This isn’t my bicycle, but it’s the same model. From Chuck’s Bikes
This is a story about my bicycle. It was built for me by Danny, the man behind the infamous karaoke show.
Danny bought a pretty sweet bike, an early ’80s Raleigh Grand Prix from the just after Raleigh was bought by Huffy, before the quality dropped off. It was too small for me, but I fell in love with it. I told him to find me one if he had the chance.
Three weeks later, he called and told me he had it in my size. You’d be surprised what Danny’s capable of.
In the first six rides I took with it, I had three accidents. Danny thus christened it “Trois Clangours”. Jerk.
I’ve had a LOT of trouble with this bike. The accidents, mechanical failures, all manner of trouble, adding up to it spending far more time out of commission than in use. Which is weak sauce, obviously.
Nevertheless, when it’s working, it’s my machine. We get along, it and me. I can feel it doing my bidding reflexively. I don’t worry that it’s going to do anything that I don’t want. It’s going to get me where I’m going, safely, as long as I don’t make a mistake.
Sometimes, though, I get in accidents that just aren’t my fault.
Like that raccoon? I couldn’t have slowed down. Even my slow-motion memory of the event barely gives me enough reaction time; no telling how long I actually had to react, but it wasn’t long.
Yes. That’s right. I hit a raccoon. In New York City.
For what it’s worth, I was riding on the loop in Prospect Park. There is actually something resembling woods in that area. I was riding home from work one night; it was around 7pm or thereabouts. It was October, dark, and chilly. I was wearing my blue-and-brown striped sweater. There was a guy riding ahead of me, about the same speed. He was two bike lengths ahead, and to my left. I heard him say, “Whoa!” and saw him dodge something. I caught site of the something, just had time to recognize it as a fast-moving raccoon and yell “Fuuuuuu–” as I tried to jerk my bike around it.
There just wasn’t enough time. I hit it square.
I went airborne. My front wheel was bent, destroyed, and my forward motion ceased instantly. My rear wheel went in the air, and I lost contact with my bike. While I was in the air, I had two thoughts. First was that I didn’t want to land on my head. Curiously, this had nothing to do with my own safety; I didn’t want to crash my helmet and have to buy a new one. That in mind, I judged my trajectory, put my arm out, and used it to absorb the majority of the fall and transition into a roll.
The second thought was “I hope I don’t break my phone.” [Spoiler alert: I didn't.] It probably says something about me that I thought nothing for my own personal safety, only that of my material goods. What it says is probably not good.
I rolled off my left arm, onto the shoulder, and up the other side. My momentum actually took me momentarily off the ground again. Here, the memory is blank. I know that I ended up crouched on my elbows and knees, hurting with a pain so pervasive and so powerful that I can still feel its phantom when I think about it. But I don’t know how I ended up that way. Did I land like that? Did I roll again and crawl up to it? I could not tell you. I wonder now if I did end up hitting my head at some point, causing me to black out for a fraction of a second.
It’s not important, I guess. I crouched there, first making sure that no part of me was searing white-hot with the pain of, say, a freshly broken bone or an open gash.
I looked at the raccoon, just in time to see him dash off into the trees, apparently uninjured.
I was a little bitter. It’s entirely possible that I remain that way. I mean, couldn’t he have at least been a little bit maimed? COME ON!
Then I looked at my bike.
It didn’t make me happy.
Things that were fucked: front wheel; handlebars; brake levers; stem. Things that were somehow spared: fork; saddle.
Now back to me. The guy who had initially dodged the little bastard was beside me. He asked if he needed to call an ambulance. I ran a piece-by-piece check and decided that I was unbroken, just bruised. He asked if “all parts are working.” A new bystander looked at my bike and said “No, man, his bike is fucked.”
I said those weren’t the important parts.
I was finally able to drag myself off the asphalt and get to my feet. I was a little woozy from a body full of aches, but I was only a mile or two from my house and didn’t have cash or desire to find a taxi. So I walked.
I called ahead and asked if maybe there could be some hot chocolate waiting for me when I got there.
Today marks the seventh anniversary of my move to New York.
Over those seven years, I’ve become an entirely different person, while also staying very much the same. If I had to ponder it, I would say that I’ve grown and matured much in the way one would have expected me to do.
I’m smarter now, more worldly, more experienced. I’m a little fatter, and much more heavily tattooed. But I’m still fundamentally the same person I was when I moved here.
I had a friend who was born in NYC tell me that you needed to live here a decade before you were really a New Yorker, and I used that as my guiding beacon for a while. I don’t know how accurate it is, and part of that is defining what being a New Yorker is all about.
For example, I came here to go to school, but dropped out. I’ve been paying my own rent from the first day I came; I never lived in a dorm, instead sharing a studio on the Upper East Side with my then-fiance. I don’t have the college experience that a lot of my friends do. Does that make my “New Yorker-ness” more authentic, or less? I didn’t have the relative safety net of not having to pay rent, but they learned and experienced the city in a way that I think is probably more important than my version.
It’s hard to tell sometimes.
According to an unscientific count off the top of my head, about 80% to 90% of the people I know are not “from” NYC, at least not in the sense of having been born and raised here. I’m sure that percentage can’t possibly hold up over the entire population; there just aren’t that many expatriate New Yorkers. Still I’d be willing to bet that the only other American city with as many migrant newcomers is Los Angeles.
When you think about it the way I do, it stands to reason that so many people here would be outsiders. Many of the people I know went to college here. Most of them are young (well, mid 20s or so), urbane, hip, from suburbs or smaller cities, frequently Midwestern. We all have two things in common. One, we thought we could make it here, and we were right. Two, and more importantly, we are all dreamers. New York seems like a good place to go when you want to fulfill your dreams.
So, all of these people, some of them here since they got out of high school. Office workers, artists, teachers, actors, writers, waiters, whatever. We all decided to stay. Even if we are not, by my native friend’s estimation, technically New Yorkers yet, we are certainly part of the fabric of this city. We are part of New York.
(The important part, he says pridefully.)
There is a common perception that New Yorkers are rude. I have never really noticed that as an epidemic problem; there is a certain number among any population that will be predisposed to rudeness, or alternately self-absorbed to a point where they come across as rude. It stands to reason that when you put more people, living more densely, you will encounter the rudeness at a relatively higher rate.
Even with that in mind, though… The born-and-raised New Yorkers I count among my friends are the least rude people I know. They may not exactly be patient with idiocy or ignorance, won’t suffer fools well, but that’s hardly rudeness, just practicality. They are gracious, they are friendly, they have always been willing to help when their friends were at their most down. These aren’t the rude New Yorkers I heard about.
So what about the transplants? All these Midwesterners, from the flyover country, known and occasionally mocked for their unfailing politeness, are they the rude people? No, not even. We may have picked up an edge of cynicism from living in the city. We may (I may) (I DO) fucking hate when a group of people walk slowly down the sidewalk, taking up all available space. But we’re still going to smile at people occasionally, even if it garners unwanted attention. We’re still holding doors open. We still wait our turn when getting on and off the subway. We’re not rude.
So who is it, then?
The tourists.
A representative anecdote: your average beautiful New York City office girl, heading from the subway to her job near Herald Square, says “Excuse me” to a person stopped on the sidewalk, staring up at the Empire State Building, and steps around him. Oblivious, he steps back, bumps into her.
“Excuse me, bitch!” he spits.
“I said ‘excuse me.’ You bumped into me.”
“Whatever, bitch.”
The office girl affixes him with an icy stare, the one that beautiful women are granted when they are first left to fend for themselves in this city.
“You’re not from here, are you?”
Taken aback, the exposed tourist steps aside.
Will he likely tell that story as one of a rude New Yorker? Absolutely. He will perpetuate the stereotype to his friends, and it will become canonized. The cycle continues. Yet it’s hard to see how he was not the perpetrator of the rudeness.
And so it goes. Most tourists, the ones talking about how rude New Yorkers are, spend their time in the gaudiest, least “New York” areas of the city. In these places, they are largely surrounded by others like them; the actual New Yorkers with whom they interact are generally going to be extremely harried service people at this restaurant or that store.
The people on the street, the ones being rude, making them think New Yorkers are rude?
Tourists.
I may not have been here for a decade, but I’m New Yorker enough to scoff at that.
If I make it three more years I won’t even have to qualify it.
I know that I’d heard the buzz when they released Turn On the Bright Lights. I know that they were hailed as part of the “New York scene” from early in the last decade. I knew their name, but I didn’t know their music.
There’s a lot to hate about them, if one is so inclined. Are their lyrics occasionally pretentious to the point of incomprehensibility? Yeah. Do they have the inbuilt annoyingness common to many bands from New York? Sure. Do they sound a little too much like Joy Division? Absolutely.
But there I was, just before Antics came out, falling under their spell. Those pretentious lyrics were not important to me; sometimes, the voice is an instrument, and what you are singing is less important than how you are singing it. Sure, they may be one of those wanky New York bands, but as a fresh transplant to the city, I found that appealing, not appalling. And you know what? I fucking love Joy Division, and I don’t see anything wrong with a band that seems to be furthering that sound.
Was it stupid when Paul Banks claimed that he’d never heard Joy Division when Interpol was formed? Yes, very. There’s nothing embarrassing about influences, else every band in the past 40 years would be ashamed to mention the Beatles. There’s nothing embarrassing about being the band that filtered Joy Division through ’80s synth pop and early ’90s grunge. Paul Banks’ baritone calls back to St. Ian Curtis as surely as the Backstreet Boys called back to New Kids on the Block.
(It should be noted that, as far as saints go, Ian Curtis was kind of a bad person. Which puts him in line with most of the rest of my personal saints.)
So: through that spring of 2004, learning something new, loving them the way we always love the shiny and new, trying to justify their faults as merits. And they’ve never disappointed me. I’ve never been let down. Which is not a thing that’s happened much in my life.
I first heard this song as the backing track to a fan-made commercial for the iPod touch. I was intrigued by it then, but didn’t pay it much mind.
Then, a few weeks later, I saw what appeared to be the same commercial on TV. Confused that what I’d thought was a fan project was on TV and officially advertising the product, I did a little more research.
Turns out, Apple had hired the fan, Nick Haley, to direct a professional version of the commercial he’d made, licensed “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex”, and put it on the air for real. I found that inspiring.
You know what else I found? A song that makes me shake my ass.
I’m no dancer; I’ve got good rhythm, natural, but I have no moves whatsoever. You know those guys at the bar who put their hands in the air and move to the music, never really exhibiting any talent at dancing, and really only embarrassing themselves?
This is the part where I look away, ashamed.
It takes a lot to make me move my ass, most of the time. I am far, far too self-conscious in that department to actually come out of my shell since I had my lack of dance ability explained to me.
It does happen, though. I danced when I saw Phoenix play. I’ve danced, jokingly, in just about every public place in New York. I will probably dance a lot when Dance Central comes out.
But none of that is the same as catching myself breaking it down, for real, on a full but obviously not too crowded train to this song.
I attracted some eyeballs, and I stopped suddenly, and I changed the track. And then I put it back on when I got off at my stop and danced down the block back to my apartment.
And I’ll dance again, right now, if you put it on.
I woke up that day the same, sort of, as many other days, with my mom rousing me to wake up and get dressed. I’d just started college a few weeks before, still living with my parents, still getting into the rhythm, and still amazed by how early a 9:30 am class could seem even though I had been used to getting up for school that started at 7:50 for many years.
There was something different that day, though, a note of panic and surprise. “Someone crashed a plane into the World Trade Center!”
In my barely conscious state, I thought distinctly “no they didn’t”. I did not understand how or why or who or anything else, any better than anyone else did before that day. I didn’t understand how quickly the world can change completely while remaining exactly the same.
I got up just in time for her to tell me that another plane had hit the second tower. She said she’d thought they were coming in to drop water on the first conflagration; instead, she saw live the moment when people started to understand. I figured it out then.
On the way to school, I put Clarity in my CD player and pressed play, the opening hum and beat and chime and strum and pretty words all fading into just the right lines: “It happens too fast to make sense of it, make it last.”
That’s exactly what I was trying to do when I got to my class building. The lobby was jammed with people, necks craned up to see the small television hanging in the corner.
We all watched the first tower fall, then the second. The world changed before our very eyes, too fast to make sense of it.
It was cold there, that late in the winter and that close to the water. I didn’t expect the first time I ever saw seagulls to be concurrent with a snowfall; I’d always associated them with warmer climates and those beaches that I still had not ever visited. Yet there they were, wheeling through the air in their presumably inexorable search for food, occasionally blowing out of existence when the wind gusted and threw a blast of snow across the scene.
I was huddled in the tunnel under the pedestrian bridge in the park at East End Avenue. It was the only place I could go to get away from my house, not the most wonderful place in the world at the time.
I hadn’t yet grown accustomed to living in a city where I was actually exposed to the weather. I didn’t own an umbrella yet, something I managed to regret every time it rained hard. I only had a scarf because I’d received one as a gift, and a hat because they’d given them out at Domino’s in the winter time when I was delivering for them. Most crucially for me under that bridge, though, I didn’t have any gloves.
I palmed my CD player and thrust my hands deep into my pockets, hoping to keep them warm long enough for the storm inside to blow over so I could go back home. I sat; I must have looked for all the world like a scared, cold kid to every passerby. I was 21, older than I’d ever been, and now I’m even older, and I thought I was dealing with the situation in as adult a way as I was going to manage.
I didn’t want to go wait inside the coffee shop where I worked, even though it wasn’t far. I, for some reason possibly related to my pride, felt it was a better idea to stay close to home and let myself suffer. Maybe I wanted to be a martyr. Maybe I wanted to prove a point. That was never going to work, something disastrously easy to see in hindsight.
I put on “Hustle Rose” by Metric and moved to the melody line of the vocal, trying to keep warm to its repetition and rhythm. The third or fourth time through, I started to get more cognizant of the song’s component parts, the keyboard or organ or whatever line that traced the vocal in the background of the opening, the complex changes engineered by altering the song’s instrumentation, things I’d learned to notice by spending almost all my time around and among musicians for as long as I’d had the slightest shred of independence.
It was clear in retrospect that I should have tried harder at music myself.
Emily Haines sings “throw me a bone” and I can follow her wherever she wants to go. I hadn’t heard of Metric before a random unexpected instant message from a friend of mine earlier that fall had implored me to look them up. We weren’t quite to the torrenting stage yet; I must’ve downloaded their EP and first full length from a peer to peer network, back before those became so laughably archaic that the record labels figured out how to beat them.
I hadn’t heard of them, sure, but no mixtape I made that winter didn’t have a Metric song on it, and since the only thing I could afford to give for gifts over those first far from home holidays were mixes, I used most of the songs they had at the time. It was obviously love at first sight.
I dared to expose the bare pale skin of my hand to the biting cold so I could tap a few buttons on my CD player and set the song to repeat; there were other songs that day, but none of them mattered.
None of them mattered.
I wonder if I knew even then that I was imprinting a memory on my mind, defining a moment of my life, embossing one of those things that would come to explain what New York is to me into the flat stock of my life. I don’t think I did; I wasn’t that smart.
I imagine I was just cold and lonely and alone in a city I barely knew aside from a few too many nights spent at a gay bar with $10 all you can drink on Thursdays and a few too many regrets that didn’t involve nearly enough bad decisions.
Remembering nighttime rides across the Williamsburg Bridge on my way home, the wind biting just a little. Looking up at the pretty city night lights over my head and across the river and in my heart.
Remembering when I was a kid and I thought I knew everything, staying out all night drinking shitty Denny’s coffee because we knew the service would be so bad we didn’t need to tip, until we became friendly with one of the waitresses and started to leave her $5 tips on our $3 checks.
Remembering when I started to make friends in New York, little by little edging myself into a real life here. Late nights at bars doing things I should’ve known better than to do, and not even regretting it the next day, except that one time.
Remembering this exchange: “Where’s Jesse?” “He went home early, wasn’t feeling well… and his fingernails were painted the same color as yours.”
Remembering putting this song on a mixtape for a friend, one with whom I’ve given and received dozens of tracks that could have had any number of meanings, but instead only meant what they mean.
Remembering hearing it on the soundtrack to Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, a movie that we love unconditionally that just doesn’t seem to be as popular to a lot of others. Now every time I hear it I’m reminded of all the things that movie makes me feel.
“This door is always open, no one has the guts to shut us out.”
We Are Scientists, “After Hours”. Say that you’ll stay.
An Illustrated Guide of the Columbia Hipster from the-fed.org, 2006
Last week, I was interviewed by Margaret Durfy for her dissertation. Her subject is city living, urban subcultures, and hipsters. For whatever reason, she was put into contact with me by my friend Katie, who long ago fucked off out of NYC to go grad school in Boulder and, you know, be all successful and stuff.
Anyway. I met Margaret at Joe on East 13th Street. Despite my oft-professed misanthropy, I found her very affable, not least because she wanted to ask me all about my favorite subject: me!
(See, that’s funny because if you actually know me at all you know just how little I think of myself. It’s ironic!)
It was a strange experience in some ways. I moved to New York in August 2003 and know I made the right decision. Until I was asked why, though, I never thought about the question.
The question started with where I’m from and why I left. I never really considered the why because I didn’t think I needed a reason beyond “it’s Tulsa”. The interview was supposed to last an hour, but it went over 90 minutes because I truly considered my answers and I really, really can’t ever shut the fuck up.
Why did I leave? Because within the hermetically sealed little world of my friends and the people around me that I built in Tulsa, I was too close to the center, too close to being talented enough to slot in among the people at the top of the group. I just… don’t think I belong at the top. If I was in a place where I was better than mediocre, the place was too small.
Why New York? Because I always thought I was a city kid; how better to find out than to move to the biggest one in the country? No truer test.
I also got to speak on my current theory of myself: that I am a self-hating hipster. “Hipster“, what a loaded word. It represents so much. Affectations, fashion, degree of employment, parental assistance, so much. Everyone has an opinion on their idea of a hipster. Many people’s opinion is negative. That mostly includes my own.
So: people see me in a t-shirt and jeans, hair dirty, tattoos, riding my bike or hanging out in Park Slope or Williamsburg. Can I blame them for automatically assuming I am whatever a hipster is? No, I can’t; for all intents and purposes, I am one. But that doesn’t stop it from bothering me.
Ultimately, I guess that represents why trying to define “hipster” fails. It means too many disparate things. Relocating to New York from somewhere smaller and less glamourous and being or pretending to be poor is really all it takes. I have those things down.
I’ve been in NYC for long enough now that even the most stringent native would at least consider the argument that I’m a New Yorker. I may even stay long enough to make it a sure fact. I already have a pretty clear idea of the “who”. But over the past few days, I’ve put some thought into “why New York?”, and it’s led me to the biggest one of all: why haven’t I ever thought about this before?
