which is a five-day street fair in a town ten minutes away from where I grew up, beloved by the world and chock full of country charm such as
the belief that pumpkin-related foods are entertainment,
so many effin’ pumpkin displays it makes the pie center of your brain kick into triple overdrive,
inappropriate signage,
and so much food that you start to force feed it to your family pets just to get rid of all the treats you bring home with you.
All of our eatin’ is cataloged here at donuts4dinner.com, because you non-food-loving types don’t deserve to get to see photos of deep-fried peanut butter.
The view down a lonely Williamsburg street at the last rooftop party of the summer.
Emily brings her hypoallergenic Yorkiepoo to work, and I convince Jack to stick him in the fridge. Emily is not amused.
Steve receives an Amazon gift card from Michael Jackson with the following note: I’m really happy for you, Elvis, and I’mma let you finish, but Steve is one of the best kings of all time. Of all time.
An accidental snapshot confirms that I’m a robot with lifeless doll eyes.
This weekend, instead of properly paying attention to me, Kamran combed YouTube for all of the songs listed in New York magazine’s Brooklyn Top 40, the top 40 songs coming out of Brooklyn and defining what it means to be indie right now. He made a playlist of them, which you can enjoy here:
I feel so close to all of these artists somehow. Both physically, because I live down the street from them, but also . . . not spiritually, because that’s lame, but somehow like spiritually, because this sound is so distinctly Brooklyn to me, and I feel so distinctly Brooklyn myself.
While we sat on Kamran’s loveseat, him reading cases for law school and me scanning blogs as we listened to the playlist for the second time, he looked over and said, “We should be doing this!” I said, “Oh, um, I don’t know if we could do this.” He said, “Well, not THIS. This is good.”
This is the song he was talking about:
We decided that when we need to feel better about ourselves and how easy making music is, we’ll listen to this:
I forget sometimes that I’m so freakin’ lucky to live in a city where this stuff is being made and is readily available to me. I saw Crystal Stilts open for Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, saw Amazing Baby open for Cold War Kids, saw MGMT play in an abandoned pool, saw The Dirty Projectors play on the Williamsburg waterfront. Remind me of this when I say I can’t be out at a show until 2 on a weeknight.
Yesterday, as Kamran was doing his Body Test on our Wii Fit, the little Wii Fit Board icon thing with the unexplainable baby voice decided to take a detour and asked him how I was doing. Then, it asked him to select whether I looked lighter, heavier, or the same after my recent sessions of hardcore Wii hula-hooping and Wii bowling.
Kamran looked at me as I sat eating chocolate fudge brownie Ben & Jerry’s and politely chose “the same”. The Wii Fit told him that perhaps he should pay more attention to me. We laughed, since I’m always doing dances around his apartment on the weekends to get him to pay attention to me instead of his law school books.
The Wii Fit then told him that in studies, dogs that are paid more attention by their owners are more motivated. Hmph.
Last week’s New York magazine had the most interesting article about a co-housing community trying to plant roots in Brooklyn. The idea is that they’ll buy an abandoned factory or warehouse, fit it with something like 30 apartments, and include huge common areas where people can gather. They’ll make all decisions as a community, eat dinner together, keep their apartment doors open, and basically be family to each other in a city where people pride themselves on anonymity.
I love the idea. I’m now dying to be a part of it and would be in a second if I had the $500k for one of their apartments. I talk daily about how much I miss the way people say hello to everyone they pass in my hometown in Ohio, the way you have to respect and care for each other when you know each other’s fathers and brothers and were taught by each other’s grandmothers in elementary school. When you pass different people every day and your neighbor literally runs into his apartment to avoid having to exchange pleasantries with you, it’s much easier to feel separate and to be selfish and rude. Imagine how many fewer people I’d have to kick in the balls on the subway if we all knew each other personally and didn’t assume our problems were worse and ourselves more deserving of a comfortable spot on the train. It’d be like living in a college dorm room all over again, except with children and puppies.
Yet everyone else I’ve talked to seems to think this is a terrible idea. You?
I'm Katie, a farmgirl originally from Ohio who moved to NYC in 2005 for no apparent reason. I like vintage-looking things that are actually new, filagree everything, people who don't make me feel awkward, meaning it when I say "no sleep till Brooklyn", and not trying too hard.
