Category: New York

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[a blog we can agree on]

Someone who didn’t make it to last night’s Meetup posted about her blog I Hate Duane Reade: Service from Hell — a truly brilliant concept for a blog.

My own story of hate is about the Duane Reade around the corner from my office, where I actually watched a woman assess the line forming by the pharmacy, ostentatiously lock the door to the pharmacy, and then tell all the customers standing there that there was no way she could give anyone their medicine because the pharmacy was locked.

Nice.

Maybe what’s needed next is a competition to see what Russell Stover candies are harder than.

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[meeting new people the internet way]

Lately I’ve been feeling like my social circle has become a bit too circumscribed. I’ve come to rely on a small group of friends who all have busy lives, and this was fine until recently. But now that Jenny is away in Chicago most weeknights, I’ve realized that I really need to get out there and meet some new people.

I don’t know how people used to do this before the Internet. Did they go to the local Y1 and look at a bulletin board? Did they just all know to join the local Kiwanis? Did people actually talk to each other in public, like while hanging out on stoops or whatever? I have no idea. But in my world, any social crisis is best solved through the magic of technology.

And so I have joined a whole bunch of Meetups for people interested in everything from Korean language partners to swing dancing to Scrabble to simply having lunch2.

Last night, after much hesitation during which I considered ditching the whole idea and going to a Marijuana Anonymous meeting3 instead, I finally decided to follow my original plan, which involved visiting the Won Buddhist temple for some very helpful yoga and mind clearing, then heading down to the Luca Lounge, way out on Avenue B and 13th Street, for the NY Bloggers Meetup.

At a table in the back garden, I joined about seven other bloggers and would-be bloggers for a freewheeling chat about digital media, concepts for blogs, how to draw comments and God (that last one was a tangent). Our illustrious hostess, Alejandra, does something complicated involving the coordination of international editions of Cosmopolitan and publishes the charming Sent from My Dell Desktop. I also had fun chatting with Paull Young (not the singer), an Aussie new to New York who publishes Young PR, works in new media strategic management, and needs to be taken to his first baseball game.

Far across the table was Carolyn, whose blog, Becoming a Woman of Purpose, has apparently begun to draw a community of women who are looking to gain from Carolyn’s insights as a life coach and just generally grow as people. With a rather different approach to women, another member of our group was planning a website devoted to teaching men how to pick up women, and I ended up in a long conversation about possibly editing some of the pickup scripts that will then be published in PDF format and sent to paying clients. This is not exactly my area of expertise — or interest — but I will edit for guvment scrip, and unlike, say, writing people’s college entrance essays, there was nothing about this particular activity that seemed outright unethical.

I know there were more blogs mentioned, and Alejandra graciously collected a list of them4, which she has promised to post to the Meetup group. I’m grateful to Alejandra for getting us all together, and just glad to be reminded that there are lots of interesting ways to meet new people.

Update: Alejandra, our fearless leader, just sent out a list of links to Meetup members’ blogs, and here they are:

Carolyn:
carolynsfo.blogspot.com
spiritwomen.blogspot.com
spiritwomen.wordpress.com

DC:
http://betternotsent.com

Josh:
www.palaverist.org

Paull:
youngie.prblogs.org

Alejandra:
sentfrommydelldesktop.blogspot.com
—
1. “As everybody knows my name at the recreation center.”
2. Who doesn’t like lunch?
3. For those who may be new here, I’m a recovering addict with 85 days of sobriety, which may explain some of the need to rebuild my social life.
4. On good ol’ paper.

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[sing along with buffy]

Gothamist strikes again, this time picking up on the Buffy Sing-A-Long each month at IFC, at which Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans get together and sing along with the musical episode, Once More, With Feeling.

I am definitely in the Buffy fan camp, but I am currently working my way through the series and haven’t yet seen the musical episode, which is two seasons ahead of me, so no spoilers please. Indeed, our most recent episode, Hush, is kind of the musical episode’s opposite: super-creepy floating dudes known as The Gentlemen steal everyone’s voices. This is one of the scariest episodes in the series, capturing the flavor of an actual nightmare.

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[revs/cost]

When I first came to New York City in 1993, it was a very lonely place for me. That bitterly cold winter, I didn’t know where to go or how to meet anyone to go with me. I would take the train down from my Columbia dorm to what I thought was the cool part of town, getting off the 1/9 at Christopher Street and wandering back and forth along Bleecker in search of a local music scene, my feet freezing in my inadequate jungle-warfare combat boots. I felt dwarfed — dwarfed in my father’s oversized wool Canadian-navy greatcoat, dwarfed in this huge, thrumming city that promised so much but seemed to keep its promise at a distance, always receding.

Against the crushing anonymity and isolation, I remember discovering and then treasuring the mystery of COST/REVS. These graffiti stickers were everywhere pasted to the backs of street signs and WALK/DON’T WALK signs (back when they still had words instead of today’s pointillist icons). At first it was just those two words, stacked up on each other in block capitals:

COST
REVS

Then they started getting blasphemous: COST SAVES, GOD saves COST, COST IS RELIGION. And then there was the phone number, which it took me months to bother writing down and calling. When I did, I got a rambling, incoherent voice message whose content has long since escaped my memory, which in those days was anyway frequently impaired and clogged with details about Apuleius and archivolts.

What I found so amazing about these stickers was the spectacular human effort that had gone into putting them up. They were everywhere, all across town, on sign after sign: thousands of them. And this was no vast collective effort, like putting up the Brooklyn Bridge. This was the dedicated work of one or two individuals, who for no obvious reason felt like altering the environment in which we all lived. It was human and passionate and sort of sad in its uselessness, but beautiful in its dedication and persistence.

For me, those tags are a marker of a particular time. Finding pictures of them online is surprisingly hard, but that was the moment just before Internet ubiquity, and the Internet is weirdly bad at archiving the time just before camera-phones. It was the era of Giuliani’s battles with East Village squatters, of Newt Gingrich, of a world without Kurt or Jerry. A couple of years later, I would be on Sven’s rooftop on the Lower East Side, watching the Fourth of July fireworks exploding over the Lenin statue on Red Square and talking about how New York City was the seat of empire. But that was in the future. REVS/COST helped me get through those confusing, lonely first years in the big city.

Today Gothamist posted a YouTube video of REVS at work on more recent projects. My favorite quote: “I’m into the individual spirit, anybody who does things in a solo way, like Ted Kaczynski, Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ.” REVS’s identity is still unknown, but at least now you can read about him in Wikipedia.

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[how to find your way around nyc]

This is totally exciting: a GypsyMaps is a new website that overlays Google Maps with the NYC subway system and allows you to search for directions.

Until now, HopStop has been my go-to site for subway and bus directions, and it’s more robust that GypsyMaps in a couple of ways. The biggest difference is that HopStop includes bus lines, although GypsyMaps claims to be adding that soon. Another nice HopStop feature is that you can opt out of particular route segments and see what new options it comes up with.

The problem with HopStop, though, is those little, inscrutable maps for the beginning and end of your trip, which is when you really need the most help figuring out which way to go. With GypsyMaps, you can zoom right in, GoogleMaps stylie, and take a closer look.

GypsyMaps is still working out the kinks, but it could give HopStop a serious run for its money.

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[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.

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[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.

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[banwatch: sweating the small stuff]

New Yorkers love to complain, and the Daily News is already bitching about how new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, after advising diplomats to do “as Mayor Bloomberg does” and take public transit to work, decided to be driven the eight blocks from his hotel to a breakfast meeting, then left his driver idling in a no-standing zone.

Gestures are important, but I think the Daily News is jumping the gun on this one. Yeah, Ban’s driver should obey the law, and yeah, it’d be nice if Ban followed his own advice and took the subway everywhere. On the other hand, driving really is a lot faster much of the time, and Ban isn’t mayor of Subwayland. His work really is important — more important than impressing New Yorkers or fellow diplomats with his individual devotion to combating gridlock. Also, unlike a lot of the diplomats, Ban is actually busy.

Via Gothamist.

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[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.

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[live]

I Would Never Wanna Be Young Again | Not a Crime | 60 Revolutions (YouTube Videos) by Gogol Bordello (Gypsy Punk World Strike)

When I was younger, rock concerts were major events in my life. I would find out about a show through a listing in BAM or the Guardian, buy my tickets early and let the anticipation build over weeks or even months. Against the backdrop of tedious mediocrity that was high school, an upcoming concert was a glowing beacon, a reminder that there was a grander, funkier, freakier world out there and that I could access it if I wanted to. Going to these concerts, I knew I was a part of something larger than myself. And back in high school afterwards, I would be sustained by the secret knowledge I’d gained at the Stone or the Omni or the Phoenix Theatre, seeing Primus or Soundgarden or Fungo Mungo: I am not like the rest of you. This is not my whole world.

Once I had a car, concerts became less of a big deal to get to, and consequently less of a big deal. What had once been a breakthrough to an ecstatic new world was now a mostly enjoyable but fairly regular amusement. Once I moved to New York in ’93, concerts became even less meaningful. Try as I might, I failed to find any scene in New York that could stand up to the multi-ethnic, genre-muddling loopiness of the Bay Area. Where bands back home wore wild costumes and leaped around like lunatics, the East Coast scene seemed to require that bands dress badly and stand around looking bored.

Concerts still involved painful noise, crowds, cigarette smoke, long lines, overpriced tickets, late nights, sweat, bad drinks and horrendous opening acts, but the payoff was less. I no longer needed rock concerts to help me locate myself in the world or feel cool.

I’ve been to plenty of concerts in the years since then by artists I really like, but it’s rare that I’ve felt that old sense of anticipation. Today, though, it’s back. Tonight, I’m going to see Gogol Bordello at Irving Plaza, and I feel the giddy thrill of adventure in store. Check out the live clips and you’ll see why.

Bonus: Not a Crime (Video)