THURSDAY ROUNDUP MISCELLANY (IF ONLY WE'D MADE IT TO PENDLETON)

duchess is making us dinner this evening. our meal will be the first and last of this year's fall series, a nostalgic paean to the almost weekly dinners we shared over most of last september, october and november -- although the only thursday of that run was thanksgiving (duchess' first as hostess at that), the remainder of our meals together we shared on tuesdays.

tuesday evening was, of course, taken by the tao lin reading and then visits to ground kontrol and biwa with the author. i still haven't read richard yates, but i can tell you without doubt (doubting though that you'll take me at my word for my breach of professionalism) that tao lin is for real. wherefore my certainty? well, he's working on a long review of one of my favorite books from the japanese literary canon. enough said. the proof is in the pudding. (and the pudding, kids, is just the un-filed gobbledegook of my selfish grey matter.) biwa has a cocktail named after a kenzaburo oe book, but what would really shine on their menu is an almost transparent blue. i shouldn't review a book of tao's anyway, because we're essentially related now after he slept on my couch and i didn't hide the leopard print slanket on the side chair. is it still starfucking if you don't fuck?

that's a question for dinner. although we're never without topics for conversation, a lady does like to be prepared, and i've already today forgotten the purse. it's a shame that the pleasant weather won't give over to cold and rain just for tonight (and only until i have to leave on my crosstown trip home) so that we could reminisce properly over the soothing crackle of a duraflame in the fireplace. a girl can hope, i suppose, but as louisa may alcott put it: "boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats, and women must not expect miracles." hopefully i'll get the chance to play both parts tonight. i'm practiced, and duchess has directed the best.

she's also good with the silver and a hammer, and i'm getting that necklace back. rapture! i'll be needing to pull quite a few chers if i want to keep in all my characters.

HOW TO SOFTEN THE FALL

summer is over. or rather, fall is back in full force. i'm not so sure anyone in town would let me get away with calling what happened here over the last few months a summer. (i for one didn't get nearly the reading done i should have.) but whatever it was it passed, and that was abundantly clear two weekends ago during the three days of downpours. those passed though also, and the light is now very certainly autumn light, and i remember that this season can be really pleasant in portland, specifically in late september and early october -- which is to say the time before the rain won't stop again until our next unenthusiastic summer.

so now i'm looking forward to reading aurorarama. true, that's in large part because the marketing campaign succeeded on me. there was that. but as the days get shorter and the layers come on, i'm also excited for the anticipation of reading a literary adventure about ice and long nights and trash collectors dressed like plague doctors and well dressed night lifers trying to take the long-night-life of their arctic utopia back from the stranglehold of authority. of new venice in 1908 i'm imagining something like orhan pamuk's snow meets "steamboy" meets sin city.

in one of the two excerpted sections that i was able to find online there's a scene in which a character is eating at a street-counter swedish smorgasbord (that word is acceptable as english without the diacritics) when he's interrupted by two dapper thugs from the "gentlemen of the night." to flesh out the image i did a little investigation into the smorgasbord, apparently a something unto itself and not just indicative of a bounty. it turns out that there's something called a chinese smorgasbord as well, which originated in vancouver through the intercourse of scandinavian and chinese immigrants. the loggers and the fishermen wanted the restaurateurs to lay out their (already westernized) food the way it was done in scandinavia, and it was by the sustaining power of that union that a great nation was built. crazy kanucks. gosh. where would we be without books?

FANNING THE FLAMES, part 4; or, LEIGH ALEXANDER'S REVIEW OF THE NYT REVIEW OF RICHARD YATES SEEMS ANGRY

***update and correction, 9/29/10: leigh alexander probably uses female pronouns (i guess so after someone used them in reference to her after i asked his opinion of her essay), so i've changed all the potentially contentious/offending words in this post from yesterday. heaps of thanks to everyone who read this post then saw me last night and didn't say anything. or not maybe.***

there's much ado about irony in leigh alexander's response to charles bock's nyt review of richard yates at 'thought catalog.' alexander begins hisher essay by challenging bock's use of "ironic" in the opening paragraph of his review, comparing it to the (as heshe sees it) equally amorphous but media ready term "hipster," which, of course, is often used in close association with the more ironic (read here as "self-consciously mocking/tongue-in-cheek) uses of irony (ref. this blog).

unfortunately, alexander's liberal use of single quotation marks makes it difficult to tell where he'sshe's quoting from bock's review from where he'sshe's attempting to imbue certain terms with the significance of a contemporary cultural consensus; to force a general acceptance of a definition, so to speak -- or perhaps just to color the quoted terms with some sort of irony. as a result, though heshe makes a case for the significance of tao lin's novel beyond just its characteristic language (a case that could probably be argued more strongly if that language were treated as a reflection of the significance), alexander blurs hisher audience's focus on richard yates and veers toward diatribe instead.

no, i still haven't read the book; although i'll hear tao lin read from it tonight at reading frenzy (7 p.m., 921 sw oak). but as such (and being familiar with other of lin's works), i'd venture to say that i'm a respectably impartial judge of the efficacy of the different arguments being made around this new book. maybe i'll be inspired after tonight and read the book. we'll have to let the fire die down at some point.

in the meantime, the mediation. alexander's essay does make one solidly cogent point, even if it's only the linguistic one (let's just agree to accept the premise of this, hisher final paragraph, so that we don't have to countenance any possible fallacy of logic):

"Mr. Bock’s review, with its visible resentment, inaccuracies and naked anxiety, might be the largest item of evidence extant speaking to the relevance and efficacy of Richard Yates. And therein, at last, lies the quintessentially most-correct definition of ‘ironic.’"

right on, leigh. although...ironically(?), for an article titled "Charles Bock’s NYT Review Of Richard Yates Seems Angry, Factually Inaccurate," your response seems maybe too, um, angry.

ACTIVISM; or, ON WHAT NOT TO READ

it's banned books week. the powers that be in publishing and bookselling could surely have come up with an even more pointedly foolish term for what is, in fact, a celebration, but "freedom to read" et al. were probably already taken by military campaigns.

this week -- and you HAVE to do this by sunday or else the curse won't stick -- get out to your local library and request something that's been reviewed for removal, if not from your local library's collection then from a library somewhere ostensibly more concerned with the right upbringing of children. or at least get out there and launch a campaign to have a book banned. stephanie meyer is an easy and arguably deserving target, but i'd also suggest working to ban something like spoken from the heart, because there are other creatures of the night more nefarious than in meyer's castrated vampire fantasies. (i'd also ban salinger across the board just so that all the kids around town carrying incredibly conspicuous copies of nine stories can regain some of their credibility. if they had any. but you do just feel sorry sometimes.)

this blog is particularly familiar with certain recent banning efforts since we're also the central nervous system for the so called "homosexual agenda," stopping the spread of which is apparently central to most opponents' objections to good young adult fiction. the animosity of the book banners is though, in fact, pure vendetta -- the result of a crazy party that "h(omosexual)a(genda)!" had in fayetteville, arkansas during one of our organizational conferences. as such (or maybe in spite of it), i'm happy to have made a kind of penance for (or a proud admission of) my part in that debacle by gifting my niece the absolutely true diary of a part time indian last christmas. that book was removed from ninth grade english classes in crook county, oregon in 2008 for a passage discussing masturbation, but was reinstated after review by the crook county school board and its superintendent of schools. the stockton school district in missouri banned the book in april of this year.

if kids don't read about things like masturbation (we're a long way from actually teaching it), how are we going to properly equip them to spend their free time not asking and not telling during operation freedom to read?

ha.

FANNING THE FLAMES, part 3

i haven't read richard yates, and i don't plan to before i go to watch tao lin read from it at reading frenzy on tuesday, but there's no question that lin has made himself a mainstream name with this book. that jonathan franzen parody cover that the stranger ran turned out to be only the opening salvo of lin's fifteen minutes. richard yates has now also been reviewed for the nyt book review.

if, however, the reviewers are representative of popular opinion, it's looking like tao lin might have some trouble keeping the limelight. even the review in the portland mercury, sister paper to the stranger and the "indie-r" of portland's two weeklies, was consistent in its take on richard yates with the opinions expressed in less quaint/more industry minded outlets. lin's new book sounds essentially similar to his efforts in shoplifting from american apparel, which i did enjoy and appreciate, and the new book should resonate with a similar audience.

maybe. while extreme understatement and the language and manners of the chatting classes are undeniably characteristic of tao lin's so far very polarizing prose, an entire oeuvre dedicated to describing a laconic and anesthetized youth in petty revolt probably won't engender any sustained fascination, even for fans. which isn't to say that lin's style isn't careful and brilliantly expressive of his subjects and their mumblecore world. but as a statement, what lin has done in shoplifting from american apparel and richard yates can only be really profound once. should something perhaps start happening? the emotions we're reading are convincing, sure, but why not just get back to chatting ourselves? that's all i can really say, you know, not having read richard yates and all -- though the speculation no doubt helps convey on me the aura of an active and official book writer. no one at the oregonian has cracked a book since making staff, that's for sure. so if nothing else, it's good practice. not that i aspire to the oregonian, unless, that is, they want me.

maybe it's that i entered into my fascination with tao lin before all of this hullaballoo and the scales are starting to drop. being on trend isn't always flattering. (do you know ugg boots?) maybe i should just read the new book. but i'm seeing my copy of shoplifting from american apparel at the bottom of a pretty precarious stack, and it should take most of the spare time around my other reading to get it out. i do want to have it signed. we'll see.

ON GETTING THINGS DONE; or, HOW TO EXPLOIT AN EMPLOYERS' JOB MARKET

we didn't read this apparently "fascinating article" from the boston globe on the fate of authors' libraries after they die, but it's mention in a blog post at 'mobylives' entitled "the endless ephemera" that begins "what's to be made? what's to be saved?" did get us to thinking.

the idea that a library, or any collection of cultural material for that matter (especially a personal one), should might be engaged as a story representative of its curator(s)' artistic, philosophical and philological history is nothing new to modern epistemology, particularly within literary circles. samuel beckett was notably keen on the idea of a book of fiction put together entirely of linked quotations, passages lifted -- not plagarized, mind you, for the consciousness of the effort -- from other works and reassembled as a unique statement. that idea is central to michael kruger's the executor, in which one writer and scholar is appointed the task of locating a deceased (and somewhat estranged) friend's masterwork amid the piles and shelves of his literary and academic estate. the work, it seems -- although the executor leaves his original search to get lost in the back streets of memory and its interpersonal demands -- might be the shelves and the piles themselves, mapped by the deceased in a code of aggregated quotations.

too academic for this blog, you say? fie! the point is that we wonder to what or to whom the 'looking good in pants' library should be devoted once our illustrious blogging career has ended. what does or should it say about us? or, what does and should it say about whom? (read the death of the author by gilbert adair for an impressively intricate, postmodern tail chase of that idea.)

there should at least be a catalog. so! we're accepting applications for an intern. pay is negotiable; but really, we hold all the cards. all are welcome to apply, and application materials will be judged solely on merit. standout candidates will be asked for an interview. it should go without saying, but biting wit and snappy dressing are musts.

update: we did read the article. now probably on to wittgenstein's mistress.

THE ALL CASCADIA KICKBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS

it was raining at overlook park in portland, ore. u.s.a. for the all cascadia kickball championships on saturday afternoon. the vancouver, b.c. contingent had arrived well ahead of anyone else and was camped underneath a large deciduous tree that let only some -- though in larger droplets, it seemed -- of the rain through its leaves and branches. in addition to three coolers filled with who knows what, there were a dozen cases of beer piled near the players' cheering accessories, all of it purchased, incidentally, for the price of a single sixer in canada. beer and kickball, it seemed, were as synonymous as beer and canada, so the show would go on (and well fueled), even for the rain.

not that the rain is anything that should phase anyone who'd call herself a cascadian, but this was the first weekend that the weather had confirmed the passing of summer, and there was palpable regret at overlook park over the lack of sun for the event. if kickballers are going to get wet, they'd prefer to do it head first into home base on the slip and slide. the weather did, however, keep seattle from showing. at three o'clock, an hour past the scheduled beginning of the championships, portland's team of select competitors (apparently there are close to two hundred teams here) had arrived to meet the canadians, but it was clear that no one would be coming to represent washington. not that anyone was surprised. once more with feeling!: seattle, well, i'm sorry.

thank god, portland! you brought a tent. it may be a rose city taboo to open an umbrella, but portland knows that fall sports heckling is best done from the easy comfort of shelter, and that tree wasn't really coming through. what's more, now there'd be dry spectating from a vantage nearer the diamond. the spectating was fine, too, since team moon wolf mandates short shorts on each of its players. the flea market outside chinatown got credit for most of team vancouver's jerseys -- but who knows where that one girl got that wolf head merkin. as time and game moved on, her team members weren't wearing much more below the waists. what had probably started the morning in seattle as proper jeans were cut further and further up the moon wolves' thighs, sometimes to the marked chagrin of their teammates more eager to get on with the game. "you two, stop scissoring. we need another dick in the field."

vancouver went up early. and big. there was a scoreboard behind home that passing players turned every time they came through, and it showed ten to zero in favor of the canadians before the end of the first inning. perhaps portland hadn't expected their rag tag opponents to be any competition and hadn't yet put their heads in the game. after all, the canadians are known for their lassitude when it comes to procedure, and it wouldn't have been unexpected had portland not expected vancouver to perform under the rules (strictly enforced except for the length of the game) of america's national pastime. but the moon wolves shined under the pressure that grey afternoon -- if not under any big lights to mark the scale of the match-up. by the fifth of seven innings, portland hadn't managed to answer a single point to vancouver's fifteen. the moon wolves howled.

it was a different kind of howl, though, that echoed through the tent when a report from the camp at the tree came to inform the managers that the stock of beer had almost been depleted. america must have been poaching from the north, an incisive metaphor for something, no doubt, and it seemed to have worked to their advantage. while it's possible that the moon wolves had merely drank too much and passed their booze to performance acme, portland's rally in the final innings was just as likely a result of americans' not-so-secret pinch kicking advantage: they can do everything better drunk. when the final out of the final inning was made (a one handed catch, probably; a suitable close to a game in which the choice between saving a beer and making a play is the measure of dedication in both directions), portland had narrowed its point deficit to under ten. under five, even? besides portland's creepily fastidious manager, no one seemed to be counting at that point.

and that was it. with no team from seattle, vancouver had won itself the all cascadia championships with its one victory. there was a to-do over a trophy (like the merkin, who can guess the origin of the jumping dolphins?), but more commotion over the beer run, which was obviously going to be an imperative precursor to the friendly game to be played next, this one with canadian rules, which is to say there'd be hardly any, or at least to say aim for the head. cheers. and then whatever they say in canada.

one-hundred and forty-one dollars and twenty-two cents bought one-hundred and seventy-four beers that made it back to overlook park just in time for the rain to pick up and for teams to be picked. and for the teams to shotgun one of whatever they could find in a can from the new pile. it was hard to say how things went in game number two with no one keeping score, although someone must have been counting outs, because the teams kept switching sides; but there was really no being sure of that either. after twenty? thirty? minutes, the sheets of rain that were battering the diamond had, all of a sudden it seemed, chased most of the portland players off of the field -- but not under the tent, so they must have just gone. a shame, or a deferential tribute maybe, that they didn't leave with their share of the one-hundred seventy-four. an admission of defeat at any rate. vancouver, the all cascadia kickball dolphins jump for thee.

really, though, rain? it's only september. but the crowd cheered, most of it still on the field. "take of your shirts!" it was the man himself yelled it, and the crowd obliged, still cheering. pants would surely have come next were the wet post-scissor shorties not a point of vancouver pride. "this is my place and my time," their smiles seemed to sing in unison, and the jewel of the west shone down brilliantly from the true north. ironically, this was a foreign place, but it was as unanimous as the elation (remember how many beers?) that this couldn't have happened anywhere else. portland does, after all, know irony.

HOW TO LIVE THE LIFE; or, ON READING AUTHENTICITY

"what do you have for scotch?" the menu was just a beer and cocktail list. "what do you like?" "i don't know, i've never had any." "just branching out?" "no, i'm trying to get literary drunk, and i thought that would be a good place to start." "should i just have the bartender recommend something?" "moderately priced. ask the bartender for a moderately priced scotch." even though i'd been assured that literary drunk was like rich drunk in that it's ok to drive afterwards, i'm no rich literary drunk.

the scotch was warming like people say it's supposed to be. that's the effect that i noticed until my appointment tapped me on the shoulder and indicated his table. i don't know what to say about what we said to each other. there was no shortage of words, for sure. it was just that sort of a meeting. and a first meeting, at that, so there was more than enough material for conversation.

he brought me books. i shouldn't have put them away so quickly, in case our conversation alone wasn't enough to convince the staff and non-literary clientele of the victory of our credentials. being literary requires donning the pretensions of elite culture without owning any shares in its means. there are of course wealthy members of the literary set (the rich literary drunks that i'm not), but on any occasion they are resolutely more one than the other (that is, more literary or more rich) and can be judged in their authenticity by their every pattern of speech and behavior. but since authenticity requires pretense, the act is a delicate one, rich or not. we succeeded -- i think -- without any need for props. thanks scotch. where would we have been had i opted for the well?

the scotch and two whiskeys and michael asks if i'm literary drunk yet. "i think so. yes." we had two (?) more whiskeys to be safe before we started drinking beer. everything started on the record after we were sure we were there, but you can listen to the recordings for details -- or read their distillations later, that, after all, (which is to say writing), was the purpose of our night. that and jonathan franzen's glasses. portland does have a characteristic style, doesn't it? "the hipsters here seem happier."

ha! i'll have to stay for a while then. "stop, though. tranny, i know there's no company card."

ABOUT LAST NIGHT

i never read this article ("the web means the end of forgetting") from the july 25th issue of the nyt magazine, but it sat on the coffee table for at least a month because the pictures in the article were cute. they got it -- and oh were they clever! -- so i assumed that i got the article too without having to put in the time. it's good advice. shoulda taken it last night. will someone press my ctrl identity + alt + delete adolescence keys? that's for the record.

HOW TO...OH! IS THAT MY BAG?; or, PORTLAND, A LOVE STORY; or, HOLY SHIT! DRIVEL.

did someone really spill wine on this shirt? and i just had it made... true that shirts are the least expensive to send, and i understand that you're unfamiliar with the hassle of dry cleaning, but it does still cost money. the bartender got me a drink, yeah, but that wasn't unexpected. rather, there were expectations without your intervention. ungrateful? no. i'm sorry. god. was that my bag? i swear the floor is slanted.

i should be quiet. this isn't my party; but still, thanks for coming. we're so glad you could make it. darling, i know! you only turn thirty once, and i just celebrated the first of my twenty-ninth birthdays. it's the goddamn virgonics. we just congregate here, the late august and early september birthdays. so people in this city should understand then that it's nothing small for us to put on a good shirt and go out to the bar. this bar. clean, smart and picayune.

yes acquaintance that i can't quite remand to any specific introduction, i appreciated your invitation, but i just couldn't be there that other time. and no, i don't smile in photographs. my laugh lines are setting. vanity is a cruel master, HAHAHA. your movie? so's my book. yes, if you don't mind, but just because you're going to the bar.

the blogger and the jewelry designer. all grown up! he IS cute, though. you couldn't have blamed me. or balm-ed me, my first and impulse correct misspelling. i honestly have to say that i think that i was set up for failure that night. sticking to that story. not tonight. no i won't. i'm on a budget, you understand. that night, though, going dutch, that you got fancy for me because we could call it a special occasion. i did have a good time.

oof. a white rose? doesn't she know what that means? please believe me. if we weren't so catty together we couldn't have gotten over the other hurdles. thirty is beautiful on you, but, for me, i really should have committed to twenty-six. and he's, what, twenty-three?

find something on the internet and just go with it. write. but i'll spend that thirty minutes of necessary reading instead on the bicycle doing laps of the neighborhood to tonight's soundtrack. tonight's whatever soundtrack. shuffle makes for surprising profundity after four...or five? which ones were comped and who bought me something?

virgo. you're the smell of too early chimney fires when everyone else just wants to pretend that 80 degrees today portends something benevolent. the portent of the storefronts is benevolent now too. the smell's not so bad. let it rain. and then, break in the soundtrack. "hey, forrest." i won't ruin this by veering into his wheel. i'm not sure if i'm wearing my helmet. "no, just riding before i go home to type." "do you usually ride to come up with ideas?" "i guess i just, you know, ride." you can't smell it, though, so i shouldn't have brought that up. people are good tonight. fundamentally.

i'm dabbing and the spot is just bleeding. is this even going to come out if i take it in? i just went to the goddamn dry cleaner. really? and it's the half of the ideas that i thought were good when i was listening to that whatever important and doing my laps that aren't finding you.

i REALLY don't have the time. but it's the ten minutes in the morning to free write and spare myself the rest of the waste that are the ones that, well, they apparently cost more than this damn shirt. i digress. quantity wins tonight. and the smell. why else would i write on the porch? just make something up, or use the internet -- or the chickens. we're all always good for a laugh. i smiled for that one, even for the lines.

why did i do laundry? i can't be bothered with dressing the bed.

thanks for coming to my party.

RAISON D'BLOG

as of monday 9/6, 'the reading experience' is no longer being maintained as that blog in its original form. instead, its author plans to post at four new blogs: 'the reading experience 2.0,' which will feature reviews of new fiction, short critical essays and posts on general literary history; a first side blog that will treat only american authors the majority of whose careers fell in the period of the twentieth century after world war ii; a second side blog to amalgamate and direct readers to posts from throughout the wider lit crit world; and one last side blog devoted to more academic writing (e.g. reviews of academic books on contemporary fiction). it seems that the task of consistently and coherently accomplishing all of those other tasks at just one outlet became either counterproductive or simply counter-intuitive or a writer so deft at analysis and classification.

the blogosphere isn't going anywhere; and in fact, it's moves like these that should be proof enough that intelligent (or maybe just curious) readers will support the efforts of intelligent (or maybe just dedicated) independent internet writers. the old problems of quantity and the resultant difficulties surrounding sourcing/searching do persist, but we should by now have recognized that quality is achievable and has been achieved, and is encouraged by readers' demands and not just a narcissistic desire on the part of bloggers to self-publish (which continues to be at once our biggest fear as concerned readers and our biggest joy as idle writers). if you still don't agree (we clever people often mistake our stubbornness for being principled), a distillation of 'the reading experience' 1.0 is available as a paperback for $17.00. if we aren't allowed another wave of inspiration this week (bookslut's success story should have been enough for us, it's true), at least we can allow ourselves the pride of having understood that a blog is, if nothing else, a great vehicle for launching a book. buy mine.

where to? division and specialization, apparently. late stage capitalism. no big surprise there. but that the world of belles lettres has become more widely accessible to both consumers and purveyors might just mean that the internet is making good on that promise it made us for a new freedom for information. remember? it was right before we all settled for porno anyway. better to have loved and lost and all that. ...what elephant? let's not talk about money. just leave an envelope on the dresser. i'm too inspired for qualms this morning.

VANCOUVER EPIC

paul and i started the day at the elysian on w broadway, paul -- more sensitive to the double-edged effect of caffeine than even i am -- having been inspired (against his better judgment but most certainly by aid of my encouragement) to jack himself up before our ride after a double espresso on commercial the evening before had him mumbling about needing to do some hills at well past eleven.

a cup of drip costs as much as an espresso drink at elysian, so i opted for a double americano, which i did my best not to immediately empty while i waited for paul to sip his shot. elysian's cafe on broadway is l-shaped, with the menu, register and espresso machines directly across from the entryway and a line of stools set up under a ledge in the front window to one side of the door. the space recedes back into the interior of the building from the end of the bar. it ends at a cement wall decorated with a large digital print of several dozen brown women sorting green (coffee) beans. the photo is well placed, and its effect is expansive -- and not just because the spatial perspective of the photo is the same as the room's as seen from the end of the bar. the women in the photo are seated at their work in nearly the same configuration as the customers enjoying their product at the ten or so tables in the bottom of the l. sorters and sippers alike looked happy, but i made a point of reading the caption of the photo in hopes that it wasn't only decorative. for better or worse, it was just descriptive, though the simple juxtaposition imposed by the picture is probably more stimulating than any half-assed agenda that the cafe might have tried to push through a cleverly written statement. it's reminder enough not to raise an eyebrow at paying $2.50 for a drip coffee -- although the beans for sale at the counter were from intelligentsia, and you can't help but wonder how much margin happens between british columbia and chicago.

paul finished his espresso, and i, excited and because what the hell i was on holiday (that's how i pretend to imagine they'd say it in canada), chased my americano with a good measure single shot. out the door but before setting out for our goal, we hopped onto the bicycles and backtracked a few blocks to city hall. after all, every epic needs a prelude. plus, i like to make it a point to read a few historical placards while i'm in town so that my trips aren't just new iterations of drinking (coffee) elsewhere. vancouver city hall was built some time in the 1930s on a hill across false creek from downtown. canadians are bold. rather than build their municipal center at the center of the city, vancouverites chose to position their city hall where it would command southern views from the city center. there's a clock at the top of the tower. a clock trimmed in red neon. it was 10:30 already: well past go getting time, so we went.

we took cambie st across the water into downtown, where cambie turns into smithe, which we took for a few blocks before zig zagging our way to 99 and the entrance to the stanley park causeway. destination: horseshoe bay. even though i know the northwest and just generally knew better, when paul announced our plans i pictured a long, sandy beach covered in sunning crabs. more likely that the bay took its name from its shape and not the native fauna, horseshoe crabs after all not being native to british columbia. whatever. there'd be enough to look at on the way to not require me imagining anything past what we would pass. the first of that -- and of the hills -- was in the park.

the causeway runs out of the west end of downtown vancouver into stanley park, then up through the park and under the viewing platform at prospect point to the base of the lions gate bridge. paul was too polite (i can't imagine it was timidity after the espresso) to pass the two women riding side by side in the bike and pedestrian avenue in front of us, so our climb through the park was slow and easy, the causeway also being the least steep of the few approaches to the bridge. the ladies ceded us the left before i gave myself the chance to impose ourselves on them and, luckily, just as the view of north vancouver was opening up through the trees.

and then the bridge. the view of the north district and the mountains behind it was as striking as it had been the night/morning of the dance party at prospect point 36 hours earlier, but with the decidedly different and special magic of a cool and intermittently overcast late summer morning in the northwest. the headwind and the vista were, very literally, nearly enough to lose me my self control. i'd only crossed the lions gate once before, that time too on bicycle, but i'd switched my pedals from the fixed gear that morning to put them on something with gears from paul's magic garden bicycle basement, and the long bridge descent quickly reminded me of my near crippling fear of high speed coasting.

paul and i, sadly separated by eight hours on amtrak, are of a piece. bikefag be praised, we both struggle with straddling our identities as fixie hipster douches and ironic road racists, one unnecessarily high end performance bike shoe in each world. while neither of us actually race, we do love a good ride, and it's tough, as such, to find good and sympathetic company in either of our cities. while visiting a bike cooperative in victoria two years ago, i came across a decal for sale that i'm sure was meant as a sneering joke but that fits paul's bike-style perfectly. i ended up getting the "my other bike is a colnago" sticker for a friend of a friend in portland, but that was before paul had been to the police auction. i asked paul how much his fluted-diamond tubed vintage colnago had cost him, and he lamented somewhere in the range of 600. "but i had to pick up a bunch of other stuff, too. they came as a package." oh canada.

not wanting to be sold short, i had paul put me on his charming 80s yellow pinarello, which, but for the brake cables running out the tops of the old hoods that put me in constant danger of carelessly snagging my left hand and veering out of control when i went to wipe my face, more than suited my needs, ability and aesthetic pretensions.

beyond a short series of off ramp turns and lane changes at the north end of the bridge, our route took us onto marine drive, which moves traffic from north vancouver to the west and all the way to the bay. past the easy rolling of marine through the shopping centers in west vancouver, the road hits a pretty and posh residential area that affords riders a beautiful view of vancouver's southern peninsula across the burrard inlet, but the price of the view is very much the end of the easy rolling. as marine heads further into the west bay, it turns into series of closely spaced up and downhills that were a frustrating challenge for me, the under experienced shifter. it would seem that the west hills anywhere are the west hills everywhere.

paul consistently dropped me on every ascent as i consistently dropped my chain trying to master the nuances of the pinarello's friction shifters. we weren't, however, put the shame of being passed: the kitted-out west van dentists and their cervelos were all of them already headed back towards town. the serious weekend warriors start early and do their coffee at the bay. i would venture to guess that the manhattan to nyack circuit runs something similar, and that paul and i were probably in a similar suit to the handful of brooklyintes that make that trip on any given sunday. i'm sure that the return trippers looked at paul and i with reciprocal scorn, both of us in our black three-quarter lenghts, paul with his u-lock in the back pocket of his vintage jersey and me with my shoulder bag over my v-neck tee. it might be time to retire the fixed gear altogether: vintage bike road rides are definitely the new ironic hip.

i caught up to paul halfway up one of the more serious inclines on marine, and his throes weren't, unfortunately, just from the climbs: my "what's up pauly?" was answered with a retch and a brown glob spat up on the roadside. i apparently shouldn't have encouraged his caffeination, especially since neither of us had thought to fuel up on anything substantially caloric. but paul didn't seem all that put out -- minus the return on the espresso, the hills just bring on the gags per his telling -- and we fled the scene before any of the well-heeled denizens of the west bay had a chance to level any accusations of our smudging the beauty of their neighborhood.

marine finishes its course into horseshoe bay in grand style with two long downhill charges separated by a flat stretch that's home to the west bay yacht club, where paul and i would have stopped to refuel had we remembered our jackets. déclassé, i know, and what shameful incapacity! oh well. and also alas, because once we rolled into the bay we'd already made a tacit agreement to avoid however possible having to go the backward direction on those declines. good thing we took some time to take in the scenery. i bought a couple of postcards and a dozen stamps to post the cards i'd already written. i also paid ten plus tax for the sunday times. oh canada. at least we'd have the puzzle at lunch. fish and chips: it's the bay. and we needed the sugar from the ketchup. no horseshoe crabs, but the fir lined mountains coming down to meet the ocean won the day for british columbia. ligia oancea knows what she's singing about.

there's really no way but up from horseshoe bay unless you're taking the ferry to bowen island, so paul and i were forced up to re-catch marine before being forced to make a decision on our return route. at the roundabout before the hill to the yacht club paul steered us onto the exit that led to the intersection of the sea to sky and trans-canadian highways. "the highway's graded, so we'll just have to climb to elevation and won't have to deal with the ups and downs over and over after that." i didn't understand why we'd want to ride on grates, but paul had done well hosting the ride up until that point so i was happy to put my faith in canadian benevolence to get us home. it turned out that the climb onto the trans-canadian wasn't anything more demanding than what we'd already done, and once we were on the highway i was welcomed beyond all happy expectation to a completely unexpected surprise. the trans-canadian has a three meter berm...and is marked for cyclists. there's a bike lane on hwy 30 in portland as far as sauvie island, but there's no high speed road that would compare to this. oh. fucking. canada. and hey big ring, i'd forgotten about you.

dear downtown vistas, i left my heart in canada. the mists were rising again along the water, and the city seen from the highway ridge had me wondering about someday riding the number one all the way to calgary. it was smooth going for several miles (i was tired and couldn't think in metric any longer) until we exited back into north vancouver and had to find our way back onto marine. if the pinarello's vintage brake hoods were cause for concern before, that was nothing compared to the terror they wreaked on my hands bombing back down to the water. not only was i coasting fast and loose down a steeper slope than anything else we'd done that day, but i'd not brought my gloves on my trip, and the grating on my thumb joints was enough to have me ask paul that we do a zig zag instead of directly connecting the dots by the quickest route. we got there. no collisions. and that was less my fault than for the conscientiousness of north vancouver's sunday drivers.

i'm only in town for four days, and who knows when i'd be able to take this ride again, right? so, instead of taking the lions gate back south into the park, paul put us along the water going east. apparently there was another bridge. we got there after passing at least two stands of weekend fresh fish markets and being drafted by two forty-somethings for two miles along the railroad tracks that connect the rest of canada to vancouver's north side granaries. i get cranky for those sorts of things, but paul reassured me against railing too hard on our guests. "it's nice for them to try to hang with the young guys." i'd be 29 in a day and a half. if for nothing else, it was nice to be reminded that there's older than that.

the other bridge is awful. it's a part of the number one, so we could have probably exited directly onto it. the iron workers' memorial bridge they call it, because a catastrophe took however many iron workers to their deaths there during its building. it's no less of a horror now, at least on a bicycle. i was ahead of paul by that point, and after about half of the ascent (it just rises and falls for a little over a quarter of a mile each way) i'd committed myself to just looking at my pedals until i felt the tension quit, but a hundred rotations in i couldn't help but look up and see how much pain i had left. the bike/ped way is only a few feet wide, and traffic was raging past on our left. keep smiling. at least the descent didn't make that too hard, especially since the trail that connected the southern end of the bridge to whatever road took us back to east vancouver was an under maintained asphalt trip delightfully reminiscent of two years of cyclocross failures.

the v-neck was soaked. a half century was about all my underfed hipster douche legs could take. paul reads minds, and read mine uncannily that afternoon. i haven't any idea what road got us back to east hastings, but as the city buses started passing us i knew we weren't far from back in town. paul rolled us up to the astoria, unbidden, for our post-ride purchases. we waited in turns with the bikes outside while the other one made his buy. twelve something for a sixer of pabst? after the times and the postage, i couldn't afford to stay in character. my game was cheap and domestic by that point. and, in that vein -- and by the way -- couldn't one of my friends find me a canadian to marry?

beers in the bag and a dozen blocks to strathcona park for sunday soccer. no, i wouldn't be playing, but i wasn't going to move from that grass for anything for the next few hours. the sun had finally beaten the clouds in that day's battle, and self-prescription and the end of the puzzle were all i needed. it didn't hurt that the shirts were coming off either. "you're from portland? i LOVE portland." tell me something we don't know. and massage my cramps out while you're at it. hey, i mean, we're both standing guard for thee, true north strong and free, even if i haven't yet taught my quads the anthem.

[can't picture it? pauly plotted a map.]

SUMMER VALEDICTORY; or, THE NEW GIRL IN TOWN, part 2 (but no sort of continuation)

although this correspondence between jessa crispin and michael schaub on the founding of their online literary magazine bookslut (this month celebrating its 100th issue) claims itself to be "mostly incredulous," you should believe it. to restate: it can happen; and it can happen out of notes on cocktail napkins with a slate of contributors that only includes a half handful of friends and your sister -- and it's nice to have something inspiring to live vicariously through on the second full day of grey and rain to interrupt what came up to us last week in portland and presented itself as an honest, trustworthy and providing late summer. the hope of hopes, really, after being shamefully reminded that we never should have let our guard down and put any faith in that godawful daytime star.

bookslut's portland reading series commences 9/24 at reading frenzy, presided over by schaub, who's still struggling to get accustomed to our unique ways here in the rose city. come out and help the new transplant see how portland lambastes an author. you've got two and a half weeks to practice your eye rolls and lip curls. oh, and free pabst, by the way. schaub has, ahem, done his reading. the victim? tao lin, in town to promote his new book richard yates. sloppily high-minded fun for all! and if you believe what crispin and schaub have to say about bookslut history, we can probably even get you laid.

HOW TO START THE WEEK OFF RIGHT; or, STARTING YOUR WEEK OFF RIGHT: YOU'RE WELCOME

you'll need some coffee in the morning to get you started after the long weekend, whether you were dossing in lament of the passing summer and are heading back to the grind or if our time off found you selflessly working at plying us workadays with caffeine and alcohol. a solid source inside the company tells us that courier coffee has started roasting for billy wilson. stumptown coffee's comeuppance is long overdue, and though wilson also sources from intelligentsia and ritual (and a 33g handful of other wide cast micro-roasters), wethinks that this move bodes well for the rose city's real local roasters. owner joel domreis has been busy with the new cafe, leaving alex geddes at the helm of courier's roaster. so far, no complaints.

joel could be said to have followed in wilson's footsteps after recently buying jeff heisler and robin rosenberg's half & half cafe at 923 sw oak, wilson having purchased that duo's second venture on 13th in the pearl last year (or thereabouts). a good faith gesture on wilson's part, then? or is the city just craving more courier?

who can say just yet. but. spotted: billy wilson gloomily presiding over a nearly empty house at barista alberta. the tides and times do change. drink up, ladies. the morning is young.

HOW TO SELL YOURSELF WHAT YOU'VE ALREADY BOUGHTEN; or, ON SURPRISE SELF-DELUSION

flavorwire recently posted a list of the top 10 bookstores in the united states. guess which one topped the list? we don't know where two through ten are because we stopped after confirming powell's. now we don't feel so bad about shirking our book browsing responsibilities in canada. and it's just five blocks from work...

portland, it's your subtle charms and exhibitionist delight in them that keep me running back into your arms. how long can i stand to stay away?

MY PORTLAND TIS OF THEE, SWEET LAND OF BEER FOR FREE

where else but our neck of cascadia are you going to be invited to a late summer hop picking barbeque? brewers ben flerchinger and casey lyons were on hand at the se lucky labrador for their annual fresh hop party, where the beer (triple threat and got hops ipas) flowed freely for anyone willing to pick. portland had a relatively wet summer, so the pub crops weren't what they usually are; but guests brought crops from their own gardens and labored happily over fresh draft pints and bites from the grill. all the hops picked during the barbeque are gathered together for one batch of fresh hop beer which, not caring what varietals their friends might bring to the party, the brewers rightly call the mutt. lucky lab beer already packs the punch of your grandma's hooch, and i can only wonder at how hopped up the people who'd had the oils of the plants all over their hands from three o'clock got by nine. no matter, really, so long as they tipped the girl at the kegs. smile for the camera, portland. this one's for you.