Category Archives: New York Stories

The Gentleman or the Abyss

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times, true story, ,

Last week, I went to the Apollo to see the Prez. Let me repeat that because there’s something magical and ridiculously unlikely in that sentence.  Obama, is, of course, the first sitting president to ever come to the Apollo.  Ten or fifteen years ago, Harlem was much less safe and chic than it is today, and a presidential visit to the theater would have been unthinkable.  But then, to paraphrase Tom Tomorrow, if Dr. Who had landed in 2001 and announced that in 2008 America would elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, it wouldn’t be the time travel part that would sound crazy.

Today 125th street has tour buses and chain stores, but still the feeling of history, and the Apollo is history.  Tickets were reasonably priced, starting at $100, far less than a Broadway show or a concert.  This was not a big donor crowd, just enthusiastic constituents, still proud of their President though some may have been a little disappointed that he hasn’t always been as forceful as we’d hoped.  (As someone said to me recently, “I still love the President. I’m just not in love with him anymore.)

Our politically savvy cousin (a former campaign manager for a sitting senator) who accompanied us, reviewed the President’s speech as a “incoherent, but exciting.”  Obama was trying out different things, honing his message for the coming election. He was in training.

The speech reminded me of why we had expected so much.  He hit the right populist notes, sounding like Jimmy Stewart in the never released Capra sequel, President Smith Runs for Re-election. He talked about the economic mess he inherited, how hard it will be to pull ourselves out, the need for the same rules to apply to everyone, and that we are all in this together. He talked about the good that government can do and referenced social security as well as health care reform.  He mentioned the GI bill, which his grandfather had used to go to college after the war.  My father also went to school on the GI bill.  In his case to attended optometry school at Columbia, although  before the war he’d  gotten a bachelor’s degree at City College (also in Harlem, USA), which back then didn’t charge tuition.  Imagine that!  A free university education.  What a country we once were back when that socialist FDR was in charge.

Obama talked about his opponents and how much the republicans had changed, referencing both Lincoln who created the Internal Revenue Service and Teddy (Bust the Trust)  Roosevelt.

But the moment that would be immortalized on YouTube was when he first came out, after the Reverend Al Green, and he began to sing Let’s Stay Together.  The crowd went wild.  Obama beamed that big smile, the one that inspired crazy Pam Geller to speculate that Malcolm X was his biological father (my absolute favorite conspiracy theory, not only for its absurdity and physical impossibility, but because I kind of wish, if only.)   At the time, I just enjoyed the moment.  It only hit me hours later that of course the singing was staged.

When the stakes are this high, nothing is left to chance.  I can imagine Obama with his advisers planning the marathon of his New York night — three dinners and a show.  I could see him being told that the entertainment would include Al Green, prompting an impromptu song burst, followed by one of the bright not-so-young men saying, “You’ve got to do that!”

I accept that he is after all a politician, an incumbent running for re-election in a tough economy. The line that has haunted me since Thursday wasn’t the musical interlude, it was when he said that this is not the same Republican party he ran against in 2008, that back then he ran against an opponent “who agreed that we should ban torture, believed in climate change, [and] had worked on immigration reform.”

Here’s what it comes down to. On one side are the republican candidates left standing. There’s  Romney, a rich man who can joke about betting $10,000, and about his being “unemployed,”  then turn earnest about corporations’ being people.  If he didn’t actually exist, Stephen Colbert would have had to invent him.   There’s Gingrich who doesn’t just pander to racists, he incites them while playing the victim. And Santorum is still in the race, a man openly disdainful of science, education and contraception.  Here are people advocating policies that would rid us of even the small safety net that exists, who would happily gut social security, rescind health care reform, destroy public education and leave an economy in shambles, men who talk about limiting government while advocating its entry into our bedrooms.

Before the show, as we waited on line (this being New York) that cold winter’s night.  Across the street, there were the usual motley band of protesters, occupy Wall Street types with signs about corporations and Guantanomo, proclaiming their status as part of the 99%.   Of course this was an event for the 99%.  Ironically, many of us had probably at least visited Zuccotti Park.  While some will argue that there isn’t much difference between the parties, at this point that’s unaffordable nihilism.   Maybe Obama is too “centrist” for some or too much of a gentleman when times call for a street fighter, but we are all standing on a precipice and it’s either him or the abyss.

At Home She Feels Like a Tourist

New York Stories, Travel Blog, ,

Through a series of unfortunate circumstances we wound up not traveling this past anniversary, and instead decided to simply take a day or two off and do some stuff on the island in which we live.  We are not snobs and would have been happy to travel to the bigger long island nearby or even the mainland up north or to the west,  but as it turned out, we stayed close to home.

So, in case you may be visiting, here are few tips from our recent travels:

Getting Around

In really inclement weather, when especially tired, the better half and I have been known to hop into a cab.  Taxis are expensive and depending on where you are going and when, they can be slow, but they are plentiful.  Despite Sex in the City, most real people take trains and buses most of the time. The “yellow” cabs all use meters.  If you happen to be staying north of 110th street or in the boroughs, and a strange black car pulls up beside you, chances are the driver is not a serial killer.  If the license plate says: TLC, then it is a livery or “gypsy” cab.  It is technically illegal for them to stop and pick up passengers on the street, but it’s commonplace especially in neighborhoods that aren’t served by a lot of cabs. They have set prices although who knows what they are?  Generally, you can negotiate a bit with the driver.  They may not be willing to take you too far out of their comfort zone.

The subway is generally the best choice. There are parts of Manhattan that may be a few long blocks east or west from the station, but most New Yorkers are walkers and can handle it.  While the bus system is great, buses are amazingly slow and if I were a tourist with a limited amount of time, I’d avoid them altogether.  There used to be good discounts for buying Metrocards costing $20 or more. They’ve now lowered the discount to a flat 7% on all cards costing $10 or more, so those cards aren’t as much of a bargain.  If you think you’ll be using the system at least one round trip each day, then invest in a seven-day unlimited Metrocard for $29.

While I don’t want to get sued if you get stabbed or killed on the subway, I will tell you that the subway is very safe and runs frequently 24/7.  Weekends, however, things get weird as a lot of repair work gets done and this causes route changes and delays.  The MTA website offers updates and travel advisories. There are maps in every station and in most train cars.  You can use the “trip planner” on the MTA site or on HopStop for directions.  As a native, I’ve found both these sites a bit hinky, but Hopstop offers a little more flexibility.  You also should not be shy about ASKING a New Yorker if you aren’t sure what train to take. New Yorkers LOVE to talk and will be happy to give you directions. If they know languages, they LOVE to speak them, so even if you are a fluent in English, you can always mess with us by speaking something else and seeing if there’s anyone who can help you.

Movies

There’s no reason to see a film in New York City.  There are better things to do that you can’t do at home.  Back in the day, there were tons of revival and art houses in the city where one could watch film “classics” and foreign films on big screens.  The revival houses are long gone.  Most of the smaller art houses as well, but there are a couple of places left that still show foreign and indie films.  Our two favorites are the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the Angelika Film Center.  Lincoln Plaza, which the better half and I have taken to calling the Lincoln Plaza Home for Adults, because it tends to skew old, is located near Lincoln Center, barely north of midtown on the southern tip of the Upper West Side. It’s not that far from us, but it’s not the one we’d be most likely to recommend to tourists.  Ever since the nearby Barnes & Noble closed, there’s not much to do if you get there early or need to meet someone. The lobby is small and crowded, and the employees tend to be a surly bunch.

Angelika on the other hand, makes a night at the movies a worthy destination.  It features a lobby level cafe with plenty of tables and no ticket required. Though the coffees may be overpriced, it’s located on Houston Street at the border between the East Village and Soho, with big glass walls that allow for street watching.  The staff is helpful and friendly.  When I balked at a $4.00 charge for bottled water, I was given a paper cup with cold water free of charge. While that may seem like a small thing, believe me in this town, it’s anything but.

Personally, I think they could better use the space, add a bookstore, or throw in a small laundry service where locals could drop off, go to a movie and pick up their stuff when they leave, but that’s just my obsession with maximizing real estate.  The theatres themselves are small, but well designed and clean.

Times Square and the Theater

I get it.  Most tourists want to go see a Broadway Show.  Whatever.  There’s a lot of live theatre to be seen in New York that’s not on Broadway.  Actors live here.  You can see plays that aren’t on  Broadway for the fraction of the price, but over the last few days, we went to see a Broadway show, so I’ll give you the scoop on discount tickets.

You’ve probably heard of the half-price day of the show, TKTS booth. Not all shows area available, and those that are, aren’t necessarily half-price, but it’s still a great resource. The website will even tell you what was available within the last week.  (There’s an app that gives you real time information about availability.) There are now satellite counters in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan that offer matinee tickets a day in advance.  The discounts range from 30-50%.  A particular show might only have a discount of 30% and only on the most expensive seats, so you still may wind up spending a lot, especially for musicals.

Even if the show you want to see has been available at TKTS, that doesn’t mean that the day you get on the line it will be available, so if you really want to see something specific, you might consider just getting your ticket online before you come to town.  Generally, on a weekday especially in lousy weather, if you get to the line 50 minutes before it opens, you won’t have to wait more than ten minutes once it opens.  If you arrive later, you could be waiting more than an hour.  If you do come later, some of what was available might be sold out, but sometimes new shows are added write before the curtain goes up.  One feature that’s relatively new, or that I didn’t know about is “Play Express.”  Play Express is a separate line for non-musical plays at discounted prices.  Because most tourists want to see musicals, the Play Express line tends to be very short, and availability is pretty good.  We saw Chinglish with 8th row orchestra seats, and completely enjoyed the show, which unfortunately will close January 29th.  So if you are a “culture vulture” who just wants to see great (non-musical) theatre and doesn’t want to spend your whole afternoon waiting in line, Play Express is the option for you.

Times Square itself is a nightmare.  It’s like some horrid outdoor mall in hell.  Gone is any trace of grit.  It is Disneyfied and family friendly, although absurdly overpriced.  There are no good restaurants in Times Square, but if you have to use the bathroom there are a couple of McDonald’s (including an extremely large one on 42nd street).  There is also a homey Starbucks with clean restrooms across from the TCKTS booth.  Feel free to ignore any signs suggesting that bathrooms are for customers’ use. If you’ve ever bought anything at a McDonald’s or a Starbucks, you are a customer.

I would avoid at all costs the “Discovery Store.” We got to Times Square before TCKTS opened, but then decided to use Play Express, so there was no need to wait on line. (In New York you wait on line. You skate in line.)  One of the giant billboards was hawking “the Dead Sea Scrolls” at Discovery Times Square, so we decided to check it out.  The admission was a whopping $27.00 for adults and $19.50 for kids 4-12.  Maybe it’s a great exhibition, but there are many terrific museums with outstanding regular collections and special exhibitions in this city.  None of them are this overpriced.  Some are by donations.  Some have special  “free” days or evenings.  By all means enjoy our museums, the real ones, not the Discovery Store or Madame Toussand’s.

(Tip: If you want to go to a museum between the time you pick up your evening tickets and get to the theater, MOMA is walking distance (or a very short cab ride) from the TKTS booth. They have “free” Friday nights starting at 4:00.  So if you get to TKTS before it opens at 3:00, and then go to the museum for a couple of hours, you’ll still have time for dinner before the show.)

Restaurants

Real New Yorkers are appalled by chains, with the possible exception of Dunkin Donuts which is local.  There are a few Applebee’s mostly in outer borough malls or Times Square.   There’s an Olive Garden in Chelsea that people eat at ironically, but I’m not sure that’s good for your digestion.  Generally, the better half and I go for ethnic food in Queens because chances are it will be more authentic, better and a whole lot cheaper than in Manhattan. However,  I’m trying to stick to our recent tourism, so  I’ll tell you where we ate this week.  On our movie night at Angelika we had planned to go to Angelica Kitchen, no relation, a popular vegan/organic place.  It was packed. I’m not sure whether or not they take reservations, but I’d recommend calling to check and/or being prepared to wait.  Because we couldn’t go there, we went to our favorite place for comfort food, Veselka’s.  Veselka’s describes itself as Ukranian soul food and was in the East Village when the East Village had edge — still easy on the wallet, and authentically delish.

When we went to the show, the plan was to dine after the theater, and we wanted to stay in the area.  This does not mean we would consider Times Square itself.  46th Street starting at 8th Avenue is known as New York’s “restaurant row” and is a short walk from the Broadway theaters.  There are some very good restaurants there that aren’t tourist traps.  MenuPages offers tips and “real people” reviews for almost all. .  We chose to avoid the row and head for 9th Avenue away from the hubbub. This is the area now called Clinton that used to be known as Hell’s Kitchen.  Like the rest of Manhattan, it’s ridiculously safe for a major city.  While plenty of people may go to 9th Avenue, it’s not a tourist trap.  We had a craving for Indonesian food which isn’t as ubiquitous as other cuisines.  We chose Bali Nusa Indah and were not disappointed.

Honestly, I don’t write enough about things to do in the city or getting around.  Seriously, if you are planning a trip and have some specific questions, write me, I’ll either blog about it or get back to you via email.

A Matter of Life and Death

death and dying, New York Stories, Politics and Culture, true story, , ,

Email to a friend:

Hi Susan,

Are you in Colorado?  Happy New Year.  Hope the snow is fresh and the crowds are reasonable.   Just wanted to update you on my whacky life.  So last Friday (a week ago), Maizie had a seizure, which I wrote you about. Then the second one the following day which was 12/24, again complete with eye-rolling, collapsing, peeing, and getting up a couple of minutes later and looking around like, “Huh? What? Where’d this puddle come from and why is my backside wet?  Shit. I hope Mommy doesn’t yell at me for this.”

Craig was ready to put her down that day, and if Dr. Dan (the new vet that my nephew works for) had been in, we would have.  But he wasn’t, and we made the appointment for Thursday, as that was the first early morning one we could get, and Craig wanted to go to work afterwards (and not go home and brood).  But Sunday morning, when he took her out, she was all “jaunty” and continuing to want to kill her frenemies, and to want affection, and to get all excited around meal time, and signal to go out to troll, etc.  By Monday, Craig was having doubts.

I just couldn’t take it.  At that point, I still wanted to kill my dog.  I was thinking of my Dad, after his cancer returned and he kept talking about how he just wished a piano would fall on his head.  I was thinking about Craig’s cat, Big Red, and how he waited too long, didn’t even notice how much weight he was losing because he saw him everyday, and finally Craig was supposed to travel for work and I was going to take care of Big Red, but when I went over a few days before Craig left,  I realized he was dying and  we had to put him down sooner.   I was thinking about Maizie’s inevitable decline, and the stoicism of dogs, and how we should just get off this emotional roller coaster, and how it would be me, working from home, more likely to see the next seizure, more likely to be the one taking her in when she finally couldn’t get back up on her hind legs, carrying her to the car.

Craig thought it was my being obsessive, and it was Italy, our planned anniversary trip, coming up in two weeks — the first time we’d be in Europe together, and to a country neither of us had visited.    Maybe something to that, because we both agreed that if we didn’t put her down, leaving her in a kennel for 10 days, even a nice one, was probably not a good idea.

On Tuesday, we went out to dinner with the cousins.  They aren’t fans of the Maize, having a bad impression based on an unfortunate dinner incident.  But Daniel (the smartest man in any room) brought up the seizure thing. Did Craig really want to wait for the third seizure?  The answer was no, but….

The next day, Craig  checked with the airline.  No refund, of course, but $200 to change the dates.  My sister happened to call and I updated her.  I reminded her of my father’s piano line.  She didn’t think it was that simple.  She pointed out how much he’d held on at the end.

“Nobody wants to die,” she said.

She reminded me that even my mother, who was unconscious those last few days, seemed on some level, not willing to let go, although she had said earlier, after her stroke but before she faded away when the subject of a feeding tube was broached, “If I can’t eat ice-cream, what’s the point?”

But Maizie, based on what I was telling her, hadn’t reached that point yet.  And I realized she was right.

Craig cancelled the appointment.  We were still figuring out Italy. We rationalized that before the seizures we’d been planned to board her, and what had really changed?  Yes, she might take a turn while we were away, and we’d feel terrible, but more likely it would be a slow decline, another seizure maybe, maybe two, but not a crisis.

We wouldn’t leave her at the place we usually left her.  They’d screwed up last time, not monitoring her closely or contacting us when she seemed to be reacting badly to the meds she was then on for her Cushing’s.  There was another place we’d taken her a couple of times, swankier, more expensive, less convenient to get to.  We thought we’d try there, but also see if my nephew would consider dog sitting.  He couldn’t.  His workshifts are too long and she’d be alone too much.  My sister had mentioned a son of a friend’s, a musician in need of a day job, raised in an animal loving household as a possibility, but Craig thought given Maizie’s special “behavioral” issues, a stranger who wasn’t a professional might not be a good idea. We called the swanky place.  Before I’d had a chance to explain much, they reacted to the words, “Geriatric” and “frail” and told me straight out that a dog in that condition should never be boarded.

That hit us like a gut-punch.  Not only were we terrible human beings for considering killing our dog, we were terrible human beings for wanting to go away.

We wondered what would happen if there were an emergency and we’d both have to travel.  Or what if Craig got one of those good business gigs to Africa and I could join him after?  The answer to the first case, was we’d leave her at the vets, for as short  a time as possible.  In the second case, I’d stay home

Today, Craig reported Maizie seemed a little out of it on their walk.  She’s sleeping now.  She sleeps mostly.  Italy is probably off the table for a while, unless she takes a turn for the worst in the next few days.  We might ask the musician if he’s interested in the gig, not for Italy, but generally, if she lives a while, and come spring we want to use those tickets.

This is it.  There aren’t a lot of choices.  Putting down an animal is never easy.  But it probably helps if it’s already too late, if their suffering is obvious. In some dispassionate way, I don’t think it would be a big deal to deprive her of continuing a journey that is almost at its end, and may involve a steep uphill slog.  That’s in the abstract.  In reality, I couldn’t see getting her into the car, which often signals trouble but sometimes signals fun, driving her to Dr. Dan’s, where she’ll greet my nephew like a friend and then look at it me like I’ve betrayed her when she remembers it’s a doctor’s office. I couldn’t imagine my husband, lifting a now shaking dog onto the table as Dr. Dan gets the needle ready, and feeling for the rest of our lives that we deprived her of something, even though I’m not exactly sure what.

UPDATE:  1/12/12: We canceled Italy. The good news is I may go to see a show on Saturday, have tickets to see Al Green, Lin-Manual Miranda and POTUS at the Apollo on 1/19, and the better half and I will be taking some time off to celebrate doing New Yorky things.  Maizie seems to be doing better.  We went to the vet just to check in and because she was licking herself a lot.  He said it was a probably just an irritation from lying all day on a hard spot.  He said she looked great for a dog her age, even for one who doesn’t have cushings.  No seizures since the ones that almost caused her executions. We decided not to put our lives on hold and called up a bunch of kennels.  We found that some wanted to put her in a “special care” doggy nursing home where she would be tended to way more than she would ever want.   We now have two potential reasonably priced places that we think will work and will check both of them out.  Maizie will definitely do a test run of two days to make sure she can tolerate the boarding.

Fake!

book reviews, New York Stories, Politics and Culture, Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times, writing/blogging/publishing related, , , , ,

“I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.”

—  Fielding Melish, Bananas

In an age when the “self” may have infinite online iterations and an “award winning” 16-year old novelist  can unapologetically admit to “mixing and matching” by mostly taking the words of a less well-known writer, and still get nominated for a prestigious literary prize, how do we even begin to define “fake”?

Millions of viewers tune in for the wedding a woman famous for nothing.  The marriage is over in 72 days, and it’s possible the bridegroom wasn’t in on the joke, yet the celebutante’s ratings and brand do not appear to have suffered.

Still, some fakes are roundly condemned. In 2006, Kaavya Viswanathan wrote How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. Viswananthan got a major book deal while a sophomore at Harvard.  The novel came out, and so did the accusations that she had stolen chunks from another author’s series.  Viswanthan claimed it was unintentional. When the extent of her cribbing made her excuses unlikely, she blamed her photographic memory, saying she must have “internalized” the other texts.  Her publisher didn’t see it that way and canceled her contract.

Fitzgerald aside, second acts exist in America., Kaavya went on to Georgetown Law School just like former “journalist” Steven Glass who had been famously fired from The New Republic for passing off fiction as journalism.

There are many infamous cases of straight out plagiarism and other literary fakery over the last ten years —  “fake” memoirs like A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.  Frey is best known for an oft parodied episode of getting reamed out  by an enraged Oprah.  There’s Margaret B. Jones, who published a memoir of gang life in South-Central, in which she claimed to have been a part-Native American foster child in South Central.  She turned out to be a white surbanite with the last name of Seltzer, who briefly went to a public high school.

Perhaps the condemnation of Frey, Viswanathan, and Jones/Seltzer has to do with their “success” at fooling the self-important.  You don’t mess around with Oprah, The New York Times, and big publishers.

I’ll admit to having sympathy for Laura Albert who wrote novels under the name JT LeRoy and even had a relative make public appearances as this persona.  She was convicted of fraud for signing legal papers using her pseudonym.  While she never claimed that her books were non-fiction, she gave her alter ego a backstory suspiciously similar to that of her characters — a childhood of abuse and neglect, sexual identity issues, prostitution, etc.  As Birdie Coonan in All About Eve might have said “What a story. Everything but the blood hounds snapping at her rear end.”

Readers who “believed” in JT LeRoy were very upset to find out that the “author” didn’t exist.  Yet, how does that change their relationship to “his” fiction?  In an interview with The Paris Review, Albert explained the origin of the JT LeRoy persona.  In her version, LeRoy was not invented to fool readers or sell books, but to protect the psyche of a writer who was filtering some difficult material, which in fact came from her own past.

Do we forgive Albert because the writing stands on its own and the motives, at least in the beginning, did not appear to be monetary ones?  Or do we condemn her because readers grew emotionally invested in an “author” who was in fact a creation?

Sometimes it’s difficult to spot a motive for fraud. Over the past couple of weeks,  The Hacker Hunter has become the talk of the town on Kindle related blogs.  This is a techno-thriller/spy novel, self-published in October that amassed 350 favorable reviews.  The problem was that none of them were real.  The “tells” for fake were abundant, and the numbers impossible. Even Amanda Hocking, the Queen of Kindle doesn’t have anywhere near that many reviews on a single book.  Readers complained and almost all the reviews on Amazon US were pulled.  As of this writing, they are still up in the UK. The book itself wasn’t just “bad” in a Jacqueline Susann kind-of-way, it was the Springtime for Hitler of books.

Fake reviewers are reportedly paid $10 a pop and the review mills may be paid twice that for setting them up more. That means the author of Hacker could have spent $7k on the fakes. Did he really think this would lead to big sales?  A movie deal? Why not just hire a ghostwriter?  Or at least a proofreader?  Why risk one’s own reputation and maybe even one’s business?

Pondering motives brings me to the curious case of QR Markham, aka Quentin Rowan, whose thriller Assassin of Secrets was published in November by Little Brown (the people who brought you Kaavya Viswanathan).  Secrets was getting rave reviews and all kinds of buzz.  Within two weeks of publication, readers had noticed the plagiarized passages from a number of other books, and Rowan’s entire oeuvre turned out to have involved a lot of heavy, unattributed borrowing. When caught, Rowan admitted the fraud, even though some bloggers offered a way out, imagining it could have been a brilliant postmodern hoax.

Rowan sat down for a virtual (honest) conversation with a blogger about his “career”. He  suggested that it was having a poem anthologized in Best American Poetry when he was nineteen years old that set him on his wayward path.  He thought he was “destined” to be a great writer, and when he started writing prose, he just found other people’s words more “clever” than his own and started to “swipe” them.  He compares this to other addictive or obsessive behavior that is not rational.  There’s something awfully self-pitying about those remarks.  “Poor me, if only I hadn’t been ruined by early success and had applied myself to my craft.  I could have been somebody.  I could have been a contender.” Or as Jane Austen’s Lady Catherine put it, regarding music, “If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”

Nietzsche said, “The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night.” Another cure for insomnia is schadenfreude.  Rowan is an investor in a bookstore, Spoonbill and Sugartown in Williamsburg. I blame Williamsburg itself for sealing his destiny.  I used to live there once before it became a playground for trustifarians and the tragically hip.

This is a neighborhood about which a young musician recently told me, “It’s not enough to be an artist or a musician, you have to be the right kind.”

Back in the 80’s, when my friends in the East Village referred to Williamsburg as a suburb, when taxi drivers wouldn’t take me there, when it was still a real place, there were writers and artists even then, but they weren’t there because it was a “scene.”  They were there because it was affordable. Nowadays, I feel too old, too ugly and too poor to even get off the train at Bedford Avenue, much less set foot in its most chichi of bookstores.

Rowan wasn’t actually trying to be a writer.  He was trying to be “the right kind“, the “kind” who gets published in the right places, and owns the coolest shop on the coolest block, in the coolest neighborhood, of  the greatest great city in the world — even though it’s a world of appearances that are no more real than shadows cast on the wall of a cave.

Quiz, kids: Free e-book if you can answer me this.

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, writing/blogging/publishing related, , , , , , ,

I was having a discussion with my better half about Spalding Gray, the late great storyteller/performance artist. There was a story about him in this week’s New York Times Magazine even though he died in 2003.    There was also a documentary about his work made in 2010.

Back in the 1980′s and until the early 90′s I saw him perform many times in lower Manhattan, and once after I moved to Vermont when he was “on tour.”  His death hit me hard, in fact it seemed like it hit the whole City hard.  He disappeared one night, and was thought to have jumped off the Staten Island ferry.  His body wasn’t found for a while, so one could imagine him off on another adventure, the soon-to-be subject of a monologue. Sometimes, I still daydream that it was a mis-identification.  Spalding Gray is alive and well, in hiding, gathering some new material.

There’s a reference to him within the first 10% (the Kindle sample) of my novel Loisaida — A New York Story, which is set in the late 1980’s. He isn’t named, but there are several clues that it’s him.

Here’s the quiz, kids:  The first 5 people who can correctly (1) pinpoint the reference and (2) tell me which of his performance pieces it is referencing will get a free e-book copy of Loisaida in any e-book format, gifted to them or the person of their choice.

I’m figuring if you can get the reference or are even interested in trying, you probably are the audience I’m seeking and will enjoy the read.

DO NOT POST YOUR ANSWER as that will ruin it for everyone, but leave me a comment below letting me know you know. I will then email you giving you my email address and you can send me the answer.