Category: New York City

The seeds of my current shift in residence were planted in October of 2006, when Tara, Joe and I took a trip to New York. I knew that I wanted to see the Zappa Plays Zappa tour, and figured it would come nowhere near Arkansas, so catching them in New York on Halloween seemed like the best idea. Little did I know that the places I would go and people I would meet would eventually cause this massive upheaval in my life.

This morning I realized that the pictures that I took during that trip were never uploaded to Flickr, so I uploaded them just now. If you were here for the travelogue, then you’ve seen the pictures.

It only took me a year and two months since that trip to get here.

Union Square is an interesting place. It’s apparently the epicenter for TV crews looking for man-on-the-street footage. Walking to Quizno’s this afternoon I was asked by a Japanese TV crew to tell me about movies I would watch for Valentine’s Day. I said The Apartment, because it is romantic even though it’s not your traditional romantic comedy. Then they asked for something more recent, so I just said Almost Famous, because it’s a movie that has some things to say about love, and it’s a movie I always have to make sure gets seen by those who haven’t seen it.

Just after that, I turn around, and there’s Rob Riggle from The Daily Show, asking people who they’re voting for and then shooting them free t-shirts from his t-shirt cannon. I wasn’t sure if they were staging something so I just stayed out of the way and took a picture. I went on to Quizno’s still impressed by my contribution to Japanese televsion.

On the way back, Riggle was still there, this time asking for volunteers so I stepped up and said I was voting for Obama. Truthfully I hadn’t actually decided between him and Hillary, but it was the first thing that popped into my head so it must be my preference, right? It’s not like I’m actually voting in the primaries anyway.

So it looks like I’m going to be on The Daily Show! I don’t know when; I’m not sure what the turnaround time is on the correspondent segments, but I’ll post the link as soon as I see it on www.thedailyshow.com.

Oh, and the shirt? It’s grey and says “Will Work for Freedom.”

Work is keeping me very busy, but here are some new photos I’ve been meaning to put up:

• My walk to work
• The front door
• The reception lobby
• The neighbors
• The diversions (there’s a Forbidden Planet at Union Square, it’s a Nerd Mart)

Also, today I happened upon a large stuffed tiger. Just about every week around here I find something quizzical in my path.

It’s cold out, and I need to save money, so I only left the house once this weekend, and that was to go to the grocery store. It’s only a few blocks away, and yet I kept finding things worth photographing. The sky was clear, the light was perfect, and the dreary neighborhood just seemed to come alive. I started to notice the subtle differences between my neighbors’ doors; each one told a different story: one classy, one grumpy, one…trying too hard? I even noticed the peculiar remainders of windows past above the dentist’s office. Even the overbearing condos seemed pretty.

My neighbors are a widely varied bunch. Elephant figurine collectors live alongside people with unfortunate dietary habits. And of course, the recently departed eccentric Vinnie Russo, with his Styrofoam crosses, I Love Hawaii stickers and peculiar taste in yard ornaments.

Down Smith Street, even the scrapyard held my interest. I found a happy fire hydrant and an unhappy phone cradle living along the Gowanus Canal, in the shadow of the mighty green Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

I have to say that I was quite proud of my work that day.

Secret message to those I’ve told this to: I’ve said before that a particular task that took me several years to accomplish only 2-3 times in Little Rock took one week to accomplish in New York. Well, I’ve been in New York just over two weeks now and that task has been accomplished AGAIN.

Two days on the job now. Yesterday was mainly acclimation and getting set up. Today was a meeting all day in New Jersey with a big client. I’ve been hired to head up the website portion of a larger marketing account. Tomorrow I get some more orientation in the office. Here are a few things that make this job awesome:

• Company laptop and Blackberry
• Great benefits package and 401k
• 2 weeks paid vacation
• 10 sick days
• 3 Floating Holidays
• 5 “Summer” days off (can’t be appended to other days)
• Thanksgiving + days before and after off
• Christmas Eve and Christmas off
• Half days before Memorial Day and Labor Day
• Bagels every Friday

Currently I work on the top floor of a 12-story building, occupying a corner office with two other guys, but I’m sure they’ll move me to a cube soon. The view and the neighborhood are great. Union Square is a block away – including a Whole Foods, Circuit City, Virgin Megastore, and across the street is The Fillmore at Irving Plaza. DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist are playing two nights there this weekend, but it’s sold out, naturally. Oh and there’s a Farmer’s Market most days during the summer. It’s only a few blocks from my F train, but I need to find a good transfer to the Union Square stop. Speaking of which, since I had to meet my group this morning at 8 a.m. for the trip to New Jersey, I thought I would get to work early, but I ate up the time by accidentally taking the G train from my stop, which meant I had to make my way back to the F line. I made it to the rendezvous point right at 8. Phew.

I walked around Green-Wood Cemetary yesterday. I wish I had made a better effort to find famous graves, because they don’t give you much of a directory at the gate. Naturally I wanted to find people like Bill “the Butcher” Poole and Edward R. Murrow, neither of whom I found on the map. It was still a nice walk, and a nice view, given that it’s the highest point in Brooklyn.

What’s sadder than a cemetary? A cemetary dumpster.

Afterward I stopped by Arika and Chu’s to visit.

Friday I walked around Red Hook, and between the fishing bait, defunct moonshine operations, abandoned cars, it felt like Arkansas isn’t so far away anymore. And at Fairway Market I found Frank Zappa beer, and while I did not it find very tasty, it nevertheless seemed appropriate for Frank. It was bitter and a little prickly.

And I made tea with my old-school carton of milk. That made me happy. I was going to go out again today but the wind chill is 11 degrees. I made it as far as the subway before I just turned around and went home.

Today I found a peculiar enjoyment in walking through a cold drizzle. It reminded me of London, where just getting home after walking all afternoon was a victory and falling exhausted onto my bed was first prize. Here in Brooklyn it’s much the same; although generally I make dinner first and savor the day’s hard-earned shin splints.

I find the best stuff when I’m looking for nothing. Today I found robots. Lots of sculpted robots made of found objects. They live in a couple of junk shops on Atlantic, called City Foundry, if I recall. I was also followed by Jesus. Once on Bergen, then later on Court. It was good to see him. Compared to Arkansas, he’s under-represented here.

At the Salvation Army I had the exquisite pleasure of not only finding a super-rare Earthsuit CD (the previous, Christian incarnation of Mute Math), but also an even rarer Latyrx t-shirt. Both cost only $2 each.

I’m starting a new category on the blog just for New York City, because I think the city will present me with a continual flow of new experiences. Here are a few:

You couldn’t pay me enough to be a big-rig driver in this town. Last night, walking past Katz’s, I helped a truck driver as he attempted to turn off Houston onto Ludlow. Ludlow is, like most of the streets on the Lower East Side, tightly packed with parked cars around two thin lanes. And there was a delivery truck double parked on Ludlow last night. And road cones. The rig took out a few of those while flattening a bag of trash, but stopped short of scraping a mailbox. The driver was clearly stuck, so I told him to hang on while I moved the remaining road cones and gave him hand signals to negotiate the mailbox, which his reflectors did scrape past. No serious harm came to the mailbox. There’s a job I could never do.

Speaking of jobs, I wonder about the lives of all the convenience store clerks, magazine kiosk workers, cabbies, and generally the people who make the city work. Where do all these people come from? Where do they live? How do they live? And who are all these people driving in cars? Why would anyone want to have a car in this town? Are they all commuters to somewhere else? Who are all these people?

All of these people, with so many religions and ethnic backgrounds, all here…and not killing each other! While it’s true there are ethnic enclaves like Chinatown and the Hasidic/Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn[1], you rarely read about full-scale warfare between them. Every faction in this town gets along with the rest of the city because they know that if they don’t, they will not survive. Is New York City a model for the rest of the world to follow? Or does this scenario only work in cities?

Maybe I shouldn’t think about it so much.

1.) Which I walked through today; it was like Israel without firearms.