Ohio Through Fresh Eyes

In 2006 I was chomping at the bit to get out of Ohio. I was on the tail end of four years in Columbus capping 23 years total in the state. Anxiety and frustration flowed through my veins like blood and alcohol and my impatient restlessness was at its peak. I'd been wanting to leave since I was 13 years old, dying to go off in search of some sense of purpose and belonging.

As I drove off in that U-Haul in the mid-August heat there's no way I could have predicted how comfortable I'd feel coming back.

Notes From a Bus Terminal

The plan was to leave work early, go home, get my luggage, and take a train, a train and a bus to Laguardia. The plan was to board AirTran flight 208to Akron. The plan was to spend a night in Cleveland and drive to Cincinnati the following day for a Memorial Day weekend that was a housewarming and reunion all rolled into one.

As they say, "The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry and leave us naught but grief and pain."

A Brooklyn Tattoo From Brooklyn Tattoo

I was perusing Facebook last Friday and noticed that a friend of mine was attending an event at Brooklyn Tattoo on Smith Street and Atlantic in Brooklyn. Curious, I clicked through and arrived at one of the more impulsive decisions I've recently made.

How an Early Evening Turns Into a Late Night

For the better part of four years for my friends and I Wednesday has been a bar night. Not a wild, get dressed up, go out late bar night. A blow off steam after work and leave after happy hour night. Occasionally these outings have spilled into Thursday A.M. but generally we'd belly up at 5:30 and be out in time for Lost. Though we've dabbled in other bars our bar of choice has been largely consistent as has our bartender (the wonderful Ms. Heather.) Our times have not always been unpredictable but they have always been fun so when I texted the usual suspects yesterday as afternoon stretched to evening I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into.

Little did I know that I'd be left fighting a hangover for most of Thursday that even an early-morning bacon/egg/cheese croissant couldn't ward off. How did I get from light after-work drinking to trudging through a work day dehydrated, muddled and craving huge bowls of fries covered in cheese and hot sauce? The story isn't funny. It's not strange. It's not surprising. It's probably a little anti-climactic But it says a lot about that bar, this city and the people that choose to populate both.

Written Over Three Very Good Days in New York

Monday through Friday my days play out much the same. My alarm clock buzzes, I jerk half-awake and I groggily strike out in the direction of the noise hoping to hit the snooze button. Eventually I drag myself out of bed, cook breakfast, take a shower and leave my apartment. On the good days the sun is shining and my landlord's cats are relaxing on the front steps, patiently waiting for me to play with them.

Six blocks north to the subway. Two flights of stairs down to the train. Hoping that the G is not waiting at the platform causing me to sprint or wait an indeterminate amount of time for the next one. A little after 9am I arrive at work. I drink coffee. I open up Outlook and Excel. I mess about with figures and paperwork. I stress out about things over which I have little control. At 5pm (or 5:30, or 6 or 7) I leave.

This flat, grey day-to-day is the basis of my everyday and yet there are times (like now, on my roof, on a 65 degrees and perfect afternoon) when I get the strongest feeling that this 8-5, five days a week is nothing more than an extension of my dreams. A waking, walking sleep. In those hours it certainly feels as if a part of me remains unconscious, waiting for that first breath taken after 5 (or 5:30 or 6 or 7) outside the office's revolving doors. Then during, for example, a walk from Union Square to the East Village for a burger and a beer the best parts of me start to come alive again. Chatting with a bartender for a couple of hours about proper techniques for pouring beer and mid-90s alt-rock seems more like Real Life and Real Experience than an entire day of the-same-as-yesterday.

Happy Belated to Me

In my adult life I have generally not bothered to celebrate my birthday. I've only thrown parties twice, never tell anyone in advance and in recent years have taken to removing my birth date from all of my social networks when it approaches. When I turned 23 I left town.

This year, however, I decided to throw a little something together. That little something ended up growing into a four-day extravaganza that spanned three boroughs and highlighted some of the truly great things that make living in New York meaningful.

Shhh, Don't Tell Anyone

I've lived in New York for three and a half years now, two of those years spent in the still heavily Italian Williamsburg. Over the past ~38 months I've had plenty of opportunities to fall in love with the thin New York slice of pizza and believe me I've fallen hard. From the overflowing behemoth slices at Anna Maria's to a simple, clean cheese slice from Stromboli's I have no shortage of wonderful pizzerias to frequent.

Thus, it's to my unending shame that I admit: I eat a lot of Papa John's pizza. In the corner of my kitchen stands a tower of boxes from that bastion of Midwestern chain pizza and if it weren't for my penchant for recycling that tower would be four times as tall. In Ohio I ate Papa John's now and again and always thought it was a pleasant pie, though hardly my favorite. In New York it's still hardly my favorite but there's no pizza that I've eaten - here, in one of the best pizza cities in the country - more than good old PJ's.

It all started when Papa John's took a dominant place in my hang-over food rotation. Meatball subs gave way to General Tso's Chicken gave way to pepperoni pizza. The crust and cheese aren't bland but are generally inoffensive and the sauce and pepperoni add nice savory flavor the compliments the large amount of that hangover panacea: grease.

Eventually, though, the Papa followed me from hung-over haze to stone-cold sobriety. Perhaps it was the online ordering system allowing me to put an order on credit without talking to a real person. Perhaps it was the slew of cheap coupon deals Papa John's continually pumps out. Perhaps they put crack in the sauce. Whatever the reason, whatever the method John snuck his pizza into my psyche with no signs of letting go.

On the Way Home This Car Hears My Confessions

Since moving to New York I've found a lot of favorite things about the city. Free museum nights, free summer concerts, 4am bars and a pervading sense that a person is only as old as they let themselves feel. Near the top of the list is the erratic, nerve-wracking, frustrating, convenient and indispensable New York public transportation system.

For $2.25 I can travel from Coney Island to the Bronx Zoo; from the Hudson River to the Atlantic Ocean. On any given Friday night I can see one of the best modern art collections in the world at MoMA in Manhattan, catch an outdoor show at the Prospect Park bandshell in Park Slope, crawl into one of my favorite dive bars in Williamsburg, and be in bed without having to worry about traffic, falling asleep at the wheel or a DUI. I don't have to be alert during my morning commute and can begin to veg-out during my evening commute. Hydroplaning, warming an engine, defrosting and scraping a windshield and black ice are issues my past self had to deal with but that my current self can blithely ignore.

For all of the construction, delays and hours spent waiting for infrequent late-night trains the subway is undoubtedly my lifeline to New York City without which I'd probably spend most non-work hours holed up in my apartment playing video games and drinking whiskey (which isn't to say I don't sometimes do that anyway.)

As a child of the midwest, however, that grew up with wide streets allowing cars to drive at or over the speed limit (except in Lynndale!) in a city sprawled out enough to warrant a long drive just to get to a friend's house I can't deny there is a certain experience that only private transportation can confer.

I look back through rose-colored glasses and remember a certain serenity in my morning and evening commutes. The individualism that existed on even the most packed freeways as people traveled en masse, but were still encapsulated in their own little four- and two-doored worlds. I remember driving through a sleeping city surrendering its roads to me and my compatriots coming back from late-night jobs, shows and poker games. I remember the freeway between cities at midday, the sun hitting fields for miles around with only road ahead and behind. I remember road trips to Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with friends packing into cars packing into caravans four or five deep with only one of us in the whole group really knowing the way.

Above all else I remember the music.

It's not a Doll. It's an Action Figure.

Thanks to an incredibly opportune two degrees of separation, I was able to get into the New York Toy Fair today. The event - which will stretch through Wednesday - was open only to media and toy vendors and featured booths of every kind imaginable: think of it as the E3 of toys.

All manners of my childhood geekery were revitalized from Star Wars to Street Fighter 2. G.I. Joe to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Even the X-Men showed up in force.

While Samus Aran and Ryu Hayabusa were among the most impressive, Barack Obama was perhaps the most entertaining.

The love of my childhood life, Legos, were also well represented - though mostly behind ten-foot walls that I couldn't get past.

Some of my favorites from the day follow (mostly having to do with Watchmen or Final Fantasy VII):













Check me out on Flickr for more pics from the show. Sorry for the quality on some of these, they were taken with my phone.

Eight Year Old Me Wins

When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man... my childish things were still awesome.

To explain, much like 99% of boys born in the 80s my formative years were spent acquiring random, interconnecting, multicolored blocks and constructing robots, space ships, and guns - though my shining achievement was possibly the Super Nintendo mock-up. Or maybe The Wing.

While that may seem somewhat nerdy to the uninitiated it was a great outlet for imagination and creativity. It was also the centerpiece for one of the greatest four-way friendships of the last 20 years, but I digress.

I still have fond memories of early morning, mid-afternoons and late nights making (to my mind) sleekly designed wholes from those myriad disparate parts and I still have a fascination with projects that creatively utilize my old childhood tools (sometimes to epic proportions).

And I also currently live in New York City.

Moral of the story? Legos are awesome.

End of an Era

New York City is a place of constant bustle. A rushing torrent, pushing ever-forward yet swirling around stalwart constants from past ages. Though seemingly timeless, none of these markers of New-York-That-Was can last forever. Just as Guiliani excised the prostitutes from midtown and hipsters overtook the LES and Williamsburg (and soon to be Astoria, Clinton Hill and Mott Haven), this past Sunday time and age claimed Joe Ades, fixture of the Union Square Greenmarket.

For years every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday Ades could be seen and heard on the northeast corner of Union Square - just outside of the bounds of the market for lack of a permit - selling "the only vegetable peeler you'll ever need to buy." He was the side-walk pitchman from a bygone era the quality of which New York may never see again. Burning hot or freezing cold, Ades staked out his spot near the market (and at a few other spots around the city including near Radio City Music Hall) suited up with thermos at his side. His sales pitches were like sidewalk shows, gathering crowds that would make subway break-dancers jealous. He'd spend a day shredding carrots to pieces (in mere seconds!), his scraggly beard and disheveled hair belying the Upper East Side apartment he called home.

Ades was a husband four times, father to a daughter and two sons, and grandfather to three girls. More than that, though, he seemed family to New York City - a beloved uncle whose captivating presence was at once fancifully whimsical and comfortably reassuring.

We were lucky to have you, Mr. Ades. You will be missed.