if you’re looking for me this Friday night (calling ALL st. louisans)

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

9pm. turn into St. Cyr Industrial Park. look for Westrich Trucking. if you don’t find us it’s because we cut you and left you on the riverbank.

Here’s the facebook invite – all are free to attend.

I wore some of my best socks to Somerville

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Because I Wanted to Fucking Dance!

HONK! 2009 took place this past weekend in Somerville outside of Boston, MA. But a big thanks is due to my friend Alita for giving me the heads up on the event that I honestly did not know about – but she read my body language and excitement for recently seeing Mucca Pazza and clued me in. I glanced at the list of bands travelling to Boston to play and it read like an international smorgasbord of brass & drum skins. And I wanted to get my step on!

I got in touch with one of my Boston chums, “mulcad01″, and described the event’s affairs and location. He too wanted to enjoy the festivities, and declared that everything – everything! – was “about 2 blocks away” from where he lived. Somerville and Davis Square, here I come!

from NYC to Boston. I took the Bolt Bus, which comes highly recommended. They have 110V AC power outlets and a pretty good WiFi connection, and their crowd are generally advantageous of these amenities. So there are lots of laptops and movie-watchers. Yes, this means you’re more-or-less isolated from the person next to you, but it’s also a means of discussion & conversation if you’re so inclined, and I am!

It took nearly an hour and a half just to get out of Manhattan! So I arrived to Boston late, but it worked out perfectly that my matey mulcad01 got off work as I was arriving. mulcad01 and I went to a bar and watched the unfortunate conclusion to game 2 of Boston’s ALDS – no better than my Cardinals. And in true Boston style the bar was jam packed with revelers and fans. And in true Boston style they spent as much time yelling at the television as they did drinking – that is, LOTS!

mulcad01 was afraid I’d peek under the covers, so he wore his jeans to bed. Otherwise he said he always sleeps completely naked and chained to his bed (some alarm system “releases” him every morning).

After some driving around and looking at quaint streets and public art, we went to a NERF WAR GAMES event. No shit. See for yourself:

Everybody was really dorky and lovely and the donuts were only a quarter if you were participating in the war, but we wanted to HONK!-stomp!

(Please keep in mind we didn’t have a choice in attending the NERF event. Seriously! It’s not like… a geek like me would ever, I mean ever, be interested in anything like that!)

We proceeded back to Somerville where mulcad01 lived about 2 blocks from everything. And sure enough within minutes from his doorstep you could hear and then see the processions of bands converging on the town and then occupying their respective “stages”: squares, parking lots, plazas, bank steps. Whatever and wherever that could hold a couple hundred people was, for one day, converted into a great outdoor music spectacle! And the weather couldn’t have been better: warm in the sun, cool in the shade; you wanted a sweater otherwise but were fine to take it off and stay warm as long as you danced danced danced!

All the bands were, simply, amazing! Each band had two slots and played in two different places, so the opportunity was there to see every band and site. I did not. Mainly because I wanted to see two bands in particular, and a couple other bands if time allowed. The two bands in particular were Hungry March Band (who have graced these pages before) and the What Cheer? Brigade whom I first saw open the Swoon show at Deitch in Long Island City last year and they blew my mind then, and this time around they completely disemboweled me! mulcad01 and I danced so hard we woke up the next morning stiff and sore!

Oh yeah, here are those bands I was talking about:

What Cheer? Brigade from Providence, RI

Hungry March Band from Brooklyn, NY

Rude Mechanical Orchestra

I didn’t get nearly enough photos of What Cheer? Brigade. That’s because I was dancing so hard! Their second set was after sundown and the pavement nearly cracked from the collective stomping of the crowd! Especially that one song… you know it when you hear it. With that silent break-beat that transitions from horns to drums, breaks again and everybody starts whaling! Oh man I’ve had that stuck in my head for days!

Just do a Flickr search for HONK! 2009, you’ll find plenty more images already flooding online.

After the final sets the evening quickly died down. Everyone was pretty exhausted from approximately 10 hours of dancing and walking the streets, and believe it or not people needed rest… for the street parade the next day! Yay!

But before we get there I went on a nightly walking tour as I often do in new cities/towns, and mulcad01 showed me this round building that I would totally love to call my own. It’s been uninhabited for some years, and is only recently being “developed”. How properties like this ever fell by the wayside is beyond me. If it were mine, I’d paint it in such a way to make it appear like a giant cake! Yummy home!

And now, for the street parade:

What Cheer?, this time marching.

I didn’t get to see them the day before, but I guess this is Orkestar Zirkonium. . . oh yeah, THEY ROCK! Their songs were perfect for marching, as mulcad01 and I kept pace with them for many blocks!

We departed the parade however and took a walking tour and headed to Boston’s ICA where there’s currently some wonderful work by Damián Ortega installed. We took about the longest possible circuitous foot-path route there, and along the way saw a stairway full of slinky, a GIANT ship on the horizon, and mulcad01 pointed out what would be the best possible sniper positions (spillover from his service in the Watching Too Many Movies forces).

look at the size of that boat. seriously. it’s taller and longer than those buildings!

the identity of mulcad01 will forever remain a mystery.

We had some dinner, headed home and I packed my bags for departure. The festival was moving to Providence the next day for PRONK but unfortunately I had already booked my return ticket and didn’t have a place lined up. So I jumped the first available WiFi-enabled bus back to NYC and there I was at 2am.

And well, you know you’re home when:

and just to remind you, SOCKS!:

Bottom line is, if you have the opportunity, GO to HONK! You won’t regret it. What a joyous celebration of dancing in the streets and freedom of movement in an otherwise striated space. Express yourself through dancing!

[full set of images on my Flickr]

flight out of STL, into NYC

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

While I always love my time in St. Louis, my people there, and having a deep familiarity with a city that is no longer mine, these shots from my return flight from St. Louis’s Lambert to New York’s LaGuardia help illuminate why I am so in love with the grandeur of New York City, a city of unimaginable size and scale:

For starters there was the actual takeoff out of St. Louis. Now, first thing to note is that the airport is in the County, not the City (limits). Still, it’s all part of the St. Louis “region”. However it’s a distinguishing fact to keep in mind that when you land at LaGuardia you’re landing in Queens County, one of the five counties that constitute the boroughs of New York City. Also, look at how green this place is:

So here’s a shot flying east over the Mississippi. That’s downtown St. Louis in the background, the most-distinguishing building being the TWA Dome/Edward Jones Dome, the white hump of a building that the Rams play in:

We dropped below the clouds just in time to catch the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn to the north with Staten Island in the corner:

One thing you’ll recognize immediately is how much closer you feel. And what I really love is having a relational proximity to this city that I’ve really only experienced elsewhere in London. You live here for so long and you really start to develop a memory-map of the city based on prior experiences, in ways that I never could in St. Louis. Like the week before I was underneath the same bridge I was now 3,000 feet above:

(Staten Island in the background)

Or take the Rockaways, here pictured in the background behind Coney Island/Brighton Beach, I was at a beach on the left top-middle edge also just a week prior:


And to give you a sense of scale, it took an hour to travel from Lower Manhattan to said beach by ferry – that’s how huge and expansive this city is!

A shot of Brooklyn, this time a view of that building at the intersection of 4th Avenue, Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue (which I’ve got a shot of from below as well!):

Here’s a view of Governor’s Island in the lower-right seen over the right wing. I was at Governor’s Island just a couple weeks prior for the Tangent public art festival!

Continuing on.

Here’s a great shot of the AT&T building near Canal and Broadway, which can be seen just above the AT&T building (see detail):

it ain’t called Empire State for nothing

Madison Square Garden, the round building in the lower-right, much more impressive than the Edward Jones Dome highlighted near the top of this post.

Yankee Stadiums new and old (left and right, respectively) – I have yet to visit the new stadium.

A view of Co-Op City in the Bronx, the largest cooperative housing development in the United States.

And then suddenly you’ve landed.

This flight was incredibly short for some reason. We departed about 30 minutes late it seemed, so they must have made up for it in the skies because we landed 2-3 minutes early! Nice.

Oh yeah, this was an American Airlines flight, and given their flight path if you want these remarkable views from St. Louis get a window seat on the right side of the plane! I sat in 18F, so a few numbers less (17, 16, 15, etc.) would probably remove the wing from your view. Yippee!

(these photos from my full set found on my Flickr account)

today’s adventures

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

told in reverse order, with moblog and digital camera photos. started with a trip to the deli; 7 train to Flushing Meadows; visit to QMA museum; then lunch at Jackson Diner; walk around Jackson Heights; trip to Jim Hanley’s Universe; stumbled by a box of watches on the way home; then trip to the pub.

will update throughout the day

headed back to NYC in style

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

some thoughts on New Orleans

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

an unordered list of reflections of life in New Orleans:

• they don’t have laundromats in New Orleans, they have washaterias
• Uptown is latitudinally south of the downtown
• if you ask for water at a restaurant, expect to drink 750mL; glasses here are huge!
• Dr. Bob has a visual stake in absolutely every single commercial establishment
• while sitting in the bathtub, it’s entirely possible you’ll be bitten by a mosquito. in January.
• some restaurants “don’t do change” – they round up
• if you don’t say hello to a stranger, you’re rude
• ZAPP’S!
• directions? don’t expect a cross street
• swagger is synonymous with walk
• depending on where you’re going, you might have to sit tight for a while. In order to let the railroad train pass. “The tracks” here routinely control the flow of traffic (pedestrian, bike, car) and they don’t move fast.
• Overheard in New Orleans (OHNO): “Cold is not the word!” – when it’s 55F with a slight breeze.