why do you care? i'm sure you can pretend that i don't know it gets better. just be nice and play along until the wig story. we all need our horizons broadened anyway, and art takes time. it'll cost you, but the clues are there if you're looking. and looking -- good in pants, that is -- means trying some on every once in a while.
august 30, 12:10 p.m.
"hello, woo. your sign says that you open at twelve, but the doors are still locked and the sign isn't flipped. we're sitting across the street at solly's with portland and we want to buy things at your store."
woo is the name of the vintage store on 28th and main, not of the proprietress who isn't answering at the other end of the line. (chinatown is later.) but there's enough on the next ten blocks not to have to worry just yet so we walk.
12:20 p.m., lines clothing (3793 main st.). they've got a really handsome knit wool zip up in cream with a pheasant on the back and a hunter-with-rifle above the front left pocket. the tag wants 120, but based on the time the sweater's been hanging on the rack the man at the register is willing to go down to 105. still too rich for a first stop single item purchase. and god! there's a little gold purse on a chain strap that ian and i use to practice our cab hails, but 55? bc really does stand for bring cash. ian finds an ivory sateen dressing gown for 10. some girls have all the luck.
12:40 p.m., front & company new and consignment (3772 main st.). the menswear section could stand a revitalization. and a mirror. ian makes sure to remind one of the clerks to tell her manager. grace makes it to the fitting room with an oversize short sleeve button up in yellow and black cross check plaid. ian insists on darting, but i think that it's supposed to be smocky and say so. a no, then. later, front.
one-ish? jared is taking grace to work at 1:40 and it's agreed that we still have time to get down a few more blocks and back to woo, so it's one-ish. i don't need a smartphone. i have speculative recollection. eat it, BlackBook. we hadn't planned on antiquing, but i can see an old sash on a dressmakers dummy through a door we pass and want to put it on. 75. probably not that versatile. it's good we came in, though, because the the sash pales to the novelty of a pair of steampunk goggles and a kkk robe. they're asking 175 for the "knights of columbus" costume. i may be lapsed, but that cross isn't catholic.
1:10 p.m. c'est la vie (3247 main st.) is always a winner, especially for accessories. two years ago they sold me a purple paisley d&g tie for...15 maybe? it's also the shop where i found a vintage wilson overnight bag for just 20 bucks. i should probably give c'est la vie some credit for bringing us over to the purse side. i grab the auburn scarf off the lady display model as soon as i'm inside. i'd like it for less than 10, but it's perfect, even in rayon. good thing, because there isn't much else. but no shade on c'est la vie. it's not the best season to be looking for decently priced sweaters or jackets.
loft is next door and upstairs. everything costs too much, which is suspicious for all of the missing labels. jared still convinces us into convincing him into the cardigan. true, it matches the button up, and the button up fits. that's what you pay for.
woo (4366 main st.)? it's by the car and the bikes, so we're headed back toward there anyway. i'm crashing from too much coffee (a vancouver theme, it seems), so i don't get too excited about anything. neither of the two airline bags are exactly what i'm looking for. too bad i won't have time to get to value village. at least the owner recognizes jared and acknowledges his call. i think they have a different inventory online, too. grace scores, though...though i'm not going to do this garment justice in description. it's about the same length as the smock at front, but fitted, all black, and with feathered puff flares on the shoulders. like i said. some girls.
1:30 p.m. time for to grace to fly away and for gearing up to get down to chinatown for the canvass shoe hunt.
beer.
3:15 p.m. main st. at pender. the store we're looking for, the store that sells the cheap canvass shoes, is purportedly somewhere around here. a friend in portland got a white pair for 5, but grace says you can score some for 4. jared and i try two stores on west pender without luck. there are shoes at the next place we try on main, but nothing so simple as we're looking for. i decide to ask for help.
"do you sell those canvass shoes here?"
"no, no."
"do you know where i can find some?"
"i look like i know chinatown? why you don't look around?"
"ok. thanks."
"welcome."
a younger woman at another store is more helpful. (we've now been pretty much all around the intersection.)
"i know those shoes. they were really popular when i was younger. you should try a grocery store," and she tells us to look on pender west of main. right on, gracie.
it's obvious that there aren't shoes for sale at any of the specialty herb stores, and nowhere else looks much like a grocery. jared suggests we pop into a souvenir place that i'm almost already past, and good thing, because they had them. 6.99. i'm not going to try to haggle, especially since we weren't even offered a discount for being on our honeymoon. two pairs each. black and white. that comes to 15.44 for everyone who forgot about the harmonized sales tax. you've got that going for you, portland. god bless oregon, land of the free and home of things that cost what they say they do on the price tag.
3:47 p.m. ian rejoins us, and we ride the overpass on dunsmuir, i think, to granville st. that's where the h&m lives. the real jewel of the west. i don't feel so whining and provincial about insisting on getting there while i'm in town after having heard another guest at the house, a lady from winnipeg, talk about doing the same thing. can you believe that the story about the frozen horses from that guy maddin movie is actually true? also, i say that i just need underwear and socks. apparently a coat, too. and a cardigan. there's an impossibly skinny guy (really, it seems impossible that anyone could be this thin) trying on shirts and jackets at the same mirror as i'm using, and i want to tell him that nothing's going to fit, except maybe the small underwear. i'm glad i go with a pack of mediums, and am close to making the wrong choice until ian opens some smalls and wraps a pair around my neck. there's a security tag on the package that i'm afraid is going to shoot ink or something. says ian: "the bag's just plastic, tranny." there's a security tag on the floor.
4:22 p.m. downtown is making me crazy now. i wait in the checkout line. goddamn sales tax. some advice: don't buy anything from the jon kortajarena ad campaign. it'll sell out right when it goes on sale where you live anyway, but you'll be happy that you missed out when you see the three dozen twinks that got one of those sweaters all on the same day.
i want to be at the house. we take the escalator down from the h&m menswear section to where we can get out of the store and out of teeming pacific centre. there's a stand of three lady mannequins to the right of the end of the escalator. what do you know? the wigs come right off. they're long and blond with long, straight bangs. if none of the hats that jared's passed me today have fit, this wig isn't going to either. better judgment hasn't stopped me trying before. i really don't want the tape on the underside of the wig on my hair, but i do want the too small wig on my head. "how hard do you think it would be to steal that?"
i've already thought that step ahead of ian and should already be walking toward the door, but i don't even get the thing on my head before i get stopped by a "uh-uhn guys." maybe someone saw the underwear fitting on a camera. the queeny floor guy makes me put the wig back on the mannequin as i explain that i was just looking for a price tag. "they're not for sale." "well i saw a label under there. where can i get one?" "sweden." hmm.
there are probably magnetic sensors in the ugly barrettes on the wigs anyway, but i think it would have been better to get caught outside the store. that way i have a solid excuse as to why i won't be able to make it back to the states on schedule. but i think also that jail isn't as much fun as i'm having, wig or not, and i don't expect they'd let me keep it just for my trouble. plus, i have to meet people at kickball in robson park at six.
4:40 p.m. japa dog. it's a thing. another canadian cart-made-good restaurant story, but in japanese and about hot dogs. pay attention, portland.
4:59 p.m. i'm burping radish from the daikon oroshi on top of my tofu dog and blaming caffeine for how much i want everyone else to get off the sidewalk. it's probably their fault. but damn, girl, you sure am filling out the back of them pants. pack your shit and get thee to the park.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
FRUIT AND CAKE. HAVE YOURS AND EAT IT TOO.
prospect point is at the north peak of stanley park, vancouver, bc. bicycling there from chinatown takes you through the motorway under the vancouver convention center, a wide functionalist catacomb that seems like it shouldn't be permissible to traffic, especially bicycles, and riding it in the dead of night makes you wish you'd had the foresight to be on something so that the red lights swerving in front of you would trail to complete the effect. past that the route goes along the seawall by the high rises in the west end, which then make for spectacular viewing once you've gotten into the park and can see them back across vancouver harbor. the point is up a hill, a straight climb in the dark to a ridge above the south end of the lions gate bridge, and the point is also that there was a party there.
a party, poorly planned maybe, because with the djs and their equipment there's not much space to dance on the concrete viewing platform down the colonnaded staircases from the top of the point. but that's where the party was, and even just watching and being pushed to the point of nearly falling off the wobbly bench at the back edge of the platform are, well, you'll just be falling into people, frenzied, dancing and drunk, and pretty just by dint of being there. plus it's dark, except for the moon and the lights above the dj tables -- that might only be there to aid the photographers. with the bikes, and the setting, and the stupidly exhilarating view of the bridge and of the plush digs across the water in north vancouver, and the bhangra and dancehall driven bacchanalia (and the photographers) it's like goddamn fucking hipster ibiza. fun, even if no one's there to take your picture. trouble won't start pushing its way into the crowd until past three, and you know to leave when you see them.
that's my excuse for excusing myself from productivity today. that and waking up and being told with a smile that i looked puffy. water, then, instead of a caesar, which is what, apparently, canadians call a bloody mary. we did finally get a couch moved out of the house and another one in. at around 4:00. jared asked me if his ripping his snaps open to tear off his shirt was going to find its fifteen minutes on the internet.
"you ripped your shirt off?", paul asked.
"yeah, paul. you were eating cookies."
"they're fig newtons."
you'd think we'd know our ad campaigns better, but looking good in pants means never having to say you're sorry.
a party, poorly planned maybe, because with the djs and their equipment there's not much space to dance on the concrete viewing platform down the colonnaded staircases from the top of the point. but that's where the party was, and even just watching and being pushed to the point of nearly falling off the wobbly bench at the back edge of the platform are, well, you'll just be falling into people, frenzied, dancing and drunk, and pretty just by dint of being there. plus it's dark, except for the moon and the lights above the dj tables -- that might only be there to aid the photographers. with the bikes, and the setting, and the stupidly exhilarating view of the bridge and of the plush digs across the water in north vancouver, and the bhangra and dancehall driven bacchanalia (and the photographers) it's like goddamn fucking hipster ibiza. fun, even if no one's there to take your picture. trouble won't start pushing its way into the crowd until past three, and you know to leave when you see them.
that's my excuse for excusing myself from productivity today. that and waking up and being told with a smile that i looked puffy. water, then, instead of a caesar, which is what, apparently, canadians call a bloody mary. we did finally get a couch moved out of the house and another one in. at around 4:00. jared asked me if his ripping his snaps open to tear off his shirt was going to find its fifteen minutes on the internet.
"you ripped your shirt off?", paul asked.
"yeah, paul. you were eating cookies."
"they're fig newtons."
you'd think we'd know our ad campaigns better, but looking good in pants means never having to say you're sorry.
Friday, August 27, 2010
OH!..CA-NADA; TRAVEL WRITING, A STAB
my ride fell through so i took the train. that was a bane for my plan to bring gifts of booze to my hosts across the border since a backpack doesn't fit very many cases of beer on top of enough clothes for a long weekend, and the train doesn't stop at duty free. alas. i'd be empty handed and at the mercy of british columbia's sobering excise taxes. the train does, however, afford travelers the sense that they are traveling, a unique sense of time and distance that goes unexperienced in the air or on the highway. maybe it's just the amtrak cascades line, which takes passengers from portland, or through the evergreen forests of southern washington and then along the pacific coast from seattle to vancouver, bc. rain or shine (my trip afforded me a taste of both before night fell outside of bellingham), the pacific northwest is specially majestic or mystical -- sometimes depending only on whether it's a coffee or a beer in your hand -- quietly happy with its misty isolation from the other geographies of north america.
still, though, without whatever particular scene outside its windows, a train makes a journey. pack what you can carry (a large backpack, a shoulder bag and a bicycle for me); take your time; enjoy the ride. it'll probably be a while. this train could be any train, just a sensory device for gradually transitioning one place into another. i spent most of my time on the ride to vancouver reading, and outside the force of the passing northwest vistas, i let myself lapse into a limbo of just travel. although the quarters weren't always this plush, i could have been headed back to budapest or varanasi or nagano. i even remembered a long trip that i took on all local lines from osaka to tokyo during which i tried my best to have, for lack of a better term and eschewing a more descriptive explanation, a mind-only orgasm: i'm almost sure that the woman across from me who was headed to homer, ak was masturbating under the pillow on her lap.
i read completely through patrik ouředník's case closed, described in the publisher's jacket copy as "a wily and sophisticated parable about the dangers of language itself." it's also a cop drama and a thriller of sorts. i don't think i got it. or i hope that i didn't. if there weren't clues that i missed or, for that matter, a solvable mystery at all, then ouředník's book is, albeit well-written/translated (but aren't they all?), dissapointingly just another book about itself: "by now our readers have definitively understood that they definitively understand nothing: what could be a more sensible conclusion to our novel than that?" rereading the section in which that passage appears in a less enchanted mood, i give up hope of finding more clues and let case closed succumb to the dangers it exposes. that's the point, and that's the experience. but the meta- and the meta-meta- are wearing on me, i hate to say. the mise en abyme and james franco. i don't think i can stand to read another author executing them so well -- again -- anytime soon. but back to the train.
literally, in fact, because i finished ouředník's book just before the train stopped at king st. station in seattle and i disembarked then reembarked after a brief leg stretcher. i dawdled over two other volumes until we crossed into canada, at which point i was sure that we'd arrive well ahead of the one and a half hours still budgeted for the train to roll into pacific central station, vancouver. not so, for better and worse. we stopped to wait for a bridge to be lowered past some river traffic with a view of the city lights in the distance. for a while i fancied that i might be fine with never arriving, just savoring having left portland and being on the edge of arriving somewhere else. the world is wide; and portland, or is not at its center, as much as we portlanders love-hate (it's a portland thing) to curl up all day (and day after day) in the blanket of our recently discovered cultural cachet. i had myself nearly up and out before i couldn't stop overhearing the conversation between the canadian man and the two women from austria sitting about five rows behind me. "i know! i love portland. they love their bicycles there, just like in amsterdam." "anything goes, really. the girls with half their heads shaved, they just don't care." which reminded me of a comment a friend had made recently: "you know you're a hipster dyke when even the straight girls start rocking your haircut." amen, jenny. amen.
the canadian man also commented on how european montreal is, and i wondered why everyone, especially actual europeans, wanted so much to make that favorable comparison. some places in europe are inevitably shit, and i couldn't have wanted more at that moment just to be at my destination in canada. the world can have its europes. i was excited about vancouver.
as it turned out, vancouver was excited for me, too. i've never been given a reason to expect otherwise, but i'm always somewhat surprised at the hero's welcome i get here. friends were at the train station waiting when my train arrived (late, even, after all that) and i passed customs. jared found me as i was leaving the station bathroom, grace was waiting in the truck. hugs and catching up, but, first, beers on the tailgate. on the ride to the house we talked mutual friends, which meant some talk of marriage, and jared recounted a dream in which he'd gotten an heirloom ring from his parents. in reality the ring was given to his brother shortly after the dream. i mentioned that since the last time i'd been to visit all of my sisters had been married (including, finally last november my younger one) and i was officially the old maid of the family. grace asked why i wasn't wearing black. i supposed i'd have to go shopping, but that was already in my plans. duly chastened, i unloaded my things from the bed of the truck. give me time, canada, it'll come back to me. in the morning.
dear portland, you may be the insouciant gamine muse of the northwest, but vancouver is a world city (and seattle, well, i'm sorry). it thinks big and in more than one language. people dress like adults. granted, there are jobs here, and there are jobs here that pay well. we can make our excuses... the mountains across the water to the north of downtown are massive. portland and seattle have hood and rainier, but the mountains here are more a presence than merely snapshots. maybe it's just that vancouver was forced to grow to the extent of its imposing environment, but here is grand, confident, and cosmopolitan.
the rain kept me from getting on my bicycle as early as i'd planned to this morning, but that meant a more enjoyable breakfast. i'm not afraid of the rain or of riding in it, but the bike is still in summer mode sans fenders, and soaking myself on morning number one was absolutely unappealing. instead, grace and i got a ride from roommate ashley to bandidas on commercial -- or, as vancouverites call it, just "the drive." bandidas (2781 commercial dr.) is an all vegetarian haute mexican joint in a sparsely decorated but cozy space. the walls are white and the lightbulbs in the ceiling fixtures are exposed, but the mismatched furniture and rustic bar help the place avoid that now all too common over-designed industrial look. (portland: think a por que no/junior's collabo at a tiny's.) i didn't venture to start drinking so early, but bandidas cocktail offerings were enticing and surprisingly reasonably priced for british columbia. the staff was friendly about my sniveling order, and my breakfast burrito "with the vegan dairy substitutions but the eggs are fine and i want guacamole" was deliciously balanced.
i didn't want to wait much longer after breakfast to get on the bike, so i resigned myself to getting wet and rode out from the house in a light mist. of course, it took only as long as it did for the water on the roads to splash up and soak my feet and bag for the sun to come out. don't rush. for as big and busy as vancouver is, it's also charmingly sleepy. i'll listen to the city next time and slow down.
my goal was to have a cup of coffee at finch's (353 west pender st.), a quaint, coffee and tea house styled a la the french provincial that also serves made-to-order baguette sandwiches. it's also only a block away from that special downtown intersection where there are visible four second hand booksellers. i'd planned to get to work on this, my introduction to vancouver, and browse the shelves, but too bad: as the handsome, tattooed man at the register in his serving blacks informed me, no wifi. i realized from there out that americans -- or maybe just portlanders -- are spoiled with an abundance of indie establishments with free internet. the man at finch's suggested i try waves, and i asked for a suggestion that wasn't a chain. nothing came to mind.
the bike shop, then. they should have a good idea or two for someone in my outfit. i've only been to super champion (245 main st.) once before to get the man who made my bicycle a t-shirt, but if not for coffee, the guys there seemed likely to know of a place with internet access that would serve me a drink. i rode up but didn't go inside, instead thinking to try my luck at solder and sons, the bookstore and cafe next door. perfect, and why had i never thought to go inside before? maybe it's newer. but they didn't have internet either, and maybe i should try waves. ironically, both the proprietor of solder and sons and his sole patron were colder and shorter with me than i would have expected from their neighbors at the all fixed gear bike shop. they were preoccupied, though, something about a book release party for a friend whose book hadn't yet found a publisher. i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, and you won't get the pleasure of reading my slight of their party, because as i was crafting it just now i found out that the man at the counter is likely a friend of my friend paul's. and they did ultimately suggest that i try a place called jj bean.
i did try jj bean (460 railway st.), which also had no wifi. the guy with the bike pump who overheard me talking with the barista came over and suggested waves with a very friendly smile into which i, emboldened by my status as itinerant stranger, read more than he intended, i'm sure. but i was willing to stick around to let whatever might happen happen, having already decided to stay anyway after coming to the pathetic epiphany that i didn't need the internet to write so long as i could use the signal at the house later to make my post. and jj bean is at least a local micro-roaster if still a chain.
the location i chose is on a gentrified stretch of industrial spaces just east of gastown, the cobbled tourist space on the water between chinatown and downtown that hosts more than one too many gastropubs (google that word and the suggested searches are all for locations in canada) and lights up with velvet-roped night clubs after dark. the other customers at the coffee shop came all from the what looked like design or architecture firms on railway, and it was admittedly comforting to see that the creative professional uniform of dark jeans, button-ups and canvas sneakers was an international trend. but jj bean is more international than any of the coffee houses i frequent in portland. during my couple of hours there i was glad to overhear a couple of very stylish women conversing in french and another couple speaking in english but with the accent of their first language, probably something scandinavian.
i didn't need the second cup of coffee that the south asian barista gave me on the house, and definitely should have turned down the double espresso and honey blended drink she brought me (made as a mistake?). she told me that if i liked it i should order a fresca medici the next time. it has nothing on joel's affogatos, but i'm a sucker for sweets (and for sweet baristas willing to make the still wet bike kid from out of town feel comfortable, even if my eyes weren't for her). i drank it happily as the sun crawled up my side of the patio. i took the sun as an excuse to move on before finishing my work, but it was really more the caffeine jitters that got my on my bike and in search of food.
downtown traffic was picking up at 4:00, but i decided to ride through the city center to get to my next stop in kitsilano so that i could take in the view of the mountains across the inlet. my timing was much better than when i took off from the house, and the clouds had completely burned off by the time i was on the bridge descent. it was only a short jaunt from the base of the bridge to noodle box (1867 west 4th) where i met grace, who filled my stomach and helped me down off my high. noodle box started as a popular food cart in victoria now has three locations there in addition to the one in vancouver. i had a bowl of vegetables and shiitake mushrooms in black bean sauce over brown rice with a 22 ouncer of raven cream ale from vancouver based r&b brewing. i should have gotten it spicier, but my bowl had enough kick to leave a tingle in my mouth between bites, and the bean sauce was just salty enough to compliment the beer. the house was dead, and grace lamented not being able to ride back to the house with me. friday night should pick up, she reassured herself. grace apparently likes it when it's busier. i was happy with a leisurely ride along the shaded route she sent me down on 10th back toward east main and the neighborhood.
there are rumors of a bike party tonight at prospect point. down below. the beer drinking is already started. oh canada. we'll see if we make it to the party, let alone to the end of it early tomorrow morning. we'll pick up the pieces one way or another then.
still, though, without whatever particular scene outside its windows, a train makes a journey. pack what you can carry (a large backpack, a shoulder bag and a bicycle for me); take your time; enjoy the ride. it'll probably be a while. this train could be any train, just a sensory device for gradually transitioning one place into another. i spent most of my time on the ride to vancouver reading, and outside the force of the passing northwest vistas, i let myself lapse into a limbo of just travel. although the quarters weren't always this plush, i could have been headed back to budapest or varanasi or nagano. i even remembered a long trip that i took on all local lines from osaka to tokyo during which i tried my best to have, for lack of a better term and eschewing a more descriptive explanation, a mind-only orgasm: i'm almost sure that the woman across from me who was headed to homer, ak was masturbating under the pillow on her lap.
i read completely through patrik ouředník's case closed, described in the publisher's jacket copy as "a wily and sophisticated parable about the dangers of language itself." it's also a cop drama and a thriller of sorts. i don't think i got it. or i hope that i didn't. if there weren't clues that i missed or, for that matter, a solvable mystery at all, then ouředník's book is, albeit well-written/translated (but aren't they all?), dissapointingly just another book about itself: "by now our readers have definitively understood that they definitively understand nothing: what could be a more sensible conclusion to our novel than that?" rereading the section in which that passage appears in a less enchanted mood, i give up hope of finding more clues and let case closed succumb to the dangers it exposes. that's the point, and that's the experience. but the meta- and the meta-meta- are wearing on me, i hate to say. the mise en abyme and james franco. i don't think i can stand to read another author executing them so well -- again -- anytime soon. but back to the train.
literally, in fact, because i finished ouředník's book just before the train stopped at king st. station in seattle and i disembarked then reembarked after a brief leg stretcher. i dawdled over two other volumes until we crossed into canada, at which point i was sure that we'd arrive well ahead of the one and a half hours still budgeted for the train to roll into pacific central station, vancouver. not so, for better and worse. we stopped to wait for a bridge to be lowered past some river traffic with a view of the city lights in the distance. for a while i fancied that i might be fine with never arriving, just savoring having left portland and being on the edge of arriving somewhere else. the world is wide; and portland, or is not at its center, as much as we portlanders love-hate (it's a portland thing) to curl up all day (and day after day) in the blanket of our recently discovered cultural cachet. i had myself nearly up and out before i couldn't stop overhearing the conversation between the canadian man and the two women from austria sitting about five rows behind me. "i know! i love portland. they love their bicycles there, just like in amsterdam." "anything goes, really. the girls with half their heads shaved, they just don't care." which reminded me of a comment a friend had made recently: "you know you're a hipster dyke when even the straight girls start rocking your haircut." amen, jenny. amen.
the canadian man also commented on how european montreal is, and i wondered why everyone, especially actual europeans, wanted so much to make that favorable comparison. some places in europe are inevitably shit, and i couldn't have wanted more at that moment just to be at my destination in canada. the world can have its europes. i was excited about vancouver.
as it turned out, vancouver was excited for me, too. i've never been given a reason to expect otherwise, but i'm always somewhat surprised at the hero's welcome i get here. friends were at the train station waiting when my train arrived (late, even, after all that) and i passed customs. jared found me as i was leaving the station bathroom, grace was waiting in the truck. hugs and catching up, but, first, beers on the tailgate. on the ride to the house we talked mutual friends, which meant some talk of marriage, and jared recounted a dream in which he'd gotten an heirloom ring from his parents. in reality the ring was given to his brother shortly after the dream. i mentioned that since the last time i'd been to visit all of my sisters had been married (including, finally last november my younger one) and i was officially the old maid of the family. grace asked why i wasn't wearing black. i supposed i'd have to go shopping, but that was already in my plans. duly chastened, i unloaded my things from the bed of the truck. give me time, canada, it'll come back to me. in the morning.
dear portland, you may be the insouciant gamine muse of the northwest, but vancouver is a world city (and seattle, well, i'm sorry). it thinks big and in more than one language. people dress like adults. granted, there are jobs here, and there are jobs here that pay well. we can make our excuses... the mountains across the water to the north of downtown are massive. portland and seattle have hood and rainier, but the mountains here are more a presence than merely snapshots. maybe it's just that vancouver was forced to grow to the extent of its imposing environment, but here is grand, confident, and cosmopolitan.
the rain kept me from getting on my bicycle as early as i'd planned to this morning, but that meant a more enjoyable breakfast. i'm not afraid of the rain or of riding in it, but the bike is still in summer mode sans fenders, and soaking myself on morning number one was absolutely unappealing. instead, grace and i got a ride from roommate ashley to bandidas on commercial -- or, as vancouverites call it, just "the drive." bandidas (2781 commercial dr.) is an all vegetarian haute mexican joint in a sparsely decorated but cozy space. the walls are white and the lightbulbs in the ceiling fixtures are exposed, but the mismatched furniture and rustic bar help the place avoid that now all too common over-designed industrial look. (portland: think a por que no/junior's collabo at a tiny's.) i didn't venture to start drinking so early, but bandidas cocktail offerings were enticing and surprisingly reasonably priced for british columbia. the staff was friendly about my sniveling order, and my breakfast burrito "with the vegan dairy substitutions but the eggs are fine and i want guacamole" was deliciously balanced.
i didn't want to wait much longer after breakfast to get on the bike, so i resigned myself to getting wet and rode out from the house in a light mist. of course, it took only as long as it did for the water on the roads to splash up and soak my feet and bag for the sun to come out. don't rush. for as big and busy as vancouver is, it's also charmingly sleepy. i'll listen to the city next time and slow down.
my goal was to have a cup of coffee at finch's (353 west pender st.), a quaint, coffee and tea house styled a la the french provincial that also serves made-to-order baguette sandwiches. it's also only a block away from that special downtown intersection where there are visible four second hand booksellers. i'd planned to get to work on this, my introduction to vancouver, and browse the shelves, but too bad: as the handsome, tattooed man at the register in his serving blacks informed me, no wifi. i realized from there out that americans -- or maybe just portlanders -- are spoiled with an abundance of indie establishments with free internet. the man at finch's suggested i try waves, and i asked for a suggestion that wasn't a chain. nothing came to mind.
the bike shop, then. they should have a good idea or two for someone in my outfit. i've only been to super champion (245 main st.) once before to get the man who made my bicycle a t-shirt, but if not for coffee, the guys there seemed likely to know of a place with internet access that would serve me a drink. i rode up but didn't go inside, instead thinking to try my luck at solder and sons, the bookstore and cafe next door. perfect, and why had i never thought to go inside before? maybe it's newer. but they didn't have internet either, and maybe i should try waves. ironically, both the proprietor of solder and sons and his sole patron were colder and shorter with me than i would have expected from their neighbors at the all fixed gear bike shop. they were preoccupied, though, something about a book release party for a friend whose book hadn't yet found a publisher. i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, and you won't get the pleasure of reading my slight of their party, because as i was crafting it just now i found out that the man at the counter is likely a friend of my friend paul's. and they did ultimately suggest that i try a place called jj bean.
i did try jj bean (460 railway st.), which also had no wifi. the guy with the bike pump who overheard me talking with the barista came over and suggested waves with a very friendly smile into which i, emboldened by my status as itinerant stranger, read more than he intended, i'm sure. but i was willing to stick around to let whatever might happen happen, having already decided to stay anyway after coming to the pathetic epiphany that i didn't need the internet to write so long as i could use the signal at the house later to make my post. and jj bean is at least a local micro-roaster if still a chain.
the location i chose is on a gentrified stretch of industrial spaces just east of gastown, the cobbled tourist space on the water between chinatown and downtown that hosts more than one too many gastropubs (google that word and the suggested searches are all for locations in canada) and lights up with velvet-roped night clubs after dark. the other customers at the coffee shop came all from the what looked like design or architecture firms on railway, and it was admittedly comforting to see that the creative professional uniform of dark jeans, button-ups and canvas sneakers was an international trend. but jj bean is more international than any of the coffee houses i frequent in portland. during my couple of hours there i was glad to overhear a couple of very stylish women conversing in french and another couple speaking in english but with the accent of their first language, probably something scandinavian.
i didn't need the second cup of coffee that the south asian barista gave me on the house, and definitely should have turned down the double espresso and honey blended drink she brought me (made as a mistake?). she told me that if i liked it i should order a fresca medici the next time. it has nothing on joel's affogatos, but i'm a sucker for sweets (and for sweet baristas willing to make the still wet bike kid from out of town feel comfortable, even if my eyes weren't for her). i drank it happily as the sun crawled up my side of the patio. i took the sun as an excuse to move on before finishing my work, but it was really more the caffeine jitters that got my on my bike and in search of food.
downtown traffic was picking up at 4:00, but i decided to ride through the city center to get to my next stop in kitsilano so that i could take in the view of the mountains across the inlet. my timing was much better than when i took off from the house, and the clouds had completely burned off by the time i was on the bridge descent. it was only a short jaunt from the base of the bridge to noodle box (1867 west 4th) where i met grace, who filled my stomach and helped me down off my high. noodle box started as a popular food cart in victoria now has three locations there in addition to the one in vancouver. i had a bowl of vegetables and shiitake mushrooms in black bean sauce over brown rice with a 22 ouncer of raven cream ale from vancouver based r&b brewing. i should have gotten it spicier, but my bowl had enough kick to leave a tingle in my mouth between bites, and the bean sauce was just salty enough to compliment the beer. the house was dead, and grace lamented not being able to ride back to the house with me. friday night should pick up, she reassured herself. grace apparently likes it when it's busier. i was happy with a leisurely ride along the shaded route she sent me down on 10th back toward east main and the neighborhood.
there are rumors of a bike party tonight at prospect point. down below. the beer drinking is already started. oh canada. we'll see if we make it to the party, let alone to the end of it early tomorrow morning. we'll pick up the pieces one way or another then.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
FANNING THE FLAMES, part 2; or, IS TAO LIN FOR REAL?
i love picking on the book section of salon.com. and i wish that laura miller had been the one to pen this article on internet literary "it boy" tao lin. or maybe not. because i absolutely agreed with the author's observations on "the next big thing in urban hipster lit," and happen to be one of those twenty-somethings that comes to lin's defense in blog posts (even if just secondarily by my defense of the significance and value of his proteges' style and literary import). indeed, i am "typical of a certain ilk of detached 20-somethings across the country."
sure, i was miffed that daniel roberts got the opportunity to give new york credit as metaphor for the loneliness of the internet generation at a major online venue after i'd already staked that claim for tokyo here. even so, roberts has a dead pin on tao lin's importance, even if he doesn't go so far as to cast his lot with lin and the rest of the alienated online reading public.
shoplifting from american apparel was total quality. and i don't just say so because of the passage set in gainseville, fl in which an onlooker to the primary conversation is heard to advocate the cool of my hometown in almost the same words that i've heard myself use to do the same thing. critics say the writing's bad and lazy, and maybe lin is just the happened-to-be-published voice of another rehash of generational angst, but his conscious and adept mimic of the emotion of common discourse amongst the kids who most commonly discourse online is impossible not to recognize.
halfassed evidence as it may be, my roommate, a self-acknowledged internet savvy twenty-something hipster, hated shoplifting, not because it wasn't a perfect telling of our lives, but because of its bleak implications for the artistic potential of our generation. roberts gets it, acknowledging the same by quoting a reviewer at amazon.com: "If this is the literature of our generation, then I'd rather die in a car crash." be that as it may, it's real, and the readers who are readers seem to be the ones that can appreciate tao lin's prose for the intentional effort that it is. we're happy to laud the accomplishments of older writers who wrote on their own generational angst so long as the significance of their language was only appreciated after their initial writings. all the more reason, i think, to love that lin is telling a generation in its defining as-it's-happening vernacular and being criticized for it as it's actually happening. i'll defer here to madonna as eva perón, vindictively singing at the stuffed shirts idling on the bowling green: "but your despicable class is dead. look who they are calling for now!"
really, though, the salon.com article won me over because it "got" me. roberts offers his opinion on how open tao lin is to accepting online friendships and furthering his financial goals by means of those outlets. i've never bid on any of the "stupid things" lin has up for auction at ebay, but the only reason i rushed to check salon this morning was because lin, my facebook friend, had posted a link to his feature. what's more, roberts' article links to a new york magazine profile on tao lin authored by none other than the sam anderson who wrote the piece on james franco ("is james franco for real?") on which i commentated last night! and what's more what's more, that anderson profile surmises that lin "seems to have planted his aesthetic flag on the treacherous Miranda July fault line between art and cutesiness." didn't i just talk about miranda july in my post on anderson's other article?!?! YOU ARE AMAZING INTERNET! we are all so connected. and, as tao lin reminds us, so awfully alone.
it is, like in my clever fantasies of meeting franco and july, almost as if we could (or somehow already) know these people in real life (whatever you take that to mean). right now i'm thankful, though, that i haven't had the pleasure. i'm not sure how fun it would be for any of the parties involved to have the opportunity to neurotically scorn each other in public when we're all already at such a pervasive and lonely loss for...whatever.
sure, i was miffed that daniel roberts got the opportunity to give new york credit as metaphor for the loneliness of the internet generation at a major online venue after i'd already staked that claim for tokyo here. even so, roberts has a dead pin on tao lin's importance, even if he doesn't go so far as to cast his lot with lin and the rest of the alienated online reading public.
shoplifting from american apparel was total quality. and i don't just say so because of the passage set in gainseville, fl in which an onlooker to the primary conversation is heard to advocate the cool of my hometown in almost the same words that i've heard myself use to do the same thing. critics say the writing's bad and lazy, and maybe lin is just the happened-to-be-published voice of another rehash of generational angst, but his conscious and adept mimic of the emotion of common discourse amongst the kids who most commonly discourse online is impossible not to recognize.
halfassed evidence as it may be, my roommate, a self-acknowledged internet savvy twenty-something hipster, hated shoplifting, not because it wasn't a perfect telling of our lives, but because of its bleak implications for the artistic potential of our generation. roberts gets it, acknowledging the same by quoting a reviewer at amazon.com: "If this is the literature of our generation, then I'd rather die in a car crash." be that as it may, it's real, and the readers who are readers seem to be the ones that can appreciate tao lin's prose for the intentional effort that it is. we're happy to laud the accomplishments of older writers who wrote on their own generational angst so long as the significance of their language was only appreciated after their initial writings. all the more reason, i think, to love that lin is telling a generation in its defining as-it's-happening vernacular and being criticized for it as it's actually happening. i'll defer here to madonna as eva perón, vindictively singing at the stuffed shirts idling on the bowling green: "but your despicable class is dead. look who they are calling for now!"
really, though, the salon.com article won me over because it "got" me. roberts offers his opinion on how open tao lin is to accepting online friendships and furthering his financial goals by means of those outlets. i've never bid on any of the "stupid things" lin has up for auction at ebay, but the only reason i rushed to check salon this morning was because lin, my facebook friend, had posted a link to his feature. what's more, roberts' article links to a new york magazine profile on tao lin authored by none other than the sam anderson who wrote the piece on james franco ("is james franco for real?") on which i commentated last night! and what's more what's more, that anderson profile surmises that lin "seems to have planted his aesthetic flag on the treacherous Miranda July fault line between art and cutesiness." didn't i just talk about miranda july in my post on anderson's other article?!?! YOU ARE AMAZING INTERNET! we are all so connected. and, as tao lin reminds us, so awfully alone.
it is, like in my clever fantasies of meeting franco and july, almost as if we could (or somehow already) know these people in real life (whatever you take that to mean). right now i'm thankful, though, that i haven't had the pleasure. i'm not sure how fun it would be for any of the parties involved to have the opportunity to neurotically scorn each other in public when we're all already at such a pervasive and lonely loss for...whatever.
Monday, August 23, 2010
ME'S AN ABYME
'looking good in pants' has a crush on another blog. the maîtresse reviews books and writes articles on art and culture, and she's working on a dissertation on british women writers in the 1930s. at the sorbonne. her site is so elegantly laid out that readers should have little doubt "reading is [as if there were really any doubt to begin with] sexier in paris." (she's not, however, without measured disdain for those literary tourists on the hunt for the pale shades of the idealized scenes of paris' past.)
and it was through 'maîtresse' that we came to read this new york magazine article by sam anderson on the-entire-world-at-this-moment's crush, james franco. it's quite an article, by which we mean that, for a celebrity profile or for otherwise (but especially for a celebrity profile), it's thoughtfully argued and impeccably written. anderson raises questions that highlight not just the man himself, but that wonder around the position of art and publicity in the worlds where franco makes his lives. i suppose that there's enough sensationalism and gossip surrounding james franco that another article in either of those realms would have quickly found its way to the rejects pile. regardless, over the 10,000 or so words of anderson's piece, i only checked my email once.
the passage quoted at 'maîtresse' i'll quote again here, because it turned out to be a deft summary of the article's themes:
so, as anderson (and then our crush) asks, is james franco for real? as well as anderson does to demonstrate that franco could actually have all the time and energy necessary for all of his projects, i'm still doubting it. that is, that he's for real. you can read the article and decide for yourself, because i'm not interested in critiquing anderson's methods or his conclusions. whether or not franco gets all of his homework done and whether his professors inflate the quality of his performance in exchange for their programs' celebrity endorsement are immaterial fodder for that rejects pile. anyway, franco apparently has a personal assistant who takes care of ALL of his day to day needs -- and i'm guessing that franco is rich. plus, what i know of his art isn't impressive: that short story that esquire printed really was, as salon.com called it, a [heh] "crush killer." the exciting bit is the realness of the reality we're questioning.
that we're even asking is proof of the complicated performance that celebrity has become at the demand of both the high and pop cultures of staged self-reference. james franco is a hall of mirrors. i've never seen him play his kind of self on general hospital, but his episode of 30 rock, on which he played a celebrity trying to dodge rumors that he's in love with a body pillow much as franco himself has (poorly for as gay as that short story was) been skirting rumors of homosexuality, was funny. james franco's art is on the art of being james franco. anderson acknowledges as much, and rounds out an entire section of his article on franco's obsession with "meta" everything. i'd say that's just your typical post-secondary student, but really who isn't now constantly wondering how convincingly -- or calculatedly unconvincingly -- they're playing themselves on the (sometimes actual) television series of their lives?
as an undergraduate, i read as much andré gide as i could find in attempts to better understand the influence of his meta-fictional the japanese master of meta-fiction that was the subject of my thesis adviser's dissertation. (here i have to confess to my crush that i once disdained paris for not having marked any of the site's i visited on my self-guided andré gide reality tour). that investigation was thrilling pursuit, and it opened me to wider interests in other disciplines of the humanities. i understand franco's devotion. but now it seems that what was once a tool intended to elucidate the means of artistic and cultural creation and dissemination has become a final artistic and cultural end. the hall of mirrors is just a fun house attraction. we stare down it (or, more correctly maybe, up at it) just to wink at our reflections with the things we've put on the pedestal at its center. and indeed, anderson reads into the winks and shoulder pats he gets from franco even as he's being scorned by the publicity people that made that illusion possible for him in the first place.
but the fun house is, well, fun, and we all get to be in on the joke. reading anderson's article i, in all the realness of assumed reality, imagined myself dressed smartly (a brown suit and a non-chalantly ported clutch) in attendance at one of franco's gallery shows. james opened with some small talk before pulling me over to introduce me to some people he needed me to meet. one of them remarked on what a dashing couple we were, and i responded in equally knowing jest: "we're all over the tabloids. they're calling us 'christopher'!" in all honesty, i've imagined a similar encounter with miranda july, but in her case we ended up making out in a closet where we'd met after both shying away from a too stressful dinner party. either meeting seems not ultimately beyond my possible reach, but those mirrors can be tricky.
what a world. and where to put ourselves in it? four graduate programs and just go for it, i guess. or maybe just one for a start. thanks for the inspiration, maîtresse. we'll always have paris.
and it was through 'maîtresse' that we came to read this new york magazine article by sam anderson on the-entire-world-at-this-moment's crush, james franco. it's quite an article, by which we mean that, for a celebrity profile or for otherwise (but especially for a celebrity profile), it's thoughtfully argued and impeccably written. anderson raises questions that highlight not just the man himself, but that wonder around the position of art and publicity in the worlds where franco makes his lives. i suppose that there's enough sensationalism and gossip surrounding james franco that another article in either of those realms would have quickly found its way to the rejects pile. regardless, over the 10,000 or so words of anderson's piece, i only checked my email once.
the passage quoted at 'maîtresse' i'll quote again here, because it turned out to be a deft summary of the article's themes:
Take, for instance, graduate school. As soon as Franco finished at UCLA, he moved to New York and enrolled in four of them: NYU for filmmaking, Columbia for fiction writing, Brooklyn College for fiction writing, and—just for good measure—a low-residency poetry program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. This fall, at 32, before he’s even done with all of these, he’ll be starting at Yale, for a Ph.D. in English, and also at the Rhode Island School of Design. After which, obviously, he will become president of the United Nations, train a flock of African gray parrots to perform free colonoscopies in the developing world, and launch himself into space in order to explain the human heart to aliens living at the pulsing core of interstellar quasars.
so, as anderson (and then our crush) asks, is james franco for real? as well as anderson does to demonstrate that franco could actually have all the time and energy necessary for all of his projects, i'm still doubting it. that is, that he's for real. you can read the article and decide for yourself, because i'm not interested in critiquing anderson's methods or his conclusions. whether or not franco gets all of his homework done and whether his professors inflate the quality of his performance in exchange for their programs' celebrity endorsement are immaterial fodder for that rejects pile. anyway, franco apparently has a personal assistant who takes care of ALL of his day to day needs -- and i'm guessing that franco is rich. plus, what i know of his art isn't impressive: that short story that esquire printed really was, as salon.com called it, a [heh] "crush killer." the exciting bit is the realness of the reality we're questioning.
that we're even asking is proof of the complicated performance that celebrity has become at the demand of both the high and pop cultures of staged self-reference. james franco is a hall of mirrors. i've never seen him play his kind of self on general hospital, but his episode of 30 rock, on which he played a celebrity trying to dodge rumors that he's in love with a body pillow much as franco himself has (poorly for as gay as that short story was) been skirting rumors of homosexuality, was funny. james franco's art is on the art of being james franco. anderson acknowledges as much, and rounds out an entire section of his article on franco's obsession with "meta" everything. i'd say that's just your typical post-secondary student, but really who isn't now constantly wondering how convincingly -- or calculatedly unconvincingly -- they're playing themselves on the (sometimes actual) television series of their lives?
as an undergraduate, i read as much andré gide as i could find in attempts to better understand the influence of his meta-fictional the japanese master of meta-fiction that was the subject of my thesis adviser's dissertation. (here i have to confess to my crush that i once disdained paris for not having marked any of the site's i visited on my self-guided andré gide reality tour). that investigation was thrilling pursuit, and it opened me to wider interests in other disciplines of the humanities. i understand franco's devotion. but now it seems that what was once a tool intended to elucidate the means of artistic and cultural creation and dissemination has become a final artistic and cultural end. the hall of mirrors is just a fun house attraction. we stare down it (or, more correctly maybe, up at it) just to wink at our reflections with the things we've put on the pedestal at its center. and indeed, anderson reads into the winks and shoulder pats he gets from franco even as he's being scorned by the publicity people that made that illusion possible for him in the first place.
but the fun house is, well, fun, and we all get to be in on the joke. reading anderson's article i, in all the realness of assumed reality, imagined myself dressed smartly (a brown suit and a non-chalantly ported clutch) in attendance at one of franco's gallery shows. james opened with some small talk before pulling me over to introduce me to some people he needed me to meet. one of them remarked on what a dashing couple we were, and i responded in equally knowing jest: "we're all over the tabloids. they're calling us 'christopher'!" in all honesty, i've imagined a similar encounter with miranda july, but in her case we ended up making out in a closet where we'd met after both shying away from a too stressful dinner party. either meeting seems not ultimately beyond my possible reach, but those mirrors can be tricky.
what a world. and where to put ourselves in it? four graduate programs and just go for it, i guess. or maybe just one for a start. thanks for the inspiration, maîtresse. we'll always have paris.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
PURSE QUEEN REDUX
christopher went to the art party last night carrying a gift from a friend. it came with a picture postcard of a herd walking (against traffic) along a graveled alpine road. "darling christopher...i yearn for you like these goats yearn for freedom, i lust for you like these goats lust for blood. i need your help buying pants." after a sentiment like that one, i had to take the gift out to be seen, even if that would be mean making a bolder gesture for this summer's signature fashion statement than i'd foreseen.
"christopher! a purse." duchess' exclamation was surprised but not disapproving. "a clutch even." it was too cool yesterday evening for shorts, even with the leggings underneath, but those wouldn't have worked with my accessory anyway. it fit everything i needed for my night out without being cumbersome, and what a prop for idling on the sidewalk waiting for public transportation! before i left the house, i was reassured by a friend that yes, it was too gay, but a clutch is really just a big wallet. i'd suggest that the rest of you gentlemen take his advice, too. i only got more compliments on my hair.
but carry your wits with you as well, big wallets aren't big enough to sneak a bottle of wine.
"christopher! a purse." duchess' exclamation was surprised but not disapproving. "a clutch even." it was too cool yesterday evening for shorts, even with the leggings underneath, but those wouldn't have worked with my accessory anyway. it fit everything i needed for my night out without being cumbersome, and what a prop for idling on the sidewalk waiting for public transportation! before i left the house, i was reassured by a friend that yes, it was too gay, but a clutch is really just a big wallet. i'd suggest that the rest of you gentlemen take his advice, too. i only got more compliments on my hair.
but carry your wits with you as well, big wallets aren't big enough to sneak a bottle of wine.
Friday, August 20, 2010
COUNTDOWN TO CANADA
next week 'looking good in pants' is making its first foray into the exciting and romantic world of international blogging. from 8/26 to 8/31, we'll be commentating on location from vancouver, british columbia, which is in a different country. since my mobile device isn't exactly smart, we won't be able to live blog the h&m shopping trip like we dreamed, though that trip will be uniquely important this visit as we'll have the opportunity to round up all the cute stuff and rock it without seeing it on anyone else for all of september before portland's h&m opens in the old saks space the following month. (just imagine a tour group of japanese at a louis viutton store in paris.) like most of our aspirations, however, it's only an idle fantasy, because we're not so dull as to think that h&m won't have turned its entire inventory at least four times in that month.
but we're getting ahead of ourselves. canada is another country. having on multiple occasions had the anthropological fortune to interact with native canadians both in their country and in mine, i've been able to completely dispel the common notion that canada is nothing more than a lo-cal, decaffeinated america. that america and canada are one and the same entity divided only by old commonwealth loyalties is actually just a myth spread by monsanto to justify the invasion of its genetically modified canola into canada's rolling fields of beautiful organic rapeseed. no. canada is possessed of a unique culture, character and natural and man made geographies.
one saturday afternoon on third beach at stanley park in vancouver, i was in conversation with four canadian friends about the differences between our countries. the content of that conversation should be enough to convince any american that canada is as foreign and exotic as anywhere in his or her travel fantasies.
in canada, the canadians celebrate canada day. until that conversation, i had been under the mistaken (and pompous) impression that canada day was a less bombastic american independence day. but in fact, canada day is celebrated every wednesday to honor celine dion's eponymous platinum album. you see, celine dion is the lord protector of canada, and everything done in canada is done in deference to canada's national symbol: celine dion's maple glazed beaver. it's in proud service to that symbol that canada levies the taxes it does, not, as is commonly assumed in america, to support a wide and inclusive net of social services. canada's parliament runs budgets well beyond even the astronomical deficits we have here in america. the taxes collected on alcohol sales in british columbia (and particularly in vancouver where alcohol taxes exceed the rates of anywhere else in the country) are not used to provide health care or unemployment benefits, but rather to satisfy the needs of the lord protector's children, who communicate with her only by pointing and speaking canada's motto: "celine, i want."
canadians also aren't haunted by the possibility of mandatory military service. although america's military is currently volunteer, who here doesn't wonder if a draft might someday be reinstated (especially if the tide of this year's midterm elections comes in to the right)? canada's standing army is small and specialized, and civic responsibility in canada is, understandably, demonstrated by service to the world of entertainment. as such, canadians are regularly conscripted into cirque du soleil. one friend described two grueling years as a trapeze artist. the pay was meager and the hours long, but the show goes on in canada. i asked another friend about his experience, and he explained to me that he had only sold tickets, being -- he struggled for a moment to identify the term -- what we here call a conscientious objector. the sun was shining that may afternoon, and the mood at the beach was correspondingly bright, but chris looked down at the sand and quietly intoned what once must have been a loud and spirited rallying cry. "this circus is for all the wrong reasons."
it was nice to know that a common humanity still bridged the different worlds of our countries' cultures. we're excited to bring you warm tales of that humanity as well as wild coverage of quiet nights at deserted bars and browsing used book stalls. oh, and kickball. stay tuned.
but we're getting ahead of ourselves. canada is another country. having on multiple occasions had the anthropological fortune to interact with native canadians both in their country and in mine, i've been able to completely dispel the common notion that canada is nothing more than a lo-cal, decaffeinated america. that america and canada are one and the same entity divided only by old commonwealth loyalties is actually just a myth spread by monsanto to justify the invasion of its genetically modified canola into canada's rolling fields of beautiful organic rapeseed. no. canada is possessed of a unique culture, character and natural and man made geographies.
one saturday afternoon on third beach at stanley park in vancouver, i was in conversation with four canadian friends about the differences between our countries. the content of that conversation should be enough to convince any american that canada is as foreign and exotic as anywhere in his or her travel fantasies.
in canada, the canadians celebrate canada day. until that conversation, i had been under the mistaken (and pompous) impression that canada day was a less bombastic american independence day. but in fact, canada day is celebrated every wednesday to honor celine dion's eponymous platinum album. you see, celine dion is the lord protector of canada, and everything done in canada is done in deference to canada's national symbol: celine dion's maple glazed beaver. it's in proud service to that symbol that canada levies the taxes it does, not, as is commonly assumed in america, to support a wide and inclusive net of social services. canada's parliament runs budgets well beyond even the astronomical deficits we have here in america. the taxes collected on alcohol sales in british columbia (and particularly in vancouver where alcohol taxes exceed the rates of anywhere else in the country) are not used to provide health care or unemployment benefits, but rather to satisfy the needs of the lord protector's children, who communicate with her only by pointing and speaking canada's motto: "celine, i want."
canadians also aren't haunted by the possibility of mandatory military service. although america's military is currently volunteer, who here doesn't wonder if a draft might someday be reinstated (especially if the tide of this year's midterm elections comes in to the right)? canada's standing army is small and specialized, and civic responsibility in canada is, understandably, demonstrated by service to the world of entertainment. as such, canadians are regularly conscripted into cirque du soleil. one friend described two grueling years as a trapeze artist. the pay was meager and the hours long, but the show goes on in canada. i asked another friend about his experience, and he explained to me that he had only sold tickets, being -- he struggled for a moment to identify the term -- what we here call a conscientious objector. the sun was shining that may afternoon, and the mood at the beach was correspondingly bright, but chris looked down at the sand and quietly intoned what once must have been a loud and spirited rallying cry. "this circus is for all the wrong reasons."
it was nice to know that a common humanity still bridged the different worlds of our countries' cultures. we're excited to bring you warm tales of that humanity as well as wild coverage of quiet nights at deserted bars and browsing used book stalls. oh, and kickball. stay tuned.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
HOW TO SALVAGE A STORY
or YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT, BUT IF YOU TRY SOMETIMES YOU MIGHT JUST FIND THE *SECOND* DISC OF GOSSIP GIRL SEASON TWO AND DECIDE THAT YOU CAN FILL IN THE BLANKS FOR YOURSELF
the window in my bedroom has been propped open against the heat since saturday. i'm using a snow globe made from a mason jar and a miniature bust of dorothea dix which raises the window about nine or so inches from the sill. it was nearly twenty degrees cooler this morning than it has been on any other morning since friday, and it took my wondering why my room wasn't less comfortable to identify the storm window still shutting the room off from the outside. i wonder if my weekend guests wondered about me...because i wondered about myself.
so this evening i decided to eat cookies. many cookies. buying prepared dough would have been easier than putting the dough together myself, but my legs were tired enough after the first half of my first dance class that i didn't want to ride any further than it would take me to get home, and i was sure that i had ingredients enough to make something. that something turned out to be ginger snaps, because the recipe i know calls for oil instead of butter, and our stock of butter needs replenishing before i exhaust it on a frivolity like cookies (though i suppose they're an important part of the self-medication diet).
the ginger snaps turned out awful, because i did not in fact have the ingredients to make them, having used the last of the baking soda on the bathtub. i knew well and better as i was mixing the dough that, although they're all three white powders, one teaspoon of baking powder and one teaspoon of cornstarch were not going to substitute for two teaspoons of baking soda. the cookies pretty much stayed dough in the oven -- but burned around their edges to help ruin the taste. i had (sincere and honest) hope for adding soda water to the last sheet as an experiment. you can do that to help relieve the density of a cake, but it did nothing to activate my ginger snaps. insult to injury: the only soda water in the apartment was left over from our mojito party and was flavored lemon-lime.
lingering heat or not, the summer's almost over and i've all but abandoned my published summer reading list (which, you might remember, was deadlined for early july). there are two cheap review copies of day for night at powell's, but i won't likely buy one. aimee bender's book fell off the radar after i saw how many autographed copies were left for the shelves after her reading. (only exclusivity could have saved that book for me in the end.) the first twenty pages of breaking dawn in japanese translation were so painful that i've almost entirely given up on it, though i'll have to think up a way to let down the friend who lent me her copies (the japanese version is in three volumes). if i'm reading something in japanese, i should just finish the woman in the dunes, right? it is, after all, on the list. but i've gone ahead and read so many off-list books (my reviews of which you might have to read elsewhere) that the list just feels like a petty nag that i worry on only because i posted it. mind you, readers, the LIST does, and not you for expecting me to make good on completing it. (i did finish watching brideshead revisited, but still have no plan to read waugh's book, though i glanced through it at the bookstore on sunday.)
you're here for the story though, no? and that, maybe i can save. the truth is, there was an earthquake. that devastating heretofore-unheard-of-in-the-northwest earthquake that the geological survey has been predicting for decades now, and man oh man, it was a doozie. i was at a hot tub party in the west hills when it happened, and the only reason the host's house didn't slide down the cliff side was because of the best reason that any of you can think of. there was, however, something special floating on top of the water (you know how hot tub parties get), and when the quake hit it splashed up into my eyes. both of them! can you imagine? it really does sting, by the way, and i could hardly open my eyes for almost a month. it's a wonder i've been able to write as much as i have since then, but once you've gotten practice with the keyboard it's no big feat to tap something out and then have someone proof it. the real pain of the ordeal wasn't that i couldn't bear the emotional burden of reading anything but those books that i really wanted to read, but that i really despise hot tubs and can't think of why i went to that party in the first place.
the kids of the upper east side are doing fashion week and college visits. you have to turn this show off as soon as you remember how awful the dialogue is and how bromidic the scenarios and saccharine the characters. (that's usually about thirty seconds from the credits of the first episode.) otherwise, you're stuck until the end of the disc. it's a morbid pleasure; the result, i think, not so much of fawning aspiration but of dwelling on idle or forgotten potential. you are, after all, watching episode after episode of gossip girl instead of diligently rounding off that reading list. but you don't have to worry anymore about getting into yale like blair does. and your chances of becoming a fashion sensation at age fifteen are completely shot. plus, you know that the lives of the gossip girl cast are nowhere near as glamorous as their characters', and those characters are flat and pitiful (though their wardrobes almost seem worth it). so strangely, the make-believe lives of manhattan's elite manage to quell your self-pity instead of feed it, and that almost saves the taste of the ginger snaps.
the window in my bedroom has been propped open against the heat since saturday. i'm using a snow globe made from a mason jar and a miniature bust of dorothea dix which raises the window about nine or so inches from the sill. it was nearly twenty degrees cooler this morning than it has been on any other morning since friday, and it took my wondering why my room wasn't less comfortable to identify the storm window still shutting the room off from the outside. i wonder if my weekend guests wondered about me...because i wondered about myself.
so this evening i decided to eat cookies. many cookies. buying prepared dough would have been easier than putting the dough together myself, but my legs were tired enough after the first half of my first dance class that i didn't want to ride any further than it would take me to get home, and i was sure that i had ingredients enough to make something. that something turned out to be ginger snaps, because the recipe i know calls for oil instead of butter, and our stock of butter needs replenishing before i exhaust it on a frivolity like cookies (though i suppose they're an important part of the self-medication diet).
the ginger snaps turned out awful, because i did not in fact have the ingredients to make them, having used the last of the baking soda on the bathtub. i knew well and better as i was mixing the dough that, although they're all three white powders, one teaspoon of baking powder and one teaspoon of cornstarch were not going to substitute for two teaspoons of baking soda. the cookies pretty much stayed dough in the oven -- but burned around their edges to help ruin the taste. i had (sincere and honest) hope for adding soda water to the last sheet as an experiment. you can do that to help relieve the density of a cake, but it did nothing to activate my ginger snaps. insult to injury: the only soda water in the apartment was left over from our mojito party and was flavored lemon-lime.
lingering heat or not, the summer's almost over and i've all but abandoned my published summer reading list (which, you might remember, was deadlined for early july). there are two cheap review copies of day for night at powell's, but i won't likely buy one. aimee bender's book fell off the radar after i saw how many autographed copies were left for the shelves after her reading. (only exclusivity could have saved that book for me in the end.) the first twenty pages of breaking dawn in japanese translation were so painful that i've almost entirely given up on it, though i'll have to think up a way to let down the friend who lent me her copies (the japanese version is in three volumes). if i'm reading something in japanese, i should just finish the woman in the dunes, right? it is, after all, on the list. but i've gone ahead and read so many off-list books (my reviews of which you might have to read elsewhere) that the list just feels like a petty nag that i worry on only because i posted it. mind you, readers, the LIST does, and not you for expecting me to make good on completing it. (i did finish watching brideshead revisited, but still have no plan to read waugh's book, though i glanced through it at the bookstore on sunday.)
you're here for the story though, no? and that, maybe i can save. the truth is, there was an earthquake. that devastating heretofore-unheard-of-in-the-northwest earthquake that the geological survey has been predicting for decades now, and man oh man, it was a doozie. i was at a hot tub party in the west hills when it happened, and the only reason the host's house didn't slide down the cliff side was because of the best reason that any of you can think of. there was, however, something special floating on top of the water (you know how hot tub parties get), and when the quake hit it splashed up into my eyes. both of them! can you imagine? it really does sting, by the way, and i could hardly open my eyes for almost a month. it's a wonder i've been able to write as much as i have since then, but once you've gotten practice with the keyboard it's no big feat to tap something out and then have someone proof it. the real pain of the ordeal wasn't that i couldn't bear the emotional burden of reading anything but those books that i really wanted to read, but that i really despise hot tubs and can't think of why i went to that party in the first place.
the kids of the upper east side are doing fashion week and college visits. you have to turn this show off as soon as you remember how awful the dialogue is and how bromidic the scenarios and saccharine the characters. (that's usually about thirty seconds from the credits of the first episode.) otherwise, you're stuck until the end of the disc. it's a morbid pleasure; the result, i think, not so much of fawning aspiration but of dwelling on idle or forgotten potential. you are, after all, watching episode after episode of gossip girl instead of diligently rounding off that reading list. but you don't have to worry anymore about getting into yale like blair does. and your chances of becoming a fashion sensation at age fifteen are completely shot. plus, you know that the lives of the gossip girl cast are nowhere near as glamorous as their characters', and those characters are flat and pitiful (though their wardrobes almost seem worth it). so strangely, the make-believe lives of manhattan's elite manage to quell your self-pity instead of feed it, and that almost saves the taste of the ginger snaps.
Monday, August 16, 2010
HOW TO BE PRETTY ON THE OUTSIDE
it's somehow already the second half of august, which means the dog days -- which i find out are actually so named because of the relative brightness of sirius, and finding out about those sorts of things makes me happy because i'm personally ruled by mercury and virgo, though that sign is apparently no longer aligned with its namesake constellation because of procession, a phenomenon i chose not to investigate because i felt it safe to assume it was some kind of drag ball.
late summer. during this time of year in japan the japanese open their letters by asking the addressees if they're keeping it together through the "remaining heat." i supposed for a moment that maybe "lingering" is more appropriate, but, then again, maybe not, because the less pessimistic probably think of the late summer heat as what's left (as in "this is all we have left of it/him/her"), and the written character in question can also be used in describing farewells and mementos. in any case, the heat in portland this past weekend was anything but a remainder, more a reminder that our june and july were only spotted with sun and unmemorably cool. the sustained greyness of the mornings of late had most of the rose city resigned to a sad slide back into fall and winter. but the weekend heat has remained through today and is hopefully going to remain for the month of september, more than long enough to give portland a full (enough) summer and not cause us to sigh (too much) that we're already reading ads and articles on the opening of cyclocross season, which seem to be printed earlier and earlier every year.
yesterday, at the end of a long day of eating (perhaps i should use quotes there because the day was in fact so dubbed from before mara, tim and i met nathan in the morning at sympatica), i took a not especially long ride through the late evening. the sun had dropped, most of the heat had lifted, and a breeze had come to take their place, but the air looked still in the way that causes city lights to shine brighter and more focused and makes details stand out in hyperreal relief. as i rode north on interstate ave from the east end of the steel bridge, i saw the half moon larger and lower over downtown than i'd ever paid attention to it before, and it continued moving with me falling gradually lower along its course until it finally went behind the west hills just at the point where i would have had to look unsafely far back over my shoulder to keep tracking it. nothing so special or significant, really, but the renewed promise of a real summer had me positively sappy. plus, i'd just recommended that mara read snow country earlier that day, and that scene with the moon was not unsimilar to the the image of the eye reflected in the frosted train window in the beginning of the book, the eye that moves steadily with the train across the snow and the lamplight barely visible on the other side of the window. someday i will have a really profound moment that hasn't already been interpreted for me on the page or the screen.
or not. and from the sound of things i likely won't ever completely withdraw from sentimentality, either. but, brother, it's the heat. i swear. the dog days. sirius and the virgin have nothing to do with each other (unless you're REALLY into the details of japanese culture), but late summer does also mean birthdays for portland's many many virgos, and with those (ours) an arbitrary benchmark from which to justify the reflective raison d'etre of this post.
things only ever get different, and sometimes harder, but only to the extent that we're wearily confronting the same issues over and over again in different physical or philosophical environs. so it's nice that we have seasons and cycles, both as reminders and excuses, but they say the weather's just something to talk about so that we don't have to talk about something else. (i hear they're even talking about the heat this year in new york, though.) then again there's always just letting the talking about the weather do the talking for us. pointless style over substance maybe, but if the substance is loth to improve, all the more reason to really get into the style. feeling ugly on the inside? blame the rain or blame the sun, but just talk about the weather. and make sure to wear something nice.
late summer. during this time of year in japan the japanese open their letters by asking the addressees if they're keeping it together through the "remaining heat." i supposed for a moment that maybe "lingering" is more appropriate, but, then again, maybe not, because the less pessimistic probably think of the late summer heat as what's left (as in "this is all we have left of it/him/her"), and the written character in question can also be used in describing farewells and mementos. in any case, the heat in portland this past weekend was anything but a remainder, more a reminder that our june and july were only spotted with sun and unmemorably cool. the sustained greyness of the mornings of late had most of the rose city resigned to a sad slide back into fall and winter. but the weekend heat has remained through today and is hopefully going to remain for the month of september, more than long enough to give portland a full (enough) summer and not cause us to sigh (too much) that we're already reading ads and articles on the opening of cyclocross season, which seem to be printed earlier and earlier every year.
yesterday, at the end of a long day of eating (perhaps i should use quotes there because the day was in fact so dubbed from before mara, tim and i met nathan in the morning at sympatica), i took a not especially long ride through the late evening. the sun had dropped, most of the heat had lifted, and a breeze had come to take their place, but the air looked still in the way that causes city lights to shine brighter and more focused and makes details stand out in hyperreal relief. as i rode north on interstate ave from the east end of the steel bridge, i saw the half moon larger and lower over downtown than i'd ever paid attention to it before, and it continued moving with me falling gradually lower along its course until it finally went behind the west hills just at the point where i would have had to look unsafely far back over my shoulder to keep tracking it. nothing so special or significant, really, but the renewed promise of a real summer had me positively sappy. plus, i'd just recommended that mara read snow country earlier that day, and that scene with the moon was not unsimilar to the the image of the eye reflected in the frosted train window in the beginning of the book, the eye that moves steadily with the train across the snow and the lamplight barely visible on the other side of the window. someday i will have a really profound moment that hasn't already been interpreted for me on the page or the screen.
or not. and from the sound of things i likely won't ever completely withdraw from sentimentality, either. but, brother, it's the heat. i swear. the dog days. sirius and the virgin have nothing to do with each other (unless you're REALLY into the details of japanese culture), but late summer does also mean birthdays for portland's many many virgos, and with those (ours) an arbitrary benchmark from which to justify the reflective raison d'etre of this post.
things only ever get different, and sometimes harder, but only to the extent that we're wearily confronting the same issues over and over again in different physical or philosophical environs. so it's nice that we have seasons and cycles, both as reminders and excuses, but they say the weather's just something to talk about so that we don't have to talk about something else. (i hear they're even talking about the heat this year in new york, though.) then again there's always just letting the talking about the weather do the talking for us. pointless style over substance maybe, but if the substance is loth to improve, all the more reason to really get into the style. feeling ugly on the inside? blame the rain or blame the sun, but just talk about the weather. and make sure to wear something nice.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
ON ATTITUDE; or, VIVA MARIA!
last december i set myself a mission to get invited to as many company or organization holiday parties as i could. my success was pitifully meager (in the end, i suppose, the mission was an oblique success), but i did manage to garner an invitation to the party of one portland architecture firm which was held at the event space of a restaurant downtown. the catering was satisfactory, and the bar was open; but the most exciting part of that part of the evening was my having been allowed to attend as a couple with monique, whose affections were being sought by a junior employee of the firm. ultimately, though, i was happy to make an early exit, especially after the president or founder or some whomever cornered me in the hallway to the toilet and tried to introduce his very young daughter to "the best dressed man at the party." (i went to that party with my girlfriend, and goddammit i was going to leave it alone!)
in what at the time i self-satisfyingly mused to be a funny internal pr move to promote the company's hipness to its own employees (or maybe just to keep the attention of their younger guests), dj beyonda (of portland soul night fame) had been booked as the party's entertainment. after the first half of her set, the dj, a friend of friends, and i were chatting about another mutual acquaintance, designer john blasioli, and about how i'd hoped to have him make me a pair of pants for looking good at flamenco. casey (djs are people too) was immediately excited, and that was the first time that i remember anyone outside my dance circle comment on the undeniable sexiness of a male flamenco dancer. i didn't disagree.
as it turned out (though i wasn't surprised -- this is portland after all), casey was also friends with a woman from my dance studio, and that woman had invited her to an event that night that casey was very obviously upset at not having been able to attend. i was also aware of the event as it was a regular thing featuring one of the guitarists who works with solo flamenco arts academy where i take classes. but fortunately for me, i had no obligation to the present situation, and it was still early enough for me to make it across the river in time for the second half of the flamenco set. and besides, elliot was now wooing monique much harder under the effects of the complimentary booze. if the main attraction at the party where i was presently was wishing to be somewhere that i could in fact be, it seemed almost deliberately flippant not to choose the second option. proud that everyone at the architecture party had now switched to the champagne cocktails i'd been ordering and enlivened by the few i'd had myself, i walked my black velvet ass across the burnside bridge to where the action was.
mark ferguson's saturday night guitar performances used to happen at the maiden, a spanish themed restaurant and bar formerly at se 7th and morrison, before it was sold last month. that particular evening, the solo flamenco crowd was getting together to welcome someone -- i can't remember whom -- back to portland from spain or somewhere, but probably from spain. all i really remember is a mood: a raucous welcome from across the front window as i walked past toward the entrance -- and complete rapture on the other side of the door where i met a room full of friends drunk on the guitar and the cante. wine too, probably; it is, after all, flamenco. for my part, i did my best just to keep a decent rhythm with my hands. the palmas are harder than you'd think. not that any of it should seem easy.
it's difficult also to convey the spirit of flamenco without sharing it. and i say so less out of fear that i haven't the ability to give a description as that my still nascent abilities as a flamenco might keep me from writing beyond a sentimental and rarified "occidentalism" (if you will). people talk about flamenco as a journey. people talk about duende, a frustratingly contextual term that describes expressivity and authenticity and "soul" (again, if you will). the one book i've read on flamenco, a guitarist's memoir, seemed to sum it up in smoking black cigarettes and snorting cocaine off the dashboards of stolen cars with gypsies. flamenco, as with most art, is difficult to describe because of all of the easy and attractive clichés available to describe it.
sadly, the maiden is gone, and we've yet to find a replacement venue for informal solo flamenco gatherings outside of class. a small setback, but one we'd quickly like to overcome. not that morale at the studio is ever low. frustration during one class or another, sure. desperation, however, is something that might be brought to flamenco as fuel for its expression, but it's not the result. what's more, maria bermudez was at the studio this week teaching dance workshops, and a flamenca could hardly be more inspiring.
i'm not up on my solo flamenco lore -- there are sure to be ghosts in that past to which i'm happy to wait to be introduced, but i have gathered that maria is a grande dame of that matrilinear family tree, and her visits are duly and piously anticipated. posters of her past performances decorate the back wall of the studio, and her steps and style have permeated every level of class.
i was not one of the students shouting and hugging maria before the first of monday's workshops. in fact, and to the contrary, i was terrified even to have enrolled. last year's workshops had been so beyond my ability that after the first day of class i danced in constant dread of being singled out for remedial instruction. it didn't help at all (at all) that i was the only man at the workshop, which presumed maria's singling me out to run through the differences in how she was leading the ladies and the less florid (though still pretty florid) braceos reserved for male dancers.
this year, although i felt much better prepared in my technique, maria's commanding presence still had me looking for a spot at the back corner of the studio. the other students and i were there to train on bulerías, a fast twelve beat rhythm that is often the first flamenco palo taught to new students and the last one mastered. it's a go to dance for parties and informal performances and is highly improvisational and heavy on the contratempos, especially in jerez de la frontera, the andalucian city where flamenco is supposed by some to have originated and where maria has lived for many years.
"alright chicas," maria ended our warm up, "...y chicos," and met my eyes in the mirror. i recalled having the same thing happen the previous year (and she would continue to announce not having forgotten me multiple times throughout the workshop), but instead of last year's absolute mortification, i felt encouraged -- maybe even challenged -- but also touched at possibly having been remembered. i thought it more likely that my sense of encouragement was a result of my technical progress, but there's really something about maria.
maria is a flamenca. and despite the tautological seemingness of that statement, it's really all that needs to be said. she's a compelling artist and an endearing personality for sure, but my failure to really embrace her during her last visit to portland had little if nothing to do with any matter of engagement. rather, it was rooted in my very un-flamenco wariness toward really giving myself over to what maria was teaching.
when people talk about flamenco they talk about compás. the word is used generally in spanish music theory to refer to a time signature, but in flamenco denotes a complete rhythmic cycle. (for example, the bulería's compás is in twelve, but it isn't unimaginable that it be scored in successions of one measure in 6/8 followed by two in 3/4.) compás is fundamental to the communication between flamenco musicians and dancers, and determines the onset and resolution of the different sections of a flamenco dance. ultimately, though, it's an understanding and a reflection of feeling through experience. (to toss another cliché on the pile:) being "in compás" is a similar quality to "having rhythm," not just being able to count one.
during the second day of the bulerías workshop, maria stopped class to demonstrate how we could recombine the remates and recoges and desplantes from the sequence we'd worked on to construct a different dance, to mix it up for a jeurga maybe. she could. we tried. the important thing, she said, was to stay in compás. "the compás is king. rey!" the point of course being that, particularly with the bulerías, the steps themselves were subject to a larger groove, and that if you could manage to keep yourself in it you'd be fine, so nothing to be afraid of, right? "you can do nothing, as long as it's in compás." of course there were limits, too, to that (daunting?) artistic freedom. maria stopped class again to work with me on a different exit than the women were learning: "you're a man. you have to do footwork. you don't have a choice. and, you know, es mi gusto." so i smiled and stumbled through the footwork.
i'm still not confident on all of the steps maria taught us during this recent bulerías workshop. but the lesson seems to have been to learn the confidence and not necessarily the steps -- and not in any cheesy self-help, inspirational message kind of way. flamenco is about owning it: knowing that you look damn fine in those pants and that the stage is yours once you've taken it. no one has anything better to do than to watch you strut. so strut. (or don't, maybe. but keep it in compás.) after we'd nearly master a phrase, maria would turn away from the mirror toward the class. "alright chicas...y chicos [smile in my direction], this time let's do it a tempo [nervous smiles exchanged between students] and with a little bit more actitud. si? con fuego." maria would then dance a phrase "straight" before repeating the same phrase per her meaning. needless to say, maria's straight interpretations were much more thrilling than the fuego i managed to put into my own dance, but i was content with missing some things to act the badass.
by day three, summer had made what by now might be its final return to the northwest for this year, and the temperature at solo flamenco was pushing ninety. we drilled longer and faster than either of the two days before. twenty dancers sweating bravado to the cacophony of a flamenco drill set is something special. maria's feelings on that last day of workshops were bittersweet, not because of the inevitable goodbyes but because after two grey days the sun had come to portland just in time for her to leave. she might have had some luck with the weather if she was on her way to seattle, but i couldn't gather whether it was there she said she was headed next or to l.a. the gaggle around maria that formed between the bulerías workshop and the next one was the same gaggle that had greeted her on monday.
i didn't stay to chat, but not for any want of excitement or inspiration. unfortunately, my legs were finished after the bike ride home (i took the long way and counted the compás in my head), but it was too late to practice and not bother the upstairs neighbors then anyways. not to worry, though. i could practice tomorrow and borrow anything i couldn't reenact on my own from another student at class on saturday. as maria imparted to the class while trying to teach us the timing on one of the remates: "siempre es penultima." it's never your last chance. there will be another time. hopefully that also bodes well for this year's holiday party season as well.
in what at the time i self-satisfyingly mused to be a funny internal pr move to promote the company's hipness to its own employees (or maybe just to keep the attention of their younger guests), dj beyonda (of portland soul night fame) had been booked as the party's entertainment. after the first half of her set, the dj, a friend of friends, and i were chatting about another mutual acquaintance, designer john blasioli, and about how i'd hoped to have him make me a pair of pants for looking good at flamenco. casey (djs are people too) was immediately excited, and that was the first time that i remember anyone outside my dance circle comment on the undeniable sexiness of a male flamenco dancer. i didn't disagree.
as it turned out (though i wasn't surprised -- this is portland after all), casey was also friends with a woman from my dance studio, and that woman had invited her to an event that night that casey was very obviously upset at not having been able to attend. i was also aware of the event as it was a regular thing featuring one of the guitarists who works with solo flamenco arts academy where i take classes. but fortunately for me, i had no obligation to the present situation, and it was still early enough for me to make it across the river in time for the second half of the flamenco set. and besides, elliot was now wooing monique much harder under the effects of the complimentary booze. if the main attraction at the party where i was presently was wishing to be somewhere that i could in fact be, it seemed almost deliberately flippant not to choose the second option. proud that everyone at the architecture party had now switched to the champagne cocktails i'd been ordering and enlivened by the few i'd had myself, i walked my black velvet ass across the burnside bridge to where the action was.
mark ferguson's saturday night guitar performances used to happen at the maiden, a spanish themed restaurant and bar formerly at se 7th and morrison, before it was sold last month. that particular evening, the solo flamenco crowd was getting together to welcome someone -- i can't remember whom -- back to portland from spain or somewhere, but probably from spain. all i really remember is a mood: a raucous welcome from across the front window as i walked past toward the entrance -- and complete rapture on the other side of the door where i met a room full of friends drunk on the guitar and the cante. wine too, probably; it is, after all, flamenco. for my part, i did my best just to keep a decent rhythm with my hands. the palmas are harder than you'd think. not that any of it should seem easy.
it's difficult also to convey the spirit of flamenco without sharing it. and i say so less out of fear that i haven't the ability to give a description as that my still nascent abilities as a flamenco might keep me from writing beyond a sentimental and rarified "occidentalism" (if you will). people talk about flamenco as a journey. people talk about duende, a frustratingly contextual term that describes expressivity and authenticity and "soul" (again, if you will). the one book i've read on flamenco, a guitarist's memoir, seemed to sum it up in smoking black cigarettes and snorting cocaine off the dashboards of stolen cars with gypsies. flamenco, as with most art, is difficult to describe because of all of the easy and attractive clichés available to describe it.
sadly, the maiden is gone, and we've yet to find a replacement venue for informal solo flamenco gatherings outside of class. a small setback, but one we'd quickly like to overcome. not that morale at the studio is ever low. frustration during one class or another, sure. desperation, however, is something that might be brought to flamenco as fuel for its expression, but it's not the result. what's more, maria bermudez was at the studio this week teaching dance workshops, and a flamenca could hardly be more inspiring.
i'm not up on my solo flamenco lore -- there are sure to be ghosts in that past to which i'm happy to wait to be introduced, but i have gathered that maria is a grande dame of that matrilinear family tree, and her visits are duly and piously anticipated. posters of her past performances decorate the back wall of the studio, and her steps and style have permeated every level of class.
i was not one of the students shouting and hugging maria before the first of monday's workshops. in fact, and to the contrary, i was terrified even to have enrolled. last year's workshops had been so beyond my ability that after the first day of class i danced in constant dread of being singled out for remedial instruction. it didn't help at all (at all) that i was the only man at the workshop, which presumed maria's singling me out to run through the differences in how she was leading the ladies and the less florid (though still pretty florid) braceos reserved for male dancers.
this year, although i felt much better prepared in my technique, maria's commanding presence still had me looking for a spot at the back corner of the studio. the other students and i were there to train on bulerías, a fast twelve beat rhythm that is often the first flamenco palo taught to new students and the last one mastered. it's a go to dance for parties and informal performances and is highly improvisational and heavy on the contratempos, especially in jerez de la frontera, the andalucian city where flamenco is supposed by some to have originated and where maria has lived for many years.
"alright chicas," maria ended our warm up, "...y chicos," and met my eyes in the mirror. i recalled having the same thing happen the previous year (and she would continue to announce not having forgotten me multiple times throughout the workshop), but instead of last year's absolute mortification, i felt encouraged -- maybe even challenged -- but also touched at possibly having been remembered. i thought it more likely that my sense of encouragement was a result of my technical progress, but there's really something about maria.
maria is a flamenca. and despite the tautological seemingness of that statement, it's really all that needs to be said. she's a compelling artist and an endearing personality for sure, but my failure to really embrace her during her last visit to portland had little if nothing to do with any matter of engagement. rather, it was rooted in my very un-flamenco wariness toward really giving myself over to what maria was teaching.
when people talk about flamenco they talk about compás. the word is used generally in spanish music theory to refer to a time signature, but in flamenco denotes a complete rhythmic cycle. (for example, the bulería's compás is in twelve, but it isn't unimaginable that it be scored in successions of one measure in 6/8 followed by two in 3/4.) compás is fundamental to the communication between flamenco musicians and dancers, and determines the onset and resolution of the different sections of a flamenco dance. ultimately, though, it's an understanding and a reflection of feeling through experience. (to toss another cliché on the pile:) being "in compás" is a similar quality to "having rhythm," not just being able to count one.
during the second day of the bulerías workshop, maria stopped class to demonstrate how we could recombine the remates and recoges and desplantes from the sequence we'd worked on to construct a different dance, to mix it up for a jeurga maybe. she could. we tried. the important thing, she said, was to stay in compás. "the compás is king. rey!" the point of course being that, particularly with the bulerías, the steps themselves were subject to a larger groove, and that if you could manage to keep yourself in it you'd be fine, so nothing to be afraid of, right? "you can do nothing, as long as it's in compás." of course there were limits, too, to that (daunting?) artistic freedom. maria stopped class again to work with me on a different exit than the women were learning: "you're a man. you have to do footwork. you don't have a choice. and, you know, es mi gusto." so i smiled and stumbled through the footwork.
i'm still not confident on all of the steps maria taught us during this recent bulerías workshop. but the lesson seems to have been to learn the confidence and not necessarily the steps -- and not in any cheesy self-help, inspirational message kind of way. flamenco is about owning it: knowing that you look damn fine in those pants and that the stage is yours once you've taken it. no one has anything better to do than to watch you strut. so strut. (or don't, maybe. but keep it in compás.) after we'd nearly master a phrase, maria would turn away from the mirror toward the class. "alright chicas...y chicos [smile in my direction], this time let's do it a tempo [nervous smiles exchanged between students] and with a little bit more actitud. si? con fuego." maria would then dance a phrase "straight" before repeating the same phrase per her meaning. needless to say, maria's straight interpretations were much more thrilling than the fuego i managed to put into my own dance, but i was content with missing some things to act the badass.
by day three, summer had made what by now might be its final return to the northwest for this year, and the temperature at solo flamenco was pushing ninety. we drilled longer and faster than either of the two days before. twenty dancers sweating bravado to the cacophony of a flamenco drill set is something special. maria's feelings on that last day of workshops were bittersweet, not because of the inevitable goodbyes but because after two grey days the sun had come to portland just in time for her to leave. she might have had some luck with the weather if she was on her way to seattle, but i couldn't gather whether it was there she said she was headed next or to l.a. the gaggle around maria that formed between the bulerías workshop and the next one was the same gaggle that had greeted her on monday.
i didn't stay to chat, but not for any want of excitement or inspiration. unfortunately, my legs were finished after the bike ride home (i took the long way and counted the compás in my head), but it was too late to practice and not bother the upstairs neighbors then anyways. not to worry, though. i could practice tomorrow and borrow anything i couldn't reenact on my own from another student at class on saturday. as maria imparted to the class while trying to teach us the timing on one of the remates: "siempre es penultima." it's never your last chance. there will be another time. hopefully that also bodes well for this year's holiday party season as well.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
WHO THE HELL IS CARRIE BROWNSTEIN?
or, rather, who the hell is carrie brownstein to trump my authority and get an absurdist television comedy series on portland? sure, she was raised in the northwest and has lived in portland twice as long as i have and she's a culture writer for npr. oh yeah, and she was in that band.
"portlandia" (after that ominous statue on top of the portland building downtown -- she wants YOU!) is set to run for a series of six shows on ifc in 2011. the whole series will film on location in portland. angry bicycle messengers and gender queered* punk rock couples??? no one even asked me to consult! i had to find out from the just out blog, and then only by the strange chance that i happened to be reading at that blog today for the FIRST TIME EVER. (by the way, just out, i'd be happy to very humbly contribute my skill and expertise to your fine publication either online or in print.)
ironic, though, that i should bemoan not having my own television showcase for the irony of commentating on the hilarity of the irony of rejecting the irony that is everything portland cool. and that's just an alanis morissette irony anyway, defensible only because ironic has so come to synonymize hip, which portland inarguably -- sometimes painfully -- is.
my only solace is hoping that ifc has fewer subscribers than 'looking good in pants' does...and that if any one of those half dozen people also live in portland that he or she will have me over next year to watch the show. we can have parties! with themes! we do those so well. does anyone know corin tucker's address? i bet she has premium cable.
*by all accounts, that sketch is a cross-dressed performance of identity performance. kudos, ms. brownstein.
"portlandia" (after that ominous statue on top of the portland building downtown -- she wants YOU!) is set to run for a series of six shows on ifc in 2011. the whole series will film on location in portland. angry bicycle messengers and gender queered* punk rock couples??? no one even asked me to consult! i had to find out from the just out blog, and then only by the strange chance that i happened to be reading at that blog today for the FIRST TIME EVER. (by the way, just out, i'd be happy to very humbly contribute my skill and expertise to your fine publication either online or in print.)
ironic, though, that i should bemoan not having my own television showcase for the irony of commentating on the hilarity of the irony of rejecting the irony that is everything portland cool. and that's just an alanis morissette irony anyway, defensible only because ironic has so come to synonymize hip, which portland inarguably -- sometimes painfully -- is.
my only solace is hoping that ifc has fewer subscribers than 'looking good in pants' does...and that if any one of those half dozen people also live in portland that he or she will have me over next year to watch the show. we can have parties! with themes! we do those so well. does anyone know corin tucker's address? i bet she has premium cable.
*by all accounts, that sketch is a cross-dressed performance of identity performance. kudos, ms. brownstein.
Monday, August 9, 2010
ON PERMITTED AND PROTECTED SIGNALS
the oregon driver manual is stubborn and unwilling to negotiate. my personal copy is also wet from insisting on coming to the bath with me instead of another book. the oregon driver manual is also wildly jealous of all the time that pretty much everything else spends getting read. he wants to keep you safe and happy, but you just can't stop poring over that bawdiness and those cheap frills.
the kids say the written test is pretty tough. hopefully friday is a pass. i'll wait to break up with the manual until then.
the kids say the written test is pretty tough. hopefully friday is a pass. i'll wait to break up with the manual until then.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
MODERN FOLKLORE
courier coffee is joel domreis.
joel domreis looks good in pants, but his pants are looking a little worse for the wear. the dark grey coated-denim ones he bought at the end of last year aren't so dark anymore and show the hand smeared trails of coffee grounds all the better as a result. the rain and the sun will do that to pants, and joel is out biking in them (the pants, in the rain and the sun) every day.
courier coffee roasts and delivers by bike in portland, ore., and that's what the header at the courier coffee blog will let you know right away. but that's not all there is to know about courier coffee, or about joel domreis.
joel got his start as a coffee roaster in his backyard or his garage or somewhere -- with a hand torch. he's had some informal tutelage from stumptown (indie rock starbucks, in case you've forgotten), but that was more through his own persistence and refusal to be discouraged than any effort by stumptown to share with another local, although back then stumptown still was one. and through that same indefatigable persistence, joel/courier maintains a small roasting facility near se 40th and hawthorne out of which he/courier has been headquartered for the last half decade or so.
courier coffee is served at restaurants that have, over the years, been named some of the best in portland, as well as at, over the years, some of portland's best cafes. the half & half cafe, a longtime fixture of portland's "indie rock block" (don't think stumptown this time) between sw 9th and 10th on oak st near powell's, was an exclusive purveyor of joel's coffee until it closed its doors this past spring.
that closing, though, proved a boon for joel and courier coffee (and for all of its devotees, including the employees of nearby wieden+kennedy, whose overtime tested tastes have compared the effects of joel's coffee favorably to those of other ad agency tested stimulants) -- as the space previously occupied by the half & half is now the site of the first independent courier cafe.
the courier cafe is still very much a work in progress. joel and his employees have yet to work out a solid accounting system, and the cash taken across the (native) walnut coffee bar is, for now, kept on a clipboard next to the clean ceramics. (thieves be warned, joel's already loyal clientele are ready to brawl.) but if the current state of affairs is a reflection of things at their shakiest, the courier cafe is positioned for success.
the nascent atmosphere is sophisticated and carefully designed, but still manages to be comfortable and welcoming. the current cafe can seat just as many patrons as its previous incarnation but with another half dozen stools available at the bar. the furnishings are sleekly uniform, and the high walls are white, this month decorated with prints of photographs of late night bike fun by gus van sant and warhol factory candids of break dancers and jean-michel basquiat -- pretensions that would be off-putting if the place weren't joel's. but joel is courier coffee, and the man makes the space.
on friday, joel -- ever the mad scientist -- talked about his plans to spend the weekend remaking an espresso machine for an account (courier cafe is as yet only open five days a week, and courier coffee still diligently makes all of its daily deliveries), while lamenting that he hadn't been home for three days and had been washing his face using the reflective side of the cafe's synesso as a mirror. and fondly, somehow, after a crazy first week of operation, joel also recalled contemplating a night on the roof after having been locked inside the space by an employee. whether that night was the result of playfulness or exhausted oversight is an argument that resolves on either side in favor of the special character of the courier cafe.
as of yet there isn't capacity for siphon brewing, a luxury fad that pulls many a pretty penny from customers at other downtown cafes, but there was talk of installing a milk tap with "flashturization" mechanisms in the ceiling for use in fancy concoction of espresso drinks. when pressed on the milk tap's sensibility toward the bottom line, joel admitted that a malt beverage would surely be a more profitable option, but then added that beer by the bottle is really how to bring in the green.
joel was counting his hours of missed sleep in his reflection at the synesso when jonathan maus of bikeportland.org showed up to take pictures. jonathan had a cup of drip and tried the specially made pineapple upside down cake instead of going for one of the affogatos that joel and his employees were pushing that day. surprisingly, the courier cafe is the only place in portland serving them, and for anyone who really needs convincing, a shot of espresso over a cup of vanilla ice cream is a taste and texture experience worth at least double the three dollars listed on joel's meticulously handwritten menus.
the bar discussion at 3:00 p.m. was over whether to play a mötley crüe record or an r. kelly one (the latter won out), and joel seemed excited to be only four hours away from the end of his first week of storefront business. one of his two staff baristas had just shown up with burritos. joel was hungry, and who can say how long he'd gone on just coffee. a couple came in the door just as he was getting the paper off his late lunch and joel bristled: "are these friends of ours?" ever the intrepid businessman, joel didn't want to present a sloppy image. coffee stained, rain drenched, sun baked pants notwithstanding: "i don't think we should be eating behind the bar."
joel domreis looks good in pants, but his pants are looking a little worse for the wear. the dark grey coated-denim ones he bought at the end of last year aren't so dark anymore and show the hand smeared trails of coffee grounds all the better as a result. the rain and the sun will do that to pants, and joel is out biking in them (the pants, in the rain and the sun) every day.
courier coffee roasts and delivers by bike in portland, ore., and that's what the header at the courier coffee blog will let you know right away. but that's not all there is to know about courier coffee, or about joel domreis.
joel got his start as a coffee roaster in his backyard or his garage or somewhere -- with a hand torch. he's had some informal tutelage from stumptown (indie rock starbucks, in case you've forgotten), but that was more through his own persistence and refusal to be discouraged than any effort by stumptown to share with another local, although back then stumptown still was one. and through that same indefatigable persistence, joel/courier maintains a small roasting facility near se 40th and hawthorne out of which he/courier has been headquartered for the last half decade or so.
courier coffee is served at restaurants that have, over the years, been named some of the best in portland, as well as at, over the years, some of portland's best cafes. the half & half cafe, a longtime fixture of portland's "indie rock block" (don't think stumptown this time) between sw 9th and 10th on oak st near powell's, was an exclusive purveyor of joel's coffee until it closed its doors this past spring.
that closing, though, proved a boon for joel and courier coffee (and for all of its devotees, including the employees of nearby wieden+kennedy, whose overtime tested tastes have compared the effects of joel's coffee favorably to those of other ad agency tested stimulants) -- as the space previously occupied by the half & half is now the site of the first independent courier cafe.
the courier cafe is still very much a work in progress. joel and his employees have yet to work out a solid accounting system, and the cash taken across the (native) walnut coffee bar is, for now, kept on a clipboard next to the clean ceramics. (thieves be warned, joel's already loyal clientele are ready to brawl.) but if the current state of affairs is a reflection of things at their shakiest, the courier cafe is positioned for success.
the nascent atmosphere is sophisticated and carefully designed, but still manages to be comfortable and welcoming. the current cafe can seat just as many patrons as its previous incarnation but with another half dozen stools available at the bar. the furnishings are sleekly uniform, and the high walls are white, this month decorated with prints of photographs of late night bike fun by gus van sant and warhol factory candids of break dancers and jean-michel basquiat -- pretensions that would be off-putting if the place weren't joel's. but joel is courier coffee, and the man makes the space.
on friday, joel -- ever the mad scientist -- talked about his plans to spend the weekend remaking an espresso machine for an account (courier cafe is as yet only open five days a week, and courier coffee still diligently makes all of its daily deliveries), while lamenting that he hadn't been home for three days and had been washing his face using the reflective side of the cafe's synesso as a mirror. and fondly, somehow, after a crazy first week of operation, joel also recalled contemplating a night on the roof after having been locked inside the space by an employee. whether that night was the result of playfulness or exhausted oversight is an argument that resolves on either side in favor of the special character of the courier cafe.
as of yet there isn't capacity for siphon brewing, a luxury fad that pulls many a pretty penny from customers at other downtown cafes, but there was talk of installing a milk tap with "flashturization" mechanisms in the ceiling for use in fancy concoction of espresso drinks. when pressed on the milk tap's sensibility toward the bottom line, joel admitted that a malt beverage would surely be a more profitable option, but then added that beer by the bottle is really how to bring in the green.
joel was counting his hours of missed sleep in his reflection at the synesso when jonathan maus of bikeportland.org showed up to take pictures. jonathan had a cup of drip and tried the specially made pineapple upside down cake instead of going for one of the affogatos that joel and his employees were pushing that day. surprisingly, the courier cafe is the only place in portland serving them, and for anyone who really needs convincing, a shot of espresso over a cup of vanilla ice cream is a taste and texture experience worth at least double the three dollars listed on joel's meticulously handwritten menus.
the bar discussion at 3:00 p.m. was over whether to play a mötley crüe record or an r. kelly one (the latter won out), and joel seemed excited to be only four hours away from the end of his first week of storefront business. one of his two staff baristas had just shown up with burritos. joel was hungry, and who can say how long he'd gone on just coffee. a couple came in the door just as he was getting the paper off his late lunch and joel bristled: "are these friends of ours?" ever the intrepid businessman, joel didn't want to present a sloppy image. coffee stained, rain drenched, sun baked pants notwithstanding: "i don't think we should be eating behind the bar."
Friday, August 6, 2010
ON DERIVATIVE CALCULI
'looking good in pants' will spend the month of november in japan, likely only in tokyo but elsewhere provided funds and hospitality (please send information on candidates for generous benefaction).
however, knowing that we'll spend at least a grand on airfare we're set now on tacking on at least five days at another exotic locale.
goddamn self-realization. and the internet! cheap multi-stop flights be praised and be damned. but the potential second destinations we've searched all share a common theme: go to hong kong and imagine ourselves passing secret lovers in the street a la "in the mood for love" (that first scene of maggie cheung and tony leung passing on the staircase to shigeru umebayashi's "yumeji's theme" is maybe the most beautiful phrase in cinematic history); go back to budapest and track down every site from the shooting of "evita;" go to stockholm and bounce between the thrilling ambiance of the stieg larsson trilogy and the quiet resignation of "let the right one in;" go to madrid and study with the dancers that inspired carlos saura's "carmen."
walker percy's the moviegoer shouldn't have eluded us for so long.
however, knowing that we'll spend at least a grand on airfare we're set now on tacking on at least five days at another exotic locale.
goddamn self-realization. and the internet! cheap multi-stop flights be praised and be damned. but the potential second destinations we've searched all share a common theme: go to hong kong and imagine ourselves passing secret lovers in the street a la "in the mood for love" (that first scene of maggie cheung and tony leung passing on the staircase to shigeru umebayashi's "yumeji's theme" is maybe the most beautiful phrase in cinematic history); go back to budapest and track down every site from the shooting of "evita;" go to stockholm and bounce between the thrilling ambiance of the stieg larsson trilogy and the quiet resignation of "let the right one in;" go to madrid and study with the dancers that inspired carlos saura's "carmen."
walker percy's the moviegoer shouldn't have eluded us for so long.
HOW TO MAKE CULTURE, part 3; TREND ALERT
ladies: the newest thing is shaving your head and wearing a wig of your own hair. you'll need to grow it out some to have enough for a wig of your current style if you're looking to keep it. so get growing! you don't want to be left behind. (then you'll be declasse AND bald.) just think of how much easier it will be to wear all of your other wigs! an intellectual and fashion statement all in one.
this is my intellectual property, but you can come over as long as you use a coaster.
this is my intellectual property, but you can come over as long as you use a coaster.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
HOW TO MAKE CULTURE, part 2; PSA
"tranny" has replaced "dude" for all common usages of that word. it happened almost two years ago, and in five years, when all of you are tossing "tranny" around left and right, i will have moved on to something cooler. we'll keep you posted.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
HOW TO KICK A DEAD GIFT HORSE
that portland's food scene is innovative, diverse and widely acclaimed should be pathetically old news to anyone who surfs the dining, entertainment, style or travel sections of any major newspaper. (that's the "widely acclaimed" part.) foodies absolutely love portland, and portland is proud to bask in the international culinary limelight so long as the limes didn't come from anywhere farther away than california. local food sourcing is an important matter of pride here, no surprise in a city that supports dozens of microbreweries and coffee microroasters (stumptown coffee, by the way, is just indie rock starbucks and has been for at least the last three years so don't be fooled). as with many of the people involved in the hipper corners of portland's music and art scenes, portland's gourmands are able to embrace an insular and sometimes provincial brand of homegrown sophistication so long as it's recognized and publicized as such by a more cosmopolitan media.
well it's more than just hype. portland's restaurants are, in fact, very good -- and astoundingly varied, to the point that portlanders often feel confounded by choice. there's delicious fare for diners of every taste, dietary preference and economic or social disposition. new restaurants are popping up all of the time; and although the characterless ones are immediately marked and destined for failure from the start, others have found success despite the continuing recession and a patronage that is steadily more unemployed. it's bizarre boom times, for sure. what's a local to do between bites but start looking the situation in the mouth?
the most visibly successful of portland's recent food ventures have certainly been the carts. this post at 'food carts portland' (there's a specific blog, yes) mentions a cnn/budget travel story that ranks portland as the top city for street food...in the world. the 'food carts portland' post also reports that there were 580 registered food carts in the city of portland as of july 20th. and those aren't all fried pies and french fries, although you can get those too. ask the guy at the desk at the boutique hotel where you're staying downtown for a lunch suggestion and that's where he'll refer you, or, more specifically to one of the four cart "pods" in central downtown.
it makes sense that a do-it-yourself city of entrepreneurial food lovers would look took the small scale, low overhead opportunities presented by the operation of a food cart as opposed to a brick and mortar restaurant, especially in a bad economy. plus, those original burrito ladies from half a dozen years ago seemed to be making a killing. (not so much the tamale lady that hocks up and down mississipi, but she just has a rolling cooler.) but do we really need two dozen on every commercial boulevard?
i love those original burrito ladies. despite my having tried foods from several other carts downtown to delicious satisfaction, la jarochita has my lunch dollars on most weekdays. the food at lupe's cart is authentic, affordable and damn tasty -- and i don't just say so because she gave me a la jarochita visor two summers ago or because once i got a free bottle of tapatio because the ladies were tired of filling me little plastic cups of the stuff for my to go orders. i don't so much eat dairy anymore, but i have to let myself indulge in a chili relleno burrito from la jarochita once every few weeks. the other burrito carts have nothing on lupe. the other carts in general have nothing on lupe, though there's sound reason behind others' wanting to replicate her success.
but 580? and with more still to come? there are new carts being set up in every empty lot or underused parking lot in portland. they do make it prettier, and the cart pod at se 12th and hawthorne staying open until 2:30 a.m. came as a welcome antidote to a theretofore citywide dirth of decent late night eats. the carts are definitely one of those things that portlanders know they've done more uniquely and free-spiritedly than other cities. and they talk about it. i used to talk about it. i'll still suggest that visitors try some cart food. in all honesty, i'd prefer that people support chefi's gourmet, the mexican food cart around two corners from my apartment that uses a strangely delicious white rice gruel in its burritos rather than the more traditional mexican rice, than go to ¿por qué no? across the street. (the brian's bowl is fresh and filling, but anything else just costs too much for food that should be served, well, out of a cart.)
the problem isn't the proliferation of street food. street food can be both exquisitely delectable and an easy gateway to a place's (food) culture. just go to the night market at the djemmaa el fna in marrakech or have a fish sandwich at the ferry pier in istanbul. eating late night ramen in tokyo is a sublime sensory experience, enhanced by knowing that the diners next to you are probably also a little tipsy and trying to let the tastes and sounds of the ramen stall distract them from having missed the last train. the problem in portland is more the reigning attitude of self-congratulation that drives droves of portlanders to the newly paved, atm equipped pod sites for sushi and escargot, especially when prices start crossing the six and seven dollar per item marks. (we have beautifully designed restaurants that serve foreign street food for top dollar, why not serve traditionally more formal dishes on the street!) i wouldn't be surprised if a pod of carts opened just to sell ethnically inspired pop rocks around a fountain of sparkling mineral water -- eight dollars a glass.
the season can't be a small part of portland's late food cart success, and the crowds at the carts outside downtown that aren't guaranteed regular lunch traffic aren't likely to be so eager come the cold and rains. not that anyone should be encouraged to fail, or that anyone should encourage failure, but there's a certain amount of inevitability associated with that world's number one street food ranking. no one wants to see the same old list twice, so there's bound to be some uncomfortable shifting before next year. so go to hell, gift horse. i don't need you. that's why i have a bicycle.
well it's more than just hype. portland's restaurants are, in fact, very good -- and astoundingly varied, to the point that portlanders often feel confounded by choice. there's delicious fare for diners of every taste, dietary preference and economic or social disposition. new restaurants are popping up all of the time; and although the characterless ones are immediately marked and destined for failure from the start, others have found success despite the continuing recession and a patronage that is steadily more unemployed. it's bizarre boom times, for sure. what's a local to do between bites but start looking the situation in the mouth?
the most visibly successful of portland's recent food ventures have certainly been the carts. this post at 'food carts portland' (there's a specific blog, yes) mentions a cnn/budget travel story that ranks portland as the top city for street food...in the world. the 'food carts portland' post also reports that there were 580 registered food carts in the city of portland as of july 20th. and those aren't all fried pies and french fries, although you can get those too. ask the guy at the desk at the boutique hotel where you're staying downtown for a lunch suggestion and that's where he'll refer you, or, more specifically to one of the four cart "pods" in central downtown.
it makes sense that a do-it-yourself city of entrepreneurial food lovers would look took the small scale, low overhead opportunities presented by the operation of a food cart as opposed to a brick and mortar restaurant, especially in a bad economy. plus, those original burrito ladies from half a dozen years ago seemed to be making a killing. (not so much the tamale lady that hocks up and down mississipi, but she just has a rolling cooler.) but do we really need two dozen on every commercial boulevard?
i love those original burrito ladies. despite my having tried foods from several other carts downtown to delicious satisfaction, la jarochita has my lunch dollars on most weekdays. the food at lupe's cart is authentic, affordable and damn tasty -- and i don't just say so because she gave me a la jarochita visor two summers ago or because once i got a free bottle of tapatio because the ladies were tired of filling me little plastic cups of the stuff for my to go orders. i don't so much eat dairy anymore, but i have to let myself indulge in a chili relleno burrito from la jarochita once every few weeks. the other burrito carts have nothing on lupe. the other carts in general have nothing on lupe, though there's sound reason behind others' wanting to replicate her success.
but 580? and with more still to come? there are new carts being set up in every empty lot or underused parking lot in portland. they do make it prettier, and the cart pod at se 12th and hawthorne staying open until 2:30 a.m. came as a welcome antidote to a theretofore citywide dirth of decent late night eats. the carts are definitely one of those things that portlanders know they've done more uniquely and free-spiritedly than other cities. and they talk about it. i used to talk about it. i'll still suggest that visitors try some cart food. in all honesty, i'd prefer that people support chefi's gourmet, the mexican food cart around two corners from my apartment that uses a strangely delicious white rice gruel in its burritos rather than the more traditional mexican rice, than go to ¿por qué no? across the street. (the brian's bowl is fresh and filling, but anything else just costs too much for food that should be served, well, out of a cart.)
the problem isn't the proliferation of street food. street food can be both exquisitely delectable and an easy gateway to a place's (food) culture. just go to the night market at the djemmaa el fna in marrakech or have a fish sandwich at the ferry pier in istanbul. eating late night ramen in tokyo is a sublime sensory experience, enhanced by knowing that the diners next to you are probably also a little tipsy and trying to let the tastes and sounds of the ramen stall distract them from having missed the last train. the problem in portland is more the reigning attitude of self-congratulation that drives droves of portlanders to the newly paved, atm equipped pod sites for sushi and escargot, especially when prices start crossing the six and seven dollar per item marks. (we have beautifully designed restaurants that serve foreign street food for top dollar, why not serve traditionally more formal dishes on the street!) i wouldn't be surprised if a pod of carts opened just to sell ethnically inspired pop rocks around a fountain of sparkling mineral water -- eight dollars a glass.
the season can't be a small part of portland's late food cart success, and the crowds at the carts outside downtown that aren't guaranteed regular lunch traffic aren't likely to be so eager come the cold and rains. not that anyone should be encouraged to fail, or that anyone should encourage failure, but there's a certain amount of inevitability associated with that world's number one street food ranking. no one wants to see the same old list twice, so there's bound to be some uncomfortable shifting before next year. so go to hell, gift horse. i don't need you. that's why i have a bicycle.
DONDE ESTAN LOS TODOS CHICOS AT?
in which a really kick-ass title is justified by slapdash musings at any cost
the boys in the band is an over the top camp fest that's worth the two hours because that's the cultural consensus. there's been a renewed buzz. it was a seminal production in raising the mass media profile of queer identity and succeeds as entertainment for the same reason: the camp fest as performance is staged nearly just as self-consciously today as it was at the end of the sixties. stonewall was no doubt responsible in part for the boys in the band making it from play to screenplay in 1970 (the live theater OF COURSE already a safe house for homosexual conceit), and a spat of dialogue in the film not so subtly argues over the artistic merits of those two mediums. but whether live or on screen, the boys' personalities are irrefutably caricatures, caricatures that decidedly prefer melodrama to allegory. is that in itself a homosexual tendency? or is that how discussions of homosexual identity tend because of works like the boys in the band. an old question, and a moot, uninspired one, really.
something else, then. if most of the current population is just as (or maybe even more) anxious and neurotic as the party of queens and fairies in the boys in the band, shouldn't everyone be having just as much fun? when sexuality became less contentious, did sex get screwed by the stamp of normality? probably not. that second question might be even more banal than the first. all those guys cruising donald in the opening sequence sure were smiling, though. and his friend gave him all those free books from doubleday! plus, credit was much harder to track back then, and apartments in manhattan were cheap! and either all those actors had glute padding or everyone in the summer of '68 looked impossibly good in pants. the grass is always greener behind the bushes in someone else's public park, perhaps. or rather, perhaps the boys in the band has absolutely no resonating cachet and it's no more use worshiping there than at the sacrifice of any other era or people's cultural gestalt.
on with the now, then! there's a buzz around mexico city...
the boys in the band is an over the top camp fest that's worth the two hours because that's the cultural consensus. there's been a renewed buzz. it was a seminal production in raising the mass media profile of queer identity and succeeds as entertainment for the same reason: the camp fest as performance is staged nearly just as self-consciously today as it was at the end of the sixties. stonewall was no doubt responsible in part for the boys in the band making it from play to screenplay in 1970 (the live theater OF COURSE already a safe house for homosexual conceit), and a spat of dialogue in the film not so subtly argues over the artistic merits of those two mediums. but whether live or on screen, the boys' personalities are irrefutably caricatures, caricatures that decidedly prefer melodrama to allegory. is that in itself a homosexual tendency? or is that how discussions of homosexual identity tend because of works like the boys in the band. an old question, and a moot, uninspired one, really.
something else, then. if most of the current population is just as (or maybe even more) anxious and neurotic as the party of queens and fairies in the boys in the band, shouldn't everyone be having just as much fun? when sexuality became less contentious, did sex get screwed by the stamp of normality? probably not. that second question might be even more banal than the first. all those guys cruising donald in the opening sequence sure were smiling, though. and his friend gave him all those free books from doubleday! plus, credit was much harder to track back then, and apartments in manhattan were cheap! and either all those actors had glute padding or everyone in the summer of '68 looked impossibly good in pants. the grass is always greener behind the bushes in someone else's public park, perhaps. or rather, perhaps the boys in the band has absolutely no resonating cachet and it's no more use worshiping there than at the sacrifice of any other era or people's cultural gestalt.
on with the now, then! there's a buzz around mexico city...
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