but all of that was just tangental back story. AMNH is located on Central Park West between 77th and 81st streets. It’s right across the street from Central Park which was a great place to eat lunch and take a break from the ice cold office where I was slowly downward spiraling into the mindset of an eco-terrorist.
One day, I met two other interns working on molecular analysis of brytozoa for lunch. Sounds interesting, right? Ha! Yeah, that’s the way I felt about their work.
Karen and Greg and I walked across the street to the park where we settled on picnicking on the rocks by the lake where people rent the row boats. We found a good spot under a tree on the rocks and chatted about research, gossip, and evening plans. The area was kind of empty that day and we were sitting pretty close to the surface of the row boat lake. The rocks formed a little hill and at the top of it was a middle-aged guy who was sitting on the rocks in a pair of running shorts.
I didn’t pay him much mind at first, but during the middle of my lunch, I noticed a frantic movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked up toward him and he suddenly stopped doing whatever he had been doing. He just grinned at me and I turned back to the conversation and my lunch. But, within a minute he was back at it. I looked up at him again, and though he stopped, I was sure that I had caught him jacking off.
I was simultaneously amused and disgusted (seems to be a common conflation of feelings that I experienced in my tenure in New York) and I turned to Karen and Greg and asked, “did you see what that guy is doing?”
They both nodded no. I blurted out, “that guy up there on the rocks-he’s jacking off!” The both looked at me in disbelief.
Greg turned to me and said something to the effect of “Ali, I think you’re wrong. People don’t do that in public.”
I looked at him in complete and total disbelief. Almost more shocked by his response than to actually catching Jack-off Joe in the act. All I could say was, “Greg, where are you from?”
“Kansas City” was his response.
“Maybe people don’t do stuff like that in Kansas City, but here in New York City, everything is possible.”
This particular summer was (dramatic newscaster voice) the “Summer of West Nile.” The virus had first appeared in New York in 1999, but during the summer of 2000 approximately 9 people died in New York City as a result of the virus and the media helped to shape it into a full-fledged epidemic. The CDC and a team of researchers based out of the very museum that was employing me had figured out that the virus was transmitted from birds to certain species of mosquitos who in turn would transfer the virus to humans via their itch and bump producing bites.
One of the perks of interning at the museum was the weekly curator lectures. The fifteen or so student-interns working on various projects throughout the museum would meet every Wednesday afternoon in the lounge where along with a nice spread of cookies, coffee and soda, we were treated to a lecture on a curator’s research. We heard about research on leeches and whales and conservation in Viet Nam. And one week, the woman who was the head of the museum’s research on West Nile filled us in on the scientific facts and the political/media hype of the whole “epidemic”.
For the average, relatively healthy human being, West Nile manifests itself in the form of flu like symptoms, but for the very old and the very young it can have fatal consequences. The CDC and the NYC government, headed by the since-knighted Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, decided that the best way to deal with the threat of West Nile was to spray the hell out of New York City. So, late at night, you could hear the high pitched wheezing siren of trucks driving up and down the streets of New York releasing chemical clouds into the environment for the supposed good of the human inhabitants. The theory seemed flawed to me. The curator seemed to concur with my opinion.
Needless to say, I’m pretty sure that the extreme flu like symptoms that I developed at one point during the summer were the result of West Nile Virus. I was bed-ridden for three days, with my savior/friend Michelle sporadically calling to check on me and delivering grocery bags filled with bagels, cup of soup and Gatorade fruit punch.
Ah, but all of that was just tangental back story. AMNH is located on Central Park West between 77th and 81st streets. It’s right across the street from Central Park which was a great place to eat lunch and take a break from the ice cold office where I was slowly downward spiraling into the mindset of an eco-terrorist.
One day, I met two other interns working on molecular analysis of brytozoa for lunch. Sounds interesting, right? Ha! Yeah, that’s the way I felt about their work.
Karen and Greg and I walked across the street to the park where we settled on picnicking on the rocks by the lake where people rent the row boats. We found a good spot under a tree on the rocks and chatted about research, gossip, and evening plans. The area was kind of empty that day and we were sitting pretty close to the surface of the row boat lake. The rocks formed a little hill and at the top of it was a middle-aged guy who was sitting on the rocks in a pair of running shorts.
I didn’t pay him much mind at first, but during the middle of my lunch, I noticed a frantic movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked up toward him and he suddenly stopped doing whatever he had been doing. He just grinned at me and I turned back to the conversation and my lunch. But, within a minute he was back at it. I looked up at him again, and though he stopped, I was sure that I had caught him jacking off.
I was simultaneously amused and disgusted (seems to be a common conflation of feelings that I experienced in my tenure in New York) and I turned to Karen and Greg and asked, “did you see what that guy is doing?”
They both nodded no. I blurted out, “that guy up there on the rocks-he’s jacking off!” The both looked at me in disbelief.
Greg turned to me and said something to the effect of “Ali, I think you’re wrong. People don’t do that in public.”
I looked at him in complete and total disbelief. Almost more shocked by his response than to actually catching Jack-off Joe in the act. All I could say was, “Greg, where are you from?”
“Kansas City” was his response.
“Maybe people don’t do stuff like that in Kansas City, but here in New York City, everything is possible.”
Friday, December 22, 2006
The Cab Ride
After my sophomore year of college, I decided to stay in New York City. Like most summers, I had little to no idea what I was going to be doing until the very last minute when I acquired a pretty cool, albeit incredibly depressing internship writing informational materials on urban sprawl for community governments at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
It was the summer of 2000, and the United States was experiencing one of the longest economic booms in the country’s history, and there I was a 20 year old kid trying to explain why this was no good. I went to work everyday and learned a little bit more about how the newest housing developments and SUVs and roads were bringing forth Armageddon. I’m not much for melodrama, but somehow spending your whole summer staring at research reports and books that point to the inevitable environmental doom which human beings are bringing upon themselves made me understand folks who take refuge in rural bunker-type abodes a little bit better.
Anyhow, before any of this had even happened, I visited my parents in Illinois for a couple of weeks. Then, one day, I packed up all my stuff and my dad drove me out to O’Hare International Airport (airport code: ORD) where with a hug he handed me $70 and told me to take a cab. I preceded to catch a plane back to New York City. Along the way I chuckled at my father’s continued insistence on giving me money for cabs. He was well aware that I usually just took the bus and put the money towards a better purpose like groceries or a couple of drinks.
I landed at La Guardia (airport code: LGA) and came to the disappointing realization that I had too much luggage to take the bus. Now, New York City public transportation is freakin’ amazing! For $1.50 you can get everywhere in Manhattan and a whole bunch of places throughout the five boroughs. It’s relatively cheap, pretty damn efficient, and as an added perk, an excellent place to people watch. And when the people cease to amuse in the subway tunnels, there is always the giant rats that are oddly compelling in their Apocalypse-resistant dirtiness.
One of the joys of living in Morningside Heights is that the M60 bus runs right from LaGuardia to my doorstep. Thus, the realization that I was going to have to dip a little further into my Dad-granted $70 for cab fare was none too pleasing when the other option was so convenient and cheap.
However, I found a cab and loaded my luggage into the trunk before giving the young, Indian cab driver the instructions to take me to 113th St. and Broadway. For the summer, I was living in a beautiful, pre-war building where the fire alarm seemed to go off every Tuesday morning at 6:15 a.m. and the elevator was out of commission half the time.
I don’t know what it is about me and cab drivers, but they always want to chat with me. And it seems that within three minutes of sitting in the back seat, I have been asked whether I have a boyfriend or not. I don’t take cabs too often (usually only to an airport when I have more than one bag), but even I had learned early on that no matter what, I had a boyfriend if a cab driver was asking.
So, I told this guy that I had a boyfriend. The young cab driver inquired about him and I had a bit of fun constructing the ideal fictional boyfriend from a composite sketch of boys that I had recently been crushing on. As we started across the Triborough Bridge, the wind whipping through the half open windows, the plexiglass divider between front and back seat, the cabbie’s quiet voice, and my disinterest all combined and I stopped listening to anything he was saying and opted to just politely nod my ascent.
This was a mistake. As we disembarked from the bridge into the heavily trafficked crosstown drive on 125th Street, I came to the horrific (though certainly amusing if it wasn’t actually me) realization about what the cab driver had been saying. It seems that he had some sexual designs on me and was trying to convince me to engage in some meaningless sex by describing, in accented English, all of the things he would like to do to me.
I was confused and shocked and praying that there was in fact a God and he/she/it would have mercy and make the crosstown commute a quick and painless one so I could get out of that cab and grab my luggage and begin moving into the beautiful, pre-war building where the fire alarm would go off virtually every Tuesday morning at 6:15 a.m. and the elevator would be out of commission for half of the summer.
But, apparently there is no God, or he/she/it likes to have the fun with me and made the traffic endless. We sat there forever, waiting for lights to change, buses to move, people to walk and he talked on. Now he was in between my legs, now he was in my mouth, now he was between my breasts. My knuckles grew whiter, my teeth clenched a little harder and finally, we were at 113th and Broadway. I sprung from the cab with the speed of a super hero. I paid him the fare, grabbed my stuff and he handed me a slip of paper with his phone number, “You will call tonight, yes?” he asked. I looked at him as I hobbled away under the weight of all the luggage and said, “Oh, yeah, if my phone is set up, definitely...” and moved just a little bit faster. He smiled slyly at me and climbed back into the front seat of his cab and drove away. I shuddered, hoping that the movement somehow gravitationally washed me free of the whole experience. Checking to make sure he was gone, I then threw the slip of paper into a trash can on the corner.
It was the summer of 2000, and the United States was experiencing one of the longest economic booms in the country’s history, and there I was a 20 year old kid trying to explain why this was no good. I went to work everyday and learned a little bit more about how the newest housing developments and SUVs and roads were bringing forth Armageddon. I’m not much for melodrama, but somehow spending your whole summer staring at research reports and books that point to the inevitable environmental doom which human beings are bringing upon themselves made me understand folks who take refuge in rural bunker-type abodes a little bit better.
Anyhow, before any of this had even happened, I visited my parents in Illinois for a couple of weeks. Then, one day, I packed up all my stuff and my dad drove me out to O’Hare International Airport (airport code: ORD) where with a hug he handed me $70 and told me to take a cab. I preceded to catch a plane back to New York City. Along the way I chuckled at my father’s continued insistence on giving me money for cabs. He was well aware that I usually just took the bus and put the money towards a better purpose like groceries or a couple of drinks.
I landed at La Guardia (airport code: LGA) and came to the disappointing realization that I had too much luggage to take the bus. Now, New York City public transportation is freakin’ amazing! For $1.50 you can get everywhere in Manhattan and a whole bunch of places throughout the five boroughs. It’s relatively cheap, pretty damn efficient, and as an added perk, an excellent place to people watch. And when the people cease to amuse in the subway tunnels, there is always the giant rats that are oddly compelling in their Apocalypse-resistant dirtiness.
One of the joys of living in Morningside Heights is that the M60 bus runs right from LaGuardia to my doorstep. Thus, the realization that I was going to have to dip a little further into my Dad-granted $70 for cab fare was none too pleasing when the other option was so convenient and cheap.
However, I found a cab and loaded my luggage into the trunk before giving the young, Indian cab driver the instructions to take me to 113th St. and Broadway. For the summer, I was living in a beautiful, pre-war building where the fire alarm seemed to go off every Tuesday morning at 6:15 a.m. and the elevator was out of commission half the time.
I don’t know what it is about me and cab drivers, but they always want to chat with me. And it seems that within three minutes of sitting in the back seat, I have been asked whether I have a boyfriend or not. I don’t take cabs too often (usually only to an airport when I have more than one bag), but even I had learned early on that no matter what, I had a boyfriend if a cab driver was asking.
So, I told this guy that I had a boyfriend. The young cab driver inquired about him and I had a bit of fun constructing the ideal fictional boyfriend from a composite sketch of boys that I had recently been crushing on. As we started across the Triborough Bridge, the wind whipping through the half open windows, the plexiglass divider between front and back seat, the cabbie’s quiet voice, and my disinterest all combined and I stopped listening to anything he was saying and opted to just politely nod my ascent.
This was a mistake. As we disembarked from the bridge into the heavily trafficked crosstown drive on 125th Street, I came to the horrific (though certainly amusing if it wasn’t actually me) realization about what the cab driver had been saying. It seems that he had some sexual designs on me and was trying to convince me to engage in some meaningless sex by describing, in accented English, all of the things he would like to do to me.
I was confused and shocked and praying that there was in fact a God and he/she/it would have mercy and make the crosstown commute a quick and painless one so I could get out of that cab and grab my luggage and begin moving into the beautiful, pre-war building where the fire alarm would go off virtually every Tuesday morning at 6:15 a.m. and the elevator would be out of commission for half of the summer.
But, apparently there is no God, or he/she/it likes to have the fun with me and made the traffic endless. We sat there forever, waiting for lights to change, buses to move, people to walk and he talked on. Now he was in between my legs, now he was in my mouth, now he was between my breasts. My knuckles grew whiter, my teeth clenched a little harder and finally, we were at 113th and Broadway. I sprung from the cab with the speed of a super hero. I paid him the fare, grabbed my stuff and he handed me a slip of paper with his phone number, “You will call tonight, yes?” he asked. I looked at him as I hobbled away under the weight of all the luggage and said, “Oh, yeah, if my phone is set up, definitely...” and moved just a little bit faster. He smiled slyly at me and climbed back into the front seat of his cab and drove away. I shuddered, hoping that the movement somehow gravitationally washed me free of the whole experience. Checking to make sure he was gone, I then threw the slip of paper into a trash can on the corner.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Fan Mail
At my high school, there was a radio station, WNTH 88.1 FM “La Voz of Nueva Trier”. My senior year, I was the music director of the station, which was pretty sweet gig mainly because every day was like Christmas. My co-music director, Ross, and I would receive a stack of packages which we would then rip open with all the delicacy of lions killing a zebra. But, the fun didn’t end there. We had our own office, the ubiquitous “C Room” for which only we had keys. And we spent most of ninth period sitting in that room, shooting the shit and “reviewing” (aka divvying up) all the cds that we had received. Some of my fondest memories from high school involve listening to records with Ross at the station. I distinctly recall getting yelled at for running around and singing Bad Religion’s “American Jesus”. That song just had such great hooks and harmonies.
Anyhow, when I got to college, I decided to get involved in radio. I was pretty impressed with Columbia’s station, WKCR because 1) it had an 80 mile broadcast radius stemming from a transmitter stationed atop the World Trade Center and 2) it broadcast virtually everything but rock music. I was all into “expanding my musical horizons” and I signed up to expand in the direction of country music. Now, when I say country music, I don’t mean Travis Tritt, Shania Twain, Garth Brooks country music. I mean pre-1960, post-old timey country music like Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers and Moon Mullican and Bob Wills: cowboys and trainmen. After undertaking a semester of technical training and a country music education by a middle-aged gentleman who booked country and bluegrass shows in Mamaroneck, NY, I became the host of Honky Tonkin’ which aired every Tuesday night from 9:30-11:00 p.m.
It was a pretty sweet time slot, and I had loyal followers who had been listening to the show longer than I had been alive. There were crazy old men who requested Roy Acuff songs every week. And there were some younger guys who would call up and flirt with me. I guess it seemed safe.
When Valentine’s Day weekend rolled around, so did the station’s annual Country Music Festival, a 72 hour event featuring time slots dedicated to the likes of trucking songs and Patsy Cline. There were only three deejays who actually knew anything about country music, but we enlisted another two to cover the endless broadcast. Being the newest to the station of all the deejays, I drew some of the worst time slots like the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. shifts. However, the one thing that I was really excited about was the opportunity to host the first two hours of a six hour stint of Hank Williams songs.
Throughout the entire festival, I was bogged down with a brutal cold. I would arrive at the station with a thermos of hot tea, a box of kleenex, a bag of Riccola cough drops, a bottle of water, and more cold medicine than might be legally allowable for one individual to ingest.
Despite my illness, the show needed to go on. So, deejay I did, incessantly apologizing for the nasal voice and the cough that sounded more like a 50 year old smoker with a 30 year habit than a college freshman with bronchitis. I survived the endless weekend. Barely.
A couple of weeks later, there was some mail at the station for me. I had fan mail! I don’t know why, but I did. Some were short notes thanking me for playing a particular song and one was an entire set of lyrics about me and my illness called “Ali Gold has a Cold” to the tune of Hank Williams’ “Tear in my Beer.”. But, there was a letter that stood out from all the rest. The front of it was rubber stamped with an ominous warning which made me chuckle and a bit wary: “MAILED FROM NORTHERN STATE PRISON NEWARK, NEW JERSEY.” This is what it said:
2-14-99
Dear Ms. Ali Gold,
I’m sitting here in my cell at Northern State Prison listening to your fine Hank Williams special and I just had to write to thank you. At least 80% of the time a man sits in prison is composed of staring out of the two by four plexiglass cell window. You have no idea what a tender mercy it is to have Hank’s tunes as a soundtrack while I watch the freight trains roll by the prison towards Newark.
I’ve spent the weekend listening to the country festival and reading Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Such books are tougher to come by than drugs in this place. Gov. Witman in her wisdom has cut off our access to literature unless the books are deemed ‘educational’ or ‘religious’. My mom tried to send me a copy of Dostoyevski’s Brothers Karamazov but it was sent back as it was judged to be ‘non-educational’.
I don’t think the ‘world’ out there has much of an idea of how bad things are getting in Jersey’s prison system. I’m not crying about having to serve time. I stole some stuff and by the ruler of society I owe the state a little chunk of my life. What is so frustrating is that the state seems to be making a deliberate effort to keep those of us who would like to try and improve themselves while they are here. I did a radio show back in the early ‘90s...It was called ‘The Cool Water Canteen’. I loved doing it. I played a lot of Hank, Woody Guthrie, John Prine, Neville Brothers, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, that sort of stuff.
I have to tell you it was a tough decision for me to stick with WKCR tonight after 8 p.m. I’m a big fan of Vince Skelsarh’s “Idiot’s Delight” on 102.7 WNEW 8 p.m.-2a.m. Sunday nights. If you haven’t checked out his show you really should he matches his sets and segues so brilliantly it’s almost like he plays his CD player as a musical instrument.
I’ll be tuning into your Tuesday show. Since this can’t possibly reach you in time for this week’s show, I wonder if you could dig up a Leadbetter version of “Birmingham Jail” or Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty” for me next week. Maybe John Prine and Bonnie Raitt’s “Angel from Montgomery”?
Let me finish this with a quick Woody Guthrie story.
After my dad died in ‘88 I got it into my head to ride my thumb across America to San Francisco. I’d just got out of the Air Force and I wanted to get one adventure in before I checked into college.
I made it out to Frisco in about seven days. I t was a really great trip. On my way back East I ducked down to New Orleans for a few days. Well there’s no such thing as a few days in new Orleans. I stayed at a little hole in the wall called Bonaparte’s Retreat. I won’t go into the madness that went on down there, suffice to say I went through $2,300 like it was play money. I was down to my last $20. It was going to take at least four days to hitch a ride home, one day just to walk far enough out of town so I could even start hitching. Long story short, I ran into a cat who had eleven Wood Guthrie albums for sale for $100. I offered him my last $20 and he gave me the albums and a booklet of McDonald’s coupons for the trip. It took me nine days to make it home to Jersey, those McDonald’s coupons saved my butt. Got Woody home safely as well.
Well thanks again for the Hank. You will have a loyal Tuesday night listener from here on out.
I know nobody writes letters anymore but feel free to do so if you ever need a convict’s perspective for a sociology class or something.
Very truly yours,
Paul
A Dog Walk in the Park, No. 1
It was my second day in New York City. Eighteen years old and fresh off the boat. Actually taking a boat from Chicago to New York seems like a pretty inefficient form of travel, so really I was fresh off the plane. Anyhow, I decided to go running. Now, this was long before I had fallen into a more traditional college routine of staying up late and sacrificing working out to any other cause. But on this warm August morning around I set out from my new home, a dorm located on 114th and Broadway. It was an ugly cinderblock and brick number from the 70’s, but at least it was conveniently located on the campus of Columbia University, the place I planned to dedicate myself to four years of education and my parents to over 100 thousand dollars in tuition.
On this morning, I wasn’t thinking about tuition or education. The learning had yet to start, and I was elated that I was 18 and in freakin’ New York City with no responsibilities. I ran south to 110th street and then headed east to Central Park. The run in the park went entirely as planned. Well almost.
I made a slight mistake on the way back. Instead of returning how I came, I ran north to 114th street with the intention of taking it all the way home.
There was only one flaw in my plan: Morningside Park. Now, I am pretty sure that this is untrue, but someone once told me that Morningside Park has the highest murder per square foot ratio of any place in all of Manhattan. How anyone would compute that statistic is beyond me, but even the mythology is a bit harrowing. At the time I didn’t know anything about the sketchy locale, so I thought to myself “there are steps here and I can see some on the other side of the park, why don’t I just cut through it?”
With that line of reasoning in head, I descended the stairs of Morningside Park onto the garbage strewn, matted grass of its “recreational” surface. The only other person who was in the park at that early hour was a ragged man walking his dog. He was standing in the middle of the asphalt path that was supposed to lead me to the other set of steps much like the Yellow Brick Road led Dorothy to Oz. But, as I drew closer to the individual and his canine companion, I realized that he was not actually walking his dog, or even walking. Rather he beating the shit out of the poor thing that futilely cowered and whimpered. As I came closer to the man and his desperate dog, I watched them both look up and stare at me. I veered around them, picking up the pace, my eyes focused on the prize of the set of steps that would lead me out of this weirdness.
Thinking back on it, maybe the dog wasn’t begging for my help, maybe he was warning me about what was to come, as if Toto was telling Dorothy (and not the other way around) “you’re not in Kansas anymore.”
On this morning, I wasn’t thinking about tuition or education. The learning had yet to start, and I was elated that I was 18 and in freakin’ New York City with no responsibilities. I ran south to 110th street and then headed east to Central Park. The run in the park went entirely as planned. Well almost.
I made a slight mistake on the way back. Instead of returning how I came, I ran north to 114th street with the intention of taking it all the way home.
There was only one flaw in my plan: Morningside Park. Now, I am pretty sure that this is untrue, but someone once told me that Morningside Park has the highest murder per square foot ratio of any place in all of Manhattan. How anyone would compute that statistic is beyond me, but even the mythology is a bit harrowing. At the time I didn’t know anything about the sketchy locale, so I thought to myself “there are steps here and I can see some on the other side of the park, why don’t I just cut through it?”
With that line of reasoning in head, I descended the stairs of Morningside Park onto the garbage strewn, matted grass of its “recreational” surface. The only other person who was in the park at that early hour was a ragged man walking his dog. He was standing in the middle of the asphalt path that was supposed to lead me to the other set of steps much like the Yellow Brick Road led Dorothy to Oz. But, as I drew closer to the individual and his canine companion, I realized that he was not actually walking his dog, or even walking. Rather he beating the shit out of the poor thing that futilely cowered and whimpered. As I came closer to the man and his desperate dog, I watched them both look up and stare at me. I veered around them, picking up the pace, my eyes focused on the prize of the set of steps that would lead me out of this weirdness.
Thinking back on it, maybe the dog wasn’t begging for my help, maybe he was warning me about what was to come, as if Toto was telling Dorothy (and not the other way around) “you’re not in Kansas anymore.”
A Brief Explanation of How this Grab Bag Disaster Came About...
I’ve been talking about doing a zine for almost a year now and I promised myself that when I finished up school, I would do it. For the last couple of months, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for this booklet, never quite sure what to call it and never quite sure of the format. I wasn’t even completely sure of what I wanted to say.But, during my last two weeks in New York City, everything sort of came together. On a Sunday morning, I was walking crosstown from the 1 train to St. Mark’s Books via Washington Square Park. And under a partly cloudy sky with the wind stinging my face, I realized how sad I was to be leaving New York. For almost a year, I had been agreeing with something that my grandpa used to say, “the only good train in New York is the one that leads out of it.”
With my departure becoming very real and near, my view of the city started to change. No longer was I looking forward to riding the train (or plane) away from the Big Apple. Instead, I found myself reminding others and myself how soon I’d be returning. After a year of lambasting New York and itching to get away from it, I started to understand that Bob Dylan lyric, “I'm going back to New York City/I do believe I've had enough.”
Nostalgia spurred me into a massive memory unearthing session. Strange little stories starting coming to the surface and I realized that some of them were pretty funny, others were very telling, and still others were a bit painful. And it was then that I knew that I wanted the first issue to be a hodgepodge of anecdotes about my experiences in New York.
When I settled on the topic, I didn’t expect the process of writing and designing this booklet to be as fun as it ended up being. So, I hope I’ve done the city and my experiences justice. And I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together.
Cheers!
A.K. Gold
January 2002
Anecdotal Evidence Issue No. 1: The New York Nostalgia Issue
In January 2002, I began the (very) sporadic publication of Anecdotal Evidence zine. Now, after years of reading other people's blogs, and claiming I would never start my own, I've decided to take Anecdotal Evidence global. To introduce the blog, I'm posting the stories that I originally wrote (and occasionally published) for the print version of Anecdotal Evidence, starting with Issue 1--the New York Nostalgia Issue. So, without further ado...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)