Brooklyn Soul

Like my pops said years ago during a family visit up north, "Queens has no flavor" in comparison to Brooklyn, and he was right about that. Brooklyn was an incorporated city apart from the other boroughs for many years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn), and the seventh largest one in this nation. We didn't/don't need a lot of outside influence to hold our own as an area. As a result, its become a haven for many native New Yorkers, for being way off the beaten path of the much more saturated borough of Manhattan during the summertime, teeming with angry, tired, sweaty, and scared European tourists who just want a decent bite to eat, some cold water, a clean restroom, and a nice place to sit in the shade, which midtown does not do well.

What Manhattan does do really well is gouge the living daylights out of each and every tourist who steps foot on the island, just as it is designed to do as a business district and trade center for the world, and we do humbly thank you for your business (http://www.opentable.com/bryant-park-grill?cmpid=poi_page_referral#). Brooklyn was (and I imagine, will always be) my safe haven from the madness of Wall Street and the suburban nut-jobs working there desperate for cash and blow, in that order most of the time (until payday, at least), the crazy expensive and openly gay theater district (both of my parents are just as histrionic as any really expensive theater ticket so, thanks, but I'll pass on your tourist fare), and the out-of-towners who say they want "the real New York experience" but have no idea what that actually means, unless it involves a tour guide and a shopping trip. Uh huh...well, you ain't livin' it then.

Brooklyn was, for me, blessedly free of douchebags during my years there (from 1993-1998 and 2003-2013), and the insane foot traffic of so many people from around the world, each looking to make it and cash out before moving back to the 'burbs. But, to me, Brooklyn was the starting and finishing point that existed outside of the money-grubbing madness of the average Manhattanite seeking to put us down as "B&T" (Bridge-and-Tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_and_tunnel), which, for an island city, is one of the most asshole things you can say to a proud maritime people. Well, yeah, bitch, I do take bridges and tunnels to get the fuck away from insane assholes like you. Kudos! It spoke to the striving bourgeois mentality of Manhattan and their fucked up values, but not of my hometown.

In the Slope, I could grab a bite to eat and sit on a bench in peace by one of the worlds great city parks, unmolested by clusters of Asian tourists with too-big cameras, or the young Hasidic couple lost and looking for a subway to take them out it all (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borough_Park,_Brooklyn). Almost every day that I commuted from home to work and back, someone would ask me for help or directions, and I always knew why: I was the safest and sanest person they would meet that day (if not the year or their lifetime), in a too-crowded metropolis designed more for commerce than living. I looked both completely at home and totally on top of all the exit points around me, which I always tried to adhere to, like my group's motto of "Get in, get out, and nobody gets hurt."  

Word. It takes a lot of soul to do that right, and the people around me in so many office environments who were/are freaked out by the size, scale, and scope of my town(s) knew that, too. I played the game for all it was worth, and I didn't lose my soul in the process. That's "Brooklyn Soul" y'all, and it ain't fo' sale, ya dig? Yeah, you do. Sure you do. So, take a listen for yourself, kids. We're not goin' anywhere for quite some time. Get used to it. We did. All soul, baby!

http://sharonjonesandthedapkings.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Jones_%26_The_Dap-Kings

https://daptonerecords.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daptone_Records

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bradley_%28singer%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funk

Tar Beach

Me and my friends instantly hated "Baywatch" the very first time we saw it, even though David Hasselhoff was the "King of Cheese" back in the day for this crazy show about his talking police car (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Rider_(1982_TV_series), and his status as a "rock star" in Germany (http://chicagolampoon.blogspot.com/2011/10/germanys-perplexing-love-affair-with.html), but it gained cult status in our 80s-era dorm rooms filled with horny teenagers who played drinking games every time there was a run on the beach filmed in slow motion with a girl in a tight red bathing suit. It sucked, but so did most of pop culture. Who fucking cares?

We humped a grind over every summer like any other east coast kid trying to make a buck for school and living expenses, and to get out of our mother's collective hairs. The kids from Long Island did clam-digging over the summers for work, plus surfing, boarding, and skate-boarding that became rollerblading with the next "fitness" craze. My family had long aborted our annual trips to LBI as too expensive, though occasionally a relative might rent a house, but with our clash in cultures, it wasn't worth going to yet another house full of crazy people.

My Brooklyn friends did what any other kid from the 'hood does: they took the train out to the beach. After I graduated, started my career, and transitioned to my own work full-time, I found myself in a similar situation: broke, alone, and wanting to hit the beach. I lived in the fourth floor of a 120 year-old walk-up in the Slope, and after I ordered a boogie-board for cheap online, I hooked up with some of my training partners in BJJ at the Far Rockaways boarder's beach, no swimmers allowed. It was a good fit for us, because we could use our mandatory rash guard shirts that we used for no-gi classes to surf with (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submission_wrestling), which gave us more exercise that was different from our main sport. Well, not mine.

They were blown away by some "white" middle-aged female rolling with the boys as a part of my MMA training, then hitting the beach like a native, and it was easy to see why. The beaches of Brooklyn and Queens had been home to hardcore ghettos for a hundred years, despite the kitschy faded glory of Coney Island that attracted dykes, misfits, and trendy hipsters looking for retro "art fag" design spaces on the cheap, but they learned. White kids from out-of-town always do. After dark, our beaches became some of the worst neighborhoods in all of the five boroughs, definitely not some fake SoCal paradise from t.v., not that I believed any of the hype I saw on t.v. anymore.

You see, in response to a "tidy whitey" Manhattan that catered to rich foreign diplomats and the local ethnic population serving them, we were supposed to retain a foothold in our culture on our teacher/social worker/publishing salaries that mandated we live as far away from our now over-priced native homes as possible. Makes sense, no? No, it didn't. But, rich white men hate looking at "depressing" project people who are passed out on a subway grating. It's, also, like, really hard on your shoes, too! So, the "powers that be" ruined our fair city in a few short years through some of the worst, most corrupt urban-planning to ever happen on planet earth, changing the landscape of our city from a great trading center with gorgeous waterways to a depressing hellhole that you couldn't walk through without an escort.

Coney became infamous for murders under the boardwalk and floating bodies washed up on the beach, as Jersey spiraled down into dysfunction with an annual epidemic of dirty hypodermic needles dumped carelessly into our waters, some of them infected with HIV and AIDS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringe_Tide), through the evil immorality of "healthcare" businesses looking to make a quick buck off the backs of a downtrodden and exhausted sick people. It was doubly worse for an elderly population that still remembered with great fondness Steeplechase rides at the beach during sunset, cotton candy with their loved ones, and the novelty of an electric Ferris Wheel that lit up at night to illuminate the sand with its many colors, as fireworks exploded in the background of another day in a public urban paradise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steeplechase_Park).

Sure, it was hard working the daily grind in a city of strangers, but so what? We had everything we needed in a quick bus ride or train stop away, but then it changed drastically. A disenfranchised people who never had any real comfort with swimming in our rougher waters were pushed out to the beaches, as a cruel reminder of a place they knew they didn't belong. My Filipino training partner was horrified by the early murkiness of our summer Atlantic Ocean, because he grew up in the tropics. Uh, this ain't that, homeboy. Ditto for my sparring partner from Korea. Are there animals under the surface? Uh, yeah, girlfriend. She preferred to stay on the beach while I body-surfed the waves like an otter fishing in its home waters, because I am.

Slowly, we came back after many years away, and so did our town. We brought to it all of our experienced know-how about social justice and real public change, just like we said we would to each other all those years ago, as we sat in spare, dirty, broken-down rooms; drunk, high, scared, and often alone. Never again. That's what we thought then, and that's what happened, as I fought my own battles in middle-age through the corrupt court systems of the city and country. 

I see you, muthafuckas. I take pictures, and I document, document, document. You can, too, because it works. That's how we bring back the world, people: one beach at a time, block-by-block—or lot-by-lot, like my good folks of the "Stop Anellotech" movement in Rockland County fighting Big Pharma and Big Corporate Petrochemical—because this city and this land is ours by our collective birth rights, and not yours, so give it back. Now is the time.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tar%20beach

Credit

In addition to his lack of driving skills, Cotto has no idea what money stands for (hint: it's for goods and services).To him, every day is either the best day ever (like a whacked-out teenager at Disneyland), or his imminent death—like a kid eaten by a gator at Disneyland (http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/15/us/alligator-attacks-child-disney-florida/). And that's exactly what his serious mental disorders are about: really really REALLY!!! great things that make you stay up for days and days and you just don't understand and why aren't you more excited, Marie? Sleep?! Food?! WHY???!!! GET PUMPED UP!!! Yeah, kid. Call me when the show is over, or starts, whichever happens last. I'm going to sleep, and I'm eating breakfast. Bitch.

The same is true about his understanding of family. His dad was his drinking buddy/sexual escapades partner (aye yi yi), and his mom's new "old man" looks at him kinda funny, too. He's been staying up late to watch t.v. recently, so he could screw the people living around him from using "his" pull-out sofa as a bed, and when you question that, he blames you for his escalating drunken abuse. It's a landscape without any safe places, which makes jail seem much better in comparison, because at least you get decent food and a bed to sleep in, you know? And maybe skip the nighttime rape scene, for once.

I felt bad for him because he had it that hard coming up in "da game" of life, but he's such a selfish fucking dick, you can't help but wish for him to be as far away from you as possible. Just because someone's really sick doesn't mean they can't also be a completely selfish asshole. I'm sure the staff at his residency center wants him dead or gone on his worst days, particularly the days when he deliberately craps his bed so the big buff orderly in the tight white scrubs can change his diapers for him while he sexually harasses him with molester-type comments. You know? A punch in the face is sometimes much quicker and easier than strapping him down to the bed and cleaning out his mess. Poor fucker. I've been there with head-cases before. Many, many, many times over.

So, when I asked him about his "credit card debt" that he intentionally mischaracterized as a fun "Sex and the City" shopping spree, it was just as depressing as I thought. "Well, Marie...", he began. Oh, OK. I'm the dumb fuck sleeping on your floor in your Army/Navy sleeping bag that you can talk down to. I forgot where I was for a minute! Actually, I didn't. Yeah, Cotto. What happened? I wanted him to just take his sleeping meds and go the fuck to sleep, but he was going off of his prescriptions one-by-one, because he couldn't handle the stress of homelessness, welfare, and his broke-ass two-year school on Staten Island for people without their G.E.D.'s coping with several mental disorders, and I was supposed to pretend that wasn't true with him, so he could psychotically pretend that I was his trapped quarry, when in truth, I could crack open his shin bones to the marrow whenever I wanted. 

Not that I wanted that. He was a dumb bloated mess of a human being, and I questioned that status on most days, too. But, let's hear it. It'll come out anyway, and it's not like I have anything better to do on a Tuesday night, besides getting a good night's sleep on this here dirty tenement floor so I can out-design the crazy "creative director" at work tomorrow, who would short-change me out of a health plan and rip-off all of my cover designs out of professional envy and hateful sabotage. So, yeah. Go ahead. Well, my grandmother died, and she asked me to "look after" her mail while she was in the hospital, so I did. Uh huh. I question every part of that sentence, but yeah. And?

"I took her Sears credit card." For how much, Cotto? And he waffled on that, too. Sigh...every step of the way, eh asshole? "About 3 or 4 grand." It was probably much higher than that, between the $5-$7000 range, because he then told me his "lawyer" advised him to pay it back quickly. Riggght...while you blow off your dish-washing job (not good enough), buy dirt weed instead of meds, and jam in a stressful college-like experience at the same time, so you can justify your subsequent freak-out and imprisonment? I think I know this tune! "It came addressed to her in the mail and I was staying there." So? So what? "I needed money." He clammed up like a hardened convict who's just "lawyered up" because he already knows the drill.

But, like, why? I mean you have two fucking cell phones, an expensive video game console that's also your hard drive, an iPad, a laptop, and ghetto headphones. The whole nine, kid. What the fuck did you spend it on? I never got a real answer that made any sense to me. What the fuck did he buy with it? For those of you reading me outside of the U.S., "Sears, Roebuck and Company" is a really old catalog business that began when the west was still a bison-filled frontier for European sharecroppers in covered wagons hoping to escape/frame "Indians" for all of their horrible massacres, in a lustful quest for blood and oil money that has come to be known as "The Wild West." You've seen the movies, right? Like that. Or, more specifically, like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears.

I mean, he wasn't exactly home-owner material as a self-entitled welfare queen. People like me work hard. Not him! He's "special". Well, Cotto, sigh...don't make me phrase it like I'm taking away your lollipop, you fucking prick. I'm tired. What did you buy with it? I waited...and then waited some more. And some more. This, from an arrogant dick who liked to pretend he was exceedingly verbal and highly loquacious with his carefully chosen bon mots. Give it up! He looked down, and thought about it, but finally, he was too embarrassed to tell me. I'm sure it wasn't for garden hoes, or trimming shears for his fucking front lawn with carefully groomed hedges. And to this day, I still don't know what he bought with a housewares store credit card used by Americans for generations as their rural general store.

I know what we did. My mom asked me to circle clothes out of a huge Christmas catalog every year for toys and clothes, and if they didn't fit or we didn't like it, we went back to the store in Nanuet (still there) to return it. That's what country folk did back then, while your dad browsed the barbecue grills and dreamed of a motorized lawn mower with a comfy riding seat, like the big Italian douchebag next door to us had, riding around smiling on his ghetto "pizza money" from his 'hood storefront in the Bronx that would become a model for the summertime NYC movie classic "Do the Right Thing" that explored ethnic and racial tensions between the Italian-American immigrants who earned their plush living off the backs of impoverished, trapped African-Americans living in a hot city without air conditioning, just like we did.

We had heavy, awkward window units that sat tipsily in the small window sills of our split-level home, and if we wanted even that cool comfort in our rooms, we had to pull down a ladder in the ceiling to go into the attic, carefully stepping between the beams so we wouldn't fall through the floor, and then pushing the heavy units down the stairs at a steep angle to whoever was at the bottom. We had air conditioning in our small bedrooms only; not in the kitchen, or the living room, or the converted basement downstairs. If it was too hot to stay in our rooms for too long, we went outside, or we walked a mile and a half to the public pool up-and-down the impressive hills of this area, or we ran through a sprinkler on the lawn, spraying each other with a green garden hose. I know that he didn't do any of that, because he said would die in his early 50s, just like his father and his father's father. 

It was sad, but it was real. As he told me his life of woe, I knew his life was designed for him to fail. And so, I listened to his halting confessions that he had to work up the nerve to tell me over shared dirt weed blunts and cheap beer, because it probably included evil staples of the projects like child rape, child abandonment, and/or child endangerment. How did I know? He told me his dad was his first "party" partner. You fill in the blanks. And that's what I did. I "read" him expertly, better than anyone else did, and that's why I got out of the ghetto alive, just like my hardcore New York City family. That, and I kicked out an old abandoned bookcase piece-by-piece after work one night, so I could leave the floor of his dirty room for the room next door with a chain through the opening where the doorknob used to be, in front of him and our neighbor "Rex", his "hood rat" partner-in-crime for those days, even though it was mostly particleboard. Almost.

My mutha's naybahood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Avenue
My fahthizz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford%E2%80%93Stuyvesant,_Brooklyn
And mine, bitch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodside,_Queens

Speed Weed

Back in the day, me and my friends all had several part-time jobs after school, and we had them before the legal employment age requiring parental consent on your employment application, which is a classic upbringing for working class New Yorkers. I had a work permit from my elementary school principal (I know it's against the law now...sigh), so I could earn a few bucks with my older brothers working paper routes. Once I hit 15, me and my two friends worked at the McDonald's in Nanuet (it's still there, too), with my mom's signature alongside mine on the job application. I simply didn't (and still don't) know how to live without working really hard for a buck. It's part of my DNA.

It was a daily part of my low-class, ethnic friend's lives, too. We all humped it with a few jobs living with our dysfunctional families, just to have food and new clothes, and to escape our insane asylum homes. I met my first French Canadian boyfriend (Hi, Joe!) at the Nyack McDonald's my friend Donnel worked at. Yeah, it was like that. Her dad had died unexpectedly and suddenly under mysterious circumstances overseas, which sent her entire family into a tailspin. Her "best friend" Laila had already been to rehab and sent back to her grandparents in Norway to "dry out" for awhile, which meant she managed the convenient store in West Nyack as a high school teenager.

That's just how it was for us. And it didn't end with high school. Me and my best friend fit right in with our new college friends, almost all of them "ethnics" from the city, with the occasional banged-up Italian chick from Syracuse with the drunk, abusive Indian boyfriend from "the res" thrown into the mix for local color. Oh, yeah? We have those downstate, too. Know what I mean? We fit each other real well. My college boyfriend worked at the school cafeteria, worked the door as a bouncer at the hip music bar downtown that his brother played at with his "art fag" girlfriend, and then he spent excruciatingly slow summers helping old rich Jewish ladies with their shopping bags get out of cabs on the Upper West Side, which financed our first European trip abroad that we got on discount because his older brother worked bags and the ticket counter for Aer Lingus.

It was everywhere we went, with everyone around us repeating the same insane chorus: if you want to eat, get a job. If you want clothes, get a job. Not health insurance or medicine(s), or a savings account, or a "golden parachute" if the job suddenly ended for reasons that typically had nothing to do with me and my hard-working friends, even if excuses were used, and by the end of high school we'd heard them all. Just survival. It was all about surviving for another day. Just one more day. We were hungry for life because we were really good at it.

And so, it wasn't a big deal to me that my Dominican friend Ariel from Brooklyn had been hustling various jobs since childhood, too. His mother Miriam was a loud, screeching hairdresser who worked intermittently for shops, and when those went bust because she got angry and threw a tantrum at the boss, she cut hair at home. We met in Oneonta because he liked my look as he passed me by on a campus staircase—we both sported Eisenhower jackets*, though he claimed his was real and I knew mine was a "faux" one that I bought for cheap down at the Jersey Shore on LBI over the summer—which gave him extra "cool points" in his desperately trendy "art fag" clique.

He lived in the dorm beneath us on the hill, right next to ours, so it wasn't long before his group and mine began mixing it up at parties. I introduced him to his first serious girlfriend—my friend "Dev", who pursued my friendship aggressively after Photography class, because I got great "crits" and she knew I knew a lot of "hot" guys—because he wasn't my physical type, and I already had a boyfriend who lived directly beneath me in my dorm. We had a lot of other differences, too, as our friendship unfolded, but suffice to say, he was very happy with his "consolation prize". They immediately hit it off as "city kids" who both wore hipster black almost exclusively, right down to their underwear, which Ariel promptly showed her to prove his "Goth" cred.

He had "Bauhaus" posters in his room, his busted-ass bikes that he fixed sometimes, and lots of dope, though he just as hungry and thirsty as us. We'd rip off smokes from each others packs during parties, and weed and beer was our collective currency that could get you instant access anywhere. Dev had already had a live-in boyfriend and a retail job in Manhattan, because her parents kicked her out of their Roosevelt Island place after she refused to go to a good college, and after they paid for Bronx Art and Science, a really prestigious city high school. Instead, they got a typical "Art Fag" with a lot of gauzy black clothes that needed steam cleaning, and a pretentious closed-jaw accent for their troubles, but she fit in with my bro from Brooklyn, and I liked that. I wanted us to keep hanging out, you know?

Ariel was busted like we were, and every summer we tried to think of ways to avoid going home for the horribly long summers that included mandatory hard labor at jobs we fucking despised...except Ariel. He was actually a street kid and not just some "wanna-be", because in addition to the usual skate-punk skills with a board, his dumb ass was crazy enough to work one of the most dangerous jobs in all of Manhattan—a bike messenger. It was like being a cabbie in the 'hood. You could get killed just for making some change. He told us harrowing stories about car doors that suddenly opened, side-swiping him off his bike that was then too broke too ride. No bike = no money.

In addition to tense stand-offs with cab drivers and truckers, he had to stay alive and stay on his bike to earn money. I can't really explain to you how insane a proposition it is, until you visit Midtown Manhattan during a commuter rush-hour, with the added bonus of a million dumb European tourists wandering around the streets during summertime. It was a stress test devised by some mythic "Men in Black": if you arrive safely, you survive. The worst accident he ever had was when he was ripped off his bike by a speeding cab, dragged with his bike underneath it, to come out the front end and grab onto the back of a huge truck's bumper that was right before him and the cab. Yeah. I know.

It was always a rough ride, but he loved adrenaline rushes and getting high, so the job took, give or take a summer session upstate. It was his way to earn, and we very much wanted to get back to our college campus in the mountains of upstate New York. It was our paradise away from home, and we got educated, too. We all had T.A.P. from the state** and single mothers (or close enough to it, with their notoriously bad marriages) who needed cash to maintain their lifestyles, not ours. I also took out a personal loan that I got for my mom so she could meet some expenses, and our tuition back then was...ahem...$750.00 a semester. Yeah, you read that right.

Everything else we had to pay for, including food, clothing, shelter, books, art supplies, medicine, and laundry. We were the most independent kids I'd ever met, and to match our advanced know-how, we'd developed maturely good tastes, like travel and fresh gear. Ariel had the added burden of being an arty hipster, which meant his hair and clothes had to be "on point" to give him status in his clique, a group of cool surfer/skater kids from Long Island, who were all more-or-less the same height, which made Ariel the tallest and skinniest at 6'1. That's a lot of hair dye and black clothes. He also needed the goods to maintain a connection with his bitch of a girlfriend who played hard to please like an angry, spoiled, rude brat. A lot, bro.

So, he did what a lot of messengers who were "hep cats" did on the side: he smoked and sold a lot of weed. I didn't really make the connect until a venture into the city for a meet-up between semesters, when his beeper would go off constantly. That's how they did back then, with special codes for "weed", or, if you were an upscale club-goer at night, coke. Ariel dabbled in a lot darker shit than me and my main crew, who were destined for scholarly lives, but Ariels' main goal was to work in a recording studio with "The Ramones", which he did, because he took us to the joint to scope it out. He still works with audio, too (sans the college bitch I introduced him to), doin' high-end installations for rich white people in the city (and occasionally their ski chalet or Woodstock country cabin in upstate New York), who want one remote control for their stereo system, alarms, and car park. Shit like that. He also married the daughter of the owner for extra security.

But, I can't deny that his bravado and skill at circumnavigating those crazy-ass Manhattan streets blew me away back then. That n*gga knows how to fuckin' ride in all that shit without dying, and that's impressive, yo. Props to you, pops! You were one of the coolest kids on the block back then, and you knew how to telegraph it, too. Good on you, bro! You were always one of my favorite Oneontans from the 'hood, guy! Have a great summer. Watch out for the sharks! With or without the "speed weed", ya hump. Ha! And, Dave, fuck you still.  Ass hat. Keep yo' Niagara ass close to the Hudson River with yo' job, and off my shit this summa! I got shit goin' on and I don't need you sniffin' around being pokey, looking for an "in" with me like you do, Indian boy. Stay off my jock!

For the "Dog Pound"

*   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_jacket
** https://www.hesc.ny.gov/pay-for-college/apply-for-financial-aid/nys-tap.html  

Counterfeit

My attempts at creating a home out of the remnants of my aunt's apartment in Kensington were often met with sneers from the 30-something crowd who competed with us as teenagers at RISD (taking the one available scholarship for Illustration from us as well!). She dropped snippy remarks about my poverty, like: "Oh, this is such a claaasic 'starter' apartment", the very same privileged bitch who took college money from us by working professionally as a graphic designer for many years, and was taught illustration by her illustrator dad before going to school with us for Illustration (hence "winning" that Hallmark prize money, the one and only prize awarded to students for Illustration), living off the comfort that her IT husband provided for her. She then set at sabotaging our lives and work when she realized NYC was out of her reach (even after she ripped us off), to finally retreat to that northern place where all rich hippies go: Woodstock, NY.*

But enough about her. I was left with whatever my aunt didn't want to pack and move with her, like she was on the run from a serious crime, instead of the easy living my father's sponsored support provided her, present at each and every level of her life, which included (totally free of charge): apartments (in New York City), houses (in West Texas), jobs (in his company), healthcare (from out of his pocket as her employer), furniture, movers, cars, insurance, food...everything was always included. The only way I could do my apprenticeship in the city and stay alive was living in her cast-off apartment that had some furnishings, leaving me to pay off her monthly maintenance fee (it was a co-op), and all of the other bills that came with living in Brooklyn.

Anything else that I needed to survive, I had to either find, make do with, or do without. It was with this barely-able-to-eat budget that a basic answering machine came to mind because I had none, and I needed one for potential employers to contact me while I interviewed for work. I had nothing except my clothes, my artwork, a drafting table, and a few lamps, moving out of my mother's house at 17 for school, and not looking back. I have always been almost completely and totally on my own, for most of my life so far. I told my cousins from Sheepshead Bay (they liked to drink at the old man's bar on the corner, down the block from my aunt's place, because it's a cheap dive with a great jukebox), that I needed an answering machine, and they told me not to shop on Canal Street for home goods, but what could I do? I was flat broke with just my work savings from college jobs and a credit card, before I began living paycheck-to-paycheck.

I'd known about Canal Street since my student days, because there's a really well-known art supply store there, packed with several floors of stuff. It's the one place in the city where you can find everything you need to make art, and that's a rare thing. Back in the frontier days of Brooklyn, I had to do most of my shopping in Manhattan, and lug it home on the train or (if I just got paid) in a taxi, but that was extremely rare. Every penny counts. I screw up my budget, I starve. End of story.

So, I knew when I picked up a shrink-wrapped machine down on Canal Street (which cost me two subway fares to get to, for the ride there and back from way-out Brooklyn, taking me hours to do, with transfers and construction re-routing on the weekend) that I was entering into a shifty no-man's land of goods and services, a shady place to shop where there are no guarantees, but when was my life any different? If I didn't do something (anything) to help myself, nothing happened. Absolutely nothing changed, because no one did anything about it, just like it is today. It looked "hot" and slightly used when I picked it up in front of a street stall, but it was either this or nothing, so I bought it from some chain-smoking Chinese guy for $15.

My dad's cousin laughed drunkenly in my face the next time I saw him, because within a month, the two mechanical arms that sprang up when you needed to change the tape broke off. They completely popped out of their tracks, never to be put back into proper working order again. "I told you so", he slurred at me, and then he bought another round. Thanks. Within a week, I made the painful decision to invest in a $25-35 machine, knowing I'd feel the squeeze at the supermarket that weekend; no after-work drinks or take-out slices for me. When I turned to look around the joint, I simply saw myself reflected in the mirror behind the bar, because there was no one else to turn to. Ain't never been any different for me than that.

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trustafarian

Fudgie the Whale

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carvel_%28restaurant%29

New York kids grew up with Carvel ice cream cakes. It's what we wanted for every birthday, and so did our friends, because our parents would never buy that for just any old day. They were specially ordered through a storefront here in New City, and they were customized, but only so much. You could choose the ice cream flavors, that toothpaste shit passing for icing, and some of the colors, but that was about it, because (and here's the funny part), Carvel was so 'round-the-way "flavid", that they were broke-ass like only a really successful tri-state chain would be: one mold, five different kinds of cakes.

And that was the really fun part: guessing the mold's origin in the latest homemade commercial, because "Fudgie the Whale" was also "Cookie Puss" (a weird alien-like creature with a bizarre helium voice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooky_Puss), or (given the holiday), that banged up-looking cornucopia NOW ON SALE FOR THANKSGIVING!!! It was designed to hide the mold pan's original intent: capture the imagination of every area kid on the block by turning that one mold a bunch of different ways, aided and assisted by the creative use of icing.

They were sometimes rough looking and dumb. but I defy you to find brown cookie crunch crumble shit that's bettah. You won't homeboy. It's that good. "Yeah, gimme some more with that toothpaste crap. Hit me with it, bro!" It won't last forevah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_Puss.

"Hi! I'm 'Cookie Puss!', and I'm out of this world!'" Wha the...?

Enjoy the summer, friends.

 
Special shout-out to Howard Stern and the rest of crew for representing our interests and the insanely wacky New Yawk lifestyle, because it ain't funny if it ain't done in "that accent"*. You know the one! Enjoy The Hamptons, yo. "After 40 years of hard work you're a real success!" (Thanks, Cashflow.)

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_English

The Praying Mantis

Shit, dude! I open the door to an extremely large Praying Mantis that scuttles towards me and a yellow grocery bag very quickly.

Years ago after college, I set up camp at an aunt's old apartment way out in Kensington, a still unfashionable Brooklyn neighborhood that remains resistant to gentrification and most types of hipsters, barring the toughie who likes to visit authentically scary, rundown Irish bars with actual Cirrhosis-nose victims. You know, those telltale purple and red broken blood vessels of the nose that come to all who spend the bulk of their days sodden and drunk on a bar stool. To give myself a break from the grind, I'd hooked up with a state school friend and her Roosevelt Island crew; a wealthy set of upper middle class kids who still smoked pot and drank mostly unmolested, because their hippie parents smoked with them, either in their upper west side apartments, or in their posh "rustic" cabins in upstate New York. 

That thing is, like, horror-movie huge.

Naturally, they were clustered around "tighty whitey" affluent Woodstock, and I felt uncomfortable in both locales, because unlike these boarding school kids, I was (and am) a product of actual working class roots, which is not so cool when you want to light up with your parents in their impeccably decorated country homes with an Acadian who doesn't play around with that mess. It was horribly awkward and the whole situation eventually blew up like I knew it would, with broken loyalties and intermittent friendships that lasted between high school and college, over divided lovers and who slept with who and when and such, the usual typically boring hippie shit, but in the meantime, summer was warm and fine in these rich kids parents' apartments around the city. 

Damn, dude. What crevice did you crawl out of?!

On one day, me and a bunch of these kids lit up on the terrace during an absolutely gorgeous summer NYC afternoon, enjoying the cool high floor breezes over glasses from a fully flowing batch of Margaritas that stood on the outdoor cafe table in a beautiful glass pitcher. The parents were gone, and harmony ruled the day. Surprisingly for such a high apartment, this kids' parents also had a stunning garden of plants and flowers, which we enjoyed greatly, watching the lazy, fat bees circle above them, surprised that they could make the journey to the 80th floor, or however fucking high we were. It was awesome! 

Great. Now it's scaling the front of the house, to attack from above.

And then, just like that, the vibe changed, when this ginormous fucking preying mantis landed on the edge of a planter, grabbed a bee as quick as a gunshot, ripped its' fucking head off, and then sucked the goo out of its' neck, like we sucked drinks from a straw. What was even weirder, is in that exact space of 60 seconds, each and every one of our group all saw it at the exact same time, as we screamed our heads off, like we just watched a 60s horror flick for the first time, high and drunk and getting more so by the minute. It was glorious, it was summer, we were 20-somethings in the city, and life was good. That was what I thought about later, after the initial shock of seeing a huge preying mantis scuttle at me on the old porch of a big farmhouse in the Hudson Valley on a warm day wore off. It was that good.

For scale: note size of house number in relation to "It".