Wednesday, October 18, 2006
IN AN UGLY TOWN
Jacksonville is a coastal city in the northeastern portion of the state of Florida. It has the distinction of being the most populated city in Florida and the largest city (square mile-wise) in the continental United States, and has a metropolitan area spanning Nassau, St. Johns, Baker, Clay, and Duval counties with a metropolitan population of over 1 million people.
Get In
I saw some horrible car accidents in the south but not so many up here, for some reason. By golly, I even had a rather bad one myself one glimmering rush hour, trying to beat the light to hang a left onto the I-40 onramp. Next thing I know the car is spinning violently with a screech and the orange sun flies from in front of me to back behind my left ear. Sat in the front seat dazed and covered in pennies from my center console, glancing over at the shocked mother and daughter I'd hit as they waited to be extricated from under the crumpled dashboard of their Tercel. Boy was my face red!
Get Around
Confidential to MU: Remember when we spent that week going to the parking lot off Six Forks, the one by the movie theater no one went to? That sure was awesome. I think we should have laid off the Taco Bell but hey Summer's What You Make It, right?
See
"To this day I don't look at hound dogs the same way. Was it you that told me that everyone there has pools? Someone told me that. They said it in such a snotty way, too, but I didn't really mind it. It's one of the things I kind of liked about you, you could switch from demure to snotty and how many people can say that?" Try saying that over the roof of a car to her in 90 degree heat parked out by some international airport with brown grassy fields surrounding its runways. Careful, the roof of the car can be extremely hot.
Do
I feel pretty guilty about it but one morning we broke into a house in suburban Atlanta. I won't say the name of the town because I'm still paranoid. We didn't take anything or harm the house at all. We just slept in the beds for about an hour or so. Didn't really have a choice, we were so damned tired. It wasn't a very smart idea to drive nine hours down to Georgia in the middle of the night anyways, but when you're 20 and drunk you kind of get a pass on these types of things.
Buy
One of my NYC-bred coworkers used to crack on me for growing up in the south. "What'd you spend all your time doing, driving around? How fun," he'd say with a sneer. Well what the hell did you do here in the big city, hot shot? Probably much of the same. For the record, we spent a lot of time in the Harris Teeter parking lot. One time Shane threw a can of pinto beans real high in the air. We watched it land on the asphalt and explode. A very satisfying noise. The grocery store was so big the locals nicknamed it the Taj MaTeeter.
Eat
Did your mall ever have a cafeteria? Ours did and they had two separate areas for lines. But one line was always closed, roped off and in darkness. I don't think in the ten years we went there was that line ever open. As a kid I always looked at it, that darkened phantom cafeteria line and wondered what the hell happened there in the middle of the night, when the mall was closed and the lights were down low. Probably the same stuff that happened in that hallway at Spinnaker's, below the art prints for the '84 Olympics in L.A.
Drink
In Washington Heights parents let their kids run around at all hours. You'll be sitting up at four in the morning and six-year-olds will be scampering up and down the halls, shouting and bouncing things off the plaster corridors.
Sleep
Mad props to the chick in Ashburn who offered her house for me to sleep in one winter. I should have taken you up on that. I hope you're still alive!
Stay Safe
It's funny how in America you can gather three or four of your friends from all over this huge land, from suburban and urban backgrounds, Christian and Atheist, vegan and carnivore, and despite all differences, each person can contribute at least two stories of close encounters with random street crime. Love it or leave it!
Get Out
I was smoking a cigarette outside of work and a woman walked by in a fluorescent pink wool skirt. Something came over me and I wanted to shout "HEY! I remember you! You used to turn tricks in the parking lot in front of our building in the early 90s!" That sort of thing isn't as delicate an issue as you'd think. I've found that if you just state it bluntly and with conviction, most people will be happy to correct you or lament your mistaken memory with a brief chuckle. What a friendly city, I hope we stay together for another three years, old buddy.
Jacksonville is a coastal city in the northeastern portion of the state of Florida. It has the distinction of being the most populated city in Florida and the largest city (square mile-wise) in the continental United States, and has a metropolitan area spanning Nassau, St. Johns, Baker, Clay, and Duval counties with a metropolitan population of over 1 million people.
Get In
I saw some horrible car accidents in the south but not so many up here, for some reason. By golly, I even had a rather bad one myself one glimmering rush hour, trying to beat the light to hang a left onto the I-40 onramp. Next thing I know the car is spinning violently with a screech and the orange sun flies from in front of me to back behind my left ear. Sat in the front seat dazed and covered in pennies from my center console, glancing over at the shocked mother and daughter I'd hit as they waited to be extricated from under the crumpled dashboard of their Tercel. Boy was my face red!
Get AroundConfidential to MU: Remember when we spent that week going to the parking lot off Six Forks, the one by the movie theater no one went to? That sure was awesome. I think we should have laid off the Taco Bell but hey Summer's What You Make It, right?
See
"To this day I don't look at hound dogs the same way. Was it you that told me that everyone there has pools? Someone told me that. They said it in such a snotty way, too, but I didn't really mind it. It's one of the things I kind of liked about you, you could switch from demure to snotty and how many people can say that?" Try saying that over the roof of a car to her in 90 degree heat parked out by some international airport with brown grassy fields surrounding its runways. Careful, the roof of the car can be extremely hot.
Do
I feel pretty guilty about it but one morning we broke into a house in suburban Atlanta. I won't say the name of the town because I'm still paranoid. We didn't take anything or harm the house at all. We just slept in the beds for about an hour or so. Didn't really have a choice, we were so damned tired. It wasn't a very smart idea to drive nine hours down to Georgia in the middle of the night anyways, but when you're 20 and drunk you kind of get a pass on these types of things.
Buy
One of my NYC-bred coworkers used to crack on me for growing up in the south. "What'd you spend all your time doing, driving around? How fun," he'd say with a sneer. Well what the hell did you do here in the big city, hot shot? Probably much of the same. For the record, we spent a lot of time in the Harris Teeter parking lot. One time Shane threw a can of pinto beans real high in the air. We watched it land on the asphalt and explode. A very satisfying noise. The grocery store was so big the locals nicknamed it the Taj MaTeeter.
Eat
Did your mall ever have a cafeteria? Ours did and they had two separate areas for lines. But one line was always closed, roped off and in darkness. I don't think in the ten years we went there was that line ever open. As a kid I always looked at it, that darkened phantom cafeteria line and wondered what the hell happened there in the middle of the night, when the mall was closed and the lights were down low. Probably the same stuff that happened in that hallway at Spinnaker's, below the art prints for the '84 Olympics in L.A.
Drink
In Washington Heights parents let their kids run around at all hours. You'll be sitting up at four in the morning and six-year-olds will be scampering up and down the halls, shouting and bouncing things off the plaster corridors.
SleepMad props to the chick in Ashburn who offered her house for me to sleep in one winter. I should have taken you up on that. I hope you're still alive!
Stay Safe
It's funny how in America you can gather three or four of your friends from all over this huge land, from suburban and urban backgrounds, Christian and Atheist, vegan and carnivore, and despite all differences, each person can contribute at least two stories of close encounters with random street crime. Love it or leave it!
Get Out
I was smoking a cigarette outside of work and a woman walked by in a fluorescent pink wool skirt. Something came over me and I wanted to shout "HEY! I remember you! You used to turn tricks in the parking lot in front of our building in the early 90s!" That sort of thing isn't as delicate an issue as you'd think. I've found that if you just state it bluntly and with conviction, most people will be happy to correct you or lament your mistaken memory with a brief chuckle. What a friendly city, I hope we stay together for another three years, old buddy.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
OH HOMEY DON'T KISS ME
Fall plans:
Back in the day I told someone about getting chased by hounds in the mist, around 3:30 or so in the morning, way up Fifth Avenue around where there are a lot of gated gardens. I didn't want to be chased by the hounds over in Central Park in some wide-open space like the Sheep Meadow or down winding paths by the 66th Street Transverse Road. No, it has to be in a well-manicured patch of grass, bounded by hedges, towered over by ornate limestone manses. Come to think of it, maybe it's more of a Spring thing. A Spring Fling.
Involve myself in a fling with an Exxon cashier. This won't happen, as I don't know of any Exxons in the five boroughs and I don't really drive much. One of the last days of Summer in 2001, before the world went all nutso on us, I found myself driving from Washington to North Carolina on a Sunday morning. I was alone and extremely hungover. It was overcast when I stopped at an Exxon south of Richmond and met a lovely girl from Belgium working the cash register. I bought a paper and some gum and never got the chance to ask her what the hell she was doing there. I hate driving long distances by myself--I really can't stand it.
Drive through housing projects. It's not really like it was in the early 90s when my aunt would shuffle us across the avenue even though we were still three blocks from the perimeter of the complex. Nowadays I slide through in the 95 Taurus with Sonic Youth stickers on the back, pumping Midlake and chainsmoking. I am a Greek fisherman on the D train at 3:30am. I am a Republican car dealership security guard eating Tempra powder on the corner of 84th and Columbus just after midnight. I am a Pakistani family eating tacos at O'Hare airport. What I'm saying is, it's no big deal.
Did you know Lil' Bow Wow's new album is going to be titled Piss-Covered Gargoyle? You heard it here first.
Atlanta doesn't strike me as a very good city for fall. Not like, oh, Saint Louis or even Edmonton. Remember when we saw a cop chugging a Corona on the porch of that shitty club in Buckhead? We couldn't stop talking about it at breakfast the next day. I don't believe that was fall, that had to have been spring. Again, some things just fit into spring, like driving your Range Rover into an oak tree in New Carrollton.
Fall for me will always mean smoke-scented streets, soft Earth, withered grass under a bed of wet leaves, dogs with machine guns, cats appearing on TV and interrupting the playoff baseball, war between the animals oh god why did we ever let them learn our secrets they're coming do you hear them and then Susan from next door lets out a scream and sure enough the backyard is filled with cats in Power Wheels, all helmeted and bearing tiny machine guns--how did they make those things without opposable thumbs?--and we're being told to line up, at least I think so, it's hard to tell through all the meowing. That is fall for me.
Last but not least: hang around municipal buildings. If you live in New York and you find yourself free one radiant afternoon, go to 79th Street between Park and Lexington, north side. You'll see one of the satellite buildings for Hunter College, built in that psuedo-International Style so prominent in the late 50s and early 60s. It looks like the type of building that you'd want to break into, hole up in one of the dusty classrooms, listen to a ballgame on transistor radio and drink Scotch until you make the unwise decision to phone an old gal from a nearby pay-phone. At least, it seems that way. I've been eating these cheese sandwiches, see, and I think the ch
Fall plans:
Back in the day I told someone about getting chased by hounds in the mist, around 3:30 or so in the morning, way up Fifth Avenue around where there are a lot of gated gardens. I didn't want to be chased by the hounds over in Central Park in some wide-open space like the Sheep Meadow or down winding paths by the 66th Street Transverse Road. No, it has to be in a well-manicured patch of grass, bounded by hedges, towered over by ornate limestone manses. Come to think of it, maybe it's more of a Spring thing. A Spring Fling.
Involve myself in a fling with an Exxon cashier. This won't happen, as I don't know of any Exxons in the five boroughs and I don't really drive much. One of the last days of Summer in 2001, before the world went all nutso on us, I found myself driving from Washington to North Carolina on a Sunday morning. I was alone and extremely hungover. It was overcast when I stopped at an Exxon south of Richmond and met a lovely girl from Belgium working the cash register. I bought a paper and some gum and never got the chance to ask her what the hell she was doing there. I hate driving long distances by myself--I really can't stand it.
Drive through housing projects. It's not really like it was in the early 90s when my aunt would shuffle us across the avenue even though we were still three blocks from the perimeter of the complex. Nowadays I slide through in the 95 Taurus with Sonic Youth stickers on the back, pumping Midlake and chainsmoking. I am a Greek fisherman on the D train at 3:30am. I am a Republican car dealership security guard eating Tempra powder on the corner of 84th and Columbus just after midnight. I am a Pakistani family eating tacos at O'Hare airport. What I'm saying is, it's no big deal.Did you know Lil' Bow Wow's new album is going to be titled Piss-Covered Gargoyle? You heard it here first.
Atlanta doesn't strike me as a very good city for fall. Not like, oh, Saint Louis or even Edmonton. Remember when we saw a cop chugging a Corona on the porch of that shitty club in Buckhead? We couldn't stop talking about it at breakfast the next day. I don't believe that was fall, that had to have been spring. Again, some things just fit into spring, like driving your Range Rover into an oak tree in New Carrollton.
Fall for me will always mean smoke-scented streets, soft Earth, withered grass under a bed of wet leaves, dogs with machine guns, cats appearing on TV and interrupting the playoff baseball, war between the animals oh god why did we ever let them learn our secrets they're coming do you hear them and then Susan from next door lets out a scream and sure enough the backyard is filled with cats in Power Wheels, all helmeted and bearing tiny machine guns--how did they make those things without opposable thumbs?--and we're being told to line up, at least I think so, it's hard to tell through all the meowing. That is fall for me.
Last but not least: hang around municipal buildings. If you live in New York and you find yourself free one radiant afternoon, go to 79th Street between Park and Lexington, north side. You'll see one of the satellite buildings for Hunter College, built in that psuedo-International Style so prominent in the late 50s and early 60s. It looks like the type of building that you'd want to break into, hole up in one of the dusty classrooms, listen to a ballgame on transistor radio and drink Scotch until you make the unwise decision to phone an old gal from a nearby pay-phone. At least, it seems that way. I've been eating these cheese sandwiches, see, and I think the ch
