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.
The Job
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.
Saturday in the Cemetery
I walked around Green-Wood Cemetery 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 cemetery? A cemetery 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.
Wisdom Via Wolrab
I’m almost done digging through all of Atticus’s images on Flickr. Sometimes his image titles are more revealing than their pictures. This one sent me to Google and I found this excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams:
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
It’s good to be reminded of what is Real.
Ode to Atticus
Atticus Wolrab is a figure shrouded in mystery. All that I really know about him is that he is an artist who does all of Mike Keneally’s album art. I just discovered his Flickr stream today, and it’s one of those goldmines of creativity so deep and brightly lit that I have to tell everybody about it. Check him out.
Here are some of my favorites: breakfast face (one of several), dumped, and Bernal Hill (which I myself have photographed, although in somewhat less flattering light). But his stuff is endless, really. And he likes to put song lyrics in the descriptions and write strange, lengthy tags (see the right column of this picture).
Oh, and he just sent me a message. Isn’t that nice?
Today’s Discoveries
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.
Get to Know David Mead
The perfect cherry on top of my triumph yesterday was a MySpace bulletin from David Mead saying that he’d be playing at the Living Room last night. The Living Room, like most of the great tiny venues in New York, is located on the Lower East Side[1], just down Ludlow from Houston[2]. I was going to be at the Mercury Lounge last night to see my friend Elizabeth play trombone with one of her many bands. Fortunately her show was at 10 and David’s at 11.
Some background on David: he’s probably my favorite solo singer/songwriter in the world. Originally from the South, he moved up to NYC, then down to Nashville, and has moved back up recently. In addition to writing lyrics with smooth sophistication, he also composes melodies that grab you instantly. As a direct result of his immense talent, he’s not well known. I have all his CDs. Check out the tunes on his myspace page. If he were a movie, he’d be endlessly quotable: “trapped in the orbit of your rolling eyes,” “the lonesome weight of truth,” “and miles will make you notice / all you dream is real.” Here is David’s online lyric archive.
And, on top of it all, his journals are very entertaining and elegantly written.
1.) Let’s make a list of these tiny Lower East Side venues I’ve been to thus far, all within a 4 block radius of each other: The Living Room, Arlene’s Grocery, American Underground, the Mercury Lounge, Piano’s, Rockwood Music Hall.
2.) Scene of Tuesday night’s trucking maneuvers.
Job Offer Accepted!
I got a job offer today and I accepted! The position is Interactive Account Manager, but the web department I’m working in is only a few months old, so everything will be flexible and TBD. The company is called Unit 7 (named for a song by jazz guitar great Wes Montgomery). Check them out here: www.unit7.com.
Their offices are fantastic. Right off Union Square in Manhattan. My commute is about 30 minutes.
The pay is great – twice what I made before, but I’m pretty sure that’s the general cost of living increase for New York. Everything here does seem to be about twice as expensive. I know that if I were to live without a roommate, my rent would be double my LR mortgage. So living with a roommate will allow me to save up a bit.
I have to say my streak of good fortune[1] is still in full effect. I got in town a week ago Tuesday, had my first job interview this last Tuesday, and got the job today. All the more surprising is that I had originally intended just to be a temp for awhile, but the recruiters nabbed me and put me out there. So I’m plunging headlong into this thing. I start on Tuesday, after the MLK holiday. Wish me luck. Hopefully my Arkansas job skills match up to the Big City.
1.) Laptop travails notwithstanding.
New York Thoughts
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.
Lazy Sunday
It’s almost 2 p.m. and I’m still in my pajamas. I’ve been watching, copying and screen-grabbing a DVD that my brother made of old home movies. I uploaded several shots to flickr, so check those out.
Yesterday I ventured uptown to eat at Tom’s Restaurant, made famous by Seinfeld and Suzanne Vega. I also walked by the Flatiron building (also known as the Daily Bugle in the Spider-man movies), which I’d never managed to find before. I also spent a lot of time at Norman’s Sound and Vision; they were having a big 50% off sale in the basement. Here are the highlights:
The Old 97’s – Satellite Rides: $1.50
Pearl Jam -Ten: $1.50
Beastie Boys – To the 5 Boroughs: $2
Steely Dan – Two Against Nature: $1.50
Elvis Costello – Spike: $1.50
I’d wager that in the next few years, as CDs die off, this sort of thing will happen more often. Stores will start unloading used CDs at the same prices as used vinyl. $1 to $2. The retail CD stores are already gone; it’s just a matter of time before the secondhand places start disappearing.