Chihuly at the Botanical Garden

Dale Chihuly has an exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden until October 29th. If you have a chance to make it up to the Bronx, I highly recommend it.



The Sun. If only the real sun had come out.



You can see how much it rained from the swollen Bronx River.



The Garden of Glass right about the Rose Garden.




The Botanicals Gardens are impressive in their own right, especially the roses.

But the real show was in the Conservatory.




The Amathyst Tower outside the entrance.



Inspired by the Japanese art of flower arranging.




More installations.



Can you guess which spears are inside and which are outside.

My favorite were the boats.




I took 102 pictures, maybe I'll post more tomorrow.

Team France: World Police

Last night, Stephen Colbert quipped "Ceci n'est pas un peace-keeping force" about France's failure to institute a peace-keeping force in Lebanon. Initially France pledged the bulk of the 15,000-strong force which along with the Lebanese army would: (a) eradicate Hizbullah in southern Lebanon, (b} create a lasting peace between Lebanon and Israel or (c) leave after several soldiers had been killed by Hizbullah/ Israel/ friendly fire and leave the Lebanese army to do what is wasn't able to do/ didn't want to do in the past twenty years. If you picked c, you are clearly not a member of the UN or the EU. In any event they have only contributed 2000 soldiers.

Magritte painted a picture of a pipe and labelled it Ceci n'est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe). Because in semiotic language, it is not a pipe, but a representation of a pipe.

In the same way that France has not created a peace-keeping force, so much as it has created a farce of a peace-keeping force. Farce, along with cheese-eating and surrender, is France's true talent.

Resignation

I've been bad. I haven't updated here in a month and a half. I forgot the password. I was thinking about abandoning this blog-thing altogether. I'd begun to feel anxious and frustrated. I thought I lost my voice, but really I just had nothing to say.
I had a job that was sucking my soul out. That's why I didn't write. "I feel numb. I go home at night and sit on the couch watching tv till I pass out." Day after day after day. That's sounds really depressing, but I wasn't suicidal or anything. I was just nothing. I just didn't give a shit about anything.
But yesterday, I quit. I got a new job, by what I can only describe as a stroke of luck and a sign of divine mercy. So I'm back.
Awesome things about my new (it's actually my internship from last semester, but now in job form) job:
I can wear jeans
I will not have to toil in a cubicle
I can take a lunch break
I like my coworkers and they like me (also they are not androids)
Half day fridays

It's a lot more interesting and I get to work on creative projects. I just have to suck it up and get through these next two weeks.

This has inspired me to download way to many songs. As much as I often disagree with Pitchfork (especially abou their disdain for Ryan Adams, but that's a whole other post) about current music, I agree almost whole heartedly with them about music from the past.

The Giglio

In celebration of Italy's win of the World Cup, I and my friends A and A went to the annual Feast of the Giglio. New York is home to several feasts put on to commemorate Italian saints. The most famous one is the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. But another great feast takes place in Williamsburg, where a 65ft. statue is carried through the streets.

The feast is in honor of San Paolino the patron saint of Nola who saved the town from Arab invaders. If you look closely you can see the arab invader on the platform.
Carnival games and rides are staples of feasts in the tri-state area, but my favorite part is the food.

Sausage and Peppers, Pizza and Kebabs and other crazy delicious street food.

Mmm. Meat on the grill. A classic smell of summer.
My favorite are Zeppoles.

Delicious deep fried batter covered with powdered sugar. Heart attack inducer? Maybe. Heaven in a paper bag? Definitely.

Working Girl

I've been wondering for a while now how to broach the subject of my employment. I am generally against writing about work. As if we haven't learned enough times already, it will only get you fired. And for all the funny, weird and annoying things that happen to me, when I sit down to write about them they lose some of their luster. As if under the florescent ligths and grays walls of the cublicles, everything is amplified, but in the cold clear light of day the same slights and the bizarre conversations are cut back down to size.
John Lennon said life is what happens when we're to busy making other plans, I would just amend that to say life is what happens when we're not at work. I took my job because I believed in the mission of the organization. At college graduation, all of the speeches encouraged us to use our extensive educations, prodigious intelligence and massive student debt to change the world.
A nice sentiments, but how does one go about doing that? A few weeks ago, I read an article in the times that quoted a resident of the rapidly shrinking coastal islands of Louisiana as saying, "I used to think I could change the world, but now I realize, it's changed me."

Lady? in the Water

Elijah Wood? Is that you?

Resolution

I don't make New Year's resolutions. I don't care to lose weight or stop biting my nails. But it's come time to make a change. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I know that it's been negatively affecting my life. My family hates it; my friends make fun of me. Strangers stare at me on the street. It's ruins my appearance and it ruins my reputation.
Confessions of a sloppy eater. I've gotten grease stains on my clothes and crumbs in my hair. I've walked around with powdered sugar from zeppoles all over my shirt. (Hey they don't call it a shelf for nothing.) It was funny when I was a little girl. Inconsequential when I was a teenager. Understandable when I was a college student. But now? It's gross.
The last straw came today when I got a sandwich at lunch. I couldn't wait of course, so I ate it walking down the street. Only to realize three minutes later that I was getting big greasy drops of olive oil on my pants accentuated by ciabbatta flour dust. I had to walk around the rest of the day like this. People looked at me funny.
From now on, I'm going to sit down and eat my dinner like a grown up.

Why the South scares me.

I was accosted by a group of southern kids in Washington Square Park today. They were taking a survery of some sort. Despite the fact that my eyes were looking at a book and I appeared, by all accounts, to be reading not one but two of these kids came up to me and wanted to ask me some questions. The first time I said I was busy and the second time I said I was reading. This kid had a serious southern accent that I had previously only heard on tv, and part of me wanted to believe he was putting it on. But his big blue eyes were lit up with what can only be described as the light of the Lord. There was this flicker of confusion on his face, like reading was clearly not a good enough excuse to not talk to a stranger. I was curious about what these questions pertained to, but not curious enough to be berated for being a liberal, non-believing, fag-lover. (Ok I have no idea if that is what they were all about, but I automatically distrust anyone who lives outside of a 75-mile radius of New York. Who do you think elected Bush? Twice.)
Any way upon coming home I decided to do a google search to see if I could turn up anything. One of the kids was wearing an Auburn University shirt, so I decided to start there. I couldn't find anything about a survey, but I did find this. Ok, the guy who wrote it is seems like a nice enough chap, but that's not going to stop me from making fun of it.
First of all they fell into the Manhattan Apts trap. Everyone I know who has gone to this agency has had a nightmare experience. Everyone. But it is kinda funny that they are shocked that realtors charge a fee. $3000 is pretty steep, but no one I know even complains about realtors fees anymore. We're just so used to being raped up the ass like that. (Maybe that's how we become fag-lovers in the first place?)
Also college students need it explained to them that a train line has two tracks that go in opposite directions? Really?
The best way to get a job in New York? Southern Charm. Unless that's a code word for blowjobs and connections, I'm not sure it's going to take you far.
But the do's and dont's list is the best part.
Don’t make any jokes regarding race or sexuality. You never know
You never know!? You never know!? There are so many things wrong with this, I don't know where to start. Yes, clearly the reason not to make racist, homophobic jokes in the workplace is because you might offend one of those n*****s, kikes or fags. But it's totally cool behind closed doors with your cracker buddies. And again, college students need to be told this? So much for southern charm.
Don’t interrupt the producer while he is having an important conversation with the DP to ask if the thing we’re having tomorrow is a party or a meeting.
I assume this one comes from personal experience.

First We take Manhattan

Today was the first day off I've had in close to a month. I had a perfectly nice plan to go into the city and see the new Leonard Cohen documentary, aptly titled Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man playing at Film Forum. I have a hard time telling New York's arthouse theaters apart, and it was only after I arrived that I realized, I had never before seen a movie at Film Forum before. Because they have been, without fail, sold out. But I arrived with forty-five minutes to spare and figured that I could run my one errand of the day, going to the bank, after I bought tickets. Instead when I plonked my debit card down on the counter I was told that they only took cash, but there was an atm around the corner. I figured I could run to the bank and be back in time to make the movie, but of course when I got back (all of twenty minutes later) it was sold out I had to buy a ticket for the next showing, two and a half hours later. If I had had a book with me this would have been fine, I could find a coffeshop and kill two and a half hours no problem. But I didn't.
So instead I got a delicious beet and goat cheese sandwich at the Sullivan Street Bakery and read a few articles in the Times Styles Section. Afterwards, I decided to head over to the river but was confronted by two unexpected occurences: rain and 16 year old divos. The rain I could have dealt with, but 200 hundred 16 year olds in last Halloween's Rainbow Brite costumes was another matter. I walked west along Charles Street, only to get sucked into the vortex of the Gay Pride Parade and spend the next two hours wending my way back down to Houston Street. Somewhere around Christopher Street and Washington Street, I got stabbed by a kebab skewer in the crush of the crowd.
By the time I got to my seat at the theater, I was irritated and exhausted. The movie fortunately was amazing. It was not only a musical retrospective but also a spritual journey, I felt inspired and transformed by the time the credit's rolled. I've long respected Cohen's song-writing ability, but I like covers of his songs more than his own versions. The performances, which had all been taped at a concert last year at Sydny's Opera House, were interspersed by interviews with Cohen and the musicians participating in the concert. Once I got over the interviews interupting the music, I fell in love with the movie.
On my way home, I sated my craving for Mexican food at Le Esquina with a avocado con queso torta. The service was ridiculously amateur with two hipsters manning the counter. The boy hipster spilled my change all over the place when handing it to me and didn't seem to notice. While waiting for my food, I watched as domestic hipsters tried furtively to gain access to the "speakeasy" downstairs and foreign hipsters confusedly tried to order food. The sandwich itself was a party in my mouth.

I thought you were from somewhere else.

I took a long two-hour walk today all through Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Boreum Hill, Cobble Hill, Gowanus, Park Slope and Prospect Heights and then finally back to Clinton Hill. When I was two blocks from my apartment, this crazy women asked me for the time. Seriously she had a beard, no joke. I told her the time, and then we both looked up the street to the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, which was showing the wrong time.
"You can never depend on it."
"Yeah..."
"I need to know the time, because I have a phone call to make."
"Uh huh"
She had come up to me in the middle of the crosswalk and by this time I'd crossed the street, but she kept talking to me.
"Where are you from?"
"Here"
"New York? You seem like you're from somewhere else. Some other state."
I keep walking up the street, and she keeps following me, trailling me by a few feet.
"When's your birthday?"
"October"
"October what?"
"Sixth"
"Libra. My friend's a Libra. My dear brother's birthday is October 1st."
I'm not even trying to respond anymore. It's dusk, like the French say, entre le chien et le loup.
"I haven't seen him for twenty-seven years. He got married twenty-six years ago and the last time I saw him was the year before that. He lives in Nassau. He won't come into the city and I won't go into the country. I thought you were from somewhere else."
I'm starting to get nervous, because we're around the corner from my apartment and I don't want this crazy woman to know where I live. But just in front of the library she stops walking abruptly, like there's an invisible wall only she can see.
I don't know what it is about me, but I've always had this ability to attract the walking wounded, the lost souls. Yesterday, I started talking to a woman, about the architecture of tenement houses. Somehow my art history major at NYU came up.
"Oh!" She said, like I had just revealed my prediliction for eating glass. I was a little taken aback.
"I know how smart you are! Do you know what you learned? I'll tell you what you learned. You learned you how to read people," she said ticking them off on her fingers. "You learned how to look at things, you learned how to analyze people."
"Yeah..." I was dumb. I felt like I was having my palm read.
I thought I had majored in art history because I liked the pretty pictures. I thought I was from here.

The Never-Ending Story

I have now discovered that when I bought my new cell phone two weeks ago, I was also charged for an extended two year contract and a bunch of accessories I neither want or need. Uuuuggghh.

In cheerier less tedious news, I moved into my new apartment. It's fabuuuulous. Pictures to follow.

Let them eat 401(k)ake

Boy, the NY Times sure likes giving advice. A few weeks ago they had an article about the rise of unpaid internships and their general worthlessness. If it doesn't pay; it doesn't teach you anything, that article proposed. Upon reading this article, at my first real post-grad job, I thought it was bs. I've had both paid and unpaid jobs and internships, and I didn't think how much I took away from the experience had anything to do with how much monetary compensation I received. Besides I've learned tons of great job skills during my internships in college. I can do amazing things with spreadsheets and I've mastered the art of the business casual email. The tasks that I do at my "real job" don't vary greatly from what I did at my "fake jobs," but something fundamental has changed.
In high school I had a job to pay for trips to the mall and cheesecake at the diner. In college I had an on-campus job to make beer money. Now I have to pay for my own rent and food, which in New York, don't come cheap.
At all my previous jobs, I tried to ignore the office politics. My mantra was not to get involved in personalities. I could act like I was above the fray, because I wasn't a part of it. My internship would end at the end of the semester or the summer, and it's almost impossible to get fired from a part-tiime job as long as you're a warm body. But the "real world" is different. All of sudden it matters if people like you, and if they're spreading rumours behind your back. It's like being back in the cafeteria in high school.
Thankfully the New York Times also has savings and retirement adivce to help the recent college grad actually escape the soul-sucking gray cubicle. The first two suggestions are prosaic, at best. Drink the sludge at the office, instead of getting Starbucks, and quit smoking, not because it's bad for you, but because it's expensive. (Although the lung cancer will keep you from worrying about the state of your 401(k), since you probably wont' make it to retirement age.)
But my favorite peice of advice is to sock $325 away in your 401(k) every month. After paying my rent and utilities, I have $521 to pay for cable, internet, phone, groceries, clothes, cleaning supplies, toiletries, laundry, dry cleaning, transportation, and grooming. Forget restaurants, bars, concerts, museums, furniture, books, music, pets and travelling, Wait wasn't this the same newspaper that just told me I'm a complete ignoramous with no knowledge of global affairs or cultures, and I should get dear old mom and dad to bankroll the Grand Tour?

Miss Embarrassed

I actually had this conversation with a little boy today.

"What's your name?"
"Miss Baritz"
"Miss Embarrassed? Do they call you that because you're embarrassed?"
"No, that's not my name."
"Can I have your number?"

Fin.

Phone Follies, Part Two

If I have learned anything from this experience, its not to lose a phone in a cab. At least I'm not this guy.
When I called 311, a lovely group of people who will listen to you bitch but not do anything in anyway to help you, I filed a police report and was given the numbers of the two police precincts in New York that collect items lost in cabs. One of which never answers the phone and the other which never seems to have any lost items in their possession
On Saturday, certain I would never see my phone again (RIP) I headed to the Verizon store to see how I could replace it. The customer service rep had told me very helpfully and completely falsely that sometimes Verizon stores carried reburished phones and would give them away to replace lost phones.
First stop, the Verizon store on Union Square, where I was not received like a customer, but more like a crackhead or a subway rat.
"We don't do that," the girl in the store said. "I don't know of any stores in New York that do that," she answered when I asked about a refurbished phone. So what could I do? "You'd have to buy full retail," she said and continued to stand there. How do you expect to sell anyone anything if you don't show them any merchandise?
Second stop, the Verizon store in Circuit City on the other side of Union Square where I was completely ignored for a full half-hour and then told that I would get a better deal on a phone if I went to an independent wireless store. The rational? "the phone service providers don't make money off the phones, only the service." Which wold seem to support Verizon having better priced phones over Sketchy Cellphones down the street, but whatever, but I was soaked and exhausted, so I head off to 14th and 6th.
Third stop, Sketchy Cellphones (name changed to protect complete assholes.) I found the same model as my lost cellphone and was told that it would cost $200.
"But it retails for $180," I said and turned to leave.
"Okay, I'll give it to you for $170."
So I bought it, making losing the cellphone only the second dumbest thing I had done last week. Sketchy asked me I could pay for it in cash, even going so far as to tell me to go across the street to the atm and get cash and he'd waive the tax. While swiping my credit card, he actually answered his phone and had a conversation about how he was living rent free in his apartment by renting out the other rooms. Who would want to live with this douche bag?
When I took it out of the box, there were scratches on it and when I got home, I discovered that the phone was assigned another number and had numbers already stored in it. Plus, I couldn't activate the phone.
The receipt helpfully said no refunds. But I went back to Sketchy, where I was confronted by Muffin-Top. Whose solution was to call Verizon and let me talk to customer service again.
"Look, I don't want this phone. It's used, it has someone else's number on it and it doesn't work with my plan. Take it back."
"You can have a store credit."
"No I want a refund."
At this point I was shaking with rage. I've never been antagonized by store employees before but these gems came out of Muffin-Top's mouth:
"So what, you're just going to stand there for hours?" When I told her I wasn't leaving without a refund.
"Are you just going to stare at me like that?" When I decided to end a volley of "I want a refund." "We don't do that."
"I can't just take money out of the cash register. I have my own expenses." That's not how a refund works, retard.
Finally when I kept demanding she take the phone back, she tossed it off the counter and scribbled a "store credit" on the receipt.
It took a lot of self-restraint not to yell, "you're a fucking piece of shit" when I walked out the door.
I called my credit card to stop payment on the charge, but was told I'd have to wait because the charge was still pending.
Monday though I was on the war path. I filed complaints with both the Better Business Bureau and the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs, both of which offered consolation and a promise to fight the good fight. You're going down, Sketchy.
(Also, the second person I talked to at Verizon gave me a discount on a new cellphone, so I'm back in business. Call Me!)

Lost

So, last night on the way home in the cab I lost my cell phone. I was on my way home from a benefit at The Pierre, which was crazy fun, but I think it was that last glass of champagne that led to my distracted state and lost phone. I called it when I realized it was gone and it rang but no one picked up. Everytime I called it after that it just went to voicemail. I actually filed a police report, which trust me, I felt really stupid doing. I mean ok, someone steals your car or breaks into your house, you file a police report, but a cell phone? Anyway, I'm supposed to keep calling the NYPD lost and found to see if someone turns it in.
I'm trying to recover my numbers (I didn't even know my parent's home phone number and had to look it up), so if anyone reads this (Bueller? Bueller?) email me your number at victoria_at_nyu_dot_edu and I will send you my work cell phone back.

So Long, Bushwick

This is going to be my last weekend in Bushwick. I can't say I'm exactly sorry to go. On Monday the moving truck comes and all of my stuff will be put into storage for two weeks until I can move into my new apartment. I'm moving to a neighborhood that actually has stores and restaurants, banks and pharmacies. Delis that sell more than ossified cookies and rolling papers. When I first moved here, my dad asked me if I knew where to buy drugs and I did. But I still haven't found a clean supermarket that sells more than chips and rotten produce.
I won't miss the dirty dusty streets dotted with dog poo and chicken bones. I won't miss having to scrub my feet of ingrained dirt on days I wear flip flops. Least of all, I'll miss the old men yelling Mami at me and blowing exaggerated kisses. I was used to catcalls from living in Manhattan but all the learing leachery made me want to lock my self in my apartment and only emerge wearing a burka. I won't miss the strange smells that billow up to my window from my neighbors' kitchens; today I can't decide if it is a gas leak or rotten chicken liver. I won't miss the noise, either, from the hipsters on the roof or the distant roar of a PA system. Some nights I wonder if I hear cars backfiring or gun shots. Most nights I just turn the tv up and try not to think about it. Maybe I'll miss the crowing of the rooster at the slaughterhouse a few blocks down, but I won't miss the smell from all the chickens, geese and rabbits kept in small cages.
Now I have to run breathing in the exhaust from the BQE, in a couple of weeks I'll be close enough to Prospect Park to run there.
I never for one day forgot that I didn't belong here. Every walk to the corner, ever ascent up the stairs to the subway station; I felt as if I had two heads. The accusatory looks, the sidelong glances; I always felt as if I were an attraction at a zoo. The only thing that made it bearable was my daily escape into Manhattan.

The Circus

I swear this happened to me. The circumstances are vague, but the details are clear. One night, while I was living in Italy, I came upon a band of Gypsies. The Piazza de la Repubblica, normally sedate and heavily touristed, had turned into a swirl of sound and light. I saw the sparks from the fire, a block off, illuminating the silhouettes of the crowd. Closer, the beat of the drums seemed to pulse from the cobblestones. I was spellbound and walked toward the flame as if compelled. In the center was a barefoot girl, spinning to the music as if oblivious. She didn't look like the gypsy girls I saw at the bus stop with their torn clothes and bitter faces. In the red pulsing light she seemed superhuman, divorced from reality, gravity, convention. My heart beat to the rhythm, and the seconds seemed to slow, suspended in the thick, smoky air.
Could I live like that? Yesterday a distant memory; tomorrow an insubstantial dream. Could I loosen the chains that bound me to the earth? Would I live by my own dreams and find my own way?
I felt as I was turning head over heals. A breeze picked up and the light flickered. The dark wrapped itself closer around us and I turned to go home.

Usage

I'm no grammar saint. I make mistakes. I leave out apostrophes, misuse commas, but I proofread and ask myself if it is, indeed, too much. I smirk when I walk past a deli advertising "grocery's" or a store renting "video's." Today I saw a "goes" spelled "go's." Freshman year, I took a class during which we had to pass our rough drafts around and critique each other's work. I was too hung up on the sentence structure and punctuation to spend much time on the content. Forget "Writing the Essay," we needed "Writing the Sentence."
So today I was particularly disappointed by the essays Nicolas Kristoff chose to be the finalists for his "Come Document Devistation in Africa!" contest. As my sarcasm may suggest, I don't think much of this trip. I think it's akin to Oprah showing victims of car accidents who have had their faces burned off or allowing housewives to feel "the horror of the Holocaust" through the eyes of someone who experienced it. It's just pornography for the soul-dead. The winner even claims to want to "break people's hearts thoroughly."
I've often enjoyed and agreed with Kristof's articles, but this entire contest seems to be mis-guided. When announcing the contest, he alleged that American students, even those who study abroad, are sheltered and ignorant (my words.) Something about doing more drinking than studying, I believe. He encouraged all college students to take a gap year and travel the world and investigate other countries and cultures, supposedly to right perceived wrongs. A virtuous goal, no doubt, but the essays that were chosen as finalists hardly reflect it.
Instead they vacillate between a litany of complaints concerning childhoods marred by poverty and divorce and self-satisfied boasts of prior accomplishments including trespassing, reading newspapers and pissing oneself. I come away believing that mass media has so warped the general conscience of this country that we think any ripple or hiccup in our lives is a sign of insurmontable tragedy, and that our penchant for self-promotion is insatiable. I have experienced death and divorce and poverty, but I would never disrespect my mother so thoroughly as to degrade her sacrificies to further myself. Even if I were to, I would use proper syntax.

Victoria Day

All of Canada is celebrating me right now. Seriously.

Seeworthy

This weekend has been unusually eventful.
Friday I went to a benefit for the AIDS walk, which I really enjoyed. It was a little bit like vaudeville with music and comedy and readings. I always thought vaudeville must have been really kitschy and schmaltzy, but this was quite sophisticated. Everyone who performed was really talented, too . And to cap it off, I won something in the raffle. It's a box set of music from the '90s called Whatever and includes Social Distortion's Ball and Chain, Spacehog's In the Meantime, and Pavement's Cut Your Hair. I love the '90s.
Saturday I went to to look at the apartment I'm moving into. Looks like I won't be homeless after all. I can't believe that I'm going to be living in a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood after my experience living with a leaking roof in the ghetto. I mean, the other night I was going to sleep and realized that I sleep in the same room as my refrigerator, which is the same room that I do my work in, which is the same room that I watch tv in. But in 3 weeks I will have different rooms to do all those things in! I think it's a little sad though that I'm excited that my new bathroom will have a toilet paper holder and a towel rack. The only downside is that it is in a coop building, and I need to get them all kinds of documentation that is proving rather difficult to gather.
I think my new job and my new apartment mean that on the Brooklyn food chain, I have moved from despised hipster to loathed yuppie. I'm not sure if its an upgrade or not, but I did feel that my new status meant I should travel to the mecca, Fairway, which only opened this week. Conveniently located in Red Hook, it is innaccessible by subway, poorly serviced by bus routes and almost impossible to be found by the average New York cabbie. Luckily half of Park Slope was there with their Jeeps and Subarus. I on the other hand had to hike from the Smith-9th Street stop of the G train.
Red Hook was not what I had expected. I'm beginning to think that Bushwick is indeed the shittiest shit hole in Brooklyn. I had heard all about Red Hooks reputation, but it's a picturesque, if picaresque, neighborhood. Brick tenements huddIe together in the shadow of crumbling factories and warehouses while closer to the waterfront the rusted vestiges of Brooklyn's seafaring past are still visible. I passed art galleries and antique stores and yes, even strollers. Just as I saw the distant form of Fairway on Van Brunt Street, I began to smell the sea. The one form of transportation that is easily accessibly from Fairway is the Water Taxi.
I hadn't been planning on buying much, but when I walked up to the cheese case and saw they had Brie de Meaux, I couldn't resist. The employees had obviously been vigourously coached to be friendly and helpful, but I still had a pretty genuine conversation with the cheese guy about the supierority of brie de meaux. (Whole Foods and many cheese shops refuse to carry it, because it is made from raw milk.) After the cheese, I quickly went into what I can only describe as the foodie trance, that weird stupor that people go into when they walk into gourmet supermarkets and lose the ability to walk. Thankfully, the aisles are wide and the store is big enough that customers can walk around like extras from Dawn of the Dead without creating chaos. There were still some kinks to be worked out, though. The credit card machines were on the fritz and didn't accept the first card I tried. I also would have appreciated if some proper bagging instruction had accompanied the customer service training. My container of watermelon opened all over the bag it was placed in and the cheese was crushed by the apples. My mother always rearranges the groceries after they're packed, and I thought she was crazy, but today it made sense. They were only single bagged and one of the bags split on my way home.
The trek home involved a bus, a subway, and a 20 minute walk. All told it took two hours to get back home. If I have another free Sunday afternoon, I might go back for certain things like cheese and fresh fish that I can't get from Fresh Direct, but I won't be making that hike for stuff like apples and pasta.

It's Coming With Me When I Go

So because of poor foresight and even poorer planning, I have to get out of my apartment by the end of the month. My apartment has been rented to a girl who came to look at the place about a week ago. A few other people had been by before, and they had been underwhelmed. But this girl was seriously enthusiastic. "This is what I"m talking bout!" she said when she came throught the door. I had 3 weeks of laundry jammed in a corner, and the tub and toilet had these weird pink stains they get when I don't clean them frequently, but she didn't seem to mind. (BTW, I looked it up and the pink residue is caused by airborne bacteria that thrives in moist environments. Yum.) "This kitchen is way better!" She'd already been to the vacant apartment next door, which except for the paint job, is identical to mine. I can only assume she liked my crusty cutting board and dusty dishes in the drying rack. Her reaction to the bathroom: "You use Kiehl's!? Me, too!"

I had this exchange with someone else who came to look:
"Is this your air-conditioner?"
"Yeah, it's mine."
"Does it work? Does it keep it cool?"
"Yeah, it does a good job."

Why do you care? I'm taking it with me when I go! I remember being dragged to see what felt like hundreds of houses with my parents in second grade. Upon getting in the car again, I would make comments like "I didn't like their couch" or "They had pretty curtains in the kitchen." And my parents had to explain to me that their stuff was leaving with them, and I had to imagine how our stuff would look in the house. Apparently the people who came to see my apartment didn't get the same pearls of wisdom from their parents. I know that my stuff looks cute with the inexplicable orange paint job, but I'm taking it with me when I go! The pink bacteria is all yours, though.

In return I've been looking for apartments in Clinton Hill, which is near where I'll be working. Seeing as how I have to be at work at seven, I figure I should be close by. I had looked at a couple of lofts in the area, but moving from a loft in a sketchy neighborhood to a loft in a semi-sketchy neighborhood at a 50% mark-up seemed like a bad idea. Today I went to look at a studio in a brownstone on Clinton Ave. Clinton Avenue really must be one of the most beautiful streets in New York. 19th Century limestone mansions and brownstones hide behind lush leafy trees. I had Essex Green on my iPod and the people I passed nodded and smiled at me. "I must live here," I thought. I got to the buidling, which echoed the gabled townhouses of Amsterdam. "I want it!" I thought. I was asked to come back in twenty minutes. When I got back I was greeted by the super who spoke only semi-comprehensible English. I was able to make out that it was the basement apartment, and that the current tenant had changed the locks and we had no way of getting in. I peered down the dank stairs to the darkened front door. "Come back later." Maybe not.

When I got back home, I began looking at listings online and called about another apartment in a brownstone nearby. The landlord sounded sleazy.
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a school registrar."
"Oh so you teach."
"Well, no I work in the office. I do the admin stuff."
"I'm partial to school teachers."

Yeesh. I'm supposed to look at it tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I really want to. Will my desperation to stay housed win out over my reluctance to not fall into the clutches of a dirty old man?

Fin

Yesterday, my last paper for college was due. It was for my internship seminar, and was title "Community at a Crossroads: Adaptive Reuse and Redevelopment on the Lower East Side." I'm now officially done.
Afterwards I went to pick up my new computer and my tickets for graduation. I all just feels so final. I mean, I'm pretty happy with where I am in life and how college turned out. I think regret and guilt are pretty useless emotions so I'm not even going to entertain any fantasies about what college could have been like had I or it been different. So all in all, I had a pretty great time at NYU. It just all feels so fast and incomplete.
I never really thought about what I wanted my adult life to be like outside of ballerina/astronaut/lawyer day dreams, and now that I'm finally here I don't know what direction I want to go in. Especially since I feel like I already missed a fork in the road that I didn't even know was there.

Anyway in cheerier cooler news, my graduation present is an iPod nano and a MacBook Pro. They are both seriously cool. Although it is a total pain getting my music/ pictures from my old PC to the new compy. If only I could upload from my old Pod... I would take a picture, but I'm not sure if my old camera works with this computer and I'm too exhausted to find out.

Le Travail

So I got a new job that is sort of kind of in Clinton Hill. (It's really in Bed-Stuy, but more on that later.) On Friday I went to look at some lofts about two blocks from my future place of work. They were okay, but reminded me of NYU dorms in that they were showing about 10 years wear and tear when people had only been living in them for two. But I loved the neighborhood. I was walking down the street, when a woman stopped me and asked what smelled so good in someone's front yard. It was Lily of the Valley. We both stopped and smelled the flowers until we walked to the corner and said good bye. Actually we wished each other a nice day. I couldn't believe I was still in New York.

Shut Up

Shut Up, tourist frat boys I saw at Magnolia who were "rapping" Lazy Sunday. You've never been here before. You don't know that you love these cupcakes, cousin. You're no better than those Sex and the City wannabes who get off that taupe colored tour bus and stuff their face with cupcakes till they can't fit into their jeans.

Shut Up, NYU. It's a library. I don't want to hear your conversation (on your cellphone!) about whether or not that Chinese girl was flirting with you by asking if you wanted to study this weekend. I don't want to hear you singing through the wall of my study cubicle. I don't want to hear your conversation in Russian.

Shut Up, Asshole on my roof who brought there dog up there for a whiz and won't be quiet. Hey! I have a great idea let's get drunk and yell! WHOOO!

Spring Fever

I don't consider my self an outdoorsy person, but every year when it begins to get warm again and the sun starts to stay up till after dinner, I get this intense desire to sit in the sun or go on long walks. Unfortunately this is also the time when I have to most work to do. So I find myself ditching my homework to walk along the still desolate boardwalk at Coney Island or climb the hill to the Cloisters. This afternoon rather than take the subway home, I decided to walk across the Williamsburg Bridge and watch the sunset.



I've always like Edward Hopper's aptly titled, From the Williamsburg Bridge. I thought it perfectly captures that desire to be outside, to get out of the dark.
I took this picture from the Manhattan ramp of the bridge. It's unlikely that these are the buildings in the painting, as many of the buildings along Delancey Street have been knocked down and replaced with projects or even that Hopper painted the exact streetscape, but I think they come remarkably close.

Misc.

In an homage to my favorite Daily Photo blogs, I thought I'd post this picture. It's the Flushing Avenue Station of the J train and directly behind the platform is the hulking form of Woodhull Hospital. The hospital is ugly, distopian and, by all accounts, provides inadequate medical care. I think the architect must have been watching Kubrick movies and drinking chocolate milk the night before he began designing it.
Anyway if you like cityscapes check out Paris, London and Venice. There must be 35 in all, but those are my favorite.
On Friday, I went to see Lonesome Jim. It was opening night and Steve Buscemi, who directed, answered questions afterwards. It was a quasi-Catcher in the Rye story about a likeable loser who hits rock bottom only to learn not to look for his heart's desire any farther than his own backyard. Despite it's cliche ridden plot and minimalist production, the acting was low-key and charming. My biggest complaint is that it's entirely forgetable

Not a girl; not yet a boy

Reasons I think I might be missing a chromosome:

1) Dirty Dancing I don't get it. In one 24 hour period freshman year, I was forced to watch this "movie" twice. I sat through it dutifully, but frankly I think it's crap. I don't get Patrick Swayze. I don't get the dancing. I don't care if any one puts Baby in a corner.

2) Sex and the City All right, I'll be honest, they really lost me with the "shiksa princess" story line, but even before that this show was kind of mystifying. I like shoes and shopping as much as the next girl, but Carrie was whiny, petulant and ultimately, completely unsympathetic. Sure the show was funny at times, but it's not my life philosophy or anything. And I would never pay to have a taupe colored tour bus take me to Magnolia for cupcakes. I can walk there just fine myself.

3) The NY Giants This past fall I had a conversation with a girl who admitted that sometimes she wished she'd been born a boy so she could play football. Maybe I'm not alone...

4) Offsides It's just not that complicated. You're in an offsides position if you're closer to the goal line than the second to last defender and the ball. But it's only an offense if you're interfering in play. Granted this is made more complicated to judge because football (Europe) doesn't use instant replay. But making Angela Merkel (the Chancellor of Germany) draw a diagram of offsides to prove she's really a football fan? Puh-lease.

Belated Greetings from Michigan.

I hadn't realized that I haven't updated in almost a month. I've been really busy with school and work and I haven't had anything interesting to talk about. I'd been planning on updating when I'd been in Detroit, but I was to busy eating hamburgers and watching tv. (Seriously that is all I did, and Comcast is way better than Cablevision.)
Detroit is a crazy, crazy place. There is so much I could say about this, but I will only mention this. Detroit has a phenomenon called urban prairie where entire neighborhoods have been demolished and have reverted to their original prairie state. Feilds of wild flowers now surround the ruins of houses, factories and churches. This isn't the whole city, but its a sizeable part.
The other things that I've been thinking about include the crappiness of the fact that Apple doesn't make replacement iPod headphones and Trader Joe's doesn't live up to the hype.
I've been forced to buy replacement headphones that are pinkish-white, although they do fit more comfortably in my ears. I know it's a total lable-whore thing to worry about, but I'm not appreciating having to walk around the city with non-Apple 'phones.
Also Trader Joe's, meh. I will totally admit that I'm Whole Foods' bitch, but I'm not that impressed by TJ's. Their selection is way smaller; plus I have to stand in line outside. The lighting and decor are harsh, while the shelves are in varying degrees of disorder and emptyness. All of which contributes to a rather Soviet bread line atmosphere. And their claims of super-deliciousness? Completely unfounded. My brie was average, but the massaman curry was inedible. As if it needed another endorsement? (ex)MTV VJs love Whole Foods. Two years ago, I saw Carson Daly chatting up everybody in sight at the Columbus Circle WF, and yesterday I saw Matt Pinfield at the Union Square one. (It was totally him.)

In the Future

As I am currently procrastinating writing a paper and I have been asked the question of what I am planning to do upon graduation approximatley 2000 times, I thought I would answer it here.

1)Go abroad. I'll never again be so rootless that I'll be able to pick up and move to a foreign country.
a) UK, I love Britain even though I've only spent one week there. (Ridiculous? Possibly.) I would love to experience a culture whose language I can understand (mostly) but is so different from the US. Although London is prohibitively expensive, it manages to feel more cosmopolitan and smaller than New York simultaneously. It would be interesting to experience a culture that values (requires?) self-deprecation and regimentation as it is so opposite of the US, although that could possibly be stifling.
b) Paris, once again, a place I have only spent a week in that I love. I think with a few months I could be fluent in French, which would be very nice. Plus, Paris is so beautiful and I miss how delicious food in Europe is. I love how in Europe vestiges of the "old" way of life have survived despite industrialization. In America this old way of life never really existed.
c) Tokyo (or an large city in Japan.) I've never been, but I would love to go. What I've seen/ read about Japanese culture fascinates me. This would be the most difficult experience of the three so far. I don't any Japanese and I think navigating the cities/ culture would be exceedingly different but I'm up for a challenge.
d) Hong Kong, Like Japan it would be a difficult transition, but the I think the hectic pace of Hong Kong would be exhilirating and a challenge.


2) Stay in New York
a) Work for the city/ state. I like politics, theoretically. Could I like them practically?
b) PR, I have some experience in PR-y things. It's fast-paced, relatively creative and can get you into some pretty nice parties. The sleaze factor is pretty high, though.
c) non-profit, It's basically what all my internships have been in. My current one I love, but I've been in several that have been miserable experiences. The mission/ work environment is so important, although it always is and it's hard to weed out the good places from the bad. Also the pay can be exceedingly low. I don't know if I have the time to find a good place and pay rent in New York.
d) teach, I love the idea of molding young minds and improving their lives. It would be really rewarding, but on the other hand, it is a huge responsibility and a huge committment. I don't know if I'm ready for such a "settled" down job yet.

There it is. Does it sound too much like a report for career planning day. Well, I have three months to decide and make it happen.

Right to Privacy? What Right to Privacy

OR

Reason #361 why I am never leaving New York:

Or not going to South Dakota at any rate

My favorite part of the article? There's only one abortion clinic to shut down.

Coffee

What I miss most about Italy is the cappuccinos (cappuccini?) New York coffee, even and especially Starbucks, is bitter, burnt and well, bad. An early morning cappuccino in Italy is like being awoken by angels. It doesn't need sugar; the steamed milk is sweet, not sugary and smooth, foamy not bubbly. The shot of espresso is never bitter, but dark, earthy, complex. It's the perfect size. It's small enough that it can be drank before the milk gets cold, but large enough to be savoured. Italians don't take their coffee "to go;" they drink it at the bar with a coronetto. As an aside my last night in Florence, we went to the bakery that makes the pastries for all the bars in the city. Our only directions were to follow "the smell and the light." We found it.
Since coming back to New York, I haven't been able to find a decent cappuccino. That's wrong I have found ok cappuccino. The espresso wasn't bitter; the foam wasn't stale, but something was missing. It didn't help that they are universally sold in paper cups and drank through plastic lids. There's just something special about drinking it from a cup and saucer. Most of them are just too big, too much milk, not enough coffee. I was despondent, but settled for drinking what I could get.
Until today. There is a little cafe near Washington Square that I have walked past thousands of times. The outside is unassuming, white stucco surrounding gigantic windowsm but the name, the name is promising. Caffe pane e cioccolato. Coffee bread and chocolate. Today I finally had a reason to go in and it was just like being back in Italy.

The "F"reak Train

Monday. 4:55 pm. F Train at Delancey
Freezer bag. Freezer bag full of brownish-green stuff. Freezer bag full of weed!? Just as I realize what I'm staring, the guy next to me bolts towards it. Before he can grab it, the 19 year old whose pocket it has fallen out of snatches it from the jaws of the door. "Did you see that?" he asks me as he sits back down.

Other things I've seen on the F Train?

A barefoot homeless man covered in motor oil.
A man suffering from NF
A conductor exorting riders to "turn that frown upside down."

Blizzard of 06

Last night (and this morning and currently) New York got the second biggest snowstorm in the city's history.
These are pictures from my neighborhood. I wanted to take pictures from my roof, but by the time I'd made it home my camera was frozen.

The Most Holy Day of the Year

My parents turned down Free tickets to the Super Bowl. I'm so mad. And when did I find out? 15 minutes ago. So angry.

Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

I live in a hipster building. I came to realize the fact coming home on the J or L train. I would always see these kids: the boy who dresses like Joe Strummer (complete with fedora), the kid wearing white loafers and too tight cords, the girl with the bleached asymetrical hair cut and surgically attached pod'phones, get on the train in Manhattan. Hipsters, I would sneer to myself and expect them to get off the train at Marcy or Bedford, but they wouldn't. When the J train would make express stops and bypass Hewes and Lorimer, they wouldn't seem nervous, like they'd missed their stop. Then they would get off at my stop and we would both start walking west, and the first one to make the right onto my street would look over their shoulder to see who was following them. (This is a bad neighborhood; people get mugged, you know.) We'd reach my building, not holding the gate open for each other. It happens all the time.
I've seen a lot of weird behavior. I'm no one to judge really, anybody who's lived with me can tell you that, but there are somethings even I find off putting. The other night as I was heading downstairs to get my laundry, I passed a man on the stairs holding a swaddled bundle. There are no babies in this building, I thought. He glanced up at me, both surprised and worried and hugged the the thing closer as if he were afraid I would wake it up. I tried to walk quietly so as not to disturb the "baby." As I passed him on the landing, I saw a dog's head poking out. WTF?

Cops and Robbers

Last night, someone tried to break into my neighbor's apartment by "ripping off the skylight." How do I know this? I was awoken by the conversation between the cops and my neighbor. The cops seemed pretty unconcerned and kept saying it must have been "a buddy trying to mess with you" while my neighbor kept repeating that the skylight had been ripped off and that it was a "cat burglar."

My apartment is just down the hall and also has skylights so I'm pretty edgy, but the whole thing seems so surreal, I'm still not completely sure what to think.

Wayfaring Stranger

Something strange happened to me when I came back from studying abroad almost a year ago. I only became more restless. I've never been content to sit around, and I've always been ready to leave for anywhere at a moment's notice. Shpilkes, my grandmother calls it. Ants in your pants. And yet I've always considered myself a die-hard New Yorker, even during those years in New Jersey, I always thought of New York as the only worthy place to live. But in these last few months, I've begun to wonder what else might be out there. I've begun to wonder if I might not really be happy elsewhere. My father, having spent a considerable amount of time in the Midwest, would tell me growing up that I had no idea what the "real" America was like, that New York was an anomaly existing in its own universe. Maybe America isn't like that New Yorker cover.
Maybe there's more than rocks out there.
I think it might have happened when a friend came to visit this past fall. She had never been to New York before, and the sight of the Empire State Building literally stopped her in her tracks. I couldn't quite understand her reaction. I've become a little inured to what makes New York so great.
New York has a lot of cons, and I've become a bit jaded to her pros. In the past six months, I've had several friends leave New York, and at first I was at a loss. Where do people go when they leave New York, I wondered. Doesn't any other place pale in comparison to New York? Aren't they bored? But maybe I've become a little bored.

Happy New Year!

I was lucky enough to be able to see the ball drop in person last night, and not have to freeze my ass off, either. I'll try to post pictures when I get them since I didn't bring my camera with me.

And the Giants won the Division title and are going to the playoffs! It will be a good year!