Picture Monday: this dog's life

Jackie, our weekend guest from Puppies Behind Bars.

Picture Monday: W'burg

W'burg, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Picture Monday: Travel edition

International electric closet, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Wonder what goes on in there?

5 Boro Bike Tour: Astoria Park

Astoria Park, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Picture Monday: Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

IMG_0275, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Picture Monday: Top Secret Attack Band in Prospect Park

IMG_0185, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

A great day in Brooklyn

New House Passover reunion 2008

When I first arrived in New York, I sublet a room the size of a twin bed in a fifth-floor walkup tenement flat just south of Washington Square Park. I hated it, could touch both walls with my fingers at once, but like much else in my life at the time, I was too complacent to do anything about it. In my seven years living there, I grew convinced through observation that if you split MacDougal Street down the middle, there would be rings and rings of the same kind of tacky decadence going back two hundred years. When Edgar Allen Poe did his time on West 3rd St., he must have been slumming, pounding his head against his garret wall at all of the drunks and out-of-towners, clogging up the sidewalk and going: “Wither thou a good plate of spaghetti?” Dylan and the Beats were easier to picture, cheap bastards trawling MacDougal Street for a fast drunk in tack city.

Finally, I let myself be kicked out of that apartment and landed in the least likely place: a collective house in Brooklyn. A commune. And there was subsumed in the topsy-turvy feeling of sharing intimacies you would not share with a lover, four falling down floors of a crumbling brownstone, six grown-ups, one child, no locks, poor boundaries. We played this game of trying to recognize the footsteps of people coming down the stairs. I ran. They told me I always ran.

Even accepting the sacrifices that were required to live in that place, when we were forced to wear heavy coats while playing poker huddled around the kitchen table in the dead of winter, plumes of hot breath visible in the air, there was this tangible sense of something meaningful that assuaged the solitary self that I left behind me.

I remember one night early on during my stay there, Mars orbiting close, all of us clamored to the roof. Among five other bodies strewn across the expanse of black pitch and looking for the red planet, closer now than it had ever been in 60,000 years, I was floating down to earth, finally coming to rest.

I've moved on but every year go back for Passover, a messy/delicious improvised celebration with this family that I found there, these people who have become my family.

How is this house different from all other houses? I don't know how to put it into words exactly. You'd have to see it for yourself.

Things to do in Philly when you're English

My English coworker Tom asked me the other day what's so great about Philadelphia. Well, the sixth borough of New York has got a lot going for it. Throw down twenty bucks in Chinatown, and within a couple of hours, here are all the wonderful things you can experience:

1. The Philadelphia Art Museum. Yes, it's something of a rite of passage to bound up those steps, Rocky-like, and triumphantly gaze over the whole of the city of brotherly love.

2. The Mutter Museum. A total heebie-jeebie fest, this Victorian medical museum houses body parts in formaldehyde, skeletons, and other disturbing remnants of medicine before doctors, like, knew anything about disease.

3. Hoagies. Back when I was a student at Simon's Rock, there was a weekly institution at the dining hall called "Hoagie Day." The blend of cold-cuts, shredded iceberg lettuce, oil and vinegar, and fluffy bread ensured that this was my favorite day of the week. Well, every day is hoagie day in Philly. All the focus on cheesesteaks may unfairly overshadow this deserving Philly invention. The go-to spot is Sarcone's.

4. Cheesesteaks. You go to the corner where Geno's and Pat's duke it out to see the rivalry for yourself. But don't try to start an argument about which cheesesteak is best in Philly. That's like trying to prove the existence of God.

5. Reading Terminal Market. Have you noticed how many of these reasons are about food? That's because Philly has insanely concentrated areas of foodie delights, including Reading Terminal Market and the Italian Market, so if you are still hungry after all those cheesesteaks and hoagies, you can hook up with some gourmet provisions.

6. The BYOB restaurant phenomenon. I don't really understand this, but I guess Philly has worse blue laws than NYC. So you can tote your own bottle to a schmancy restaurant like Matyson. The boon of broke gourmands everywhere.

7. Cheap real estate and cheap beer. Need I say more?

I was so enchanted by Philly on my last visit that I was inspired to begin a novel about a 30ish ne'er-do-well chef named Charlie Pepper, who takes his English girlfriend to Philly over Christmas to break up with her. You can see more about my irrational love for Philadelphia by checking out that first chapter here.

For the time being, though, Philadelphians, I salute you.

A journey to the intersection of art and life to say farewell to the Flux

This is the story of one Englishman, one Argentinean, and one Californian’s adventure into the fringes of the Queens art scene. It all started when my coworker Tom was invited to an opening at a show called “Everything Must Go” last night at the Flux Factory.

In case you’ve never heard of this teeming experimental laboratory, Flux Factory is a live/work commune for artists in Long Island City that’s about to be demolished. At one time, I wanted to create a photo book about collective living spaces, and Flux Factory was one of the places I researched by stopping by occasionally, once for a class on bookmaking, and also for an installation piece where they had novelists living in pods in the main loft space churning out a complete manuscript in a month.



Every time I’ve been to Flux, I’ve felt like I was intruding on the living room of people far cooler and artsier than I. This visit was no exception—after we’d woven our way past car dealerships and Taiwanese megachurches to arrive at the space right on time, Tom and I found ourselves the first non-residents present. Everyone else seemed to be artists engaged in final tweaks of their installations.







The charms of the show were slow to reveal themselves—I think in part because we were initially timid to begin exploring a space where there was little delineation between public and private space. Everything Must Go is definitely one place where art is everywhere from the giant soup pot of jellybeans on the kitchen table to a loft-bed laden with homemade pies, but more on that later.



But once people started to arrive, including Tom's Argentinean friend Manolo, and the booze started to flow, Flux Factory revealed delightful secrets in hidden corners and some truly innovative uses of space.


Above is a picture of Tom adding to the wall of art. His contribution? A Fish n' Chips sign, of course!

One of my favorite installations is pictured at left. The giant cut-out figures conjured childhood and were a little bit scary at the same time. The best part was the sound, though. A sound artist had rigged up a xylophone and some other percussive instruments to play weird, whimsical music.




“This is the best experience of New York I’ve had since I got here,” Tom raved. A native of the UK, Tom has been living and working in Stockholm for the past five years before joining the British Tourist Board New York office on a temporary assignment. He’s grown very fond of the relaxed, laid-back atmosphere of the Swedish capital. “So it’s the like the Brooklyn of Europe?” I asked him. “No, more like the Berlin of Sweden,” he replied. On the other hand, Manolo insists that Buenos Aires is filled with examples of Flux Factory-like places.

Several of our favorite experience not represented here:

• The pie and milkshake installation: one of the artists had transformed her living space into a salon of delectable desserts. For a nickel, she would make you a custom milkshake, but even better, you could climb up to her loft bed and enjoy a slice of pie! Not something you see in New York everyday, kids! Tom’s inner Homer Simpson gave this installation a blue ribbon.
• The slide. Remember to sign the release!
• The rooftop shack built by Tom’s friend Michaela
• The strange percussive rattling of Manolo’s truck on our way back to the city over the Queensboro Bridge.

You can experience the swan song of the Flux Factory’s current incarnation in Long Island City during the month of April. There will be a closing party that will probably surpass this opening on Saturday, April 26. Check their website for more details.

Go for the pies, stay for the intersection of art and life.