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Spent a lot of time wandering about aimlessly yesterday, enjoying the fruits of unemployed life in NYC. Two interesting things I came across.
First in the West Village, Horatio and Hudson, ’round 4p:
That ain't good...
Bad: Yellowish-white smoke billowing out of a manhole.
Really Bad: Said manhole cover dancing a noisy little jitterbug from all the pressure.
“Oh, Shit” Bad: Cop, standing in the intersection – “OK folks, I really wouldn’t cross here ’cause it’s probably gonna blow…”
* * * * *
Meanwhile, back in my native Brooklyn, an underground army of anti-vaccine activists is on the move:
I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Apparently vaccinations are also closely linked to poor spelling and shitty grammar. No word yet on the connection between vaccinations, autism and support of Ron Paul, but our crack team of pseudoscientists is hard at work on tackling this one…
While putting up that last post, it occurred to me that as a New Yorker of more than a decade now, and even though this blog is still in its infancy – and therefore still very much at risk for Sudden Blog Death Syndrome – it would be remiss for me to not at least acknowledge that today is, in fact, 9/11.
Especially since, while walking to the cafe in which I’m now firmly ensconced, I trailed behind a slowly disintegrating procession of firemen who had just left the big church on 6th Avenue. Clearly a memorial service had just ended, and most of them were more or less at ease, except for a small detachment that were actually proceeding with banners, in formation, toward Flatbush Ave.
I don’t know if I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I feel absolutely nothing today. I was here when it happened, living in the city. I lost contact with the outside world for the better part of two days. I housed a friend who walked from his office in Tribeca after watching the second plane hit, and who suddenly found himself stranded on the island. We ate dinner together in a packed diner that had almost run out of food, while watching ash-and-dust-caked trucks rumble past, leaving behind long airborne streaks of grey that slowly settled on 1st Avenue. I found out that you can’t give blood if you’ve had hepatitis A. I smelled the burning for weeks afterward, which smelled unsettlingly of barbecue laced with unknown chemicals. I went to peace rallies and memorials, signed petitions, took photographs, and watched the cordon of machine gun-toting National Guardsmen slowly recede down down down until all that was left were tiny armed brigades in our leading transit hubs.
And now, seven years later, nothing. It’s been bludgeoned out of me. I’ll Never Forget, but in the same way as one might Remember The Alamo – it’s history, but the personal has been crushed out of it to make way for the symbolic. It’s been drenched in the most distasteful politics and used to decorate pathetic posturing and some of the most execrable laws that I never dreamed I’d live to see enacted. So fuck you very much, George W. Bush. Fuck you, Rudy Giuliani. Two times, in fact. Fuck you Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, and Tom Ridge, and John Ashcroft, and Alberto Gonzales, and Karl Rove, and John McCain and all the rest of you who decided that today was more important and useful as a GOP talking point than as a human tragedy.
I know you’ll probably never get yours in the poetic sense that you deserve, but I do hope you and your lackeys do get it at the voting booth in two months.
In an ongoing effort to pack as much summer as possible into one rapidly dissipating weekend, I defied all wisdom and reason and confronted suffocating crowds and probable heatstroke in pursuit of rotis and sweet sweet goat curry, among a tantalizing array of other comfort foods…
So much fried goodness, so few arteries...
Generally I hate parades, but this one offered such a winning combination of delightfully spicy and flavorful home cooking with scantily clad young women in ludicrously ostentatious outfits that even my jaded heart could not ignore the call.
Attention, ladies: this Fall, it's all about blue, blue blue...
Of course, I spent the next 36 hours recovering from sauted brain, but such are the wages of sin…
Here in Brooklyn, every car rental is also a lesson in geography and international relations. Observe – I just arranged my vehicular transport to visit the folks next weekend, and was informed:
You CANNOT take vehicle outside following states: NY, NJ, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Canada, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Should you drive outside a 450-mile radius without prior written authorization you will be charged .35 cents per mile above the provided free mileage per day.
[emphasis mine]
Leaving aside the fact that this gives me latitude for a long freakin’ drive (Vancouver, here I come-w0000t!), when did we finally annex our northern neighbor? And was it really the simplest administrative solution to just make it one big state? Help me, Rental Agency X!!
But as long as I can still sit on the grass and enjoy sweet, sweet Mexican corn, then it’s still summer, baby!
Choose your weapon!
Yes, I finally finally made it to the Red Hook ball fields in time to scarf down corn and Salvadoran papusas, and wash it down with some hibiscus juice. Best of all, since it’s Labor Day, it was almost like going to the RHBF back before it got covered in the NY Times, Gothamist, Curbed, blah blah blah and overrun with every hipster with a bicycle. Nope – now, everybody was out of town except the true locals and a handful of diehard supporters, so no lines and just pure eating enjoyment. God, I love long weekends in the city…
