new york
After dinner, Andy and I stopped by a bookstore that was next to St. Mark’s Comedy Club. Unorganized, lots of underground poetry, ended up getting “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and a preface to Plato. I asked the guy if they had any Ed Sanders (his Tales of Beatnick Glory shaped my sense of history of this neighborhood). They had that same book, signed,
... See moreInterested in doing a deep dive in Steven Holl’s Hunter’s Point Library. It was a $41m NYC library by a starchitect and everyone seems to hate it (including my friends who lives nearby and see it from his window). A friend I know was given a tour there by one of the librarians, and she was complaining about how—functionally—it was an absolute
... See moreI could probably write an essay on how the MOMA demolished the Folk Art Museum by Williams and Tsien in NYC. The FAM was a masterpiece, it’s known for the facade, but the interior was special too. I think it went out of business. MOMA was next door, and instead of acknowledging the museum as a work of art, they figured big open spaces would be
... See moreI live too close to NYC to not be “sketching it,” both in the literal sense (drawing), and in the sense of writing sensory paragraphs. Feels microcosmic in the sense that this one city might capture the wonder and woes of our modern condition better than any place else. Need to reread Delirious New York.
The Long Island highways are flashing “ARRIVE EARLY, STAY LATE,” to warn everybody of the upcoming eclipse-induced traffic surge.
Coming through and out of Grand Central, I experienced something like “alien thought” for the second time in this place. It was exotic, amoral, strangeness; a weird mix of color and shape-sifting sci-fi scenes. Then there was something like “snare drum shamanism,” where I could hear and see the buzzing rolls of wooden sticks on a tight drum head,
... See moreOn 2nd Avenue & St. Mark’s, there’s a noise band performing on a rooftop near the intersection, and as you walk east, the nature of the sound reflections change in weird ways.
Impressions on the standup comics and crowds in Midtown for the East Village.
Midtown: Long-Island like, sports and sex jokes, louder, more stereotypically New York, Mitch Hedburg, played into racial stereotypes, comfortable, comedy as a hobby, beer culture.
East Village: nuanced, less obvious punchlines, more believable personal stories,
I’m sure someone’s written about the romanticism of bookstores before, or at least a “How to Bookstore” manual. There’s a kind of Keuroacian self-bullshit I experienced going to the Strand, some grand narrative, some story on the lifelong pursuit of logos. Then the first 10 minutes is a whimsical flick through the carefully curated on-display
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