Flaming Pablum

"A Place to Dream?" Redux: The High Line ... Ten Years Later

Eleven years ago, my friend Sean penned an audacious op-ed for the New York Times — he was able to do those things — in advance of the opening of the much-feted High Line. In his article, he took the planners to task for their comparatively banal designs to transform the long-derelict strip of elevated railway into a public park. Sean had more lofty ideas, although few of them seemed especially likely — let alone practical — but such was Sean’s perspective on the world. Personally speaking, my biggest grievance with the High Line was that I’d never been bold enough to venture onto in during its less accessible iteration as a forbidding artifact of urban abandonment, tangled with wild overgrowth and street art. I’d had friends who’d done it, but I’d always wimped out.

Regardless, the High Line opened amid much fanfare and congratulatory backslapping in 2009. Touted as some kind of blow against the empire, the opening of the public park was seemingly perceived as a bold defense of art, beauty and history — a lovingly cultivated green space born of the obsolescence of a vanished industrial age. Enabling its visitors to reclaim the vestiges of an outdated era, one of the primary purposes of the ambitious re-imagined space — or so I was led to believe — was to provide new vantage points with which to view the surrounding city. Much Like Robin Williams’ rapturous lecture on the value of different perspective in “Dead Poets Society,” the core of the High Line’s original mission was to allow its visitors to experience the surrounding environs in a whole new way.

My children were still relatively tiny tots when the High Line opened, so — as detailed in this ancient post — I dutifully took them to the High Line for a look around. Indeed, it was a fun new spot for them to explore.

It’s funny how fast things change.

Ten years later, the High Line is essentially a complete atrocity. As Justin Davidson rightly pointed out in a recent article for New York Magazine, all the initial attractions of the High Line — that rarified new perspective on the surrounding sprawl, that placid green space of tranquility amid the hoopla, that reverent intermingling of the city’s past with the city’s present — have been basically reduced to a pack of fanciful lies.

In very short order, real estate developers seized upon the long-fallow opportunities the High Line enabled and almost set about ruining everything that was promising about the project from the get-go. Arguably ringing in a prurient new era of architectural voyeurism, buildings started sprouting up around the High Line with an accent on avaricious exhibitionism. High Line visitors were essentially invited to openly gawk into the vast windows of plush hotel rooms and sweeping, extravagantly appointed private apartments. This aesthetic was conceivably kickstarted by the Standard Hotel at the southern end that — it has been suggested — encouraged its guests to engage in panstless sexytime in full view of the park beneath, a trend that was swiftly adopted by the veritable emerald city of structures that sprang up like a gaggle of erections — sorry — in very short order. One or two buildings has since turned into a lustily impersonal gang-bang of wanton development, brazenly altering the cityscape the High Line was ostensibly supposed to complement.

To walk the High Ling now is simply to gaze at countless, prohibitively expensive living spaces that are either still in the throes of tireless construction or are finished but strikingly, noticeably vacant of any signs of life. Try to find a spot to stand there for a few minutes undisturbed (no easy feat), and you’re doubtless to hear someone exclaim something to the effect of “Who would want to live in an apartment on full display all the time?” It’s an entirely fair question, and one that sort of answers itself when you search for its willing participants.

Taking that a step back, however, “to walk the High Line” itself in any capacity has become a joyless chore. Like the wait for an overhyped ride at an amusement park, traversing the length of the High Line — in either direction — is all anticipation and zero fruition. There is no payoff. One is herded through it in a glum exodus of corpulent human cattle, waddling though vulgar monuments to the affluent. I cannot imagine why anyone — be they native Manhattanites or born-&-bred Pataskala, Ohio buckeyes — would derive any pleasure from the experience. But dutifully, they still come in hordes.

But beyond the High Line itself being ruined, the public park has played a greater role as ruiner.

The surrounding neighborhoods the High Line weaves through have all been affected, and rarely for the better. Longtime residents have been driven out by the escalating rents, and age-old businesses, landmarks, institutions and neighborhood favorites have been swiftly and mercilessly extinguished. Like a delicate eco-system grappling with the introduction of a virulent new species, large swathes of the Meatpacking District and Chelsea are wholly unrecognizable today, “re-booted” as uber exclusive enclaves.

My son and I found ourselves on the High Line on Saturday, naively thinking it was early enough to beat the crowds and that we’d be able to make our way downtown in a more direct manner. Suffice to say, we were laughably mistaken in that assumption. Much like finding oneself in the middle of Times Square, the experience was such a deeply irritating headache that I doubt I’ll ever voluntarily return.

Fuck the High Line.

Lunch with The Ramones

In one Facebook group or another I’m a member of, someone posted the above photo of the late brothers Ramone that I’d never spied before, prefaced with the question: “Where was Jone’s Diner?”

The diner in question is, of course, the former Jones Diner (curious apostrophe placement, though) that was formerly on the southeast corner of Great Jones and Lafayette Streets. I spoke about the place a couple of times here (notably here, here and here), but it was just one of a great network of endearing greasy-spoon joints that has since been all but wiped off the map.

Some might remember the Great Jones Diner from its cameo in the video for “Two Princes” by the Spin Doctors. In later years, its metallic, railway-car-like exterior was removed, revealing a brick-faced edifice beneath. If I remember correctly, it was closed and then razed around the dawn of Y2K (remember that?). These days, there’s a giant new building erected over its former footprint that has yet to define itself as anything other than just another vulgar display of exclusivity and affluence.

Back to the photo, though, I find it striking how the Ramones have now fully crossed over into the realm of the practically mythological. I honestly used to see Joey Ramone walk around my neighborhood (he was hard to miss). I spied Johnny Ramone on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village, once (I left him alone), and surreally sat across from Dee Dee on a Downtown 6 train (I left him alone, as well). For decades, you just took the Ramones for granted. My friend Rob B. and I had a long-running gag. “Should we go see the Ramones next Thursday?” “Meh, they’ll be back.” And they always were, until one day, they weren’t. And then they started dying.

With great respect to Marky -- and, I guess, C.J., Richie and “Elvis" --  the original Ramones are now all gone. We’re all so used to seeing their familiar stances on album covers, videos and in any number of celebrated photographs by shutterbugs like Bob Gruen, Roberta Bayley, Godlis, and Mick Rock (among many others), that to see a “new,” heretofore unpublished, lost or just plain ol’ less-well-circulated snap of them always stops me in my tracks. Yeah, we’re all used to seeing them pose like ….well, like The Motherfucking Ramones!… that to see them just hanging out or goofing around is just this great reminder that beyond being this iconoclastic, culture-informing unit, they were ultimately just a group of four guys, however dysfunctional.

Chelsea Mourning: Coda

While many were prepping for "the Big Game" (insert pungent, damp fart sound here) yesterday, the wife and I spent most of our Super Bowl Sunday attending to various errands of varying significance. Since our age-old oven range started literally belching smoke and flame last week, we had to bite the bullet and repair to the antiseptic confines of Home Depot on 23rd Street to begrudgingly procure a new one. Following that strenuously expensive undertaking, Peg headed east to take our 12-year-old to an arguably long-overdue haircut (Oliver's forelock was starting to look a bit Danziggian), while I was dispatched to the Apple Store in the Meatpacking District to replace an Apple TV remote rendered inoperable by my own zealous impatience. 

Along the way, I passed by the Chelsea Hotel (very recently invoked here), and appearances look unforgivably tragic. 

Farewell to The Half King

As I understand it, we officially lose The Half King tomorrow, vanishing from its place of almost two decades on West 23rd street, which is strange, `cos I feel like only yesterday, I read about its impending opening.

Arguably most famous for one of its founders, author Sebastian Junger, The Half King became a regular haunt of New York City’s robust legions of hardened journalists. I was unwittingly about halfway through my long tenure at the TIME Magazine news desk when the bar opened in 2000, so it indeed became a regular stop for many members of the team, and a particular favorite whenever a normally far-flung correspondent was in town. I have many fond memories of supping multiple pints in the company of those estimable colleagues there, and often feeling well out of my depth, but always welcomed. As I’ve mentioned many times, the TIME team was a tight, familial unit, and I continue to regard my friends and co-workers from those days with profound respect and admiration.

But in terms of The Half King, I have two specific memories of the place that rise to the top, and neither of them involve my career in journalism.

The first occasion was a reception thrown by the publishing company my wife was working for, at the time. One of her authors had just given a reading nearby at the Barnes & Noble over on Sixth Avenue that is now a Trader Joe’s, I believe. This was this young author’s debut, of a sort, reading from his first novel, which was semi-autobiographical, if I recall correctly. In any case, this young writer’s big Italian family turned out in force to proudly show their support and hear their guy do his thing. The drama began, however, when the author ended up outing himself by way of a passage in his book to the gathered attendees, much to the pronounced surprise of several members of his very large family. By the time the whole congregation had moved over to The Half King, what had ostensibly been conceived as a festive gathering had turned into a very different event indeed.

Initially, I’d just been along for the ride, so to speak, and was always happy to be included in any excursion to The Half King that would invariably involve a few pints. As it happens, I ended befriending the husband of one of my wife’s colleagues when it was somehow gleaned that we both harbored a fondness for early 80’s hardcore bands like the Circle Jerks, Kraut, Bad Brains etc.

This all culminated in a surreal scene wherein a large percentage of the room we’d all been herded into was occupied by a gaggle of excitable Italians wrapped up in the throes of very emotional discussions (all in Italian … with lots of raised voices and frenzied gesticulations), with my wife and her team trying to comfort the newly distressed author, while myself and this other dude sat in the corner pounding beers and talking animatedly about our favorite punk bands.

My other long-lasting memory of The Half King is more recent. It was the tail end of 2016, just after the election and tensions and apprehensions were, suffice to say, rather high, as you probably recall yourselves. Here in New York City, for the most part, the pervading mood was one of gloomy consternation and incredulousness. In any event, I’d been drafted to go pick up my daughter after some social event in Chelsea, and the wife suggested I arrange to meet up with a few of my fellow dads beforehand. Since it was in the same `hood, I suggested that the four of us meet up at The Half King and have a couple of pints before picking up our respective kids.

I remember walking in and meeting these guys – most of whom I knew pretty well, by that point, or so I thought – at the bar. A sporting event of one variety or another was on the television above the far end of the bar, and that commanded most of the attention. Talking sports with any degree of enthusiasm, let alone credibility, is not something I’m especially versed at, so I just drank my beer and only chimed in when I had something to say. As if on cue, the program cut away to a news break, and Donald J. Trump’s mug appeared on the screen, prompting a not-so-subtle hiss throughout the bar. I can’t remember what comment I made, but it was one that doubtlessly telegraphed my own misgivings for the results of the election. Suddenly, all three of my fellow dads looked at me quizzically. “Well, he’s gonna get this country back on track,” one remarked. I snorted and practically spat out my beer, assuming he was being facetious. He wasn’t. The other two were nodding in agreement. There I was, in the super-liberal capital city of a super blue state … surrounded by three unblinking Trumpublicans. Had I slipped through a portal into The Twilight Zone?

Now as much as I’m generally very happily game to burn a few bridges every now and again, the notion of starting heated political beefs with the fathers of my daughter’s best friends seemed ill-advised. I demurred from futher commentary, and we all went back to our beers, my big takeaway being that it is NEVER a good idea to assume everyone you’re with is on the same page politically.

Sadly, that bizarre instance was the last time I ever darkened the doors of The Half King. For a more authoritative and broader portrait of the place, check out this great tribute from The New York Times.

Pour one out. 

One More Chelsea Mourning

I’ve mentioned it before, but I’d love to say I was initially familiar with the signifiance of the Chelsea Hotel because of some of the more celebrated creatives, thesbians and bohemians who periodically resided within its hallowed walls, but much like probabaly most of my generation, I first came to know about the Chelsea because of one individual, and one individual only -- that being Sid Vicious. The now-very-late Mr. V notwithstanding, however, the Chelsea Hotel’s associations run an impressive gamut from literary icons like Arthur C. Clarke, Dylan Thomas, Arthurs Miller and Allen Ginsburg to musical luminaries like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Jim Miorrison, Edith Piaf, Janis Joplin to visual artists like Robert Crumb, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Mapplethorpe and countless others from virtually every artistic discipline. This list of its more celebrated guests is a veritable “who’s who,” full stop.

As detailed in a few older posts, I was fortunate enough to attend a few parties at the Chelsea Hotel back in the `90s, enabling me to travel beyond its lobby to meander through its storied halls. The last time I was able to do so was in 2010, as detailed here. It was on that occasion that I had the fleeting foresight to have my photo captured within. That’s it below, with me posing portentuously on the stairs, trying to look like a sinister, leather-clad punk, but simply looking like an inebriated, portly dad (guilty as charged, your honor).

Only a couple of years prior to that evening, the Chelsea’s beloved manager Stanley Bard had been abruptly deposed and many of its longtime tenants evicted. Turnovers in ownership started to take their toll. A year or two after my final visit, the Chelsea became entirely impenetrable – its fabled lobby closed and its edifice encased in scaffolding. A new management company promised/threatened that the Chelsea was to be re-imagined as a newly luxurious, bespoke hotel. Whatever remained of the hotel’s old interiors were stripped and gutted as it entered a new chrysalis phase. Patti Smith, some might remember, played an invitation-only event, which managed to rub a lot of people the wrong way, somewhat understandaby.

I actually did return to the building in more recent years. In 2014, there was a Blondie exhibition in a space just to the west of the hotel’s entrance, followed by Dee Dee Ramone exhibit (himself another former Chelsea tenant) a year or so later. But the hotel’s new iteration was still a work in progress, at the time.

But fruition never came. Walk by the Chelsea Hotel today in 2019, and it is still cloaked in a seemingly perpetual state of painful transition. This week, Gothamist posted a lengthy update on the hotel’s long saga and current, sorry state, complete with a frankly heartbreaking slideshow. Click here to see that.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, but I’m very glad I got to spend those few evenings there when I did. It’s a damn tragedy that they couldn’t just let it be.

Youthful Indiscretions?

I can’t remember if I was a high school junior or a senior when the shot in question was taken, but there’s a photo shot by my friend Rob B. of me circa 1983, standing like the gormless adolescent that I was by my locker, at the time. True to form, there I am wearing my school blazer, with a pair of old-school Walkman headphones around my neck, grinning at the camera like a total dweeb.

The interior of my locker is festooned with the silly accountrements of the nascent rock geek -– hastily cut-out images from magazines like Creem, Circus and Trouser Press of bands like Motorhead, Judas Priest, U2, Twisted Sister, Devo, The Ramones, Iron Maiden, The Police, Pink Floyd, Dead Kennedys, Ratt, Motley Crue, The Plasmatics and a few badges and stickers. While I’m not-at-all proud of having extolled the merits of bands like Ratt and the `Crue here (although I’ll never part with my copy of Shout at the Devil), there is one more element of this picture that really makes me wince. On the interior of the locker, tucked between the back-cover photo from Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry and a signature checkerboard flyer from Canal Jeans Co., there’s half of a REAGAN/BUSH `84 campaign bumper sticker. Ugh.

Suffice it to say, beyond being able to parrot whatever bits and pieces of vague agitprop I picked up from my favorite punk and hardcore records at the time, I don’t believe it would be fair to have characterized me as a politically savvy high schooler. I was certainly aware of who held the major offices and what parties they were affiliated with, but was otherwise blithely preoccupied with the pressing matters of being an invariably frustrated pubescent; More fixated on battling acne and figuring out how to credibly communicate with girls --- endeavors I never truly mastered -– than ruminating on realpolitik or keeping up with the overarching issues of the day.

My step-father, meanwhile -- a dyed-in-the-wool, William F. Buckley-style Republican -- was fairly vocal about his pronouncedly righty leanings and prone to telegraphing same by slapping any number of candidate-endorsing bumper stickers on the rear of our family Volvo. I can’t recall the precise circumstances, but perhaps he passed on a sticker to me to help evangelize the Reagan/Bush `84 cause? Honestly, I cannot imagine another reason why it’d have been in my locker.

Make no mistake, though –- my point here isn’t exactly to express contempt for the late Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. I’m not wincing about that as much as I’m wincing about having made any political endorsement, at the time, being as completely uninformed and -– let’s face it –- ultimately disinterested as I was. I am not at all proud of that. And endorsing a candidate or party or cause or whatever just because your parents told you to is completely lamentable, as far as I’m concerned. Think for yourself and express your own ideally fully-formed opinions

Mercifully, college was a big wake-up call, in that -– and myriad other -– respects. I swiftly found myself more active, cognizant and arguably more informed about politics, taking long-overdue interest in the issues and swiftly alligning with the Left in rather sharp contrast to my parents’ politics. I have remained a loyally lefty Democrat pretty much ever since.

Cut to …. 2019.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last week –- and, honestly, no one would blame you, if you were -– you’ve invariably read and/or seen any number of stories and video snippets about the now-infamous incident on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial just prior to MLK Day, wherein after being taunted by a handful of inargualby obnoxious Black Israelites (if you’re a New Yorker of any stripe, you already KNOW how provocative they are), a robust gaggle of Kentucky high school boys from Covington Catholic -– in town for a Pro-Life march -- embroiled themselves in what is becoming a historical flashpoint as MAGA-hatted teenager Nicholas Sandmann came tensely face-to-face with Native American elder Nathan Phillips in a wordless-but-antagonistic standoff that swiftly went viral.

In the wake of that event and all the accompanying spin and fallout, I still have questions. While it’s understood that the Covington Catholic kids were on the receiving end of the Black Israelites’ invective, that still provides zero explanation for Sandmann’s standoff with Phillips, nor do Sandmann’s reasons for not walking away himself credibly hold any water. Was he just being a stupid and/or immature kid, as many have suggested? Maybe so, but his assertion on Wednesday morning’s interview with a roundly unthreatening Savannah Guthrie on The TODAY Show (an awkward alma mater, for me) that he had “every right” to do what he did suggests an awareness that belies the stupid/immature defense. That he patently refused to acknowledge any need to apologize really didn’t help, either.

But seeing young Nick Sandmann interviewed in the clips from Wednesday’s TODAY Show -– a questionable move for NBC, I’d suggest -– I was struck by the visual dichotomy between his now-famous profile on the steps, looking insufferably smug, smirky and inexplicably standing his ground … and his spot on TODAY looking doe-eyed, smaller and softer-of-chin than the pugnacious future-fratboy of mere days earlier. For a moment, I started wondering if, like the teenaged me in that photo above, he was simply caught up in the political messaging his parents probably espouse. Maybe he really doesn’t grasp what he appears to be evangelizing?

Then, I thought, …. Yeah, NO! You simply cannot draw a parallel between a comparartively innocuous bumper sticker from a completely different political era and climate and the MAGA hat. By this stage of 2019, nobody is sporting a MAGA hat without *WANTING* to stir shit up. I don’t care how young you are. Those hats, which some have compared to swastikas and the white hoods of the Klan -– are positively DESIGNED to provoke. In as divisive an era as we are currently engulfed in, you would have to be strenuously stupid not to fathom as much.

Sorry, young Nick, we’ve all been irresponsible at one point or another in our lives, but I just don’t buy that you didn’t know exactly what was transpiring there.

Got A Light?

It being a whopping seven degrees outside today, the wife decided it was a great opportunity to do some arguably premature spring cleaning around the apartment. Suffice to say, not every member of the household was as enthused about this plan as she was, but there we are. 

Whilst Peggy was on a ruthless search-&-destroy mission in our overly-stuffed linen closet, we came across an old jar of matchbooks I used to keep in our previous apartment's bathroom. For a while back in the 90's, we'd both gotten in the habit of absconding with loads of matchbooks from any bar or restaurant that was foolhardy enough to offer them. I cracked open said jar to reveal a host of establishments that simply no longer exist. 

Today, the space that was the old Hi-Life Bar & Grill on the Upper West Side (which had great neon signage) is now a relatively banal clothiers.

Merchants was a chain of kinda douchey, ersatz-posh bars scattered around town that are all gone, I believe.

Around The Clock was a standby 24-hour East Village mainstay on Stuyvesant street just north of St. Marks. Today, it's a Japanese bakery called Pan Ya. 

The Stanhope Hotel was a stately concern across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side at 995 Fifth Avenue. The wife and I spent our wedding night there in 2001. It closed in 2005, and is now a luxury co-op. 

Grange Hall was a great restaurant on Commerce Street in the West Village with bright, airy space and a traditional American menu with inspired, Depression-era decor. It closed in 2004, and the space hosted a few other concerns in its wake. Today, it's newly vacant again.

Lakeside Lounge was a particular favorite Alphabet City bar I posted here about a few times. It closed in 2012, although it sort of lives on via its website. Today, the space it once occupied is part of Maiden Lane, the restaurant that took over the old Life Cafe space on the corner of 9th and Avenue B. 

The Cedar Tavern was my dearly beloved local on University Place between 11th and 12th. I wrote about it here extensively, most recently here. It closed suddenly in 2006 with news that the air rights above it had been sold. The plan was that they'd build above it, but that the bar would re-open. They lied. It closed and was gutted. The bar itself was removed and shipped to Austin, TX. In its footprint was built a strenuously ugly condo. The ground floor sat vacant for years until a "European" waxing space opened. Yeah, like we needed that. The circumstances of the Cedar's abrupt departure still make me palpably hostile. 

Cafe Noir was corner bar in SoHo with a kitschy Moroccan theme on the corner of Thompson and Grand Streets. It was a great spot for beers and tapas, but closed around 2012. I believed they re-located to TriBeCa. This particular space is now a somewhat ridiculous lingerie shop.

Technically, Chumley's on Bedford Street in the West Village and ACME on Great Jones Street are both still going, but both are newly "bespoke" versions of their former incarnations. I frothed at the mouth about the shitty new version of Chumley's most recently here. ACME, meanwhile, used to be a great BBQ joint with a disarming selection of hot sauces. It also came appended by a live music venue in its lower quarters called -- wait for it -- Under Acme. My friends' band The Hot Corn Girls played a gig or two there. More recently, however, ACME underwent a "culinary transformation" and now serves "French-meets-Italian" fare. The space beneath that was Under Acme is now reserved for private functions. Read: It went all upscale and prohibitively pricey and now, basically, sucks. 

Lastly, The Knickerbocker Bar & Grill at 33 University Place is still there, mercifully, and retains its rarefied character of old Manhattan. If it ever closes, I will be devastated beyond words. 

Fuck You, Dry January

I mean, let’s face it, January sucks, no matter how you slice it. Between it being long, dark and cold and the comedown from the ostensibly festive holiday season, one can’t help but enter into it with some semblance of dread and despair. This, of course, comes coupled for many with a sense of guilt and obligation, whether it’s because of the resolve to honor one’s New Year’s resolutions or simply to detoxify via the self-imposed exile from boozeville that is so-called “Dry January.”

In past years, I’ve endeavored to accomplish the DryJan challenge, as routinely mentioned on my year-end surveys and at great length here last year. Last time around, as I said, I was knocked off the horse early by the arrival of the colorfully named winter weather event, the Bomb Cyclone. That’s just an excuse, of course. Had it not been the Bomb Cyclone, I’m sure I would have concocted some other reason. In short order, it was beery business as usual.

This year, however, it felt less like a whim or nagging twinge of guilt and more like a necessity. December had proven to be a robust month of imbibing, what with a preponderance of holiday events to attend. After weeks of office Christmas parties, a wedding and a few other booze-laden social engagements, we repaired to my brother-in-law’s place out in Pennsylvania for Boxing Day. I was pretty much handed an open beer when I stepped out the car at 2:00 pm, and that kept going until well into the evening. By New Year’s Eve, I was beyond determined to undertake a Dry January. Hell, I was positively looking forward to it.

I wasn’t getting sloppy-shitty, blacking out, slurring my words, starting fights with strangers or anything, but the burly intake of beer was becoming routine, and my tolerance was ascending sharply. Between the probable weight-gain, the conceivable strain on my liver (although my friend Keith keeps reminding me: THAT’S WHAT YOUR LIVER IS FOR, DAMMIT!) and, frankly, the expenditure -– I felt it was high time to flex my long-dormant will power, dry my system out and save some money… the latter reason reinforced by the arrival of some beefy post-Christmas Amex bills.

For no readily apparent reason, however I decided to augment the swearing-off of beer with two other stipulations. I would go without my iPod (yep, I still use an iPod … and you can go fuck yourself if you find that funny), as I’d been noticing a shrill uptick in the tinnitus that has been screaming in my right ear since 1999. Being that it’s been suggested that alcohol-consumption heightens the ring (along with salt, sugar and pretty much anything else that makes life worth living … like, say, oxygen and sex), I figured I should give my ears a break as well as my liver. A steadily stentorian diet of IDLES, Daughters and, strangely, The Upper Crust for much of December certainly weren’t doing them favors.

The third prong of my resolution was fairly simple: Take the stairs. Not at the office, mind you, but at home. It’s not a big deal, but I figured walking up and down the five flights would be a good habit to get into. To be honest, my building is fairly squat, and you’re on the second floor before it even hits you and while you’ve digested that information, you’re practically on the fourth floor. But hey, … couldn’t hurt, right? Regular readers might remember my running campaign from a few years back. Recurring knee problems forced me to abandon that, but I figure walking up and down stairs is something I should be able to regularly tackle.

Anyway, that was going to be my January – thirty-one days marked by sobriety, silence and strength.

Honestly, the toughest of the three directives to honor has been the stairs. It’s not that I’m lazy or that I find ascending those five flights too challenging, but rather that I just forget. I walk into my lobby, and muscle memory almost takes over. I check my mail and boom, next thing I know I’ve pushed the button and gotten on the elevator. There have been times when I have actually gone back downstairs and repaired to the stairwell to complete my mission, but I’m just finding it hard to remember to do it.

Swearing off my iPod has been less complicated, although I threw that particular towel in today. In the ten days without wearing earbuds, I’ve noticed the ring minimally rise and fall in its ceaseless pitch, but not necessarily as the direct result of anything I’ve been doing – as far as I can tell, at least. This morning, I was just bored, so I slipped them back in and scored the latter half of my commute with some vintage New Order at a reasonable volume. No one is hurt by this.

In terms of the beer? Last night, after a bone-chilling walk home from the bottom of TrBeCa to the heart of the Village, I reconsidered my decisions. Yeah, I was able to turn it off for ten days, and can completely keep going, but why am I punishing myself? It’s not like someone’s going to hand me a fucking medal at the end of the month. I’m sick of drinking seltzer and tea in the evenings. I sprang for a six of Sapporo and indulged.

And with that, yes, I’ve technically failed Dry January again. I may go back to it this evening, but it almost doesn’t “count” now, not that anyone’s keeping score.

Weigh in, readers …. How are you fairing with your resolutions?

Subway Shenanigans

Personally speaking, as a native New Yorker, I hate riding the fucking subway and do it as infrequently as possible. Were it up to me, I’d walk everywhere, and usually endeavor to do so, but life, of course, doesn’t always work the way you want it to. As such, I brave the subways like everybody else, when I have to.

There’s a code of conduct one should observe when traveling by rail underground, although obviously not everyone adheres to it. Personally speaking, unless a subway car is close to empty, I usually prefer to stand. My kids never quite understand this, and I tell them that it’s because I’d prefer to be able to “spring into action” should I have to. That’s obviously something of a dramatic embellishment, but there is some truth to it.

While everyone has their own private stipulations, there are some rules that should be universal: Let passengers off before you get on, don’t stand blocking the doors, don’t eat aromatic food, wear deodorant, etc. One would like to think these and a few choice others go without saying. If only.

It comes and goes, but it strikes me that more recently, the New York City subway system has been besieged by a new plague of inconsiderate conduct. From manspreading and panhandling to assault and battery and all points in between, the indignities and affronts on unsolicited offer during your average subway ride are once again myriad. To help us tally these unfortunate instances comes Gothamist, who tidily compile archives of bad subway behavior under the tag “Subway Etiquette,” a category amply fed by the ability to publicly shame oblivious offenders via personal technology and social media. Find it all here.

Incidentally, you don’t have to go underground to have your day ruined on New York City mass transit. Late last week, my son and I boarded a curiously empty (always a red flag) bus on Third Avenue, only to discover that someone had taken a robust dump in the stepwell of the rear exit.

Only in New York.

Screw Your LimeWire

DISCLAIMER: I started writing this on Monday. When I came back to it today –- Tuesday -– I found that what I’d penned read a bit … maybe churlish is the word? But …. c’est la guerre.

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Are we really there already?

To be fair, if I’m being kind, objective and fair-minded, the article I’m about to discuss here is ultimately not that different from the countless entries I’ve posted that have lionized, say, the lost art of lovingly curating a mixtape or any one of the myriad paeans to the long-shuttered, otherwise-forgotten record shops of my youth. I still live, breathe and pine for these arguable anachronisms.

But if you hadn’t already gleaned as much, with the fleeting exception of my own cherubic offspring, I don’t have a lot of time for young people, so being kind, objective and fair-minded about this piece isn’t really on the menu. This is my lawn …. you are cordially invited to remove thyselves from it.

A young writer named Daisy Jones of Noisey – an outlet I’ve railed about here a few times before – recently posted a weepy homage to LimeWire, a iffy file-sharing service from the 2000s that picked up the baton first brandished by Napster, enabling a new generation of nascent-albeit-fucking-lazy (fight me) music fans to furtively explore, unwittingly infect their computers and -– to some minds -– violate copyright law and steal music.

Here's the graph that really set my teeth on edge.

On LimeWire, you could lose yourself for hours searching for the perfect thing to listen to, and because it felt like no one was watching, that could be anything. Before then, the only way to access music was physical, or through radio and music TV, but those platforms were often consumed publicly, so had the propensity to be performative. Suddenly, you didn’t have to pretend to like watching Kerrang or Kiss or whatever was cool among your friends. You could download Britney albums until 2AM, or get heavily into Norwegian metal. Whatever: LimeWire made your taste yours.

She goes on. Read if for yourself.

Regardless of its arguable -- oh dear me, god forbid -– “propensity to be performative,” access to the physical manifestation of music went on to be sharply curtailed thanks to ground first broken by services like Napster and LimeWire. Within a relatively swift period of a decade and change, the rituals of prior generations were virtually decimated, as once-thriving circuits of record and disc shops – both independent mom-&-pop’s and big, established chains – were forced out of business and their stock in trade reduced and devalued into dated period-pieces or ironic hipster detritus.

I find it hard to fathom that I’m about to start a paragraph with this qualifier, but…

BACK IN MY DAY…, when you wanted to hear, search out, discover and/or procure new music, you had to actually put your pants on and LEAVE THE GODDAMN HOUSE to go to places and meet with people who could enable and assist you in said endeavor. If the radio and/or MTV weren’t satisfying your needs, it made sense to actually go to places where the music you were interested in might be found. Along the way, you were bound to meet similarly inclined folks and forge new relationships, hear new things you weren’t expecting, expand your horizons, explore your city and a host of other benefits.

Personally speaking, I made many a great friend and discovered an unquantifiable amount of new music this way. Yes, I had to actually leave my home and interact with people and go to new places that I didn’t know – shock, horror, outrage. In short order, I became part of a communal subculture. That’s pretty much all gone, now, thanks to the jack-booted march of a technology that caters to a generation weaned on convenience, entitlement and immediate gratification.

Our way was better.