Blast from the past

I recently unearthed a post from 2006, when I had a MySpace blog. A few years ago, I foolishly erased that blog when I deleted my MySpace account, so I was pleased to find this time-capsule slice of New York life:

What have I been doing?

Yesterday I revisited my Manhattan-shrink-in-a-highrise (yes, Virginia, New York IS just like a Woody Allen movie) for the second of three "consultation" sessions wherein she decides how to place me. I wish she could just place me with her, but I suspect I can't afford her -- she's a real, live psychiatrist -- and anyway, she's suggesting analysis, not meds. Apparently the mysterious power of the analysis couch isn't that it makes you more comfortable, and thus more likely to spill your long-hidden secrets -- instead, it simply keeps you from looking at your analyst, which apparently helps you Journey Within and pluck out the really juicy Freudian fuck-ups that led you to the sorry place you are today. So that's good to know. I'm learning so much here!

Post-shrink I had a nice big salad at a kosher pizzeria with my nearly-always-visiting friend Bob; then we went to some kind of university art space to look at a design exhibit. It was on the streamlining trend that began in the '30s and clearly consumed almost everything it touched (until you've seen a streamlined iron, you haven't really lived). I astutely observed that the teardrop shape that seemed to characterize a great many of the pieces in the exhibit is also the way airplane wings look from the side, when you do a cross-section diagram thingy.

Bob and I talked about the poignant nature of retro-futuristic design, which expressed such optimism about the 21st century but whose moment, aesthetically, sort of never arrived after all (hel-LO, Space Needle!). Although a remarkable number of streamlined items -- lounge chairs, room lamps, counter/bar islands in a kitchen -- actually continue to exist in contemporary homes. So maybe the moral of the story is that the idealism of the streamlining age, like all idealism, failed to make it to the present day unscathed, but that doesn't mean it didn't exert a profound effect on the design world.

Also last night I stood outside the famous Ziegfeld Theater in the cold and wet to harass people coming out of the world premiere of "United 93," the Paul Greengrass film that recreates, in real time, the doomed 9/11 flight that crashed in a PA field after its passengers staged a revolt against the hijackers. My first NY freelance piece, about whether New Yorkers are ready for the movie (which opens wide on Friday), required me to join the radio, TV, and press people in the gated-off media pit across the street from the theater, from which frazzled-looking moviegoers -- including quite a few family members of 9/11 victims -- emerged following the 7:30 p.m. screening. An AP guy who admitted he'd rather be at home in bed -- yeah, join the club, fella -- shouted at random emerging audience members: "What'd ya think of the movie?" I met a nice lady from BBC Radio who played me back a bit of her interview with Greengrass. I think when you're interviewing the director, your need to do man-on-the-street reporting is greatly reduced. (Accordingly, she left pretty soon after the theater exodus began.)

I'd never been in a media pit before, and lordy, is it like the ones you see in the movies. Inevitably some Armani-wearing dude is fame-hungry and steps right up into the hot glare of the TV lights (yes, the lights the TV people used actually emitted heat and glared -- this is not a figure of speech) and talks and talks and talks. There were three big talkers. While one held court, I stuck my recorder-holding hand through the cloud of correspondents and paparazzi and asked my key question ("Do you think New Yorkers are ready for this movie?"). All the other media people listened for the answer, too. It was weird and magical -- and slightly parasitic, but oh well. 'Tis the nature of the media beast, I guess. My story, all 600 words of it, runs this Friday in Downtown Express.

An urban collective in Brooklyn

A recent New York Times article (sent my way by Joel) spotlights a community in New York that somewhat resembles the Kibbutz. Those pictures at the top, which make the residents seem like sitcom characters or reality-show contestants, tempt me to get professional photos taken of all 15 Kibbutzniks. If only I actually had the money for that...

Metro mayhem

Okay, not actual mayhem. But the threat of mayhem -- the definite possibility thereof.

I took the #71 downtown today instead of the #64, which takes me directly to work. Assorted people stood with me at the #71 stop in Ravenna, including a very nice Australian lady, and we all talked about Seattle's three snowplows and climate change. Despite the unseasonable cold, we had a nice time. At the Westlake station of the transit tunnel, I got out and walked to the #3, doing in reverse what I do every day to get home. I boarded the #3 on First Avenue, and it wasn't unusually full when I got on, but as we moved toward the hillclimb more people crowded in, until it was hard to move, breathe, etc. Then we started to go up the hill. We reached Fifth Avenue before the driver decided we had too many people -- we were too heavy to ascend the slope (this was a trolley bus). Then something happened that reminded me, perversely, of the scene in The Dark Knight wherein Heath Ledger's Joker attempts a nasty little social-psychology experiment, telling the passengers on each of two ferryboats that they have to blow up the other boat in order to survive. Spoiler alert: Human nature isn't quite as dark as the Joker presumes it to be, and everything turns out fine.

On the #3, there was much grumbling after the driver stopped the bus and told us that unless someone got off, none of us would be going anywhere, because we simply couldn't get up that hill with so many bodies crammed into the vehicle. There was swearing among the passengers, and no one, myself included, wanted to hike up Jefferson Street in the cold. We stood there for about ten minutes, and then people finally started to get off the bus. Before that happened, I thought more clearly about class and Metro than I had in some time. I'm scheduled to get my car back Monday evening, but a lot of the people on the #3 probably didn't have cars at all. When you don't have much money and can't afford an alternative, you have to put up with whatever bullshit Metro throws at you.

In this case, the bus driver was scolding us for being stubborn, but a woman at the back of the bus rightly pointed out that the driver, knowing the route, could have kept such a big crowd from accumulating in the first place. (Indeed, it was within her power not to open the back door and to tell people trying to get in the front that they were out of luck.) The woman in back claimed, perhaps a bit cynically, that the driver insisted on packing the bus beyond capacity because Metro hungers for our money. While I doubt this driver's motivation was primarily financial, the angry rider made a good point: Overstuffing a bus and then forcing people out is kind of a raw deal. (Then again, most of the people on the bus had boarded in the free-ride zone, and no one who got off at Fifth and Jefferson had to pay.) Anyway, the bus eventually got moving.

I look forward to having the option of driving again in the near future, but the other day I ran into an acquaintance from Oberlin who lives in South Seattle and doesn't have a car (he works in West Seattle, mostly), and he seemed perfectly happy busing, biking, and walking places. As I said, I'm still glad I have a car, but I plan to drive it to work just a couple days a week after I get it back. And while I wouldn't appreciate such an eventful commute every day, it was certainly an eye-opening experience. A nice balance, in a way: At my first stop, I saw people bond in a way that's unusual in keep-to-yourself Seattle, and on the #3 I witnessed equally uncharacteristic expressions of anger -- more Big Apple than Emerald City.

(By the way, credit for the photo above goes to Seattlest.com, not me.)

It's a helluva town

At the beginning of 2005, I knew I wanted to move to New York. I applied for a job at the Village Voice (nothing came of it), and I talked fairly frequently about my intention to check the place out and, if my experience justified my excitement, pick up and go. I visited the city in October of 2005, and it wasn't long before I was smitten. I saw college friends, high school friends, Central Park, Brooklyn, the West Village, and on and on. I called my friend Judith one afternoon and told her: "I'm moving here!" I was very excited.

I left Seattle Weekly in February of 2006, and my immediate plan was to divvy up my stuff into three piles: stuff to sell, stuff to pack, and stuff to ship. I hadn't counted on meeting Emily the month before I quit at the Weekly and starting a relationship that would last into the spring of 2008, but after much soul-searching, I decided to move anyway. I flew from Seattle to New York on April 1, 2006; my half-joking, somewhat superstitious logic was that if it didn't work out, I could always claim the entire move had been an elaborate April Fool's prank.

As it turned out, I took to New York like a bear to honey. I spent the first month in a brownstone with Michael and another guy, and my energy went mostly into looking for a more permanent place to live (after a month, I had to be out of that brownstone) and, of course, a job. The latter came to me via my college friend Miranda, who worked at Global Health Strategies, one of whose principals had recently suffered a herniated disc. I became his personal assistant, and over the next few months I went from fetching vegetable juice and running mundane errands to doing vaccine-related research at the company's Chelsea office. In addition to the job, I joined a softball team, went to a weekly meditation class, worked out at the Y, and had a busy social life. I felt happier than I had in a long time; New York was doing its job.

I was still with Emily, though, and eventually it became clear to us that we didn't want our relationship to end. She wasn't ready to drop her Seattle life and move to New York, and I wasn't willing to lose her, so I made plans to move back in September, right after my friend Jordan's wedding. I remember an August trip to Coney Island that seemed magical: I went alone, rode the Ferris wheel, drove a bumper car, and watched the Friday night fireworks on the beach. I thought to myself: How can I leave this place? My mother used to say that it's a lucky thing when leaving a place hurts, because that means it meant something to you. If that's true, I was a pretty lucky fellow when I left New York.

Readjusting to Seattle took some time. Am I really back here again? was my initial response; I'd wanted to leave so badly that being back seemed sightly surreal. I worked at University Book Store for six months, but retail is decidedly not for me, so when my friend Gary let me know about a copyediting job at NWsource.com, I took immediate action. I ended up working at NWsource for a full year (almost exactly), and I made some wonderful friends there, including my boss and my fellow writers and editors. When I left NWsource in May of 2008, my plan was to move east, either to New York or to an intentional community in Massachusetts.

By now, Emily and I were more or less broken up, but somehow going back to New York didn't feel right. It felt, instead, like a knee-jerk response, a bit of old logic that might no longer hold true. "Well, that didn't work out; guess I'll just go back to New York." That wasn't the spirit in which I wanted to return, and my resolve was accordingly weaker as I began to sell off and pack up my stuff yet again. I'd moved across the country twice in less than half a year in 2006, and all that moving had taken its toll. I only wanted to leave Seattle if there was a very good reason to do so, even though I couldn't articulate that; I still felt trapped here, and convinced that only a geographic fix would help me move on after the breakup. Fate had other plans for me, though: Emily's bike accident in July of 2008 gave me a reason to stick around for a while longer, and while I did I discovered the Ravenna Kibbutz. The rest, as they say, is history.

I mention all of this because my most recent trip to New York, which I returned from less than a week ago, helped clarify things a bit. Visiting in January turned out to be a good idea; it's hard to know what New York in the dead of winter is like unless you experience it firsthand, and I'd only been there in spring, summer, and fall. I went back to my old neighborhood in Brooklyn and didn't feel too much; the magic of the place was closely connected to my state of mind in the spring and summer of 2006, and that time had passed. I liked walking around Manhattan, but I noticed that the hustle and bustle, and the many challenges of life in a giant city like New York, would make a return stressful as well as rewarding.

I never set up a financially sustainable life for myself in 2006, and to do so now, in our dire economy, I'd have to work even harder than I would have had to back then. I do have many friends in New York, including a couple of really good ones, but I have so many friends in Seattle that I'd be losing at least as much as I'd be gaining by moving. It would be a bittersweet trade-off rather than the decidedly joyous experience I had in 2006 (though it would have been less joyous had Emily and I actually broken up when I left Seattle).

When I think of New York today, I don't see it as my inevitable destination. I'm still not sure I want to stay in Seattle for good, but my life here has improved in the last few months. I've settled into Kibbutz life and appreciate both my housemates and the many wonderful members of the community we continue to nurture and expand, and I'm enjoying my new job at Childhaven as well as the freelance writing I'm doing for Jew-ish.com. My 30th birthday is approaching, and while it's hard to completely shake the restlessness of my twenties, I feel a little less troubled by the notion of living in Seattle for a while longer.

When Emily and I dated, we both thought of New York as a rival girlfriend, an entity I loved that could keep us apart. Now I see the city as a former flame I may want to be just friends with. Maybe time and circumstance will rekindle our romance in the future, but I'm not as intent on making that happen as I used to be. Earlier today, an idea popped into my head as I thought about my recent stay in New York and the understanding it imparted: There's what we know and what we can't possibly know, and leveraging the former against the latter might be the key to a fulfilling life. I can't possibly know precisely what my future will entail, or where life will take me, geographically or otherwise, but it's nice to know a little more about what New York means to me, and what it doesn't.

No, I've not dropped off the face of the earth

I've merely been on the East Coast since Jan. 16. For future reference: A ten-day trip is a bit much, even when there are so many friends to see and good places to eat. My article about the Inauguration should go live at Jew-ish.com tomorrow, and once I get home and upload my pictures, I'll post them here. In brief, let it be said that New York has the best vegan food ever; my toes felt as though they'd freeze and fall off as I waited for Obama to swear the oath; and for the first time in a long while, I'm relatively excited about getting back to Seattle, and not as fixated on moving to New York as I used to be. I credit the Kibbutz (which is to say: my fantastic housemates and the wonderful community they've created), my new job at Childhaven, my challenging and rewarding freelance gig at Jew-ish.com, and my upcoming 30th birthday, which I'm much more in the mood to celebrate than pout about.

I should be back soon with Oscar predictions, but for now, here's a Wall Street Journal piece about star ratings for movies brought to my attention, naturally, by Michael.

I made it to Motown!

The married military man and the elderly lady in the seats behind me on the plane talked for three and a half straight hours, preventing me from sleeping (though admittedly I spent at least an hour of that time reading The New Yorker, and another half-hour listening to the Avenue Q soundtrack on my iPod), but I'm here! And my mother's dog is as cute as ever, and my mother herself is mildly obsessed with Trader Joe's (the fridge is filled with TJ's stuff, and it's almost frighteningly well organized), and I'm making stuffed mushroom caps for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, and all is right with the world. Oh, and Calvin Trillin's piece on barbecue in the New Yorker food issue is every bit as good as Michael claimed it was. Mimi Sheraton's ode to brodetto is great, too -- makes me want to go back to Italy. (I still remember meeting Ms. Sheraton at Salumi, with Roger Downey providing the introduction. Those were the days...)

Where I am going, for sure, is the Inauguration! I'm very excited. I'll probably spend about ten days on the East Coast in total -- several days in New York before Jan. 20, and several days after. I can't wait!

Odds and ends

As drawn to my attention by Michael, here's Dana Stevens' nice Salon piece on the Juno backlash.

In other news, Bill Cosby can sing, sort of. Kinda makes you miss William Shatner. (Gotta love the Good News for People Who Love Bad News-style crumpled-horn intro, though.)

Here's a two-minute reminder, courtesy of Emily, of what makes New York awesomer than everywhere else.

Finally, tomorrow is both my 29th birthday and Caucus Day. Hope you all enjoy playing your part in our confusing electoral system as much as I will.

"Ira & Abby"

It's really quite adorable. If you like romantic comedies set in New York, that is. And I do. Just watching Chris Messina walk past Zabar's made me drool. (About the food, not Chris Messina, though he's very appealing, too.) Maybe I can still fly out there some long weekend soon...