The Big City Herald

11/19/12 - walking around looking for auto spkrs to photograph in midtown today,

I passed by 30th Street Guitars. I was intrigued by the double neck guitar in the window, then I saw the vast array of guitars inside.

It was like touring my adolescence. They have everything - Gibson Les Paul’s, Jimmy Page Sunbursts and otherwise. Flying V’s for Paul Stanley. Fender Telecasters for Joe Strummer and Stratocasters for Jimi Hendrix.

There were even Rickenbacker’s for Tom Petty, and a Roger McGuinn 12-string.

The guy behind the counter was cool. He told me that business wasn’t bad considering the economy(1). I ventured that a lot of their customers must be high end - a market that never really changes, except to get even better when we’re in a time of considering the economy(2). He said that most of their clients are actual musicians, who will sacrifice to pay for the right instruments. Although the corporate lawyer market was still there(3).

I asked about the double neck in the window, wondering why it was two six-strings, rather than a six and a twelve(4). He said it was a baritone double neck, which probably means a lot to actual musicians. I’m guessing the store does, too. For me, it was just nice to confirm that such places exist. Although I’m a little disappointed Keith Richards didn’t walk in…

1 - We’ve been considering the economy my entire life, it seems. I wish it would start considering us…

2 - They’ve made out like bandits, literally, at the expense of the rest of us…

3 - And higher end - there was a picture on their wall of Conan O’Brien rocking out…

4 - with a mandolin attached for John Paul Jones…

9/23/12 - There are a lot more bikers in Brooklyn since my exile. There’s a lot more everything neo-liberal. Like fancy restaurants. Or for this neighborhood, which was actually a little frightening back in the day, restaurants, period. While the traditionally liberal things, like public transportation, education and housing and the good union jobs that came with them are withering away.

New York is becoming a city of 8 million millionaires.

With some billionaires. One of them the Mayor…

The best weather of the year in New York has returned. It’s been in the high 70s to low 60s with low humidity for a couple of weeks now, and should be for about another month, when the big, wet, windy storms, the Nor’easters(1) start to move through, bringing winter right behind them. The best weather starts around early September, sometimes it takes until the middle of the month (weather-wise, 9/11 was a gorgeous day…). 

Even the rainy days are kinda nice.

The leaves are only starting to change, and we may get another hot day or two (actually, 9/11 was a little warm…), but there is a definite cold tinge to the air, making jeans and a t-shirt comfortable in the afternoon sun, and requiring a sweater, or even a hooded sweatshirt on the stoop at night.

It is the best sleeping weather ever.

1 - I’m not certain how this is physically possible, but during these storms, you can turn completely around, and the wind will still be in your face. Also, it rains up, under your umbrella…

This is my glorified diary of living back in NYC after wandering in the wilderness(1) for a couple of years…

I’m writing this from the back deck of my friends’ place in between Ft. Greene and Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, in what’s become my morning ritual. I wake up, go to the bathroom, leave the bathroom sink on at a trickle for the cat, Satchmo, make coffee, check Facebook, turn off bathroom sink, get coffee and maybe something to eat, check Tumblr, check email, apply for jobs, get more coffee, go to back porch, try to write, take pictures of the cat, Satchmo.

I usually shoot around with Eric at the courts in the park down the street after that, but today he has a meeting in Manhattan. Maybe I’ll go into New Amsterdam myself to get some pictures. It’s also time for me to start getting serious about making $$$ some kind of way, traditional job or not. Who knows what that might mean…(I still have a notion of staring my own gig, but that has been slow to fruition even for me. Besides, writing and taking pictures is what I want to do, and those folks are literally a dime a dozen these days, I think…)

Today, as in general, I’ve enjoyed like the best weather i’ve known in a long time. Better than Iowa in the Fall…

or Spring.

Better even maybe than San Diego in the Fall.

And especially better than San Diego in June.

Better even maybe than Oakland year around.

Definitely better than Iowa in the Winter.

Still with me?

As I mentioned, I’m staying with one of my oldest NYC friends, Eric, and when she’s not at her mom, Eve’s, place, his daughter, Erin, for whom I was the first babysitter. Eve is also one of my oldest NYC friends, and although she and Eric have been split up for a while, everyone remains close. While Eric was visiting friends, Eve, Eric and I went to Riis Beach.

Eve and I also went to the Yo La Tengo show a while back. (The pictures I took, trying out a new one shot camera, sucked…)

I escaped Iowa in April, after being stuck there for the winter. I was there to help my mom get through the winter while she recovered from surgery. It was nice to be helpful, as much as i was, but both of us would just as soon it was on the Redneck Riviera.

And not the Redneck Tundra.

I came back to The Big City, after being away for over two years, mostly to help my friend Danny with a project or two.

A number of my basketball friends were happy to see me back, too. (I’m not certain if they all were, but you already know that from reading Ball In, right??)

In early June, i went to Oakland to visit my friend, Pam, and her dog, Zim.

I also needed to get the rest of the stuff I left the last time I was there.

Pam had to do a lot of traveling for work, and in order to take Zim and me along, we had to take her car, which was on its last miles. The most harrowing of those miles were on Highway 5 over the Grapevine on the way from Oakland to Anaheim, to the house in which Pam grew up. Many were the moments when I thought we’d have been better off spending the night in Bakersfield…

After a day or two in Anaheim, we headed for San Diego.

Pam also had work in SD, and there was a dog-friendly hotel on a dog beach.

Although thanks to the June Gloom, neither man nor beast went in the drink. Instead, we had to watch, pitifully, as Midwestern tourists dragged their reluctant progeny into the chilly surf because they didn’t spend all that money on and drive all this way for a San Diego vacation not to go in the ocean, goddammit…

I am eternally grateful that Pam also had to work one day in the high desert just north of L.A.

She was able to drop Zim and me off at Vasquez Rocks, site of just about every favorite Western and Star Trek scene I’ve, I’m, seen.

Of course, being a pug, Zim is not suited for the desert, high, or otherwise. When the nice folks running the place let him in their office for some water and AC, I joked that Zim and I had half expected to run into the Gorn Captain.

“Well, he lives right down the road…”

Of course, I thought, Star Trek might have just hired some dude to wear the Gorn costume. And/or, he was an actor who got so many roles from films shot there that he just moved in…

“Awesome,” I said.

We spent that night in Santa Barbara, where the weather was still a little June Gloomy.

We drove back to Oakland through the Salinas Valley, which not save the car some strain, but was cool, since we had been reading East of Eden to each other on the trip.

We made it back to Oakland, where I stayed for a about a month longer before heading back to NYC.

1 - The best place to learn more about that are the Toddcasts, which are out there in the ether somewhere - YouTube, my Facebook page, Homeland Security files, etc. - and The Podunk Picayune. I haven’t written or Toddcasted enough about my time in California…