Picture Monday: this dog's life

Jackie, our weekend guest from Puppies Behind Bars.

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.

Project Friday: O Pioneers!

I was always a huge fan of Little House on the Prairie. Little wonder, then, that I imagined my very first grown-up apartment as a kind of foray into pioneer life in the BK. My mom sent me a sewing machine as a housewarming present, and I pictured myself sewing calico dresses, growing salad greens on the fire escape, and hewing together furniture by hand.

Now, a year later, my sewing acumen extends merely to straight seams and minor repair work. My agricultural operation succumbed to the fate of many small farms: complete collapse—but not before my $50 investment yielded two small side salads’ worth of hand-grown greens. My furniture building, on the other hand, had better results. And with this Project Friday, I present to you the extremely simple Crash Pad, a sort of couch/bed/storage combo.

Apartment Therapy and Ikea Hacker are two superb sites for urban pioneers, and it was the latter that inspired this project. Here’s what you need to build your own.

• 2 Akurum refrigerator cabinets measuring 36 by 15 by 24‘’ or to your specs (the refrig cabs are ideal because they are short and extra deep, better for making a bench)
• Sheet of plywood cut into two pieces measuring 24 by 75’’ (Home Depot or Lowes will do this for you)
• Sheet of high-density foam rubber from a futon shop (a standard size for this is 24 by 75’’, hence the plywood
• Fabric to cover (or just a sheet or whatever if you’re lazy)
• Drill (or if you’re really lazy, hammer and nails)

Step 1: Build the cabinets per those weird, all-visual IKEA directions

Step 2: Paint the plywood to desired color

Step 3: Attach the cabinets to the plywood (you’ll make a little gap in the center which is nice for storage) with drill or nails.

Step 3: Cover the foam pad and place on the bench.

Voila! You’ve got a clever storage solution, a bench for your friends to sit on, and a crash pad for overnight guests. My total costs for this were around $200. Possibly you can do better on Craigslist, but that wouldn’t be very pioneer like, would it?