Elevating Substance…

… my new favorite blog.

Hilarious.

… but this looks really badassed.

Not that I’m in any rush to try breathing anywhere in China outside, say, the Gobi Desert, but — despite JV’s mixed review — China’s definitely on my list of places to visit. I suppose it would be time better spent not checking out the Olympics, though, given that history continues to prove that, well, you can have the Olympics just about anywhere. Except New York, that is.

Lately, in anticipation of summer beginning shortly, I’ve been trying to change my diet and get a bit more exercise. Up until recently, I’d fully well have acknowledged that my diet has been absolutely awful for quite a while now, but lately I’ve been actually paying a lot of attention to it and — prepare to be shocked — actually going to the gym for the first time in about 8 years. I’ve gone running seven of the last ten days, for instance, and am feeling pretty good about it.

Anyway, more on that later, perhaps, but the real point here, and one I’ve already alluded to on here already recently — when I don’t drink and get a decent amount of sleep, I’m way more jazzed about getting up early and getting a jump on my day. How annoying, then, to find myself up, fed, showered, dressed, out the door and on the train platform by a few minutes after 9:00… Only to wait while — I swear to God — five packed trains roll by and I have to wait about a half an hour to finally make it on to one.

In and of itself this was only mildly annoying, I suppose, given that it’s a gorgeous day outside, I had a paper to read, I wasn’t late to work, and I wasn’t exactly rushing in to get anything in particular done. The real fun started, though, when I finally made it on to the sixth train to pass by only to find that it was literally — not figuratively — packed with what I’d guess were elementary school aged kids.

Were kids that age always so fucking annoying? Seriously. There were probably 30 of the little ankle-biters huddled in two groups, half of them singing (quite loudly) retarded and mildly offensive “me Chinese, me play joke, me go peepee in your Coke”-styled schoolyard anthems. At first I assumed, as there are both a high school and a big subway transfer station about three blocks from where I get on the train, that most of these kids would get off there. But I paid a bit more attention for a minute, and while I’m pretty bad about guessing kids’ ages, I realized that these kids were (1) a bit too large a group and (2) a bit too young to be on a trip by themselves. Conclusion? They were on a field trip.

Now, I remember when I was a kid and we had field trips, we generally had buses to take us wherever we were going. I’ll totally grant NY an exception in terms of finding that workable, but either way… What fucking teacher lets these kids run completely amok on public transportation on their way to some school-sponsored event? I’m not trying to sound like a total douche because I realize that kids are supposed to goof off and act like kids a good part of the time, but I don’t think it’s so unrealistic to expect a teacher, when carting a few dozen of them onto a crowded commuter train, to enforce some sort of crowd control. I mean, ten and eleven year old kids should be able to shut the fuck up for twenty minutes, I think.  I got so annoyed that after six stops I jumped off the train and ran one car down for the rest of the ride to work.

Seven pounds, fourteen ounces. Sister and niece are recovering nicely.

When I first moved to New York I had a car. Well, OK, I moved my car here from the friend’s house it had been parked at out-of-state after I’d lived here for a few months and had decided to stay. While I’d pretty quickly adapted to taking the subway or cabs everywhere, and wasn’t in any particular rush to hit the city roads, I had to do something with it eventually. At that point my driving-in-New York experience had been limited to cruising around for a few days in the rented 14′ U-Haul I’d used to yard my stuff into town, the highlights of which were (1) barely escaping death on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at 4:00 a.m. (it really is narrow), (2) realizing on a trip back from IKEA, as I approached an underpass bridge with 10′ posted overhead clearance, that I’d gotten onto a parkway on Long Island uring rush hour in a truck that needed 12′ clearance (oops; they don’t have the parkway/highway distinction out West), (3) and getting pulled over by the police getting on the bridge into Manhattan so they could check the contents of the truck (which at that point contained only a bunch of unmarked brown boxes from IKEA). Admittedly, none of these occurrences were likely to repeat in a car, but still. Between those incidents, the beat-up roads, the traffic, and the maniacal drivers, I wasn’t looking forward to having a vehicle.

Once I got the car back here, the plan was to sell it more or less as soon as possible, though in the end I kept it around for a few weeks as I had to re-order a copy of the title or something along those lines. Having let the insurance lapse over the summer, I went to get a new rate quote online without changing my address with Progressive, and was informed that, because the credit bureau database they ran my application through reflected that my address had changed, my new monthly rate was going to jump from $83 a month to $440 a month, a big hike just for moving to Brooklyn. I managed to convince them that the car was still garaged out-of-state just so I could get the proof of insurance certificate, but was told quite flatly that if I submitted any claims in or around New York that they would deny them.

Predictably, after about 12 days of parking on the street near the Graham stop, I hopped in the car one morning to drive to brunch and saw that the stock stereo had been jacked. Whoever stole it managed to reset the alarm, though, and I kind of had to appreciate the artistry. It’s a bit like raping someone and then pulling their pants up, but since s/he was willing to go to all of that trouble for the CD player in a Dodge Neon, I figured they were welcome to it. I never ended up driving more than a few times in the city. I did drive through Times Square once while playing host to some out-of-town guests, and it was fun but harrying, like a video game but without any extra lives. And I think I carted one of my roommates into town a few times when the L wasn’t running. In any case, a few hundred dollars in parking tickets later — one for, like, $150 for partially blocking wheelchair access to a curb that was about 1″ high — and I finally got around to selling the thing to a quite pleasant house DJ from Bushwick. Who kept his appointment to see the car on a morning it happened to snow. A perfect finishing touch, really.

Why bring this up? My experience owning a car here led me to the inescapable conclusion that even if you’re driving a total piece of shit, owning and driving a car here is crazy expensive. I got to thinking about this more after my brunch conversation with JL last weekend about how we were both disappointed to see Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan fail, after being approved by the city council, without even coming to a vote in the state legislature. [Good editorial on Sheldon Silver's role here.] Pertermitting any conversation about how laughable New York’s home rule is in the first place, and the opprobrium of losing a few hundred million dollars in federal funding for mass transit infrastructure, it struck me as rather incredulous that much of the opposition to the plan came in the form of argument that charging $8 a day to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street would be a regressive tax on the working class commuters who drive into the city every day.

I’m sorry. Who are these people and how can they afford cars in the city?

By my math, with a clean driving record and street parking my $1200 car in a not-too-dodgy part of Brooklyn, it was going to cost me about $5,280 a year in insurance alone just to keep the thing street legal. And that’s before actually driving it. Admittedly, I’m in a higher risk insurance bracket than a 45-year-old soccer mom, but to me it seems a bit off the mark to posit that the people taking the hit on an $8 a day charge are the people just scraping by, and there’s evidence strong evidence that most driving commuters aren’t driving in out of necessity.

In my opinion, driving into and out of the city does seem like a luxury, and while my populist tendencies tend to shy away from taxing and overtaxing as a way of achieving a desired “social good” (e.g., fewer cars, improved transit services and more people taking the train), I’m not beyond suggesting that using the additional funds the plan would have generated for public transit was, on balance, a good idea. Above and beyond traffic being annoying and buses running slow, and taking a somewhat meta approach given that I no longer drive in the city, now that it’s fairly safe to assume that the science behind global warming isn’t just a hoax perpetuated by Al Gore, I’d go so far as to say I have an articulable interest in there being fewer cars on the road. I’m much more supportive of luxury taxes on items that in some remote way have an impact on me than I am on sin taxes on things that really don’t. For example, I can’t decide who drives or doesn’t, but their driving affects me in some way; I can’t decide who smokes or doesn’t, but that doesn’t affect me. And, again, while I’m generally leery of do-gooder plans to tax people into behaving the way “we” want them to — upping cigarette taxes seems largely colored by this motivation — I don’t mind as much when I have an interest.

Actually, I wonder how long it will take before the “going green” mentality extends to embracing the sentiment that gasoline taxes are viewed as more of a sin tax than a luxury tax. Admittedly, I think we’re a ways from that point; the recent clamoring for temporary suspension of the federal excise tax on gas stemming from the roiling commodities markets seems strong evidence in support of that conclusion. Anyway, think of OPEC what you will, but $4.00 gasoline doesn’t bother me so much…

When I was a kid I never really thought seriously about getting married. First of all, of course, I was a kid and of not capable of giving a properly informed answer. Duh. What I mean is that I suppose, had I been asked, “Will you ever get married?” I would have answered affirmatively because, based upon my empirical observation even back then, most people do get married. Statistically this is true. Likely strengthening that view was that my parents, oddly, had not gotten divorced (and still have yet to).  I say “oddly” not because of their particular relationship being ill-suited for the institution, but because, as a practical matter, most of my friends’ parents – and, indeed, many parents of people my age – are divorced.  In general, I’d posit that my friends are not excepted from that general rule, and, without sitting down and racking my brain for examples, would guess that of the few dozen people I keep in touch with whom I’ve known for more than, say, ten years, I can think of only two off the top of my head whose parents aren’t divorced or separated.

All of that being the case, lately the whole marriage-and-kids thing seems to be rearing its ugly head among people I know a lot more frequently.  One of my sisters is due to have my first niece in less than a week, for example.  And afer somehow dodging the wedding invitation bullet for some time now, I presently have no fewer than three weddings lined up already this summer, and, again without racking my brain, would guess four dozen acquaintances or friends who’ve gotten married in the past three years.  The last time I  attended a wedding it was in 2003, that particular matrimonial event capping a six year courtship and marking the beginning of the nine months of wedded bliss that followed.

Admittedly, for a few years now I’ve been of the age at which it’s not “supposed” to be (and really isn’t) surprising to hear about BFFs, ex-girlfriends, casual acquaintances, old roommates, or people you used to know shacking up, getting married and “settling down,” as it were.  And it’s certainly not a problem for me in any way, of course. I’m quite happy for them.

In the back of my head, though, I keep hearing this voice…

“My friends don’t get married and have kids. They get divorces and have abortions. What the hell is going on?”

Now, kids are great and all. Other people’s kids. Ones you can give back when they break.  I’m as yet undecided as to whether they’re for me at this point, preferring, as I often joke, to leave mine in Cancun, South Padre Island, Miami, and other spring break hot spots. No reason to go disrupting both mom and kid by relocating them to New York or anything.  If Planned Parenthood decided to launch a frequent flier program, I’d be the first to sign up. Twice. That’s all I’m saying.

And commitment, be it defined by the parameters of “marriage” or not, I also think can be a great thing. My own record of making it work, of course, is a separate matter, but in theory I suppose I see what everyone’s going for.

In practice, though, and in keeping with conventional wisdom that people of my generation are somewhat stuck in an extended post-adolescence, most people I know well who got married more than a few years ago are now divorced. And many of my good female friends who’ve gotten pregnant at some point in the past ten years or so (not an insignificant number) have had abortions. While the voice in my head, then, sounds facetious, it’s also… Accurate.

Another reason I’ve been thinking about the marriage issue more recently –- above and beyond the reason that it becomes much less conceptual when you’re watching your friends and acquaintances get married –- is that I’ve come to appreciate over the past years that I make friends much differently now than I used to, which seems to implicate in a roundabout way my own (non-)marriage-y tendencies.  I had the good fortune between ten and fifteen years ago of meeting a lot of people I thought and still think are amazing and talented people, trust immensely, and consider great friends. While historically anachronistic, that good fortune – the right people meeting at the right places and right times – worked out for us.  As an added bonus, most, if not all, are of the “low maintenance” variety, in the sense that we’ll go ages without speaking or seeing each other and still know, on some indescribable level, that we remain somehow close. It helped in a lot of ways, too, of course, that we all had a lot of shared interests back then (no, not just the drugs), and with rare exception all got along with each other both one-on-one and as a group.  One of the weddings I’m really looking forward to this summer, for example, is that of two friends I’ve known for about thirteen years, and who’ve both known of the rest of our little gang, if you will, for around as long.

Anyway, this isn’t at all to say that I haven’t met any kick-ass people since some retrospectively glorified, nebulous, “back in the day” period of time. Actually, 95% of the folks I spend my time with day-to-day are folks I’ve met since moving to New York. But I bring this last bit up becauseit seems to bear on my view of longer-term relationships more as time passes.  With respect to “dating” — what a dumb word — my take has generally been that the list of things that bother you about people you’re seeing – dealbreakers, for lack of a better word – only gets longer the older I am. On my list, for of course, are your standard ones, like, “body odor,” “bad in bed,” “doesn’t drink,” and the like. But also on there, for instance, is “insists on paying for things with personal checks at weird times.” Idiosyncratic? Maybe. But you try seeing someone who does it.  It’s really annoying.

Further, I think living in NY can be a bit taxing on relationships, too, both existing and burgeoning. I’m not sure why that is exactly, but I know almost no couples who have moved here together and not ended up breaking things off. Reasons that spring to mind? Well, It’s incredibly easy to sleep around. Second (and I read an article somewhere recently that made this point well), something about living here makes you feel younger than you are. Another possible contributing factor? The conspicuous, somewhat competitive level of “lifestyle consumption” here; money can, unfortunately, be somewhat sexy to some people, I guess.  Finally, I think it’s safe to assume that anyone you start seeing here isn’t seeing you alone. Not putting all of their eggs on your basket, so to speak. Add it all up and the playing field looks a little rough. 

I was re-reading a blog I posted a bit less than 5 years ago about these seemingly related issues, and have come to realize that while I’m a lot more conscious about wasting other people’s time than I was back then in go-nowhere friend/relationships, my views still haven’t changed much in that I’m not entirely decided, and don’t feel much closer to getting married than I felt back then.

So… Marriage and kids? Or divorces and abortions?

It’s truly remarkable how much better you feel in the mornings and what efficient use you can make of your time if you don’t drink too much and get a decent night’s sleep. Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?

Case in point? My weekend. Which felt remarkably long, but in a good way. That the eight days of rain in a row we were theoretically going to get did not materialize only made it better.

I kicked things off right by laying pretty low on Thursday night. Had dinner with CS at Tournesol, which I’d recommend and to which I’d definitely return. I’d been a number of times to the wine/cheese/oyster bar they have a few doors down from the bistro, but not to the bistro itself. Good stuff (I was a fan of the mushroom-stuffed calamari in particular), but very filling, especially after having done the 95% vegetarian thing for six weeks or so now and not being in the habit of eating too much fatty/fried food these days. I was in a serious food coma after dinner and it was all I could do to make it through a movie before calling it a night. In other words, I was pretty well-rested going into the weekend for a change.

Friday night I finally hunkered down and did some serious spring cleaning, which I told myself earlier in the week I would finally get done. As I’m still subletting, I’m a bit constrained in terms of what I can do with the place vis-a-vis getting rid of / replacing furniture and the like, and it had gotten a bit uncomfortable lately, what with the accumulated piles of magazines everywhere, stacks of DVDs lying around, and the turntables sitting in my living room. Shipping those few thousand records to NYC a few months back didn’t help, either. Anyway, I got into it and, after a few hours of work,  I am now pleased to report that it feels like a much more liveable spot, and that I feel quite a bit better about clocking the upcoming summer there.  I contemplated going out afterwards, and made tentative plans to grab a drink at Macri Park with DS, but in the end I decided staying in was the better bet. By “staying in”, of course, I mean having a few quick drinks at my neighborhood bar, where I quite fortuitously ran into a friend from the neighborhood and had a conversation about internet ad pricing (he being a print journalist).

The staying in totally paid off on Saturday morning — By 1:00 I had already gotten up, had breakfast, done some shopping, popped by work for a minute, gone to the gym, gotten my hair cut, taken a shower, and stopped by the bar to enjoy a pre-Kentucky Derby libation…

Had lunch with JL in the neighborhood (good conversation about the failure of Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan, among other things; more on that later) and then hopped on the bus (the train was skipping my local stops this weekend, which was mildly annoying) to the city.

Made it to CS’s new place right around 4:00 to meet the roommates and get our shrimp cocktail and sangria on. I’d been to the building before, as two other friends live there, too (neither of whom was around on Saturday), but hadn’t seen the roof, the club level, the gym, etc. , and must say that, now having done so, my take on living downtown is quite a bit improved. Might have to consider giving the neighborhood a shot, especially given its ease of access to the 4/5/6.  Sadly, the weather on Saturday, while not a downpour, was definitely a bit on the chilly / windy / drizzly side, and more or less put the kibosh on what otherwise would have been a few lovely rounds of rooftop croquet while we waited for the race. I did get to meet CS’s roomies and a ton of their friends, though, as well as hang out with LB and EP for a bit and make plans to go to Belmont with BM this year. Moving the soiree to the club room ended up working out pretty well, too, as there were both a kick ass flat screen and a pool table to occupy ourselves with. We found out later that apparently you’re not supposed to drink in there, but, um, that’s what club floors are for, and it was a bit late (e.g., many bottles of wine and several cases of beer later) by the time the staff caught on.

  Now, I love me some horse racing. When I was a kid I used to ride English for a few years (even showing at a pretty into level 8 or 10 times), and spent a fair amount of time at the track with my dad. An uncle of mine had a horse run in the Derby a number of years ago, and as chance would have it Kent Desormeaux had ridden for him on few occasions. I still regret not ever making the charter bus trek to the race itself when I was living in NC for two years, but never miss out on watching the race itself, even if I haven’t had the chance to hit the OTB (ghetto fab, right?). While conventional Derby wisdom is that the favorite almost never wins, how delighted was I to see Big Brown take it then, not only because it was a great race, but because I also won $400. I can’t remember the last time I ended a weekend with more money than I started it with. Sweet.

Post-race I headed up to JS’s birthday in Chelsea, splitting the cab with some girl I met in front of the building heading to the EV for her friend’s birthday (they’d lived in Spain together; we rapped about Barcelona en route) and talking Clinton vs. Obama with the cab driver after we dropped her off. (Has anyone else noticed how much cabbies seem to want to talk election politics lately?) I get to the restaurant (El Quinto Pino, also now recommended) only to realize that jackass is, um, a day early. Party is actually on Sunday. D’oh.

Head home to change and shower, pick up CS, and then hit the Mayday party at a friend’s bar in Bushwick. Said hey to a bunch of friends I hadn’t seen in a while, had a few drinks, and called it a pretty early evening (2:00am?).

Yesterday. Was. Awesome. For all of the hullabaloo about the lousy weather we were supposed to have this weekend, it was picture perfect outside yesteday, bordering on warm even. And everyone knows what that means… Sun’s out? Guns out! I was up and about by 10:00am and already halfway through my Sunday paper by 11:00, and CS and I decided to walk to brunch rather than wait on the ridiculously slow-moving bus that runs right by my place.  We tried to view apartments in two buildings near the water with big “Now Leasing” signs draped all over them, both of which turned out, annoyingly, to be at capacity, seemingly obviating the need to broadcast how open your leasing office is. We grabbed lunch outside at Masso (which, again, I hadn’t been to and will totally eat at again; amazing panini sandwiches), and despite the lovely weather, decided to take advantage of being up before 4:00 in the afternoon to hit up P.S.1 to catch the part of the Olafur Eliasson exhibit showing there. Visually it was a great exhibit, I thought, and I’m now intent on seeing the part of the show running at MoMA, but, well… Art is still gay.

Went home and took a nap, following that up with a stroll through McCarren Park (which was packed; glad to see the Nest is still bringing them in), then jumped the packed L over to Union Square, from where I meandered down to the Rusty Knot for a quick drink before a stop by Hogs & Heifers on my way to JS’s party (for reals this time). Had a great time catching up over cava and light tapas, the semi-awkward half-drunk couple in attendance aside. Somehow think I let a friend of his convince me to go skydiving in the near future. Perhaps if the weather stays like this…

And now it’s back to work. Blech.

Year in, year out, some things never change.

[Note -- See the comments for an update warranting revision of the original post, courtesy of tipster reader b. On balance, I think this correction might make the story funnier.]

[Note #2 -- This keeps getting more hilarious, as far as I'm concerned. New revisions based upon tipster Lisa's new info, which I hope she didn't go out of her way to get. :-)]

So last night I went out with some peeps to check out a friend’s band at National Underground. I’d never been there before and knew nothing about the place, though I vaguely recalled that there was such an establishment in that general locale since I used to walk by it all the time on my way to the Vag. My friend wasn’t playing downstairs until 10:00 or so, and I showed up around 9:00, so I sat and gabbed with LB, BP and AS, totally digging on the ragtime band playing upstairs (they kicked mad ass). I have a ragtime thing.

Anyway, I found out later from the door guy that it was Eddy Davis and his band playing, popular among other reasons (I learned) because theirs is the band that Woody Allen plays clarinet with from time to time. Apparently they play there every Wednesday if you’re interested. And I would recommend going to check them out at this particular bar if you’re into that sort of thing, but for not knowing quite how I feel about my brief introduction to the proprietor manager-of-sorts of said bar, who is, apparently Gavin DeGraw Gavin DeGraw’s brother some dude who works for Gavin DeGraw.

Gavin DeGraw, whose name sounded vaguely familiar, I suppose, but who I had to Google this morning.

After my friend’s band plays, I pop back upstairs and grab a seat at the corner of the bar and get a drink; I happen to be sitting next to some dude on a laptop at the last seat on the short end of the bar, up against the wall. I’m chatting up the door guy, who explains who the band is, what other bands play there normally, and the like. At some point he says, “Oh, that’s the owner right there.”

Owner Manager-of-sorts Some dude who works at this bar had been half listening to the conversation and looks up from what he’s doing, at which point I turn to my left (door guy is on my right) and say, “Oh, this your place?”

“Yeah.”

[Hand extended] “Nice one. My name’s [me].”

Dude shakes my hand.

Dude turns back to his computer.

Dude falls back into rapt silence. Without saying hi. Without trading names.

In and of itself, I think this is only mildly dick of the guy. I mean, one of your employees is making an effort to introduce you, you notice this and look up, I present you with my name and hand, and you sorta blow me off and go back to whatever you were doing. Not so much as much as a “hello.” Whatever. I finish my drink and start looking to round up my friends.

I pop back downstairs and am talking to somebody about the show, the venue, etc., and mention offhand that I hadn’t been here before.

“Oh. Gavin DeGraw owns this place.”

“Who’s Gavin DeGraw?”

My friend points to a picture of the guy brother of the guy a guy who looks just like the guy I was just introduced to as “owner” of the bar I’d just met hanging on the wall.

It’s at this point I realize that I’d likely gotten the brush off from dude because I was already supposed to know who he was or something. “Don’t you know who I am?” is a joke I often make, but I’m joking when I say it. Upon webstalking him this morning, though, I’ve settled on the opinion that he’s kind of an ass.

Dude, you your brother Gavin DeGraw wrote the theme song for some teenybopper TV show — One Tree Hill ?? — that I’ve never seen, and in 2003 you your brother he had a number two record in Norway. You have a picture of you your brother Gavin DeGraw hanging in your bar.

In retrospect, it was funny that the friend who mentioned to me that he owned the place didn’t actually answer my question but just pointed at the picture. I’m guessing she didn’t know who he was, either. Too funny.

Eddy Davis and his band, 1. Gavin DeGraw Gavin DeGraw’s brother, some dude, 0.