New York thus far….

I apologize for the lack of posts.  For a few months there, life got a bit real, sorta complicated, and busy.  Although I had the blog in mind quite frequently, I just couldn’t muster enough time between living and reading to really fit it in.  That said, I’m currently sitting at a cute local coffee shop (recently reopened!) in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn (Home!) getting back into writing a bit.

Tiny Cup! <3

The primary reason why I stopped writing is because the aformentioned NYU Guards were really becoming a threatening presence in my life.  The fear started when one of the guards, the formidable but charming Eastern Europe (as my sister and I called him), approached me and told me that they’re keeping any eye out for people in the building like me and had just caught and removed a similar lurker recently.  This only scared me because I still didn’t have money, a job, or a place to live.

What followed was about a month of super sneaking, stressing out, and a few nights wandering the streets of New York.

Yes, I did spend entire nights out in the streets.  To be honest, I often enjoyed these nights.  The only real downside was that they often were VERY long and quite expensive-due to my addiction to coffee and Clif Builders protein bars.

Addict.

Indeed, I’ll admit that these weren’t the ideal New York City situations for me, however, I would use the time to explore the East Village and Lower East Side and just people watch.  I especially enjoyed Friday and Saturday nights when the LES became an emotional roller coaster of debauchery and tears for the city’s bright young things.  It really was a hoot.

THE MOST INTERESTING PERSON I’VE MET IN NEW YORK CITY

On one night, in the middle of the week, a guard was posted that I knew would eject me from the building immediately (my sister and I named this character Old Man).  Like stated, I couldn’t risk ejection because that meant that I would have to make the streets a more regular home.  Not cool.  Thus, I walked around the quiet East Village streets near my sister’s dormitory and drank coffee and watched people and things.

The guard change, to the morning guards who knew nothing of my existence, always happened at 7am.  If I had to get out, it would often be early, maybe for some interview, and I would end up lurking around the city all day and all of the night.  Usually, my lurking would end around 6am when I would get a relaxing cup of coffee or tea at the Starbucks in Union Square (along Broadway).
This time, however, I went to the McDonalds near Union Square around 4am and sat there with a cheaper, more bitter, but still delicious cup of coffee in hand.  While I tried to relax after a long night of adventuring, this Latin sounding fellow would constantly ask me about how to spell words or if the word he wanted to use was being used correctly.  He was sending a rather long text message to someone.  This was a bit intrusive to my reflection time.

Around 5am, a belligerent bum stormed into the McDonalds and started freaking out in front of the night time lurkers and sleeping bums that populated the place at this time of the day.  His entertaining show ended with him holding a pile of napkins and throwing them down a locked downstairs section of the restaurant.  At this point, he was escorted from the facility.  From this, the Latin fellow next to me made a little joke about how crazy the guy is, we laughed, and then started conversing.

I soon found out that he was a painter who had been exiled from Cuba and was traveling around the United States by hopping trains like a Dharma Bum.  It was nuts because he would talk about holding handstands for long periods of time to maintain blood flow throughout his entire body.  These were seriously events pulled straight out of Dharma Bums.  It was wonderful!

He’d also tell me how he maintained some income by selling his paintings on the street and taking advantage of lonely Upper East Side women who wanted to make up for their “dull lives” by making it with an artist.  Although this was a bit disconcerting at first, I accepted it on the grounds of my disdain for the neighborhoods north of 14th Street.  He lived in a storage facility in Long Island where he kept a cot, soap, a bucket of water, his painting supplies, and a radio.  Since the facility closed in the evening, he’d sleep and paint during the day and wander around the city at night. Suddenly, the annoying guy who couldn’t spell became the most interesting fellow I’d met in the city.

Of course, interspersed throughout the conversation was all this rubbish about being positive and living life to the fullest.   I didn’t pay attention to these moments and couldn’t tell you too much about them.

One of the most entertaining moments of the evening was when this old and haggard looking fellow came and sat next to us.  He started rambling about how he used to have so much money training horses, however, his former employer cut him off when they were about to make it big.  After that, I suppose his life fell into shambles and he quit being cool with things to instead wander bitterly around Manhattan for the rest of his days.   Soon after, the painter and this man started arguing about how to approach negativity in life.  At this point, I zoned out and started reflecting.

As the night came to a close, the painter and myself promised to stay in touch, go on adventures, and meet again.  We hugged and he disappeared.  He told me that he wanted to hop a train to Miami and stay with some family.

THE IMPACT

That morning I really couldn’t sleep.  I had been affected by this adventuring painter who wanted so badly to be near his family in Cuba but couldn’t go because he didn’t want to live under the Castro government any longer.

To make a long story short, after applying for numerous jobs, and working at H&M in Herald Square for literally one day, I found a job working for Housing Works, an activism driven non-profit that provides necessary life sustaining support to homeless and low income people living with HIV/AIDS in New York City.

Although I found out about the company through an interest in volunteering, I fell into a position working at one of their thrift store locations in Tribeca.  The job has decent pay and benefits and I really can’t complain at the moment.

Concurrently, I found a nice and very large apartment in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn.  The rent is cheap and my roomates are darlings.  Although Bed-Stuy has a bit of a reputation, the area is beautiful during the day and actual negative incidents, although not completely non-existent, have not been a factor.

Hi from Bed-Stuy!

Look at how much further the roof goes from the top of the door! I seriously live in a cave (that has good natural light).

So, I don’t know.  Maybe the painter kicked me in the butt and I realized that I had to figure things out with more conviction or something.  All I know is that soon after our encounter, things started to fall into place for me.

To be honest, I’m still not positive about how I feel about being here.  I’m still waiting on school and have a laundry list of things I want to achieve here.  However, I do miss the West, my dad, Papercar, my Civic (Littl’an), driving, sun, palm trees that aren’t ironic, and being out of a city (i.e. going hiking).
We’ll see what happens.  Until that’s figured out, there’s still plenty of adventure here in the city to tell y’all about so I hope you’ll keep checking in!

<3

NYU Guards Part 1

ANY CHARACTER HERE

NYU guards are tough to read.  You get quite an eclectic mix of them.  Sometimes you’ll get one that’s cool and doesn’t treat you like a threat to the building’s security everytime you walk up to them without a valid building ID (like ME!) or sometimes they think you’re going to Die Hard: With A Vengeance in the Dining Hall or something.  It’s really not anyone’s fault.  Some people are more realistic and less paranoid and some people really like their jobs, so they have to be paranoid.

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“The check-in is closed.  You’ll have to wait until 10 when it opens or try to call a friend to get you,” said the guard with an over-enthusiastic tone of authority.

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We had just gotten off our shuttle and it was 7:30 in the morning.

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This was my first encounter with an NYU guard and it didn’t really plant a good seed of friendship.  Although this guy was strict, he did ultimately seem to care about the fact that we were potentially looking at 2.5 hours in the lobby with about seven bags packed to the brim with LIFE.

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He called somebody.

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First, a bit of a primer-although I plan on elaborating on this aspect in a later post on my rather undefined early existence in the city.  Since I didn’t come to New York City with a lot of money and no place to live, my plan was to stay with my sister for a little bit in her dorm and then couch surf with a few friends and relatives.

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I didn’t plan on staying for 2.5 weeks.

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As expected, the guards started to notice my freeloading after about a week.  As a result, they started to react.  It got to a point where I had to develop a series of tactics as a means of getting by them and into my sister’s room.

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It must also be noted that temporary homelessness (as in out in the street for the evening) came as a reaction to a certain guard’s presence or threats.  I’ll elaborate more on this in the aforementioned “undefined” post. I’ve found that there were guards who had an eye on expelling me from the buiding and I had to deal with them somehow, there were guards that were foolish and were easily tricked into letting you in, and then there are the wonderfully angelic goodwill guards who will try to find a loophole for you to let you in if you allude to the fact that the street is the only other choice.

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Most of the time, however, it’s a covert and strategic operation.

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Next time: Dealing with the NYU Guards (aka The Strategy), (aka Metal Gear Solid)

Week 1, Day 1: I Feel Like The BEATLES or something

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“You’re hair is beautiful.  We have the same hair!”

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These words, from a beautiful young lady that reminded me of all the flamboyant senior aides that I worked with at READ/San Diego, came as an unexpected bit of nostalgia, as well as a welcome to my new life.

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I replied, “Fantastic!”

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After months of fear regarding money, a place to stay, whether I was going to go to school or not, the temperature, the pace, no friends, no car, and the vastness of New York City; after all that, I was here.  I  was actually stupid enough to just pack up my things and move, with no job and barely any money, to one of the most expensive cities you could possibly move to.

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I almost considered going Dharma Bum for this one, however, I just didn’t have the Buddha in me.

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My sister and I waited at JFK Airport, Terminal 4 for a few hours-we had arrived quite early and our shuttle wasn’t ready yet.

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My first sight of anything New York City was going to be a sunrise.

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I was hungry for protein so I headed to the nearest health food stand for some snacks.  To my dismay, everything but a damn Dunkin Doughnuts was closed.

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Looks like I’ll be having a stomach ache to go along with my New York sunrise thank you very much.

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After a few hours of staring at girls (I perfectly timed my arrival for the beginning of fashion week) and restlessly flipping through my pocket copy of Dharma Bums, our shuttle arrived.

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Now, I didn’t anticipate that the first real PHYSICAL challenge in my new city would come so soon, however, like a fool, I had packed a few fine sartorial pieces, many jackets, some movies, and an unreasonable amount of books that I couldn’t live without and, subsequently, made each of my four bags about 50 lbs. each-I think or at least it felt like it.

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Fortunately, because I’m a MAN OF MUSCLE, I could handle it.

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Of course, the Mr. Shuttle was late and quite adamant about rushing us through the terminal to his vehical parked at least 4 miles away from our starting point.  On top of that, my right shoelace had come undone and now it wasn’t just a matter of carrying my crap but also treading carefully to avoid falling and destroying my body in an explosion of bags, clothing, and books.

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After making it through that adventure, we boarded the shuttle, along with a rather hungover looking young lady in sunglasses, a few other NYU hacks, and a pretty Australian traveler, and made about 50 circles around JFK picking up random people.

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When we finally made our way to Manhattan, on the freeway, I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful Queens looked.  I liked all the narrow houses, leaf

strewn streets, and corner markets.  It all looked quite peaceful in the morning New York glow.

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Soon enough, we would be on the Queensboro Bridge, the sun glowing brighter, and Manhattan looming.  For the first time in my life, I was in New York City.  For the first time in my life, I was in a new city with no intention of going home.

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Next Time: NYU Guards

HELLO HELLO

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Hello all!  I promised many a report of my early days here in New York City.  I can say that it was anything but UNEVENTFUL.  This city’s full of wonderful little surprises and I’m having a hoot experiencing them.  What I’m going to do is write these little things in a series, accompanied by pictures from my trusty Blackberry, to document the major happenings from my first

few weeks here.  I’ll try to keep the ship rolling on these posts and I hope you’ll keep following.  I apologize, for these first few posts will have a lot of rather inconsequential events, but it is a document of my initial impression of the city so all that stuff’s inevitable.  As the days go on, however, things are going to primarily be focused on the major things that happened.  It’s going to kinda be like an action flick without all the models with guns and explosions in your face and Bruce Willis.

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Also, if you like blog reading or getting ahead on reading some “early” stuff from the next great American writer, I’m working on some other more subject specific blogs.  However, if all you want is New York City BANGERS and other life adventures then this is the place!

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All the best!

How Gram Parsons can make you feel bad for being Fast and Furious

Gram in the "Guilded Palace of Sin" suit

DISCLAIMER: This is a piece about how stupid I can be sometimes.   Street racing is for Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.  Unless you are the aformentioned people, please refrain from turning streets that families drive on into Monza.  Thanks.

The other day, while driving quite briskly through my favorite local twisty, I had the unfortunate luck of running into a police officer leaving an attached street.  The crisis was further enhanced by the fact that it came off of a turn where you power out of a low speed corner, hammer on the throttle, and blast down a straight stretch of road with the engine on full boar.  As I crossed the turn’s apex and aggressively applied the throttle, I crested over the following short hill and noticed, to my dismay, the aformentioned law enforcer.

Upon passing the police car, I look into my rear view mirror and see the officer turn onto the road and turn on the lights.

Awesome.

Now, it must be noted, that the last time I had a run in with the police, I was in the same vehicle (a vehicle of the stripped down and extremely loud kind), parked in a Shell gas station with the car being searched by about 5 cars worth of cops out on a “drunk driving” hunt but fortunately running into a “street racer” (NOTE: while I was parked), with actual drunk asses DRIVING into the Shell to buy cigarettes and take photographs on their phones of the real life Fast and Furious.

That evening ended with a potential misdemeanor “speed contest” ticket.

Although that passed with a dismissal “In the Name of Justice”, the months of fear were still quite fresh in my mind.  So, what would any right minded citizen do in a situation like this?

I pushed the throttle to the boards.

Following the straight is a complex of esses that I knew not too many people could hang with me on (I’d probably only put money on other members of my racing club).  I knew that I could lose this cop, get a gap, and park somewhere in hiding for a little bit.

And that’s exactly how it played out.  The lights behind me were gone.  In fact, I was so confident that I didn’t even hide in a side street.  Instead, I pulled up to the red light, heart beating, and waited in anticipation for either the lights behind me or the green light in front of me.  Fortunately it was the latter.

As I slowly drove through town and pulled into a Fresh and Easy, I sat in the car for a bit to chill out.  The song on the radio was “Blue Eyes” by The International Submarine Band.  While listening to the tune, my favorite from the Gram Parsons catalog, I really started to calm down a bit.

“I’ve got the sun to see your blue eyes and tonight you’re in my arms.”

Getting wrongfully accused of being a street racer is one thing, but actually feeling like a street racer is stupid.  I needed “Blue Eyes” to put things into perspective.  Now, I’m not against going a few tenths over boring on a nice piece of road.   However, after a situation like this, and after destroying one car years ago, one should really question if the road is really worth it.  If you think it is then make sure you know what you’re doing and are ready to pay the consequences WHEN being human rears its ugly head.

All the best.