I stared down your hollow hall. Lined with what looked like static stars in a sky divided into fourths. Your beams spending summer swelling, spitting beads of sweat from bubbles, an uneven topography.
The Brew House
Writing for Writing's Sake
Category Archives: New York
Unsolicited Endorsements XXVII
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Album: “In My G4 Over Da Sea” — Neutral Bling Hotel
In February 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel released “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”, a seminal concoction* of lo-fi indie rock.
*If you’ve never listened to the blown-out guitars on “Holland, 1945″, well, do so right now.
After the release of the album, Neutral Milk frontman Jeff Mangum more or less disappeared for the next decade. He stopped releasing music and only showed up to play live shows within the last few years.
Marathon (Pt. 2)
When I wrote this a few months ago, I intended it to be a one-off appreciation of the New York City Marathon — the way it boils down sport, human nature and the complications of this city to something simple, pure and moving.
Turns out that was just Part One of what will be a three-post series. Last month, I registered to run the 2012 New York City Marathon. It will be my first marathon and most definitely not my last.
A Love Letter
I fall from the curb one wheel at a time and stand up to push with all my pounds against the slope. It’s never easy.
Up 16th Street east away from the harbor, leaving the Statue of Liberty behind. Each block is a confused collection of old and young: peeling, window-barred houses in the shadow of six-story condo buildings with ten-foot windows. A Puerto Rican flag hung here two years ago. Now, Liverpool FC.
*****
Invasive Species (They and Me and You)
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.
Times Square
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.
Vacation
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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