We’ve written about this before. Back in October, Rustin pondered what exactly it meant to wear Chuck Taylor. Beyond the contents of that post, I don’t really know much about the history of the iconic sneaker. What I do know is that my Chuck Taylors are dying.
It all changed July 14.
When Spotify expanded its service to the United States earlier this year, the streaming platform altered and improved the way I consume and find music — hopefully forever. No more forking over $9.99 per digital album on iTunes. No more sifting through shady sites in search of a decent free version of the week’s biggest release.
I see the way they look at me and mumble a meek “Hi” as I duck into my renovated apartment in the building we share.
After all, they were here first. They lived through the days of glass-enclosed cashiers, barren after-dark avenues and the crime that made New York notorious. My Brooklyn — its craft beer bars, wine shops and organic groceries — isn’t their Brooklyn.
My company relocated recently from the stately silver canyons of Sixth Avenue to the pulsating, luminous walls of Times Square. This two-block shift might not seem like a big deal, but as any resident of the five boroughs knows, it is, indeed a very big deal.
Nothing has a sound, and it’s predictably difficult to describe.
It comes in the moment when your own breath sounds like whipping wind. It comes when your shoe’s rubber-on-grass pad is audible from six feet up. It comes when the sky is clear and dark and the air is cold and crisp.
In my six years of living in transplant-centric locations (Lawrence, Kan., and Brooklyn, N.Y.), I’ve come to cherish one of life’s more underappreciated delights: Staying put for the holidays.
Back in Lawrence, some of my favorite times included window-down drives on relatively empty summer-evening streets, enjoying the solitude of the Student Rec Center during its reduced summer hours and running the hills of the car-free streets just north of campus before the summer heat hit near mid-day. Staying in a snowpacked and silent Lawrence over winter break felt like being in on a beautiful secret that the rest of the world only stumbled upon twice a week at Allen Fieldhouse.
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We’re half awake in our fake empire.
***
Push through a revolving door and break the plane of a cold that hangs solid in the air and amplifies all the small sounds, making the busy sidewalk feel almost empty. The lights from the taller buildings — 30 or 40 or more stories up — create a soft electric glow, a warm blanket of false twilight that hovers and holds the city close.
Maybe you’re headed home to dinner and bed. Perhaps you’re off to the gym. If it’s Thursday, you might be bound for a bar or dinner to meet co-workers or make connections. No matter where you’re going, you’re headed to whatever semblance of home you’ve built sooner rather than later, because tomorrow’s Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday. Another day of work.
This is all you have and this is all you have looked forward to. This is life as one in however many million, this is growing up and growing older in New York City.
The National is the soundtrack.
#basketballneverstops is a hashtag, 21 characters of clever marketing meant to sell expensive shoes in the absence of the nightly shoe commercial that is the NBA season. It’s easy to filter and dismiss marketing messages: They’re often insincere or cloying or made up of more noise than necessity.
Nike’s newest ad is clever, well-produced and slick and will undoubtedly sell expensive shoes.
It’s also true. Continue reading
At Mile 7, an older woman read the shirts as they sped past.
“Go Juan! Go Michael! Go David! Go Julio! Go…Peru!”
***
Two blocks south, a stout policewoman stood atop the raised median of Fourth Avenue, her uniform a blue-black silhouette against a brown Best Western wall.
Her hands swayed from waist- to chest-level as she issued a slow and steady clap for the droves streaming past on either side.
As a shameless atheist, proud supporter of LGBT equality and women’s rights, and general advocate of stances deemed unholy, I respect Tim Tebow.
The Brew House 