Buying Water in Barcelona

April 6, 2005—Just as I was getting decent enough at recalling my high school Spanish education for it actually to be of some practical use in Madrid, I was off to Barcelona. If you’ve never been to the capital of Catalan, here’s a tip: the language is so confusing to outsiders, even outsiders with a good comprehension of Castillian (which I have never, and will never claim to have), that the Catalonians label nearly everything in both languages, and even throw the ugly Americans a bone by often including English.

Looking back from my journal from this trip, I was amused to find that it only took me about 3 hours to transition from writing “I can say that this city has a very different energy than Madrid. I’m not sure that’s good or bad, just different,” to “Okay, I’m sold – Barcelona is rad.” But, I won’t bore you with a travelogue--though if you’re interested in A.K. Gold's Favorite Spots in Barcelona, follow the link—because this story is about stopping to buy a bottle of water.

After an action-packed first day in town involving an art museum and a recently-excavated synagogue, I walked around the Barri Gothic, continuously getting turned around in the neighborhood’s labyrinthine streets. The flight, the heat and the walking left me parched, so I ducked into a bodega to buy an enormous bottle of water.

As I walked toward the back of the store, where I could see the refrigerators over the tops of shelves, I noticed that the music emanating from the store’s speaker system was not in Catalan, Castillian, or anything resembling a romance language. It sounded like Urdu.

Now, I’ll give you that most 25 year old white, Jewish, middle class women raised on Chicago’s North Shore (which, at least when I was growing up, was largely devoid of Pakistanis) are not known for their skill at recognizing the national language of Pakistan. But, clearly, I pride myself on not being the average product of my upbringing.

I found the largest bottle of water that I could, and walked up to the register where I saw a man who was so clearly Pakistani that I’m pretty sure Britannica uses his photo in their “P” volume. The store was empty, so after he told me the price, and I paid and thanked him, I pointed to the air and said, “Es Urdu?”

He looked at me and smiled while saying “Si.”

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, and asked “Aap kaha say hay?” (Where are you from?) To which he smiled more broadly and said “Pakistan,” and asked me—in Urdu—where I learned to speak Urdu.

I once read that all the languages you are fluent in are stored in a different part of your brain than all the languages you are not fluent in—as such, Spanish, Urdu and the bit of French I know are all stored in some very poorly-developed part of my brain. That being said, I pieced together the following, “Mai, doh sal say, kalag ma, Urdu likti ti.” Which was my attempt to tell him that I had studied Urdu for two years in college (but, actually, I think means that 2 years ago I studied Urdu in college—darn post-positions).

The man seemed very impressed, and turned his attention to something I couldn’t see behind a shelf on the other side of the store. “Beta, beta. Ghori larki Urdu bolti hai.” Now, I knew exactly what this meant as his son came over to see the whitey girl who speaks Urdu.

Up to this point, mind you, I had only spoken in a poor mix of Urdu and Spanish. The store owner’s son, however, must have had me pegged. This 18 years old walked up to me and said in perfect English, “Are you from London?”

I replied, “No, I am from the United States.”

To which he said, “I didn’t know people from the United States could speak Urdu.”

I’m not really sure how one is supposed to reply to such statements, since by-and-large it is true. So, I told him that at least a couple of us can speak Urdu, and he seemed satisfied. I bid farewell, and they encouraged me to 1) go to Pakistan—because I’d love it, and 2) come back and see them again on my visit.

I tried to go back and visit the store a day later, but I got lost in the maze of streets, and never managed to find it again. Who knows, maybe the owner and his son would have forgotten I was the ghori larki Urdu bolti hai, or they wouldn’t have been working at that moment. I like to think it was one of those strange and fun interactions that could only happen when you’re traveling solo in a foreign land. The type of experience that happens by chance, and can’t be manufactured at will, and is all the more memorable for it.

A.K. Gold’s Favorite Spots in Barcelona

Insane, but true, I saw all these spots (and others) in less than 2.5 days in Barcelona.

• Museu Picasso--I contend that this Picasso Museum is better than the one in Paris. If you are visiting Madrid before going to Barcelona, go to the Prado and see Velasquez's Las Meninas, and then see Picasso's 50+ studies of the painting when you go to Barcelona. So freakin' cool. While it was a temporary exhibit, I credit this museum with introducing me to the amazing painter Jean Helion.
• Mercat de la Boqueria--as a Philadelphia resident, I have deep, deep love for Reading Terminal Market. The only place that rivals it in my mind is La Boqueria which is aesthetically beautiful, and where i bought the best chocolate covered almonds I've ever eaten.
  
• Sinagoga Shlomo Ben Adret--It was only in the last 10 years that archaeologists unearthed a couple rooms of the Synagogue which stood across from the town center until the 14th Century. It's fascinating from an archaeological, theological and social (in light of the inquisition and how modern-day Spaniards react to it) perspective. Definitely worth getting lost in the Barri Gotic to find. (If you pay attention when you're nearing the Sinagoga, you might notice Hebrew letters carved into the walls.)
  
• Park Guell and Sagrada Familia--Even if Antoni's architecture doesn't appeal to you in photographs (and yes, the term gaudy does come from his name), go to Park Guell and La Sagrada Familia. They are tremendous in person, and the history, urban planning theory, and aesthetics are totally fascinating.
  
• MACBA, Caixa Forum and the Fundacio Miro--Do you like art? Clearly, I'm really into it, in fact in 8 days in Spain I managed to see something like 12 museums. Needless to say, the MACBA, Caixa Forum and Fundacio Miro were three of my favorites with great exhibits--at the time--on photography, Miro, Joesph Sert, and Joseph M.W. Turner. If you're not quite as into art as I am, and only have time to go to one, make it the Fundacio Miro. The architecture is amazing--Sert designed it for his good friend Miro at Miro's request--and set in the beautiful Parc Montijuc.
  
• Museu du Xocolat--Yep, the Museum of Chocolate. Learn the history, smell the confections that are sold at the gift shop, but the real reason to come is to see the stand-outs from the annual chocolate sculpture contest held annually around Easter time. Ben Hur's Chariot Race, and La Pieta are the two that have stuck with me years later.
  

5 Years Later...Anecdotal Evidence Begins Anew

It's been 5 years since I wrote the second (and essentially last) issue of Anecdotal Evidence. I say essentially, because there were some notebook scribblings and ill-conceived attempts to draft Issue 3 that never panned out quite like I hoped they would.

Reposting these stories was sometimes fun, sometimes painful, and occassionally enlightening. I was amazed to find that some of the anecdotes I remember having spent hours and days crafting five years ago, had completely slipped my mind until I re-read them as I set up posting them to the blog. Heck, I had forgotten about the French Kicks' cute bass player, and the gas man on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Some things have changed a lot for me in the last five years--my age, geography and work are the most obvious. I'm now firmly ensconced in my late twenties and after five years in DC, I've been in Philadelphia for 6 months. Right now, as I sit in my backyard listening to Calexico (some things haven't changed), pecking away on my laptop on a sunny, 78-degree July day thinking about then and now and everything in between, I get the sense that I'm right where I'm supposed to be (for now, at least). That photo at the top of this post is my vegetable garden and the view from my backyard, and if you could see through the rooftops and powerlines, you'd see the Philly Skyline.

For about three and half years, I've been been doing regional economic development and social problem solving--trying to make Greater Washington, DC and now Greater Philadelphia more prosperous and better run communities for all who live and work in them. The work is challenging and frustrating and interesting and creative and meaningful and slow, but I'm one of the few people that I know who can honestly say, "I love my day job." And, I'm glad that I do work that I believe in.

In my non-work life, over the last five years, I've spent many an hour, day, week engaging with other people's stories--in real life and through books and plays and movies and records. But, as I reread the old issues of Anecdotal Evidence, I was reminded of how fun it is to be creative and write my own stories with others--even if it only is a small group of others--having the opportunity to engage and respond to them.

I'm not so deluded as to think that I'm so tremendous or worthy of a biography. But, many of the stories that I love the most, and certainly the ones I relate to the most, are not grand ones. Most of us will never have the narrative arc, well-crafted oratory/prose/lines or depth of impact of a Michael Bloomberg or Charles Darwin or Lorelai Gilmore (and I realize that I am probably the only person who would list NYC's Mayor, the father of evolution, and a much-beloved, albeit fictional tv character as my examples--but I'm an onion, baby). Most of what connects us are little experiences that happen in-between major life events--the conversations, the images, movies, books, songs, trips, thoughts, dreams, experiences--the anecdotal evidence.

So, going forward, I'm going to build off the history of Anecdotal Evidence the zine, and attempt to turn it into a living, evolving blog by sharing one new anecdote each week, a tidbit from the past or present that's rattling around in my head. I'm going to attempt to do this, not because I think it will have some long-lasting impact on others (though it's lovely to have such narcissistic aspirations), but because, at the end of the day, it's fun and challenging and interesting and frustrating and a little bit scary to tell stories, to share pieces of myself. And thus far, I've found when something is fun, challenging, interesting, frustrating and a bit scary, it's usually worth doing.

Thanks

To all of those who have been supportive of me while I was a spaz about moving and when I’m a spaz the rest of the time. To the zinemakers whose publications provided an escape from my reality: Amy Schroeder, Laris Kreslins, Andrew Scott, Aaron Cometbus, Ben Goldberg and many others; to my friends who deal with me in all my various stages of emoting: Andrew Gold, Rhett Millsaps, Meg McDermott, Lauren Wilcox, Jessie Daniels, and Jeni Nudell. To Chad Milan, Ishwara Glassman, Carrie Rosenfeld, Meghan Umphres, and Michelle Bertagna for providing me with places to escape to as well as couches and beds to sleep on. To Amanda Fazzone for being the older sister figure I never had. To David Halperin for giving me a job and reminding me that I am good at it. To Brie Zwain, Alex Zwerling and Pilar Weiss for being great roommates. To all the bands that provided the soundtrack for this issue’s creation: Interpol, Radio 4, Ted Leo, Bright Eyes, Cursive, We Are Scientists, and Speedking (especially Chet Sherwood for a plethora of things, but especially for being an all around great guy.) To my mom and dad who were awesome when I moved home and even more awesome when I moved away again. To the people who bought, read, and/or sold Issue 1…you don’t know how much it means to me. And to Al Burian for Burn Collector, Frigid Forms Sell and a Polaroid picture that I truly covet.

Isn’t a 16 Hour Work Day Illegal?

On the morning of April 1st, my first day at my new job, I was given a list of expectations and responsibilities. One of the first things on the list was finding a new office space for our rapidly expanding organization. In the three months that I have been working, we have doubled the size of our staff. Granted that means that we now have four full time employees instead of two, but it also means that half of our employees (myself included) had been working in the reception area of our Massachusetts Avenue office.

So, as if I hadn’t done enough apartment hunting and moving in my personal life, I was spearheading an effort in my professional life as well. Commercial real estate is a gross gross game. I don’t know much about it, but I do know that most of the people that you’ll deal with are not people that you would want for friends or that you would want to see your sister date. So after making a string of phone calls, based on signs posted on buildings, internet research and a couple of blatant stabs in the dark, I had set up a couple of meetings with various agents and building managers to see what their buildings had to offer. Some of them were less offensive than others.

The first place that we looked at, which was right across the street from our current office, was quite excellent. But, if there is one thing that I have learned about the adult world is that if you like something, you need to act as horribly blasé about it as humanly possible. Baudelaire would be appalled, but Flaubert would certainly applaud. And while I was well versed in this concept, one of our student interns was not. And as we explored the space he loudly and continuously commented on how “fantastic” it was. To further add to the pain of the experience, the agent who was showing us the space might actually have set a new standard for sleazy, obnoxious Jewish men. I didn’t like him at first when after hearing my name he asked if I was from Long Island (which implies some incredibly derogatory notion of Jappiness in my mind, though he might have meant it as a compliment) and my disdain for him grew even more when weeks later he asked me, over the phone, if I liked him more than when I originally had met him. My reply: “Is it your job to be liked? My opinion really shouldn’t matter.”

We looked at other places as well. One was located next to the railroad tracks and so far away from Union Station that as we walked there in broad daylight, David proclaimed that he couldn’t in good conscious get a space in that location for fear of me being raped and murdered on the walk to the train. The space was even worse than the location, if you can believe that. We checked out a couple of other nice spaces in the safer part of the neighborhood, but the first one still remained the real gem.

It took a lot of negotiating and wrangling but nearly 2 1/2 months after I had begun the search for a new office space, we signed a five year lease to move into the space that the intern had repeatedly deemed “fantastic!”

But, that is all prelude to moving day. On the night before the 4th of July, we decided to relocate across the street with the help of a moving company which tried to convince us to postpone our early evening move because of the heat. They, in fact, ended up postponing it by themselves as they arrived nearly three and a half hours after they were scheduled to show up.
Already peeved when they pulled up at 9 p.m., we then went on to face virtually every other obstacle (extreme heat and humidity, narrow glass doors, inflexible security guards and an asshole of a building engineer) that a bad Hollywood pitchman could think up for some not so funny comedy. There was even a father and teenage son combo to add to the uncomical pain.

At 1 a.m. the movers left the office. All of our stuff was in our new office space. I set up my computer and I was hit by a wave of energy as I say at my desk in my office. A little bit of my own space, where I could listen to grating punk rock without disturbing anyone, where interns would not constantly be asking me questions, where I could write extended emails without feeling as though someone was looking over my shoulder, where I could call the gynecologist and not feel like everyone else in the entire office was listening to my medical and sexual history.

And then about 30 seconds later, I was so incredibly tired that all I wanted to do was to get the hell out of there and start my long weekend. I dropped Rhett off in Dupont and drove David all the way up to his house in Van Ness. When I finally parked my car on Monroe Street, it was nearly 2 a.m., almost 18 hours had passed since I had left the house that morning. Eighteen very long hours…

Speedking

My first memory of Chet Sherwood goes something like this: I was a first semester college freshman enrolled in a really big intro anthropology class. During the course of one lecture, the professor made some snide comment about pocket protectors.

Later that evening, I had a discussion section that was run by the t.a., who in this case was (you guessed it) Chet Sherwood. He was wearing a sweater. And as he sat down he said something about how the professor’s comment about pocket protectors was ridiculous. He took off his sweater and underneath he was wearing a button down shirt. In the pocket was a pocket protector.

That anecdote doesn’t quite capture how ultimately cool Chet Sherwood is. He’s the type of person who tells you something about his life and you have to restrain yourself from responding by repeating the exact sentiment he just expressed only with a question mark tacked on the end. You worked for Matador Records? Your band toured with Slint? You spent a summer studying monkeys in Kenya? Your research focuses on the evolutionary neuroanatomy of primates? You’re married to that really cool woman?

During the course of my college career, Chet ta’ed three of my anthro classes and remained a mentor-like presence (even though it became more sporadic as I began rejecting bio anthro and he spent more time teaching med students all about the brain) throughout my college career. We traded cds, recommended books (or a book each to one another) and he helped me land a very cool internship at the American Museum of Natural History.

So, I was actually a bit sad when I was leaving NYC and realized that I hadn’t seen him in nearly three months.

None the less, it was a funny day in June when I received a press release in my email box from Mike at Tigerstyle records. I count Mike as a friend based on the fact that during the semester I was an intern at an online independent music retailer, I sat approximately 10 feet away from him. I perused the press release and paused for a long long moment when I arrived at the second half.

Tigerstyle was set to release a retrospective of Speedking, a NYC proto-post rock/garage/punk rock band that had been very productive in the mid 1990s and then disappeared. For most people, this didn’t mean much. But, I began talking to the computer screen (hoping that it could confirm my notions) saying “isn’t that Chet’s band?”

I quickly jotted off an email to Mike and one to Chet looking for one of them to confirm my notion. Both did. Mike said that he didn’t know Chet, but that the record was awesome. Chet informed me that he was unaware that the record was even being released.

Mike and Chet talked over the phone and much was cleared up and seemingly years later (actually about 2 1/2 weeks due to some poor addressing and epic bouncing around through the U.S. Postal system because of my constant moving) the cd arrived in my mail box.
It’s a funny thing when you are confronted by a friend’s art. You want to hear it, and in this case I really wanted to hear it, but, I also didn’t want to hear it because if it totally sucked it would be hard for me to lie.

Fortunately, the Speedking retrospective, “The Fist and the Laurels” is crazy and engaging. It sounds eerily like a proto-Le Tigre or Milemarker with a lot less of the blatantly political and female vocals and a lot more of the raw noise and energy. It sounds excellent in 2002, and it makes me wonder what it would have sounded like from 1995-1997 when the band was actually together. Without a time machine, I will never know, but from here on out it will used as the yardstick against which all of my other friends’ bands are being measured.

Radio 4

Radio 4’s second full length, Gotham!, arrived at my parents’ house in Illinois at some point in early February. And though I didn’t listen to it for a couple of weeks (it came along with a couple of other discs) when I finally heard all that the record had to offer, I began telling everyone I knew who had moderately decent musical taste that Gotham! was most certainly the best dance record of the year and probably one of the best records of the year. I listened to the record incessantly (actually, I still am listening to it incessantly), made tapes of it for ayone who showed any bit of interest, and made sure it was always in my car cd player when driving long distances.

In fact, the record impressed me so much that I was spurred into doing something that I had never done before: writing a critical essay in the hopes that it would be published in a significant alternative weekly like the Chicago Reader. For the first time in a relatively long time, I was excited to be writing about music. I was enthused and inspired by the sounds of Radio 4 and in the piece (which placed the record within the context of the death of danceable rock songs in both mainstream and underground rock and their current reemergence) I tried to describe not only the sounds, but the feeling that the songs evoked:

“On Gotham!, every song is worthy of a dance break like the one that follows ‘The Breakfast Club’s infamous in-school toke-up session. Molly Ringwald should be bobbing her head and stamping her feet in fits of ecstatic, tension-releasing joy to the sounds of tracks like ‘Certain Tragedy and ‘Our Town’.”

I even wrote one of the best paragraphs I think I’ve ever written when I concluded the essay with the words:

“Rock’n’roll has always been hedonistic. It’s the reason why Christians deemed it the devil’s music; why a generation of disenchanted young people raised during the Reagan era helped to make ‘alternative’ the mainstream, even if for only a couple of years; and why the last ten years of underground music has, in taking itself a bit too seriously, encouraged its proponents to deny themselves the opportunity to dance. And though rock has experienced competition from studio-concocted pop, laptop-developed electronica, and street born hip-hop, it continues to change and grow, be political and sometimes even make people dance. If Gotham! proves anything, it’s just how good a bit of dancing can be.”

They Came From Brooklyn

In issue 1 of Anecdotal Evidence, I reflected on a couple of my favorite bands from NYC. As some of you might be aware, the totally awesome French Kicks have released their first full length One Times Bells (Startime). It has gotten tres bien reviews (for good reason) and the band has popped up all over the place, even in Vanity Fair. Interpol was signed to Matador Records. ‘Nuff said. Ben Goldberg, who works for Matador publishes an awesome zine called Badaboom Gramophone and I highly recommend you check it out if you like to read about the rock.

Music always reflects a lot of what is going on in my life. When I’ve not been listening to it very much, I’ve usually been pretty miserable. The times when I have been listening to it constantly have often been the best times of my life. From incessantly replaying “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” on an old record player when I was 5 to constantly listening to the likes of Jeff Buckley and Pavement when I worked in college radio to this point in my life where I’ve learned to recognize that the one real joy of the open road is the ability to listen to 7 straight hours of music (unless you are in a blizzard and fending for your life on the road…then, you should listen to the news).

While I zoomed throughout the Midwest and to the east coast, when I was packing and unpacking and repacking, when I was designing and writing this zine, lots of records provided soundtracks and inspiration, but here’s a little bit about two records that have truly knocked my socks off…



It’s a funny thing being a freelancer. Record promotions companies and some of the smaller record labels have me on a list and when they are set to release something, they send a copy to me free of charge. The fact that a relative nobody like myself acquired two free copies of Stephen Malkmus’s self-titled solo record or that I get the latest Bright Eyes release months before all the 17 year old emo kids who truly desire it is a strange combination of luck and charm and blatant self-promotion. Often, when I open a manila paper and bubble wrap parcel, the CD contained inside is a definite disappointment. But, every once in a while, I stumble upon an album that I listen to over and over and over again.

I Saw You

I’m not quite sure why, but Washington, D.C. is apparently the loneliest (or maybe most desperate, though that’s hard to believe) city in the United States. Maybe part of the reason for this is that it’s a pretty transient place. When I first moved here, multiple people asked me if I planned to do a two year stint in D.C. and then bail (which, increasingly, is looking like it’s going to be the case). And most of the young people that move to D.C. (or at least the ones I know) work pretty stressful jobs that demand a lot of hours and even more energy. Whatever it is, there are just a lot of people in D.C. who are looking to find a special someone.
Now, I’ve lived in a couple of cities in my 2+ decades of living and every once in a while in Chicago or NYC I would glance through the matches section of the Reader or the Village Voice. But, both were pretty skimpy. In D.C., however, the Matches section of the City Paper is a freakin’ phenomena.

Everyone reads it. Now, I even look forward to the City Paper coming out so I can check out the listings. Sometimes I read ads and I think, “this person sounds kinda cool, I should drop them a line.” But, I always wuss out. And while the women seeking men and women seeking women and the “none of the above” sections can prove captivating, the true highlight of the Washington City Paper matches is the “I Saw You” section.

The concept of “I Saw You” is just want it sounds like. You see some attractive girl or guy walking down the street or at the bar or the rock show or the library or on the train or wherever and, apparently, you can’t shake the image of said individual. So, what do you do? You place an ad like this one:

“Thursday the 20th. We danced at Heaven and I was in heaven. Brazil over England. And your name was Carrie?”

Now, I’m not even sure that if I was Carrie I would know who the hell this person was, but I guess that anything is possible. My friend Chad and I have discussed the phenomena of the City Paper matches and we once concluded that it would be far better to craft fictional “I Saw You” ads, as opposed to standard women seeking men ads (or vice versa) if we really wanted to meet people who fulfilled our long held ideals. So, here are some of the “I Saw You” ads that I have crafted based on some individuals I have seen in D.C. or solely from my imagination:

Sparky’s Espresso Café You-lanky, black t-shirt, blue jeans and chucks, brown shaggy hair reading Nietzsche (in the original German?) with dictionary. Me-brown eyed girl with brown ponytail, glasses reading Bataille. Want to discuss the Apollinian/Dyonisian polarity over coffee?
Cute redhead with the red New Balance sneakers who works out at the JCC on Wednesdays and Sundays. Is that Asian girl your girlfriend? I hope not, would dig getting to know you better.

6/30 Black Cat Mainstage. Opening band drummer with the mad chops and the bad posture. I was in the crowd and too wowed by you to approach. Hope to make up for it by meeting you for a drink. Let’s see if we can find a rhythm.

Todd at PFAW. You seem totally awesome…want to make out?

Graduation & Return

Columbia University has a longstanding, and thoroughly inconvenient tradition of holding commencement on a Wednesday morning. As a result, after only seven weeks of work at my new job, I was forced to take three days off to return to New York City and fulfill the one requirement that my mother had stipulated upon my early graduation -- participating in commencement.

It was a nice break from things to get to head up to NYC and see my friends who were centrally located (probably for the last time ever). I left in the early hours of a grey Saturday morning in hopes of beating traffic out of the D.C. metro area. I’m not exactly sure what traffic I was hoping to beat, but that was my theory. I would have beaten all of the hypothetical traffic had there not been a crash involving some liquid-carrying truck that, as would have to happen, resulted in a spill on the highway.

There are very few things I hate more than driving. Which seems like a strange thing to say seeing as how much I’ve done it over the last four months. But, I don’t like how I feel my blood pressure rise, I don’t like how people will flick you off when they are in the wrong, and I don’t like sitting in traffic waiting for a liquid spill to be cleaned up for over two hours. There is only one thing that can ever calm me down in a situation like that one (or the time that I was stuck behind a wide load being escorted at 35 miles per hour in both lanes of a two lane highway in Pennsylvania). That one thing is my mother. So, I called my mom and she promised to talked to me until traffic got moving again. 75 minutes later I hung up the phone.
When I finally arrived in NYC, I had the whole weekend to see my friends (which I did), attend campus functions (which was a new experience for me since I had never done that as an undergrad), hunt down a cute boy or two that I had lost track of, and attend the very swanky Senior Ball.

Much alcohol was consumed, many stories swapped, much fun was had. And when my parents came into town with my 86 year old grandma and my brother, I relocated from the ruins of a college dorm suite to a far posher midtown hotel room.

All and all, the trip proved a success save the final couple hours where the family dynamic reached a head, but I don’t want to go into that. So, I hopped into my little car and whizzed (not in the peeing sense of the word) out of New York City with hopes of making it back to D.C. as quickly as possible (without procuring a speeding ticket) in order to attend the first event that I had worked on at my job.

After close to five hours of driving, I parked my car on S Street, right in front of the house, grabbed everything that had been thrown into my car during the last few days and bolted up the stairs where I changed into a suit and heels and then ran back out the door and on my way.
I frantically attempted to recall the address of the evening’s event and somehow concluded that it was 555 12th Street, NW. Within ten minutes I was parking in a garage and walking as fast as my heels would carry me. As I entered the lobby of the building I knew it wasn’t the right place. It was a scene taken right out of a classic movie. There I was ready to attend the event, and I was in the wrong place. In a frenzy I looked at the directory and the security guard spoke up and said “if you’re looking for Arnold & Porter, it’s at 555 13th Street.”

Without saying thank you, I bolted out the door and entered 555 13th Street which looks strikingly like the death star from Star Wars and could never be confused, from its interior, with the relatively low key lobby of 555 12th Street.

The discussion was in full swing as I found a seat and was grateful to have the chance to catch my breath. Little did I know what would lie ahead.

The Bash

When I first moved into the house on S Street, NW, my four roommates (Dom, Jeremy, Summer, and Erin) were so pleased to have me because they had truly despised their last roommate and her dog who had peed all over the upstairs carpet. And living together is like being in a romantic relationship, there is always a honeymoon, a time when you hang around with one another all the time and enjoy each other’s company. About three weeks after I moved into the house, we had a big house party in honor of Summer’s getting into grad school and Erin’s friend’s birthday, and welcoming me. We had cake and 7 layer dip and 2 kegs and loads of liquor and during the course of the epic evening, probably 70 or so people enjoyed the festivities. It was a real bash.

The hilarious thing about parties is that they always end the same way. Most people leave when the booze is gone, but there are always a group of people (usually people that no one who is hosting the party really knows) who hang out listening to loud music into the wee hours of the night. In my experience, this usually also entails the hosts nodding off on some couch or in some corner waiting for the unknown guests to leave so they can go to bed only to wake up to a massive hangover and a house in need of extensive cleaning.

This bash was no exception. At about 4 a.m. a group of kids were hitting around a balloon in the virtually empty downstairs of our house as Summer and I kept each other awake and Dom slept beside us. I was relieved when they left and I climbed the stairs before almost stumbling
upon some people sleeping up there.

I was about to walk into my room when I realized that there was someone in there. Well, not someone, someones. To be polite, and to avoid the embarrassing situation of walking in on a twosome (or possibly more than a twosome) going at it, I knocked on the door. But, instead of answering, someone got up off of my bed and tried to close my bedroom door on me. I yelled out the most obvious reaction ever, “hey, that’s my room! Don’t close the door on me!”

I heard the voice of my roommate Erin whine, “but, someone’s in my room!”

I couldn’t believe that she actually uttered the words with a straight face, even if she was drunk and in hazy make out phase. I replied with a matter of fact reply, “that’s not my problem.”

She looked embarrassed as she led some random dude (there were a lot of random dudes with Erin) out of my room. The first moment the whole thing pissed me off…the next I was downstairs telling Summer what had happened and we were laughing at how ridiculous it was.
I retreated back up the stairs and changed into pajamas. I planned to use the bathroom cause I really had to go after a long evening of partying. The house was set up so the bathroom that Erin and I shared was the only one that was out in a common area. Both Jeremy’s bathroom and the one that was in Dom & Summer’s room were not accessible. When I walked down the hall to the bathroom, I realized that there was no chance that I was going to get to use it. Locked inside was my displaced roommate and the random dude that she was making out with that night. The moral victory gave way to the biological loss.

The Polaroid

The weekend that I officially moved was supposed to be the weekend that I joined my friend Meg and her friend Andy in Wayne, Michigan for a festival aptly titled Michiganfest. Unfortunately, unlike Fred Flintstone, I didn’t and don’t have the benefit of a magical green spaceman/fairy godfather type character named Kazoo who is able to allow me to be in two places at once. Thus, Michiganfest, and all the awesome bands --including Ted Leo, Radio 4, and Milemarker -- that I hoped to see were missed. And in their stead, I drove over 800 miles through a blizzard, purchased D.C. car insurance, acquired a DC driver’s license (an epic tale in and of itself), bought a bed, observed Passover, moved into a new house and began a job.

Needless to say, I was disappointed that I missed all of the indie rock goodness that Michigan was going to offer up, and probably more so, the chance to hang out with Meg. She was understanding, but as she often says to me when we chat on the phone or on IM, she adamantly contended that she couldn’t understand why I had left NYC in the first place.

After the festival, I was chatting with Meg when she said, “You’ll never guess who I hung out with at Michiganfest.” Now, there are few people in the world who could say something like this and I would have any idea what the answer was. [To digress, there was one time I called up my mom all excited and said “Mom, guess who I am interviewing?!” She paused and then just blurted out “Holy shit! Stephen Malkmus!” Her answer was, in fact, correct.]

I knew who Meg hung out with. The answer was and could only be one person: Alexander Burian.

Now, Al Burian fills a place in my heart that can never be occupied by anyone else. Sure, there is a thirteen year old girl element that he is a pretty good looking guy, but my mild obsession with him has grown mainly due to the utter excellence of his zine Burn Collector. Burn Collector was the final straw that broke this camel’s back and made me start Anecdotal Evidence. Burian makes the mundane seem important, revels in the tangential, and is both hilariously absurd and depressingly reflective.

In addition, the last two records by his band, Milemarker, are quite solid in their own rights. Somewhere in the midst of my last semester of college, when Burn Collector was proving to be my greatest respite from genetics class, stress, and my impending flight from New York, I made the utterly absurd statement: “I just want to lick Al Burian.” It became a bit of a rallying statement, something that Meg and I laughed at when things reached their most stressful or absurd. Al Burian had taken on a super-human (or is that sub-human?) position in our world of inside jokes and perplexing lingo.

Anyhow, Meg informed me that she had not left her meeting with Al Burian empty-handed and that she was sending it to me. Over a week after she sent it, an envelope arrived at the house. Inside was a Polaroid photo with a message from Al Burian…

Elyria, Ohio

It was around 10 a.m. on a late March afternoon that, with my hands full of toiletries, I stuffed the last couple of things that I was able to stuff into my car. My mom was hanging around the newly finished front hall of my childhood home and she looked sad and excited for me. I wish I could say that I felt the same way. But, it was more fear and nausea that had taken hold of me. I gave her one last hug (after putting all the toiletries down) and walked out the front door wearing a pair of overalls I had acquired at an outlet mall is Kenosha Wisconsin when I was 15 along with a heavy wool sweater.

My mom asked me to wait and she grabbed my dad’s camera. She took a couple of photos of my pulling out of the driveway and heading East (which doesn’t have the same ring as heading west).

Unlike the first time I drove to D.C., the ground was adorned with ice and snow. But, with every CD I owned sitting on the floor of the passenger side, I wasn’t too concerned that I would get bored.

My evening’s destination was Monroeville, PA. It’s a good location, about 9 miles from Pittsburgh and right off of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Although, it does require driving the first 70 (or so) daunting miles of the Turnpike in the dark. I’m not sure who designed the PA. Turnpike, but it certainly wasn’t the same person who crafted the wide-laned, high speed raceway of its northern neighbor the NJ Turnpike. The Pennsylvania Turnpike appears to be modeled after the Argonaut’s sea journey where the cliffs nearly smashed their ship to shreds. There are high cliffs on either side, daunting curves, virtually no exits or rest stations, warnings of falling rocks (what the hell am I supposed to do if that happens?) a propensity toward extreme slickness, and of course the required regiment of ten big rigs per mile of road just to make drivers, who are unenthused like myself, a bit more nervous while driving on the friendly roadways of Pennsylvania. Also, there is the reputation of Gestapo-like law enforcement.

Before I would reach the friendly roadways of Pennsylvania, I drove the width of both Indiana and Ohio. Now, I don’t mean to offend anyone from Indiana, but that is a state that I wouldn’t mind driving across in the dark. Pennsylvania is able to redeem itself based upon scenic, panoramic views, but Indiana, at least the northern part of it really doesn’t have much going for it. Gary, home of the Jackson Five, is quite possibly the most horrible place on the face of the Earth. It’s the largest steel producer in the U.S. and when you drive through it, you can feel yourself developing lung cancer. I have long contended that maybe the best thing to do with Indiana is to relocate all the good, hardworking, sane people to some different state and give (back?) Indiana to the fanatical, right-wing extremist groups. I mean, it is the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. Then we can put an epic electric fence around it and build a highway that drives right over the entire state. If George Bush is looking to do something that will really provide homeland security, that is what I recommend.

However, Indiana does have some solid rest areas. One is named after Knute Rockne (it’s near Notre Dame, go figure!) But, named rest areas have made me ponder, numerous times, what does one have to do to get a highway rest area named after him or her? During my many Midwestern and eastern vehicular jaunts I’ve noticed no theme that unites the namesakes of the many buildings which host gas stations, Hardees, rest rooms, visitor centers, and if you are lucky a Subway Sandwich shop which is always a welcome relief from fried food. If anyone who reads this knows what the rest area naming process is, I urge you to contact me and fill me in. Maybe I can get one named after my dad.

It was snowing a bit in Indiana, but I made it through the state with no incident. However the weather really began to pick up in Ohio. My usually zippy highway driving was slowed to about 40 miles per hour, then 35, then 30 as the snow and the clouds turned the sky into one impenetrable sheet of white. I persevered and decided that Monroeville was a noble, but unattainable goal. I decided to settle on Youngstown which is about 70 miles west on Monroeville. But as I continued, at approximately 25 miles per hour across I-80 I realized that even Youngstown was a long shot. Cars were strewn on the sides of the road, and worse, many of the frightening big rigs had tipped off the road and lay on their sides like hurt horses.

Within ten minutes, my aim of reaching Youngstown was reduced to reaching Cleveland. But, as the snow literally dumped down and as my little car, packed with virtually all of my worldly possessions eked down the road, I concluded that I just needed to find a hotel room and hope to god that the weather would clear.
I exited at the next toll plaza, the woman in the toll booth looked worried about me. I must have looked like I had seen a ghost…but really I had just seen a massive truck graveyard. Truck graveyards are not reassuring.

After endless turning around and searching for a cheaper hotel, I settled on staying at the quite pricey Holiday Inn which was doing rather well for itself that evening despite being quite understaffed.

I grabbed a random bag out of my car, and got the last room in the place with a king-sized bed. I trudged to the room, grateful that I didn’t have to worry about my “all my worldly possessions-filled” car being broken into. Because, honestly, no one in their right mind was outside that night, let alone breaking into a car that within minutes was covered with ice and snow and didn’t look to have anyone’s entire material life packed within.

I opened the door of the hotel room, threw my bag down on the floor and thumbed through the hotel amenities book before discovering that I was in Elyria, Ohio.

I looked it up in my $5.95 road atlas and found that I had fallen about 15 miles shy of my final goal of Cleveland. After ordering room service, checking my email (which I was charged an unreasonable amount for doing), and watching a bit of really bad television I fell asleep.
I woke up early the next morning and made it to D.C. by late afternoon. But, as I drove across Pennsylvania, I realized that I had a little piece of me in Elyria. My $5.95 road atlas was sitting in my room in the Holiday Inn.

Apartment Hunting

I told David, the executive director and my new boss, that I would start working on April first. Over the phone he told me that he would prefer that I started the week before. I confidently explained that I was moving 800 miles, needed to find a place to live and “I’ll do such a great job once I start working you won’t even notice that I started a week later than you want.” He laughed and agreed to April 1st.

My mom was kind enough to accompany me to D.C. on an apartment hunting mission. It’s a stressful situation to know that you need to find a place in a two day time span.
I did my homework by checking Washington, D.C.’s best apartment resource: the City Paper. I made phone calls, sent emails and found out about a bunch of different places. Since I knew virtually no one in D.C. (was that past tense? ha!) I decided that a group house would be a good deal, a built in friend network. Hopefully.

D.C. is kinda deceptive size wise. The entire District is 100 square miles, make it a ten-by-ten diamond. And most of the “hip, young white kids” live in NW. So, basically you are in a quarter of a 10 by 10 diamond which isn’t much space at all. But, by D.C. standards Tenleytown is in the middle of freakin’ nowhere. It’s a residential neighborhood near American University. The first house I looked at was in Tenleytown. There was a big smelly dog, an over-zealous 30 something woman, more knick knacks then I’ve ever seen in my life, water damage and no central AC. I had been forewarned that D.C. in summer is unbearable and I knew virtually immediately I would not be living in this place.

I rushed my mom (who was sick with a respiratory infection) from Tenleytown to Shaw. As we ascended the Metro escalator, she was immediately skeptical. 8th and R Streets NW are not very picturesque especially after the suburbanized Tenleytown. There were boarded up houses, it was certainly a neighborhood in transition. We found the house we were looking for nearby on S Street and as we walked in, she perked up. We had stumbled upon a beautifully renovated, absolutely huge house. The four people who lived there (two guys and two girls) were all from the Midwest save Summer and all worked for non-profits or Congress save Erin. Summer had been an anthropology major, Dom liked indie rock and he informed me that the two big places to see shows were within six blocks of the house.

The room itself was small, but the rest of the house was rad, the rent was cheap and the people seemed cool. In a hyperactive tizzy I tried to make them like me enough to ask me to move in. I bid them goodbye and reiterated my interest in the place.

My mom and I headed back to our hotel by Union Station. At 5:30 p.m. my cell phone rang. It was Dom. He said, “we know that you’re looking at some other places and everything and we probably don’t seem cool getting back to you so quickly. But, we’d like you to move in with us.”

“Awesome! I want to live with you guys too!” It took one interview and two house visits before I had a job and a place to live. Mom and I went out to dinner to celebrate. We had planned to spend the next day apartment hunting, but we slept in instead.

The Island

The following day, I received an email at work from my roommate Erin. In it she relayed that that evening, if I was going to be around, they would like to hold a “house meeting.” In the nearly two months that I had lived in the house on S Street, we had never had a house meeting, so I asked her what it would be in regards to. I received no reply.

Now, sometimes my internal dialogue can be a little paranoid. But, this “house meeting” didn’t sound like a particularly good thing to me. By this time the “new roommate honeymoon” was over. No longer was I hanging out with my roommates who I actually began to think were a bit cliquey. I had started to become annoyed with Jer’s constant drinking and fits over whatever inane video game he was playing, the fact that one of Erin’s friends had been a total jerk to me and she hadn’t said anything to him, and Summer’s stupid cat who was always trying to get into my room and was certainly contributing to some serious allergies. And, I’m sure there were things about me that they felt similarly about. I only really ever spoke to two of them and usually that was for functional purposes.

So, I had a sneaking suspicion that they wanted me out. Soon after I had convinced myself that they had baked a cake to congratulate me on graduation. I then recognized how completely deluded that notion was and returned to the thoughts about my expulsion.

So, I sat down on the couch, in my gym clothes, at 9 p.m. They all sat so I was the focal point. Even if you know what is coming, you are never really prepared to be kicked out. And honestly, I had never been kicked out of anything before. For about ten minutes I was furious, but I remained calm and they even thanked me for taking it so well. After those ten minutes past, I was really relieved. Sure the house was conveniently located and the rent was really cheap, but it wasn’t a particularly healthy living environment to be on barely-speaking terms with your roommates.

I was shaken by the fact that I had to find a new place to live and I certainly wanted to do it quickly so I could get out. But, there was only a week left in May and it was going to be tough. I pictured myself as a homeless young urban professional, my Ann Taylor work clothes hanging from my body in rags as I walked the streets of Washington, DC with my queen size bed and box spring strapped to my back and both hands holding Crate & Barrel boxes filled with dishes.

Then I crafted more sinister fantasies about finding a cool place to live really quickly and sticking the heathens (to quote one of my friend’s moms) with a month’s worth of my rent.
Within a week, I had been offered two places to live. One that was pretty far out and had not air conditioning and a really small room. Another that was on the Mt. Pleasant/Columbia Heights border which had CAC (as the housing ad lingo is apt to say), an awesomely large room, and roommates that seemed really cool. The place was only for the summer, but on June 2nd I moved in and was rid of the house on S Street.

I was psyched that my plan to stick them with the rent would actually come to life. But, I later learned that one of Summer’s good friends moved into the house and I suspect that that was part of the plan in getting me out all along.

But, in the end, I still got kicked off the island. I just feel fortunate that the swim wasn’t far and the new accommodations (and housemates) have proven to be far superior.