My Shittiest Apartment Ever

August, 2010. There I was, back in New York City after living at home for the better part of my first year of postgrad. I had convinced a crazy artist lady to let me sublet her $700 per-month studio apartment. No way! WAY. I couldn't believe this was happening to me. No roommates! Freedom to walk around in the nude! Loud sex! Eating hot pockets on the couch while watching Sex and the City free of judgement! I was "living the dream." I thought that this was pretty much the best apartment situation I could ever hope to have in New York.

Except it wasn't. The price was right, but everything else was wrong, wrong, WRONG!!! Let me lay it all out for you:

1. IT WAS LOCATED IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY...

("you live where?")

The apartment was at the very bottom of Crown Heights, so far at the bottom that it wasn't even Crown Heights anymore and I had to tell people it was Crown Heights just so they would know what the fuck I was talking about. (The neighborhood is actually called Wingate.) A few days after I arrived back in the city, I told one of my friends where I was living, which was a ten minute walk from the Sterling Street 2/5 and the Kingston Avenue 3.

She took a long, bored drag of her cigarette. "I don't know what those things are," she said.

As you all know, I love to walk. but when that walk entails me trying to get to the subway in a timely manner so I can avoid getting fired from the Strand for lateness because I haven't been inducted into the gosh-dang union yet, it's not fun. You know what else isn't fun? Carrying Trader Joe's bags for that long in 90 degree heat. Or opening the door to find that it snowed three feet while you were asleep and having absolutely no choice but go to work (once again: still not in the union). At least I was "feeling the burn" from trudging through all that snow. Tres inconvenient.

2. THE CRAZY ART LADY WAS LEGIT, OUT-OF-CONTROL, BATSHIT CRAZY

 illeana douglas has nothing on this woman

First, there was really bad "art" all over the walls. It was all like, "cool-looking" sticks that were painted and tacked above the couch, above the bed... Wherever. In the bathroom there was a "cool-looking" stick "statue" sitting on the back of the toilet. IT WAS A FUCKING STICK STUCK IN A BLOCK OF PLASTER. My friend came over one night and accidentally broke the statue. It was hilarious. What was not so hilarious, however, was when I finally moved out and she came home and discovered the broken statue (which i had neglected to tell her about) and threatened to charge me SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS for that piece of crap because that's how she makes her living, by selling sticks encased in plaster to discerning patrons of the arts. I said no way, Jose and got away with only paying for some teflon pans that I "scratched up and destroyed." (As if!)

She didn't have a vacuum but wanted me to sweep her carpeted floor. It was absurd. Obviously, like any sane person would do (or in this case, would not do), I did not sweep the carpet.  When she came back she said that the carpet looked like "it hadn't been swept in months." Also she said that if the drain in the bathroom ever got clogged I could just pour a can of coke down there and it would solve the problem because obviously coke is the same thing as acid. Well, I didn't sweep the carpet and I gleefully bought Drano to take care of the clog. 

Needless to say, she screamed at me about all of this shit over the phone when I finally moved out. 

3. A MOUSE RAN ACROSS MY FACE WHILE I WAS IN BED

(an example of what i was dealing with)

This was the cherry on top of the fucking cake. I feel like this woman knew that she had a mouse problem but didn't tell me about it. Why, why, why??? I struggle with this question to this very day.

It all started one evening in the early fall when I was watching tv and drinking a beer and having a grand old time. Then I saw the mouse. Whatever, I thought. I've lived places where there's a mouse or two afoot, and as long as we mind one another's business then I really don't care that they're there. But then something awful happened: the mouse ran into a glue trap that the crazy art lady had placed underneath the radiator. I didn't know what to do. I was horrified. I called my mom and had a nervous breakdown. That poor little mousey, I thought. I could hear my stepfather making fun of me in the background and my mom put the phone down and said, "this is not funny! there is a dying animal in her apartment!" In the end, the mouse ended up getting itself out of the trap, which was a relief. That sense of relief, however, was to be short-lived.

I saw that mouse running around on a daily basis. But then there was another mouse. Then there was a third mouse. There would be, like, two mice (haha I almost wrote "mouses" LOL) running around the living room at the same damn time. Oh, did I mention that my bed was one of those beds where you sleep on THE FLOOR??? I went insane. I bought it all: steel wool, snap traps, glue traps... They were all over my apartment. These mice were diabolical. They ate the peanut butter off the snap traps. They pulled themselves out of the glue traps with their incredible strength. Eventually, I killed two of them. Now there was only one left. the worst one. The most evil mouse of all.

I was trying to sleep. It was going NUTS all over my apartment. Sleep evaded me, despite the fact that I'd taken, oh, I don't know, three xanax pills? The clock struck three. I prayed to god to let sleep come to me and turned off the light. I lay there, frozen, listening to every little rustling noise that may or may not have been caused by a mouse. Then, I heard that dreaded sound coming from behind my pillow. I sighed. The inevitable was finally happening.

That is a fucking mouse, I thought.

It sure was! It crawled across my neck (okay so it wasn't my face- sorry). I screamed and flung the covers off me, sending the mouse flying across the room. It ran into the closet and I leapt out of bed, filled with murderous rage. I rearranged every single trap in my apartment around the closet so that the little bastard would finally meet his maker. Then I got back into bed and waited.

And then do you know what happened? I got it. I heard it run out of the closet and then stop abruptly. I threw on the light and there it was, mired in a glue trap. Halle-fuckin'-lujah! But now what? I wasn't about to put it out of it's misery (or, more appropriately, MY misery)  by hitting it with a frying pan or something. I decided the best course of action would be to use one of the "cool-looking" sticks to place the glue trap in a large saucepan. I carried the pan downstairs and out of the building. The neighbors' trash can was missing its lid so without thinking I just flung the mouse into it. Only it didn't quite make it: the glue trap ended up getting stuck to the rim of the trash can. By that point, I'd had quite enough and went upstairs. I went to bed and never saw another mouse at that apartment ever again.

***
Well, that's it. My worst apartment ever. I've had a few years to think about this, and I realize now that though the apartment had treated me badly, I had also been bad to the apartment. I let things fall into disrepair: the wardrobe rack that collapsed under the weight of all my clothes, the filthy carpet, the clog in the drain. I sucked at paying the bills on time. The ghosts of all my rebound fucks and almost-boyfriends filled the place with a distinct sadness that I felt awful leaving behind- out of everything I did, this, I think, is what I feel the worst about.

Sometimes I wonder if the apartment would have been better if I hadn't been so angry and sad about what was going on in my life at the time. Had I not experienced my first catastrophic break-up days before I was scheduled to fly back to new york, I would have been better to my body and better to my home- thus, everything might have been not-so-terrible, right?

Then I remember the mice. And then I say, "oh, right. nevermind."

At least I got to walk by this everyday:

(via)

Sweet.

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I Would Do Anything for Love, But I Won't Do That: My Beef with Brooklyn Boys

(image via the l magazine)

I've dated/"hung out with" my share of jerks here in the borough of Brooklyn. However, I do not feel jaded or cynical about the whole dating/"hanging out" situation that exists here. "You'll never find love here," my friends say. "They're all insane."

I do not believe this! Yes, the amount of insane men that live here is...well, insane. But I think that maybe we've been going about this thing the wrong way. Maybe we need to redraw our boundaries, to make a new set of rules for ourselves. In order to distinguish the winners from the lunatics, we should take into account the area-specific things in addition to the usual things. Thus, I have come up with a list of things that I absolutely refuse to do for a brooklyn boy, no matter how cute/smokin' hot he may be.

1. I WILL NOT HAUL YOUR GEAR BACK TO YOUR REHEARSAL SPACE

I'm sorry, but this is not my problem. I came to watch you play at Death by Audio and your set was good and all but in the end it's your gear and I'm your lady friend, NOT your groupie-mule. A real man will haul that shit himself because he has sexy muscles with which to lift heavy things. I don't mind stopping at the rehearsal space with you, but from now on? I'm waiting in the car and I'm not lifting a finger.

2. I WILL NOT FOLLOW YOUR ASS AROUND THIS BAR/WAREHOUSE PARTY/WHATEVER WHILE YOU TALK TO THE 7849384938 PEOPLE WHO KNOW YOU BECAUSE YOU NEVER LEAVE BUSHWICK AND YOU'RE JUST THAT POPULAR AROUND HERE

Umm, this is really boring. Can we please have sex now?

3. I WILL NOT HANG OUT WITH YOU IF YOU DO SMACK

(no offense, d)

What the fuck is going on with everybody doing the big H again? I guess it has something to do with the whole early-nineties thing being back in vogue? Well, guys, while your self-destructive tendencies are unfortunately kind of sexy, in the end I'm not going to waste my time with any dude who "only does it once a month." You know why? Because once a month turns into once a week and once a week turns into once a day and before you know it you're at a shady pawn shop in the shittiest part of bushwick arguing with the employees to give you back your camera that your stupid ex-boyfriend pawned for 100 measly bucks.* I hope those drugs were worth it, asshole. 

Also, if you're going to break up with me, please do not do heroin beforehand. K THNX BYE

(*this is a true story- though it's not my story to tell.)

4. I WILL NOT HANG OUT WITH YOU IF YOU LIVE IN SOUTH BROOKLYN AND MAKE ME SLEEP AT YOUR HOUSE EVERY SINGLE TIME WE HANG OUT

Going into Manhattan sucks, even if I'm not leaving whatever subway station I need to walk through in order to transfer to whatever train I need to take to get to your house. I also don't like going to Broadway Junction to transfer because you know why? I've OD'd on it. I've had to use it SO MANY TIMES in order to hang out with you. How about you come up here once in a while? Do you understand the trials I go through to spend time with you? If we live in completely different neighborhoods off of completely different train lines, It is inevitable that somebody must be inconvenienced. It's not right that the inconvenience should always fall on me.

Also, I do not roll out of bed magically looking fly. Sometimes I need access to the following things: my shampoo, my conditioner, the stuff I put in my hair while it's drying, my blow dryer, my flat iron (for my bangs), my face wash, my moisturizer, and my makeup. As you can imagine, this is too much shit to put into my bag. I'm fine with staying with you and throwing some bare essentials in there so I can look presentable at work the next day, but it would be nice to stay at my house every once in a while and shower in the comfort of my own home.

You know what, forget it. This wasn't meant to be. Next!

5. I WILL NOT STAY INSIDE WITH YOU EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND...

...when there is so much cool shit to do here.

***

Let's be real here: Brooklyn chicks are some of the most beautiful, smart, and hilarious women in the world. We are adventurous, ridiculous, and fucking FUN. Guys, you are a bunch of spoiled brats. Perhaps you think that you can pay no mind to how you treat the fabulous women you are surrounded by on a daily basis because hey, if you get bored of one of them, there's always another equally-hot one to be found, right? Well, here's a news flash: we're onto you, and you're not as smooth as you think. 

As for you awesome brooklyn guys who I'm SURE are out there: give your not-so-awesome friends a talking-to! You all are too cute to be assholes.

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Whose Bar Is It, Anyway?

I've only had one person ever tell me to "stay out of my bar." The bar was Harefield Road, and the person who told me this was a girl who was upset over the fact that I'd gone on one (1) (uno) (terrible) date with her ex-boyfriend. What's even lamer is that she didn't even say it to my face. She had a mutual friend forward this brand-new information along to me. I was also informed by said friend that this woman would fight me if she ever saw me in person. Well, none of those things happened: I love Harefield Road and I go there most weekends for brunch. I was never attacked by this woman, either.

"My bar." What makes a bar "yours"? It's silly, and we know it's silly, yet we say it, or at least think it, anyway. There are two ways to delude oneself into believing that a bar is "yours":

1. "I'M THERE ALL THE TIME!"

You stop in after work and stay for a couple beers. You get to know the regulars and you are on first name basis with the bartenders. It feels just like a big living room filled with a bunch of friendly semi-toasted people with whom you'd never associate outside of this setting. If you're there often enough, people will know where to find you. They'll know that you're at "your" bar. Except, as I've stated before, it's not your bar. All you're doing is sitting there getting loaded! The worst thing is running into somebody who really doesn't like you in "their" bar. You know what, I don't care if I come into "your" bar and you're there giving me the death stare and thinking that you're really teaching me a lesson by not talking to me. Chill, bro.

A few years ago I dated a guy who was a bar regular- and a full-blown alcoholic. It was bad news. I knew that I shouldn't be hanging around him, but he was an ex-model and oh-so handsome and I just couldn't tear myself away from him. Soon I became a regular in the bar, too, and shit hit the fan. We were wasted all the time. We had a horrible fight when we broke up. He said mean things to me and I slapped him. "Get out of here, Randall," he said. "Just go, get out!" I was devastated and I felt like a monster. I pleaded with him to stop saying the things he was saying and to not tell the bouncer to kick me out but then he said, "fine, I'll leave." and he was gone. It was awful. That's when I realized: you should never be in a bar all the time. Once a bar becomes "yours" in this way, it's time to get the fuck out of the bar. At that point, the bar doesn't belong to you: you belong to the bar.

From that incident forth, whenever I went to that bar with my friends, all of the regulars would glare at me. At first I felt very uncomfortable, but as I started getting closer with my current group of friends, the regulars receded from my life and their presence stopped mattering. The regulars have since disbanded. The man I dated is sober now, I think. Once in a while I'll drop in to unwind from work and write in my journal. When I do, I sit in the seat I used to sit in when we were together. It makes me sad to think about everything that happened, but it feels satisfying to think that I'm a little wiser than I was back then.

Ah, romantic entanglements. Once you throw a bar into the mix, anything can happen! This brings me to the next rationalization of bar ownership:

2. "I TOOK SOMEBODY THERE ON A DATE AND WE BROKE UP AND SINCE THE BAR IS IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD AND SINCE IT WAS MY IDEA TO GO THERE THEN OF COURSE I GET TO KEEP IT, RIGHT?

Okay, so you went on a date. It doesn't even have to be a romantic date. It could be a friend date. You and the other person perhaps frequented this bar on a regular basis once your relationship began to flourish. But then it all went to shit, and now you are both wondering: who gets to keep the bar? 

I ran into a guy I just broke up with at a bar this past weekend. I knew it was going to happen sooner rather than later because that little strip on Wyckoff Avenue off of the Jefferson stop is TINY and there are only so many neighborhood bars to go to. (Plus a friend of his is a bartender there and if there's one thing that friends of bartenders love, it's free drinks.) We only live two stops apart, but the bar is definitely more in his neck of the woods than mine. We both party in Bushwick, so shouldn't any bar around here be fair game? But then again, we went on our first date at this bar. I'd never been there before. Should I stop going there just because he started going there first? Then there's the whole bartender friend thing. I like the bartender friend. I do not feel awkward seeing him. But does he feel awkward seeing me? Does he think I'm stalking my ex? Does he think to himself, what is she doing here? 

All of these things were on my mind upon going back to the bar for the first time since we broke up. I was having a cocktail with my girl Kelly, and we thought we were home free. But then he appeared. Out of fucking NOWHERE. Seeing him for the first time since it ended was awkward as fuck and it made me sad. It was a night-ruiner, but I steeled myself and resolved that I would not lose this bar in the divorce! Those margaritas? That rad mac and cheese dish? Yeah, I don't think so. Get used to it, yo. Move over, I'm not going anywhere. I do suppose that the laws of bar ownership dictate that this bar is his for the keeping, but, like I've been saying, the laws of bar ownership are bullshit. This is a public space, y'all!

I guess running into somebody you don't really want to run into is part of the risk you take when you refuse to relinquish a bar you once shared. However, we are all adults, and as time goes on things gradually get less awkward. One day maybe you won't even care or notice that the other person is there. Maybe you'll even have a drink and shoot the shit with them for a while. But there is a more complicated element to sharing a bar with someone, and that is the memory of you being there with that person. Maybe you made out all night at the dark end of the bar or played drunk scrabble or crammed into the photobooth to take stupid pictures, or maybe you had a horrible fight at that table right over there, the table you will never ever ever sit at again because of all the awful vibes emanating from it. These kinds of things make me very wistful. Returning to the bar sometimes feels like returning to a crime scene. Some of these memories always make me want to come back to the scene. At times, some of them also make me want to run away.

***

In the end, nothing good can really come of claiming a bar as one's territory. It only makes things weird and awful. Instead of "owning" a bar, we should just love it. It's nobody's bar but it's here for everyone, and aren't we all just trying to have a good time? Cheers to that! Now drink up, fools.

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Fast Food Disasters: When Hunger, Drunkenness, and Despair Collide

On monday night I was so hungry and toasted and tired and angry that I went to McDonald's. I "ate my feelings." I even got bacon on my Quarter Pounder. I ate it on my stoop despite the fact that it was raining a little. I sat there and shoved a burger and fries into my face. I didn't even care that maybe my food was getting wet. It was a fast food disaster. A minor fast food disaster, but a fast food disaster nonetheless.

You may be wondering what the difference is between simply eating fast food and having a fast food disaster. Well, I'll tell you. Whenever you are on the go during your busy day and only have time to pop into whatever eating establishment is closest and most convenient to get a quick bite, that is no disaster. To be sure, you are committing an act of violence upon your body by ingesting this food. Sorry, as awful as it sounds, it's the truth. However, there is nothing nihilistic and/or inherently ridiculous about what you have just done. A fast food eating experience is elevated into a disaster when the following elements come together:

1. INTOXICATION

You normally don't eat fast food, but now you want fast food really, really, really badly because you are WASTED and it seems like a great idea because you are hungry. Really, really, really hungry. Which brings me to the next element:

2. STARVATION

You wouldn't feel this way if you had eaten a proper meal before going to all those bars you just went to. You would have been able to afford to do both were you not working a shitty job, and you wouldn't feel so shitty about your shitty job if you hadn't been working there for as long as you had. Hence:

3. DESPAIR

Nothing matters, guys. Let's get two Big Macs and a giant dolphin tank-sized cup of Sprite. I don't even care how fat and/or constipated this will make me feel in the morning.

There you have it: the trifecta of badness. Prepare yourself, for you are about to embark onto some epic meal time shit.  I think that fast food disasters are the eating equivalent to binge drinking. The glee with which you will devour your food will disturb you in the morning. But, as is the case with many wild nights, it will also make you laugh your ass off. Or could it be that are we laughing to keep from crying?

I first recognized that fast food disasters were an actual thing right after Hurricane Sandy hit. As you recall, there was no subway service for a few days and we had to take the bus everywhere. Which is fine- I love the bus. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, I'd been drinking for hours with some friends of mine in South Williamsburg. The fucked-up nature of the storm and all of the havoc it wreaked drove us to drink, but we also overindulged because we were all going completely stir-crazy. When the night finally wound down, I walked to Borinquen Place to get the B60 bus home. That's when I saw it: The golden arches. That's when I realized: I am fucking HUNGRY and goddammit, I refuse to dip back into the vat of homemade lentil soup that i've been subsisting on for the past two days. 

So, I went inside and ordered food. I didn't go too crazy: I got a double cheeseburger and jammed out of there. I walked to the bus stop and what do you know, there's the B60! There's the B60... and it's pulling away. NOOOOO I thought, and I ran like a bastard. Busses are slow, right? They are hulking, lumbering pieces of machinery. Surely I could sprint five blocks or whatever ridiculous short distance that the average bus travels before it stops again.

Well, as you can guess, I wasn't as capable of this as I thought. I almost made it, but then it pulled away again. Undeterred, I kept running, hoping to catch it at the next stop. Again: failure. I gave up. I sat on a stoop with my burger. Before I bit into it, I took a moment to reflect on my life. I had just drunkenly run after a bus with a sack of fast food in my hand. Something about it seemed/seems very gross to me. I need to make some changes, I thought, sinking my teeth into my delicious/terrible/delicious burger.

Predictably, those changes I planned on making did not end up happening. A few months later, after drunk shopping at Brooklyn Night Bazaar and paying a visit to a friend off the Gates stop on the J, starvation set in. I was with my best girl, Kelly. We wanted fried chicken but fried chicken was nowhere to be found. Hark: in the distance we saw a- you guessed it- MCDONALD'S FRANCHISE. Jesus Christ, they are everywhere and I am doomed. Anyway, we approached this reprehensible mecca of crap and were devastated to discover that they were only serving people who were getting drive-through. Even though we knew it would be fruitless, we walked up to the microphone and tried to get somebody's attention. Of course, we were ignored. "Now what?" we wondered. But not for long: a green SUV pulled up beside us. The driver's window rolled down and a guy leaned out and asked us what we wanted. He offered to order it for us from his car so we could eat. Kelly and I high-fived and told the dude what we wanted. We gave him our money and hung out next to the car while he pulled up to the necessary windows.

As we waited for our food, K and I both agreed on something: this was the stupidest thing we had ever done.

While we were in line, a group of gay dudes approached us on foot. They were also hungry and about to have a fast food disaster that was on another level (you'll see what I mean momentarily). "How did you guys do that?" they asked. "We tried to order but nobody paid attention to us."

We explained to them that they needed to find somebody in a car to help them out as we had done. They were like, "okay," and went to the back of the line to wait for somebody to pull up. Meanwhile, Kelly and I got our food, thanked our guardian angel, and sat down on the curb next to a giant dumpster. Yeah: a dumpster. We reiterated to one another that this was, by far, the dumbest thing we'd ever done. Then we dove into our 20-piece Chicken McNuggets/Double Cheeseburger/large Coke/large fries with a level of gusto that some might find unsettling.

In the middle of gorging on all this shit, we spied the gay dudes walking across the parking lot towards us. The guy who was the most wasted was leading the pack. "Please!" he called, "there is nobody pulling up to the window! I'm so hungry!"

"Ummm-"

"PLEASE JUST LET ME HAVE A FRENCH FRY! JUST ONE FRENCH FRY! PLEASE, JUST ONE!"

"No way, get your own!" said Kelly. "We worked hard for these fries!"

The dude was pleading and pleading as his friends began leading him away and mouthing apologies to us behind his back. The despair was palpable. I suppose we could have given him a french fry but quite frankly it kind of freaked us out how desperate he was. Like I said before, these dudes had fallen into a fast food disaster that had eclipsed our own. The only thing worse than eating a shit-ton of fast food while wasted is not eating ANY fast food while wasted and hating life because of it. Getting led away by your friends has got to be the cherry on top of the whole thing. Oh well. I suppose they probably didn't feel as shitty as we did the next morning. I had to go to work. Needless to say, it proved to be a rough shift.

Luckily, these are the only two (three?) fast food disasters of this caliber that I have experienced. It is getting dicey, though. I live right next to a twenty-four hour McDonald's. I have been going through this phase where I suck at going to the grocery store. As you can see, this is a recipe for a fast food disaster. It is up to me to stop the cycle. Today i dropped forty bucks at Food Bazaar in the hope that I will stop being lazy and get back into the habit of making my own meals in the comfort of my own home. When I wake up in the morning after having been out late the night before, I sometimes feel badly about the things I've done: kicking over traffic cones, falling down, sending hostile text messages, flirting with people I wouldn't normally flirt with, breaking things, losing things- all of this does not happen often, and when it does I get over it fairly quickly, but it still feels kind of shitty to think about for the first half of the day. I am still young, and I feel that I am not doing anything wrong. However, if I can eliminate something that makes me feel gross in the morning, I think it's worth it. Instant gratification proves not to be so gratifying in the end, and how much longer would it actually take for me to just get my ass home and make a sandwich? I'm happy to say that I did as much last night. Not bad for three in the morning, I'd say. 

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Another Long Walk

"my favorite thing is to go where i've never been."

-diane arbus

Last summer I went on a walk. Originally, it was my intention to walk from the apartment building I lived in at the time to another building, one that I almost lived in. The reason I didn't end up living in this building is because the roof was caving in, as we discovered on the day we signed the lease. It was very rainy that day and there was water cascading down the staircase when my almost-roommates entered the building. (We never spoke to one another again after the debacle was resolved.) I decided to take a walk over there to reflect on the whole episode, maybe take some pictures and file them away for a future piece of writing.

It took me about twenty minutes to walk to the building. I found, to my disappointment, that the sight of the building did not rouse any significant emotion in me. I took some photographs and it all felt completely perfunctory, completely arbitrary. It was very hot that day, but it was dry heat, and the wind was hot, too, and it felt good. I didn't want to go home. I wanted to see more than this building, to which I never managed to attach myself in any significant way. I decided to keep walking and to keep taking pictures. The possibility of me getting lost was real because I did not have an iPhone back then and plus my sense of direction is not always so good. But, I suppose one's sense of adventure sometimes prevails over one's sense of direction.

I walked all the way from Wilson avenue to Bedford avenue. All told, it took me about three hours, what with stopping to take pictures and also to drink a beer at Bodega. I wasn't entirely sure that I knew the way, but I found the way. It was all very significant for me, but even now I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it was the thrill of finally fully realizing where I was and how to get to where I wanted to go. One half of it was based on what I knew, the other on intuition. Whatever, it's the subject for another post. What I want to talk about in THIS post is my latest long walk.

On saturday I woke up X-TREMELY hungover and for some reason I thought it would be a great idea to get a giant iced coffee and a Double Cheeseburger from McDonald's for breakfast (???????????). After that I watched several hours of Arrested Development on Netflix, and then I decided to take a nap. After my nap, I was like, "okay, this is getting ridiculous." I wanted to take a walk, but I didn't want to go on the same walk I'd gone on last summer. I wanted to walk somewhere I'd never walked before. I decided to walk to where Newtown Creek begins (ends?) in Bushwick. I packed up my camera and my smokes and began my journey from my new home in Ridgewood. HIT IT:

This is in Ridgewood, somewhere on Cypress Avenue. It has occured to me that I should be taking notes as to exactly where I shot all of these things. Anyway, I wanted to get a better angle on this tasteful garden decoration but I heard somebody open the door and I got scared and ran away.

Still in Ridgewood. 

Super kewl sign for a bar that is no more. I wish somebody could reopen it and restore the sign but that would equal more white people which would equal shittier rent so oh well.

(*not actually johnson avenue)

Eventually Cypress Avenue turned into Johnson Avenue. The tree-lined street gave way to a vast corridor of lofts and warehouses. I've never extensively walked down Johnson Avenue before. Crossing the street was stressing me out because there are like, huge trucks everywhere:

Well, these trucks are parked. But you get the idea: THEY'RE EVERYWHERE and they can't wait to to try to RUN YOU OVER.

I like graffiti on trucks because it's the closest thing to subway art that we'll ever see in this city right now. Having said this, I must admit that I am not a huge enthusiast of street art. However, whenever I'm walking around with my camera I always feel that I can't NOT take pictures of it when i see it. 

After traipsing down Johnson, I had to make a left on Varick Street, which smelled like unholy garbage. It was very desolate. I decided that it might be a good idea to take my headphones off, despite the fact that I was walking around in broad daylight. Perhaps a bit overly cautious, but whatever. Anyway, it would be a while before I actually saw newtown creek. Until I hit Metropolitan Avenue, the entire left side of the street was a "no trespassing" zone. The Department of Sanitation had a monopoly on that shit.

Walking down Varick was not so interesting. Not much to be seen besides sanitation vehicles, mostly-empty parking lots, and a bunch of industrial-looking buildings that obscured the view of the creek. These were the only two things of immediate interest on Varick Street:

1. THIS SICK SET-UP

Nothin' like some indoor furniture parked all up in an outdoor setting. I support this.

2. THIS DEAD RAT

It scared the shit out of me. I had just finished taking the preceding picture when I turned around to go on my way. As it turned out, there was a rat sitting directly in my path. I almost screamed (I hate them so much), but then I realized it was dead and instead of screaming I was just like, "oh my god!" I did what any sane human being does when confronted with a dead animal: I took a thousand pictures of it. I kept having to inch closer to the rat to get a better shot. Some guy drove by on his bike and probably thought I was a psycho. Even though the rat was dead I was still afraid of it.  Every time a car drove by the flies went crazy. Look how bloated that thing is! Gross. I think it was a boy rat.

Anyway, I walked and walked and walked and walked and I began to think that I was in the wrong place and would never see Newtown Creek. But then I reached Metropolitan Avenue.

BOOM. There it was. I was kind of disappointed to find that the Gowanus Canal is way smellier. Whatever. North Brooklyn wins in so many more ways.

Newtown Creek: not much to see in the end. I was not even very psyched about possibly becoming radioactive because I probably already am, having dated a dude who lives in Gowanus. Radioactivity: OVER. LAME. Next!

Speaking of next... what was next? I was "helluv" hungry. I decided that the only thing that could save me was a Mother's burger. But first...

Haha. Just kidding! Can you imagine!?*

(*Contrary to what the above statement may imply, the author admits to having been to pumps and enjoying herself kinda sorta a lot-a.)

Anyway.

On my way to Mother's I saw a potted plant on top of a minivan.

A mechanic wanted to be a photo star.

And I found out who to call whenever I need A REAL GOOD PLUMBER.

I was simply famished by the time I got to Mother's! I ordered a veggie burger and a Mexican Coke. I applauded myself for not ordering beer. When I was sufficiently sated, I thought about how I'd get home. The thought of riding the subway sounded repulsive to me. The previous day was so rainy and it was too beautiful outside to possibly go underground. Even though I knew my feet/legs would hurt by the end, I decided to walk back to Ridgewood.

So, I walked all the way home, all along that path. Metropolitan to Humboldt to Grand to Bushwick to Siegel to Bogart to Flushing to Wyckoff. I like walking down Siegel Street because I like to pretend I'm in another state. Sometimes it makes me feel like I'm in Indiana.

(*this is from last year's long walk)

The last thing of interest I came upon was a Harley Davidson rally at Cobra Club:

Why didn't I go inside!? I vow to never overlook another Bushwick Harley Davidson rally EVER AGAIN, cross my heart and hope to die.

And then I turned onto St. Nicholas and walked the rest of the way home.

I always feel the need to close out any piece of nonfiction writing with some big lesson about life, but the only thing I have to say about all of this is that WALKING IS AWESOME and that you should walk as long and as far as you possibly can whenever you can. Walk someplace you have never been before! It will be worth it, even if the only interesting thing you happen upon is a rat carcass. You can get some real good thinking done on a long walk, don't you know.

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popgun booking

oh, sweet. i can see SLAVVE and JIIIIIM all in ONE NIGHT. BITCHIN'.

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I MOVED

Ah, moving. It is never not stressful, but sometimes it can be stressful and exciting. The degree of excitement lies within the circumstance. Perhaps you are ready for a change and are switching apartments purely of your own volition. Or, conversely, you are moving because you have no choice but to move. I found myself on the latter end of this spectrum a couple months ago when my then-roommate and I found out that our landlord was planning on selling our apartment, leaving us no choice but to find a new place to live. It was then that the dread of finding a place to live in New York City hit me for the first time. All I wanted was something comfortable. Judging from how hard it had been to achieve the level of comfort I’d had at the apartment I’d been living in, I thought I’d never find that comfort again.

I had a couple of leads that fell through. I had a nervous breakdown about it at work and cried, cried, cried. I resorted to combing Craigslist, where I would try to find an apartment that I would share with the least-freaky freaks I could find. Everybody is a freak on Craigslist. They are either prudish neat freaks or slovenly weird freaks. I resigned myself to the fact that I was doomed.

But thank god for the internet and thank god for my boyfriend, who sent smoke signals out over the internet that were seen by Maud, a coworker of mine who needed to move by April 1^st as well. We now have a super rad apartment RIGHT NEAR THA L TRAIN. As soon as the deal was sealed, I finally started feeling super excited about my move and super over my old apartment. As I packed all my shit into a thousand banker’s boxes, all I could think about was what I hated about it and how I couldn’t wait to leave. When I finally got all my shit out of there and was taking one last look at the place, I could only think about the things that I loved about living there. I made a list. Let’s start with the things I hated.

PART ONE: THE BAD

1. THERE IS NOTHING AROUND THERE

Except Family Dollar. Fuck those people who robbed the old Silent Barn because that was the only worthwhile shit within walking distance of my house. Since moving to Ridgewood, my mood has improved about 10,000 percent. There are STORES and FOOD TRUCKS and PEOPLE walking around. If I want to go to brunch, I can take a nice walk down Wyckoff Avenue to Café Ghia. Shit, there’s even a 24-hour McDonald’s if you’re into that. Which I am, but only while intoxicated.

2. THEY GOT RID OF THE BAT CAVE

What the fuck, y’all? I don’t know what this used to be- I am assuming it was some sort of bar. One day I was walking down the street and was very disturbed to find that somebody had painted over the sign, which was one of my favorite idiosyncrasies of the neighborhood. Why had I never bothered to take a picture of it to show my future children!? Oh well. Some person from the internet did it for me. Thank god for Google Images.

Anyway. The space of the former Bat Cave has been empty ever since the sign was painted over. I can only hope that they are doing some work inside to make it into another bar because as I said before there is nothing around that neighborhood except for Family Dollar.

3. MY SHITTY NEIGHBOR DID PULL-UPS IN THE HALL

At first, I was indifferent to the pull-up bar that my neighbor had installed in the doorway of his apartment. Whatever. That’s kind of weird and bro-y but okay if you’re into that then who am I to be a hater. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, dude, why don’t you join a gym? You own the apartment. Surely you can afford a gym membership? Everybody who visited my apartment commented on and would make fun of the pull-up bar. The ridiculousness of it became fully apparent to me when I realized that my neighbor seemed to think that since he owned the apartment he owned the hallway, too. Every day there was at least one of the following clustered outside his door: sneakers and/or boots (at least two pairs), glass/plastic recycling, cardboard recycling, a tub of car litter, and a bike pump. JESUS. Can we say FIRE HAZARD? However, all that pales in comparison to what came next.

One day I was relaxing as much as one can relax while reclining on the least expensive couch available at Target. I heard the door to my neighbor’s house open. He was blasting Lana del Rey really, really loud. That wasn’t my problem. My problem began when I realized he was doing pull-ups. At first, all I could hear was heavier breathing, work-out breathing, if you will. He went inside for two minutes. Then he came back out and resumed doing pull-ups. This occurred several more times. The breathing turned into grunting. The grunting turned into... I DON’T EVEN KNOW. All I know was that it was LOUD and gross. Lana del Rey singing “Blue Jeans” in the background made it even worse. Yeah, I get it, dude. You’re a sensitive guy who is still manly. That’s great. Now get out of my freakin’ hallway. Because, believe it or not, OTHER PEOPLE LIVE HERE and they don’t want to be hearing your work-out sounds while trying to read/write on their Target sofas.

4. IT WAS TOO EXPENSIVE AND THE HEAT WAS ALWAYS BUSTED

Actually, that’s not quite true. The heat was working when our evil landlord decided that he wanted to sell the apartment. As rich people spun through our apartment with a real estate broker with a Louis bag and Restylane-filled lips (that was way harsh, Tai), our apartment was nice and toasty. My room was always very drafty no matter what, though. It was the one huge drawback from having the room with windows.

5. THE LANDLORD NEVER CALLED ME BACK

Even when some jackass broke my toilet while we were throwing a party. Come fix my shit, this is serious business! It sucked to be ignored all the time. I guess the thing that bummed me out the most about the apartment was the bad vibes I got from the management company. True, our apartment was nice and not-falling-apart, and I was thankful for that considering my previous two apartments. But there is something very depressing about living somewhere that belongs to a man who is never in his office, who doesn’t care, who doesn’t like women. A man who pulls the rug out from under you! Evil, evil man. Good riddance.

***

Well, that was the bad. I always think of the bad before I think of the good whenever I move. It’s easier to think of the bad, to focus on the things that you didn’t like in order to like another apartment better. That brings me to the next part of this post:

PART TWO: WHAT I LOVED

my old room

I won’t go into much detail, because it was nebulous, dreamlike. I remember good things the way one experiences happiness- in fleeting impressions. I don’t think it was the apartment itself that I will miss. Instead, I will miss the life I lived inside of it, even if that life was at times a huge mess. In semi-chronological order, here are the things I will never forget:

The sense of relief I felt upon getting out of Crown Heights and finally moving to Bushwick, where I’d always wanted to live during all of the time I’ve resided in this city.

Everything we ever did on the roof. Laughing with friends uncontrollably until dawn, drinking far too much, listening to music and dancing and streaking (!) and not having any neighbors catch me.

Sleeping in my old room with no windows and leading the exquisitely miserable and desperate lifestyle that I continue to romanticize.

Moving into the room with windows after my horrible roommate moved out and my awesome roommate moved in.

My 25^th birthday house party, our housewarming party, and Andrea’s birthday party.

Hosting the M1 Eve sign-making party. Solidarity forever!

Those pussy willows I put on the living room table last spring.

The breeze blowing into the front room. Waking up to tree branches heavy with green leaves.

The lull of the B20 bus chugging down Decatur Street. Hearing laundry turn in the dryer and water churning in the dishwasher.

Having the coolest, most non-judgmental roommate ever.

Loving the man that I do in my bed, in my room.

The last morning I spent in my room. The pink and orange sunlight and the mourning dove cooing in the tree at quarter ‘til seven.

I suppose the good outweighs the bad, yes?

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my sibling is talented!

my san antonio-based sister and her man have created an absurdist sketch comedy web series entitled lost in texas. you can view all of the episodes here. i've posted the most recent one for your enjoyment. 

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photos: roof show at 1085 willoughby, 8/25/12

who doesn't love watching cool bands on a cool roof? click to enlarge and all that.

DISCLAIMER: i think/hope/pray i got all of the band names right. if you, dear reader, find that i've been mistaken in any instance, please do not hesitate to let management (i.e. ME) know.

garage sail

czech neck (members of video daughters and teen demon)

heirloom

???? (plus crowd)

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