3b

Loft 3b

‘3b’ sits squarely facing an opposing sister warehouse. Four stories tall in total, the warehouses had been transformed into rent able lofts and Buschwick became the outskirts of Williamsburg. I don't suppose anyone sets out with their destination to be Buschwick. They may arrive to New York City and Buschwick sort of chooses them. That may be the best part.

 “Is that snow flakes…are they coming in to our studio?” typical. We have one legitimate door, the rest make-shift and painted with the colors that were on sale; a bright business suit blue and a gnarly maroon-red. The fact that I am a ‘we’ in this is just a little startling. And you know a magical warehouse opened up just before the corner bodega for only the winter that December selling gently used cowboy boots, long red leather coats and vintage tee shirts that could keep you in bed until the spring. At first thaw, the opening to the once saving grace to a mild winter street side thrift shop just vanished like Cinderella when the lights came on. Never a trace, like someone decided to open up their closet into an abandoned entrance way, hack off the lock and merchandise. It was a pop-up Michael Jackson thriller dressing set and I was a fat kid in a Brooklyn bakery.

There was one major drawback that I would need to deal with immediately. Let’s call him Rich. Eyeliner rimmed the tiny art dorm sink. Skinny, ripped, frayed, jeans, fragmented tee shirts and a woman’s leather jacket that did not leave his skin since 3,000 miles ago and the one door in the loft remained shut for days once a deep crate of comic books were found at the end of a gray scaled Brooklyn rainbow outside on the curb.

I lived in the loft closest to the window, the best seat in the house, he the loft closest to the entrance and hallway. Megan lived beneath my loft in the storage area that was a little less than 4 feet tall. At one point it was pretty cozy under there with a low sitting beach chair, a mattress and a lamp. The storage area rented out for $400 a month.

I now had a need for a room mate to rent out the other room space in the loft, once I successfully kicked out the loser hipster who wasn't on the lease and would skip town when rent was due, I found a friend of a friend looking for a place. Let's just say that perfectly parted blonde hair, Kate Spade bag and subsidized rent allowance took one look at 3b and she not walked, but ran to Greenwich Village faster than you can clear a room with a one eyed frisky kitten already on his ninth life. Looking back, at the time, it was sticky hot September still, furniture was everywhere, and it looked more like the aftermath of an intense hot lava game than its usual makeshift street prized charm.

Was it the yellow plastic slide nestled in between the two loft bedrooms, providing an option for a morning ride down to the kitchen cheerios? Or was it the storage space roommate? The neighbors next door who built a half-pipe in their loft space and drank PBRs daily while their friends who would travel in to play loud screaming music and skate? The feeling was mutual my perfectly blonde, straight haired, Kate Spade bag wearing friend, I would love to have been able to run to a subsidized apartment in Greenwich Village. Then again miss out on all this charm?

Nestled on the ground floor a coffee shop popped up the size of your office cubicle, where sometimes live music was playing, couches were always full and at one point they acquired their alcohol license. No longer did we have to go deeper into the warehouse maze of Buschwick for Life Cafe for company and culture. You know you’re doing well when you have your own coffee shop. A large black rubber tire provided the seating on the street and the pumpkin cinnamon bagels were unmatched. I once broke up with a guy because he ordered the same exact thing as me from the little coffee shop’s menu. An offense I determined, punishable by deleting all your numbers, never talking to you again and questioning all my life choices up until that point. Each and every morning provides a new opportunity to define by the Columbian coffee choice and bagel selection and you want to just have what the person standing next to you is having?

There were cliques and groups between the two warehouses. A boy band moved in across the street at one point. Their set-up was legit spanning 3 loft spaces. That was when Rachel, a find on craigstlist, had already moved into Rich’s old room space. My first friends were the neighbors down the hall on our floor, housing a math professor, a rather tall professional magician and the magician’s sister.

Waking up one winter Saturday morning to a fresh snow fall led to tiny buschwick ninjas dressed in wet-suits and throwing snowballs from one roof top to the other. Prefer to cozy up inside on one of these days and you could have your pick of videos to play on the old VHS tape player that is my one regret leaving behind. The machine in its entirety stood about 18 inches tall and 12 inches wide provided only one functional option. So naturally we played the goldfish fish tank video on repeat 24 hours a day. They swam really fast backwards every thirty minutes.

I closed the door to 3b after writing about world-wide events for a GLBT publication, taking a Gotham Writer’s Memoir Workshop and so many odd jobs that the temp agencies would send me on. Once when working as the coffee runner for a television executives office, we had an afternoon break with the physic to the stars. Naturally.

I have been to New York a baker’s half dozen times since living in McKibben Street loft dorms and have yet to drive down the same street that I trekked for those 10 months in the early 2000s. No longer a card carrying New Yorker, the ecosystem that once opened up before with magical sights and sounds, then vanishes behind cold grey street crusted sliding garage doors and latched metal door frames. Wafts of French roast and street bagels somehow only rise to the nostrils of Brooklyn transplants, leaving only the remnants of generic stuffy air left in the car doors from the Jersey turnpike truck stop. As if knowing I was only a visitor here now, New York saves the best for its locals.

Robert Takes A Sleep

Enter another rocky mayflower morning aboard the stacked ship of buttery regulars. Elevator rides with nervous Friday opportunities and raspy morning hellos. The basement convenience smells of fresh coffee and the stale blue ribbon and syrupy jugs of another night of dreams crushed and the same stories retold.

It is not long that the rich sounds of waves, green smells of bait set and promised escapes lure schools of fish out from their glimmering shiny window boxes to the hungry lair of the PHR Sharks. Who are ready to bait and switch a glittery reward I exchange for a meal.

I watch as the slumbering friendly bears head bobbles between wake and hibernation. A teacher without his pupils can finally lay his head down. I only hope a soft elevator ride drifts hims up to a 5th floor story.

Sheila heads out every day at dusk as fresh as a vodka-soda-lime and returns before dark. You would know this if you stopped brewing you're already cold styrofoam baseme t bar coffee.

"I'm taking the train at five," destiny has lead to a chance lobby greeting. A late husbands spirit heavily lingers and with that, June appears. We can only proceed to the pit where the story continues, where whiskey infused memories are released and one cheek glistens as a burden is released. A reporter by trade, by nature, awaits every heartbreaking staggering detail. What does that pike of feathers mean? I must ask about the blue astro van.  A precious child aims and shoots.

Sister Ship On Deck

I learned one thing last night. That feathers are a sign and June gets goosebumps. That there is a NASCAR couple I somehow missed and Amy and Elroy are match made by the stars. Robert is missed when a day goes by without his presence and Grandma probably knows where his cell phone went last.

That the three corridor building oddly reminds me of Hanson Hall on a breezy humid August night.That when the winds change, we sometimes learn to change with them. Smiles comes down for a basement check to recruit a few stowaways. It's a good night for home healing remedies, a good book and a quiet cabin. The trek has been made by stuttering Steve and the cool fall breeze today is no longer shared.

Vance is working around the clock and is grateful for a break from the heat. White sheets protect the outsiders from peering in and a sixty inch television the size of my car just drove in to my office. Football season. Boneheads now has a sister ship.

Techno Vegan Dance Time-Warp Friday's

A curious duo knocks outside. There is a back draft of laughter from within.

Determined we are finally ushered inside. 

The time-warm #vegan dance party is replayed on the sixty inch flat screen where we all now bask in the glow. 

Party passing and teeny bopper heart throbs share the night with us from an old SNL skit. 

"Take me down to Vegan-ville"...We are living the same night over and over.



I loved this night and just didn't have the time to put this the right way. Had so much fun watching SNL skit that turned out to be the same one as last week. What!! Is that Mr. R's Favorite specific show? I could do this Friday night over and over again.

Arsenic on the Rocks

A welcomed sassy friend confidently walks across the street in a moxy '60s ensemble to join where we have congregated the morning after.

"How are you this morning? Another night out on the town last night?"

A strained voice pours us a line, "I think I need an arsenic on the rocks."

Underground Acoustic Finale

Disclaimer: The following is a dream of a time when the chess board was full, the horseman stood tall and the king and queen reigned. When mamas and papas and uncles and aunts would come to play for the holidays and when cousins would make believe and grandparents would look the other way. Any representation of people or places is entirely imaginary to the best of my memory of completely real people and places.

Probably Chapter 5, 7, and 15, Not 1:

I have landed on an old couch in not quite Manhattan, in Brooklyn, on the hottest day of the year.The dingy hand-me-down brownish checkered couch, once a prized find on the streets of Buschwick, probably swiped when someone was still moving out, or in, only adds to the my doubts for what is looking to be a very roughly planned decision. Wafts of street trash and concrete heat fill the air in the big square loft. My cousin is moving out of her McKibben Street art dorm for greener pastures of a railroad apartment in Williamsburg; the trendy neighborhood. This is the chance of events I counted on when homeless and facing craigslist roommates. The scene of the two big warehouses, now McKibben street lofts, in the early 2000s plays out like a Baz Lurmann musical. Everyday is a Lurhmann Moulin Rouge or Great Gatsby film as legs dangle leisurely outside the second story loft across the street, a hipster hangs a clarinet outside a rusty loft window to serenade the blazing hot afternoon and a band begins practice in the elevator shaft for an underground acoustic finale. You can see into each and every large loft window on the opposing building and them into ours.

I am in New York City at twenty-two, it is the rainiest fall I can ever recall and all of my sandals with thongs have popped and all of my pants are sopped, but I am traveling underground through time and space with James Frey and Dave Eggers and Joan Didion doing careful character life studies, so I can begin to untangle my own shaded history.  I have mastered the L train to Williamsburg and Union Square where I stop for internet, Whole Foods and Barnes and Noble. It is on these early days of my life in New York that I also stumble across Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris. In memoir, unlike anything else at the time, I felt I could reside deeper in the undertows of a person’s most intimate account of their personal experience. I walk past the fiction, religion, non-fiction and Oprah’s top ten, but it is this section of the big box bookstore I am infatuated with, and I attribute it to having never had a mother to imprint on, never fully allowing a grandmother that privilege, and having been orphaned by age sixteen.

My situation growing up goes something like this, when the holidays came around, in the Chelsea house in the nice neighborhood by the nice schools, we had a full house. My living with my grandparents meant sharing a closet with cashmere, old polished shoes filled with shoe horns and the fragrance of mothballs. I don’t suppose that my dad’s parents had planned on raising an adult child, my dad, and then his child, me.

I was the rambunctious little one growing up in basically a museum curated by a southern woman born in the 1920s, a World War II veteran born in 1914 and their son Greg, my dad. Every nook and cranny is filled with things. There were collections of magazines, beer steins and dollhouses. There were collections of vintage jewelry and old trunks, of purses and gloves and those were just in the house. Follow a little pebbled road to a separate garage building where the curator, my dad, housed his most proudest collections. There were two floors and within those walls where the garage door never opened and the side door was always locked, were cuckoo clocks, old dressers and lamps and chairs. Always a large section devoted to Depression glass and a filing cabinet filled with tiny paper scraps of expired coupons.  And on the upstairs level where the old toys were kept you could find your pick of toy trains, old iron banks and the most valuable rare child sized automobile.

You can imagine my disdain later in life when this has all been broken down and divided like an early 19th century traveling Circus Company. This bird was pushed out of the nest abruptly. You see growing up in a museum paints everything with age and history and cob webs and wrinkles and glistening knowing eyes. Perhaps it is too good to be true because, like ‘poof’ it is gone. All is temporary. I am left with the world, my museum to navigate.

Sometime in the mid to late nineties, while living at the Chelsea house, the Chelsea museum, where I am probably wearing stirrup pants and carrying around a cassette tape player playing Mariah Carey hits, a witty, stylish and successful uncle enters the scene. This uncle introduced a level of creativity and expression I would draw from for years to come. I suspect I started wearing my grandfather’s cashmere sweaters and argyle socks as a result. Uncle Steve’s stylish good looks and keen eye for design reinforced my affinity for quality fabrics, menswear and witty gay men. In all families there has to be the one you feel you can be an excellent you with. You know, the 'You' with freshly styled hair, a well-fitted and function appropriate dress, witty things to say and an exciting industry insiders party to attend. Perhaps I could project outside my teenager self something still remaining to be imagined that I could grow into as that stylish, successful adult. Instead of the awkward teenager I was. 

In what looking back is a very short amount of time, but a large portion of my coming of age, the party, this life, had one by one come to a close. My grandfather is going in for triple bypass surgery, a 'common' occurrence, and I am not yet in high school. It is not six months later that he doesn’t make it out of recovery. And you know those two old birds, Nana and Grandy, who take the first place trophy for showing their love and bitterness towards each other through constant bickering, who were married for over 50 years and were succeeded by four children and five grandchildren, they passed within six months of each other.

I am suddenly left with my dad in someone else’s museum and the heirs have come to sort through the ancient remnants of coupons and recipes organized by category and stored away for the future that has slipped away, through an entire wall filled with tupperware and every reader’s digest from the last twenty years. When it came time to place a colored sticky tab on who wants what of the jewelry I had checked out. I still had to live here. They could all go home after this to their homes and seemingly established lives with each other to lean on and vacations to plan. At this point, blacking a few of these events felt like a simple solution as painting over a mistake with Bob Ross on public television. There seemed to be no escape from a now uncomfortable situation. 

My dad and I, an interesting combination, are the last two remaining in the boxy blue house with a red door and once welcoming entrance in the Chelsea house. He fares on the lonely insomniac schizophrenic side, hearing voices and talking to God in front of me, and then is described as the life of the party when around his brothers.  Myself clutching onto a faint dream of writing a great work of fiction/non-fiction that I later come to find out is just memoir, has no clue of whether I will make it to past thirty and if by then I won’t be talking to walls like my father. My dad is tricking me between his reality where there is a real life God that talks back, the reality everyone else chooses to see when he is rooting on Cal Ripkin and the one you may have learned to live in when growing up in a house of hoarders with bad habits of smoking several packs a day and going off of their medications. No one would be coming to fill the now emptied estate during the holidays this year. Then, my dad is killed in a car accident less than a year since his parents passed. As fate would have it. In this,  I learn, birds of a feather sometimes go to sleep together.

Five years after losing my father so suddenly and acquiring a college diploma in business-snore, honestly why didn’t I just spend the $50,000 or one fourth of an estate on a photography degree or a glass blowing masters or a grand adventure? Needless for me to say the James Madison University diploma from the college of business seemed about as useful and interesting as a place mat I hadn’t seen since the circus left town. After talking about it all summer, after graduating college, the year was 2005, after dropping an expensive shish-ka-bob on a white pair of pants on a nice lady in the nice restaurant I worked at, I decided I had to pack up my 1995 Toyota Camry and leave Virginia Beach for New York City. The gritty hot summer had not yet melted into fall and the great recession was a good year off.

As the electricity of another New York City borough weekend musical dies down and prepares for the gutter cleaners to clear away the fallen dreams, the youthful eyes from the Buschwick lofts look out and see the world as endless possibilities. My parents suffered paranoia delusions. I grew up with death and sickness and smoke and mental illness, with Hummel figurines and dollies and southern fried chicken.

And when all I could see was a suburban, stupid kid, transplanted to a dirty expensive city, I felt like an impostor. Worse, I was considering the lineage of my genes and the age I was approaching, that both parents were institutionally crazy, and I was paralyzed with the thought of the possibility. How was I going to rise to sipping bubbles with David Sedaris types and handle an equally crazy diagnosis as I have come to find out both of my parents suffered? Answers to many of my questions of why have I landed in a large loft apartment with the final remnants of an inheritance account in this one moment in time in this one life all alone still remain to be explored.

Like the memoirs that imprinted on me then, I aim to speak to that girl lost in New York City in a big boxed book store in Union Square sipping on Starbucks. To say, “Recipes are great when you have the ingredients to cook the food, other times they are just pieces of paper.”  

Perhaps had I not lost myself for so long and become a shell of a person, barely functioning, I could have seen what I see now. The world at my fingertips. The universe and technology today. My family and how close we are now and could have been or couldn't have been because we all were hurting in our own ways. I wouldn't have seen my diploma as just a piece of paper, I would have seen it as a recipe, my choice and freedom to choose the ingredients to create anything my hearts desire. And perhaps that is what hurts the most. The world at your fingertips and your puppet crumpled in the floor as the world passes you by. Such a shame to only see a piece of paper and not all of the possibilities. This. One. Life.

Small Signs

In my rush home, through traffic, tourists and interesting architect-types up the elevator I meet my eyes to this little number. So eager to get in my play pen of an apartment, all 400+ square feet of it, that I run into a very official sign on my door. 'STOP Maint. Inside'. Looks like the red marker on red duct tab was overridden when a black sharpie was found.

Anyways wanted to share a little moment when you are about to take that first step into your home, or shoebox sized cube or tree house, when you already have your shoes off and your very important last direction of the day is presented in a completely novel light. It's not digital or dead-lined or edited. Well a just a little. Always room for editing. Thanks Rodney the maintenance man. I hope we are no longer flooding the downstairs neighboor from our little pullman's kitchen.

Welcome to ‘The Mayflower Diaries’.

Fifteen floors on the 34th street block sit stacked next to glittery new Miami-like mirages of time-shares, adjacent to Hilton brand-recognized rooms and metal cranes threatening views too precious to waste. Destination Virginia Beach, a Mecca for tourists from as far north as Quebec to as far west as Michigan, we get it all. Those who travel here to vacation will take their family on a Bus for a $1 to Labor day weekend festivities and think this is the greatest place on earth to vacation, but it is not until that very next weekend following Labor Day that the locals step outside, take a deep breath in, feel the beautiful cooling weather on their shoulders and realize college football.

Matt and I live in a city central along the East coast. We live in the closest to what I could find to my old stomping grounds in my early twenties where I lived on McKibben Street in Bushwick-Brooklyn apartment 3, minus the roof-top access and hipster hieresses. Most days I find a lively, Matt, after work drinking a in the basement den at Boneheads.

The 34th street block, home to an epic pancake house, Pocahontas Pancakes. Walk in through an authentic tepee made out of your grandma’s quilts and feel yourself time-travelled backwards by twenty years into a questionably decorated diner where butter balls await you on every warm fluffy flapjacks.

“It’s a long way down for a chaser,” rasps Skip. A freshly opened PBR lands in his open hand from a skilled slide down the bar. He’s returned from a resourceful few shots of chilled cinnamon liquor taken from his newly renovated 5th floor apartment. He exits to the pit, where Robert and the others are smoking their dried tobacco sticks on a mild early-summer evening.

Stan, the cook, is moving I am informed. He’s on the other side of the bar tonight meaning he’s not sweating in the kitchen, where i suspect a delicious homemade meal is sure to be found.

Teal checkered mosaic glass tiles the length of the bar from where Grandma sits every night next to her television playing Jeopardy and sometimes Nascar, where she quietly judges from her perch the drama. There is one thing you do not mess with it is with Grandma and her television. Technically that’s two things. Don’t mess with either. They were here long before you arrived.

Elroy leans in on the other end of the bar to catch the action of the football draft on the big screen, when I walk in. “Baby-girl, What do you know about the football draft?”  I have only come down to pick up some food and beers to go, but I stay to learn that the football draft life. Mrs. Elroy has personality for days and stops cars with the morning energy of a six year old.

Then there is Sheila. Thats resident mom. With vodka. So many stories to tell.