[living in interesting times]

Last week, on Monday night, I went to sign the divorce papers. It was devastating. It was a freezing night with bitter winds, which seemed to fit. I went separately from Jenny, but on my way out I stopped in at a McDonald’s for a suitably grim dinner, and Jenny bumped into me afterwards on the subway platform. We were both very sad, and there was little to say.

It didn’t help matters that I had a cold. On Tuesday I dragged myself to a job interview with a very nice company that isn’t hiring. This did not lift my spirits. Exhausted, I took Wednesday off. It was my first time being sick while on my own — ever, really, except for one bout of serious illness in India — and it scared me. Afterward, I made sure to talk to a couple of new friends in the neighborhood, who said that of course they would help if I needed it. Learning to ask for help is good.

Saturday I went to a dance concert at Juilliard, then a much more ramshackle dance concert put on by a composer friend of a composer friend. Afterward, we all went back to the organizer’s apartment in Brooklyn for a party, at which I discussed Korean and Finnish folklore with a Finnish folklorist. I left just before the microtonal orchestral music began. I’d been suffering from my arrhythmia all evening, and I almost couldn’t walk the three blocks from the subway to my apartment. I had taken too many of the beta-blocker pills that are supposed to fix the arrhythmia, and I ended up staggering to the curb and throwing up in the gutter. I realized that to anyone passing by, I must have looked like a drunk, which was funny because I hadn’t had a drink in nine months to the day.

On Tuesday night, as I was heading to a 12-step meeting, I saw a pickup truck start backing up just as a small Hispanic man darted into the street looking the other way. I shouted — “Yo, yo, YO!” and the truck stopped inches from the pedestrian, who never noticed any of it. I then made an incomprehensible gesture at the driver and walked on.

Yesterday morning I went for a job interview and was kept waiting in the lobby for 40 minutes because of a miscommunication. But at least they’re hiring.

Last night, after a very interesting evening out, I was walking home from the subway and heard a rustling in the bushes in front of an apartment building. I turned around, expecting a cat or something, and was startled to see the wide-eyed face of a young woman who was lying there, bundled in a coat and mittens. I turned around and kept walking.

Today at lunch, the diner on 49th and First was shaken by an explosion up the block. A manhole cover had been blown off, smoke and steam billowing into the street. A few minutes later, the fire department showed up and taped off the street. As we left, we saw the shards of the manhole cover lying a few feet away from the hole. Fortunately no one was hurt.

I feel today as though I’ve somehow stepped into a Murakami novel, where the world is off-kilter in a way that may or may not be ominous, and my role is simply to live in it as normally as possible.

I’m tired.

[are suburbs the new bohemia?]

The New York Times reported recently on the decline of gay enclaves. Places like San Francisco’s Castro District, New York’s West Village, West Hollywood and Key West are gentrifying. High real estate prices and a changing ethos are transforming these neighborhoods from bastions of wild nightlife to comfortable places to raise kids, and there is attendant hand-wringing over the disappearance of a vibrant culture, along with soul-searching about whether there’s even a reason for gay neighborhoods anymore.

There is a long discussion to be had about the mainstreaming of homosexuality in America, the consequent coming out of a more diverse group of gay men and women, and the ongoing debate over gay assimilationism. But I’d rather talk about hipsters and real estate.

To understand what’s happening to America’s gay neighborhoods, it helps to look at how they were formed. America’s gay community more or less began with the Stonewall riots and their aftermath. Though usually not presented as such, these events were part of the larger 1960s embrace of counterculture and individual freedoms. It’s no accident that both hippies and gays were into free love, drugs, leftist politics and bikers (though the fascination with bikers remains something of a mystery). Like the hippies, the founders of America’s gay communities tended to be white middle-class baby boomers, and they colonized many of the same neighborhoods (the Castro is just blocks from Haight-Ashbury).

The changes in America’s gay enclaves mirror the changes in formerly bohemian neighborhoods that are not specifically associated with gay life: it’s not just the Castro and Greenwich Village that have seen skyrocketing housing prices, but also the East Village, SoHo, the Mission District, SoMa, and pretty much every other patch of once-hip ground in America’s major cities. For the first time in memory, there is no bohemian frontier in Manhattan.

This connects with another recent Times story, this one noting the discovery by bohemian types of Staten Island’s North Shore. I’ve long believed that the best way to tell what’s going to be incredibly fashionable in three to five years is to look for whatever is most egregiously unhip now (which means, among other things, that you should be preparing to grow your hair out and unmothball your flannels) , and it’s hard to think of anything less cool than the suburbs.

But will hipsters who are priced out of the city really start moving to little houses in Jersey and Staten Island? Hard to say at this point, though I will raise the possibility that a generation raised on Facebook and Craigslist may feel less compelled to form hipster neighborhoods than their forbears. What made the suburbs so awful was isolation, and the Internet provides a way to overcome that isolation without spending $1300 a month to live with rats and roaches. And there is much ironic fun to be had in a lifestyle that embraces garden gnomes.

I now live in a perfectly nice neighborhood that has yet to be discovered by hipsters. Down in Bay Ridge, we have trees, houses, lower rents and safer streets than in Bushwick, and I can still get on the subway and go to Manhattan. Am I part of a vanguard, or just out in left field? Time will tell.

[gowanus + art = agast]

It’s once again coming to that wonderful time of year when the leaves fall into the toxic soup we know and love as the Gowanus Canal, and the artists in the neighborhood open their studios to share their fume-inspired creations. This is the Annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour (AGAST), of which I am a devoted fan. The tour is actually a really cool opportunity not just to see lots of inspired and interesting art — everything from conceptual installations to marble sculpture to a stained-glass studio — but to get inside those weird, funky, fascinating old industrial buildings that dot the landscape. Plus, you will surely consume your fill of Goldfish, mini-KitKats and cheap
chardonnay.

The tour will be taking place from 1 to 6 on Saturday and Sunday, October 20 and 21. As usual, I’m going to try and visit as many of the galleries as I can. Hope to see you there!

[the fighting 13th]

I posted recently about the upcoming Congressional race in my district, NY-13, and got a comment from the author of NY13 Blog, who gave me a nice shout-out.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this blog as we move closer to campaign season. Oh, and here’s the comment, in case you missed it:

Hi! Found your post after searching for news on Fossella. Recchia has formed an exploratory committee and has some big backing (Rep. Jerry Nadler and even McMahon). Cusick and McMahon are not going to jump into this race unless there is some massive scandal and the DCCC comes throwing money at one of them to take out Fossella. So expect to see a Harrison v. Recchia primary race although I am not sure both will stay in through September.

Good stuff.

[don’t forget congress]

There’s a lot of attention already being paid to the 2008 presidential election, but let’s not forget about Congress!

In 2006, I campaigned in New York’s 13th Congressional District to support Steve Harrison’s scrappy but unsuccessful bid to unseat Conservative Republican Vito Fossella.

Now that I actually live in the district, I’m even more anxious to see Fossella taken down. Steve Harrison has announced he’ll run again, but the New York Times mentions three other potential candidates: City Council members Michael E. McMahon of Staten Island and Domenic M. Recchia Jr. of Brooklyn, and Assemblyman Michael Cusick of Staten Island.

I know next to nothing about any of these guys, but in the coming weeks and months, maybe one or more of them will declare, and it’ll be time to do some research.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine is backing a friend of his, one Tom Perriello, in a campaign to unseat Virgil Goode in Virginia’s 5th CD.

Goode is a former Democrat who voted for three out of four articles of impeachment against Clinton, then became a Republican in 2002, becoming the first Republican to serve in the district since Reconstruction. He came to national prominence by loudly criticizing Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison’s to be sworn into Congress over a Koran rather than a Bible. (In a delicious irony, the Korean Ellison used was once owned by Thomas Jefferson, whose Monticello home is in Goode’s district.)

I don’t know much about Perriello yet, but I’m going to a fundraising party tomorrow to find out more. What I do know comes from his Res Publica profile:

Before co-founding Res Publica, Tom served as Special Advisor to the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a United Nations tribunal, and as a Yale Law School/OSI Teaching Fellow in West Africa. He has worked for the US State Department, the International Centre for Transitional Justice and others on human rights and legal reform efforts in Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo, Argentina, Chile, India, and the United States. Prior to law school, he worked as Assistant Director of the Center for a Sustainable Economy (now part of Redefining Progress) and as a consultant on youth and environemental campaigns … Tom is also a founder of the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good. He holds a BA in Humanities from Yale College and a J.D. from Yale Law School and is a member of the New York State Bar.

It’s all good stuff, but not exactly the kind of good stuff that’s going to wow Virginia voters. Hopefully there’s another side to his story. I’ll keep you posted.

[moving on]

So it looks like I have a new apartment: tonight I go to sign the paperwork on a pleasant, spacious one-bedroom at 7502 Ridge Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

On the one hand, I’m glad to have this particular chore done, and glad it’s an apartment I can feel good about: in a nice neighborhood, close to the subway, close to shopping and a dry cleaner, with laundry in the basement. On the other hand, taking the actual step of paying for a new place gives the whole divorce process a depressing feeling of finality. I never wanted things to come to this, and I still don’t. I’m doing this because I have to, not because I want to, and I am very sad.

I’m also scared. I’m scared of the financial risks of moving before I have a job that will allow me to afford the new apartment, though I appreciate Jenny’s generosity in helping me in the meantime. I’m also scared of living alone, something I’ve never really done.

The move will presumably happen over the weekend of September 1. A week later, I’ll have my birthday on September 8, when I will turn 33. That day will also mark six months of sobriety. This may well be the hardest birthday I’ve ever had. If you’re a friend of mine and reading this, I hope you’ll give me a call and maybe come keep me company on my birthday.

Let’s hope things are looking up by the time I turn 34.

[not a republic?]

The 423 Smith blog has an exciting post about the Notary District, as it has dubbed the “no man’s land between Park Slope, Red Hook, and Carroll Gardens.” Of course, the Russo Realty signs are a landmark for those of us who regularly use the Smith & 9th St. subway station.

Of course, the times they are a-changin’. Sometime last year, DKNY attempted to get a hold of the fabled Russo for some notarizing action, but there was no response. More ominously, the Dock War boat has been removed, and there are signs of impending construction. For how much longer will Brooklynites delight in the glorious profusion of ineffective marketing that is Russo Realty? (Via Curbed.)

In other neighborhood news, Curbed notes the construction of new housing down where Court St. runs into the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Some of the apartments appear to be practically on the expressway, which would not make for a happy lifestyle. Sometimes you just have to wonder what the developers are smoking.

[smith street food news]

Frank Bruni of the New York Times today reviews Porchetta, the new Smith Street eatery that replaced Banania, and gives it one star, along with a mix of praise and complaint. We haven’t tried it out yet, but I have to say that the decor goes past the funky to the spazzy, which hasn’t lured us in. Considering today’s review, I feel like I should try it, but also that I should be ready for disappointment. (You can peruse the menu here.)

In other neighborhood food news, Smith & Vine, the excellent boutique wine shop with the unbeatable $10-and-under table, is moving to bigger digs nearby:

As of the first week of February 2007 (the year of the pig!!), Smith & Vine will be relocating to our new home at 268 Smith Street, directly across the street from Chestnut Restaurant between Degraw and Sackett.

Now we know this sounds crazy, but in the end, it’s gonna rock! We will have a private tasting room and much more space for you to browse and take your time while you shop.

If we don’t see you before, then stop by and check out our new digs.

Also be sure to check out their sister store, Stinky Brooklyn, where they can recommend just the cheese to go with your newly purchased wine.

[the neighbors]

Across the street from the South Korean Mission to the United Nations is a construction site where the new United States Mission to the United Nations is going up to replace the old United States Mission to the United Nations (picture of the entrance showing the seriously dated old architecture).

The new structure is designed by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects, the same folks who brought us the architecturally muddled but kind of cool Astor Place Sculpture for Living, that grand symbol of the death of bohemian East Village. (Sorry, kids: the ongoing eastward migration of hipness has crossed the river, passed through Billyburg and settled on Bushwick — for the moment. If trends continue, hipsters will be living in Middle Village, Queens, by about 2050.)

Emporis has details, the most intresting being that the new structure will be 22 stories, with no windows on the first six floors to make it harder to blow the place up. Friendly. They’ve also got construction pics, including a nice shot showing the temporarily exposed flank of the Ugandan Mission and the Korean Mission across the street, behind the crane. From this photo, you can probably work out that we can peer down into the construction site from our windows.

Of course, there are other ways to get a look. Cryptome, a rather cryptic and moderately creepy website, has an Austrian-domain-hosted page full of pictures of North Korean diplomats and their Mission, towards the bottom of which are a couple of shots of the US Mission construction site, one of which is labeled “The New US Mission to the UN Under Construction at East 45th Street and 1st Avenue, Photographed Through a Vacant, Unlocked Guard Hut.” Nice.

Oh, and on a local note, the cement for the project is being provided by the Gowanus Canal’s own Quadrozzi, in whose trucks I am tempted to try hitching a ride to work.