Tag: New York City

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NYC Blizzard of 2010 / Books I read in 2010

Snow storm in NYC

Him: “Streetsmart?” That’s what stupid people say when they don’t like to read or know anything about anything.

Did you have a nice holiday? Hope you did. Didn’t do much myself, just saw the folks and ate my weight in Chinese good. Nuthin beats homemade food, yeah?

Just got in from shoveling a ton of snow in the UWS. About two feet of drifts where I am. NYC’s pretty for about 20 minutes in times like this. Then everything turns grey and icy.

Since I’m working from home today, figured that I’d read. Don’t think I ever told you but I’m a business book reviewer for the New York Journal of Books. Read twenty-one books for them in 2010:

  1. The Power Formula for Linkedin Success
  2. Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business
  3. Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms
  4. Never Get a “Real” Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business, and Not Go Broke
  5. SuperFreakonomics, Illustrated Edition
  6. Comebacks at Work: Using Conversation to Master Confrontation
  7. The Referral Engine
  8. Rework <- Excellent book
  9. How the Mighty Fall . . . And Why Some Companies Never Give In <- ditto
  10. The Law (in Plain English) for Photographers
  11. The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers
  12. Mastering the VC Game
  13. Design Is How It Works
  14. Linchpin
  15. The Wisdom of Bees: What the Hive Can Teach Business about Leadership, Efficiency, and Growth
  16. The New Rules of Marketing and PR
  17. The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics
  18. Living Trusts for Everyone: Why a Will Is Not the Way to Avoid Probate, Protect Heirs, and Settle Estates
  19. Legal Guide for the Visual Artist
  20. How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish Without a Trace
  21. Free: The Future of a Radical Price <- ditto

Probably read about 25 books total this year. Use to read a lot more but I’ve been sleeping better so that’s gone down a bit.

Did you read any good books this year?

Location: my warm living room
Mood: cozy
Music: She looks around There are snowflakes on the ground
YASYCTAI: Stay in if you’re in NYC. It’s horrid out. (24 hrs/0.5 pt)
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Aerelon: No one that was born poor wants to stay poor

Mona Lisa on a NYC Building

1983
Me: Why do I have to know what a salad fork looks like?
Him: (exasperated) Because, one day you’ll sit down with people that have a fork for salads and you’ll need to know which one to use. Now’s what’s that?
Me: Soup spoon.
Him: (beaming) Yes, soup spoon. That’s right. Good.

Thanks for taking the time to write a comment or email. Found it all really interesting the very different views people had. It’s funny but minorities & native-New Yorkers saw one thing (the second exchange) while non-minorities & non-New Yorkers pretty uniformly saw another (the first exchange).

As I wrote, that was the entire conversation; she never even bothered to respond. And rather than deal with any of the points I made, she sniffed, “Ugh, Logan, ugh! Privileged sentiments bore me.”

Like Nietzxche said, “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” She’s so smugly certain she’s right, she has no need to respond to new information.

Switching gears, you can always tells someone that used to be fat. They lumber. They walk as if they still carry the weight.

When I did lose the weight, onea of first things I did was ask my mom to buy me a nice sweater. She brought me to Alexander’s and I picked out a grey sweater from a bin. Got it big just in case I got fat again.

Wore that sweater proudly cause I got it at a department store. At the time, we didn’t usually get our clothes from a department store. When I told Grace in school about it, she laughed and said that only poor people shopped at Alexander’s and that I probably got it from the bargain bin. So I put the sweater away and only wore it at home.

It took me years to unlearn how to walk like fat person. Just like it took me years so that people didn’t immediately say, “You sound like you’re from Queens.” And years to know that what other people think of me is nonea my business.

Still, gotta admit that “privileged sentiments” made me pause. But not for reasons y’might think.

That I don’t sound like someone born to penniless immigrant parents outside an industrial park in Queens, New York, I take as a particular compliment. No one that was born poor idealizes it, only rich folk that have no clue.

Take it as a testimony to those parents who made sure, even though we grew up with halfa nuthin, we still got a proper upbringing – jia1jiao4. They taught me manners, how to love reading, and how to figure out which one was the salad fork.

“Privileged sentiments” – gotta tell my mom. She’ll take that as a particular compliment too.

And now, geekiness:

Location: hopefully Croxley later
Mood: lethargic
Music: You got the talking down, just not the listening
YASYCTAI: Seriously, stop idealizing things you know nuthin about. NYC in 1993 is hardly NYC when it was gritty. Try five years earlier on for size. (2 mins/1 pt)
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Privileged nights in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Le Parker Meridien, NYC

Lobby of Le Parker Meridien, NYC

So, Le Parker Meridien was pretty nice. They were giving away two tix to Paris and called out the name of the firm first – my firm. Told my boss that I hoped it was me and then he won.

Thought that was pretty funny. I ended up winning a candle holder. It’s better than spending a buck to win a buck, I suppose.

The next night, had dinner with the lawyer that represented the first Guantanamo Bay defendant. Was a pretty eye opening dinner. Not at liberty to give away much but the facts are that the government had five years to prep against this lawyer with really only two people helping him. The government brought up 260 charges and only one stuck.

Makes one wonder how strong the government case was to begin with.

———-

Below is an actual conversation, verbatim, on my previous post with a female friend – not HG.

If you’ve read me for a while, I’d like to know your thoughts on the conversation? Note, it was a public conversation so she expressly wanted this read. Specifically, how do I come across to you and how does she come across to you?

I’ll give you my thoughts next time.

Her: I’m one of those people who miss the old NYC. I moved here in ’93 and there was a real sense that anyone could move here and create whatever life they wanted. No way does that still exist. I think when people say NYC isn’t what it used to be, what they are trying to get at is the diversity back then meant NYC was open to anyone. It’s not about grit being cool. It’s about a city that had a place for everyone, regardless of class. That’s just not true anymore.
Me: Heya! I think that, in that regard, NYC’s an even better place now that it was back then. We have a mayor that’s expressly pro art, with major art install oftions all over the city. Moreover, its safer and more tolerant here than ever. We still have places for everyone: artists, businessmen and – surprising even to me – families. I would never have considered raising a family in the UWS or Battery Park before and now it’s an option.
Her: Ugh, Logan, ugh! Privileged sentiments bore me.
Me: (I’m) perplexed. Are you saying I’m the privileged one?

That is the entire conversation.

Location: In my warm room
Mood: Still kinda irritated
Music: Who cares if you disagree? You are not me
YASYCTAI: Tell me what you think of that. (2 mins/0.5 pts)
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NYC isn’t what it used to be. Thankfully.

Times Square, NYC on a summer night

Her: You know, when you go out, you don’t need to eat everything they give you.
Me: (staring blankly)
Her: (sighing) Nevermind…

It’s holiday party time. Got client events at fancy hotels, steakhouses, ballrooms, and hidden bars on tap this time around. This week, heading to Le Parker Meridien.

Not sure if it beats all-you-can-eat wings and pitcher beer but I’ll find out. Should probably hit the gym. Later.

———-

People who aren’t from here often comment about how they miss the “grit” and “coolness” of NYC in the 80s and 90s.

Cannot tell you how much that annoys me.

For anyone that grew up here during that time, no one misses it. It’s one thing if you come to city as if you’re a tourist at the zoo and get to go home to a nice colonial in the suburbs. It’s another if you have to walk by hookers and over bums to get home off Times Square.

People talk about NYC my home when it was a hell-hole back in the 70s-90s as if it was a movie and y’can just turn it off when you’re done. Lemme tell you that being a fat, awkward, minority nerd during that time was unpleasant.

Very unpleasant.

If you wanna see an idealized NYC where you’re safe walking down the street but can still oogle the seediness without smelling the urine or taking knee to the gut off 14th street, rent a film.

You don’t see me driving to your lawn in Connecticut saying, “This is so sterile and safe – but bears and wolves, now that’d be cool. Oooh, imagine if there was one chasing someone right now! Not us, of course. Or anyone we love. Someone else. Maybe a fat Chinese guy with glasses reading Sherlock Holmes.”

Location: Looking out a rainy window
Mood: irritated
Music: Good times never seem so good – so good, so good, so good
YASYCTAI: Stop idealizing things and be grateful for what you got. (2 mins/1 pt)
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Halloween 2010 NYC

Docks restaurant in midtown, NYC

(c) Someone else

Me: (to cook) Did you just dunk the bread into oil before frying it?
Him: (nodding)
Me: Niiiiiice…

Last Thursday night was not the best night I’ve had.

Submitted the five projects that night – still dunno if I’ll get paid. Anywho, turns out I missed one key piece of information. So I slept for four hours, woke up at the crack of dawn, redrafted and then resubmitted it while HG went to the Caribbean without me. As soon as the paperwork was in, dashed to the office to put in a full day at work on Friday.

Was supposed to meet up with Paul to catch the Jaymay concert downtown and was gonna bail but somehow found my second wind with four hours sleep. Had a grand-ole, rum-filled time. The opening act was way cool too and were dressed like the band in the Muppets with a twist! They wore a joker grill on their teeth so they were “evil Muppets”! Jaymay put on a great show as always.

Felt awake enough to over to his pad and pick up some street Halal food, just like I did last year. Next day, wrestled where the guy I used to school proceed to whup me every-which way.

That Saturday night, did what most geeks do when their fiancees’re away and the women in NYC are tarting it up for Halloween – stayed home with some pork rinds and assembled a quad-core, triple-digital input DVR with 3.5TB of harddrive space and dual 32″ extended desktop display.

Sunday worked again; on the train to meet a client, this four-year-old girl dressed up as Snow White got into an argument with her older brother dressed as Batman. She ended the argument by reaching down and firmly grasping his privates and violently yanking.

Every man watching did a collective sympathy groan.

Quite the dweeby weekend.

Docks restaurant in midtown, NYC

Location: in fronta screens
Mood: still insanely busy
Music: You see, there’s just too much I know already
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Embracing the Randomness

Picture (c) downtown NYC
“I’m warning you! If you fall off that eggplant, you’ll be squashed for sure!”

Last night, met up with my friend Ben – who writes Conceived and Composed, that clever pic above is his – and my other buddy, PB.

Got together to down some rum and $0.10 wings downtown. Always tell myself to limit myself to a half dozen. Never happens. We chatted about photography and life: re the former, I picked up a new shooter; re the latter, work is heating up, finally.

Am at an age now where I think I’m able to ride out most storms. The stuff that’s been going on with the Rutgers kid committing suicide got to me, like all the stories do – depression is something I think most insomniacs have dealt with and the response has been the It’s Gets Better campaign, which I’ve always believed was the case. Because it does get better.

Anywho, after stuffing ourselves with wings and booze, we discovered that a relative’s of Ben’s owns the local banh mi shop so we had to stop in there too after our greasefest. Piggies we are.

Unlike a lotta places in the world where people gotta do the terrible things to just survive, here we get randomness to enjoy. But only if we decide to do it.

———-

Installment two of my dating/relationship This Modern Love column on Techorati is up today.

Speakinga which, gonna have to change my posting schedule to Monday and Wednesday for this here blog so I’m not super swamped. See you Monday, yeah?

Location: home, trying to get work done
Mood: hungry
Music: I’m surrounded you know, it’s all around me
YASYCTAI: Embrace the randomness. (3 hrs/1 pt)
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Nightlife in NY

Who’s got oysters?!

nightlife, nyc, new york city, hudson terrace, rooftop

 

Him: Free rum?
Me: I don’t think I can make it.
Him: Free rum at 6:30 and you can’t make it? Who are you?

Met up with some friends at the Hudson Terrace last week. Think that’s why I love NYC – you can be sitting down in front of a court pleading one second and then drinking a nice aged rum with a slice of orange at an open air, open bar the next.

Him: I dunno, not my thing.
Me: Please, you’re single in the big city, on a roof deck, drinking some free rum. The world’s your oyster. (turning to friends) Who’s got oysters?! (we all raise our hands and he laughs and does the same)

This one fella kept shoving people aside to get to the bar, me included. Wanted to get in his face but since I’m not a child, decided against it. But this’s not to say I didn’t entertain myself.

He leaned in to ask the girl sitting next to me to dance and she did. Sitting back down, he went to get them drinks.

Me: He’ll ask you to marry you tonight, you know.
Her: (laughing) What makes you say that?
Me: He seems the type. Kinda pushy. Brave when he’s drunk; dull otherwise. So what’s your deal?
Her: I’m here from Toronto.
Me: Wow, your American is excellent.

We chatted for a bit and when the guy came back, he scowled at me but handed her her drink.

Me: I just saved you from a night of boring.
Her: (nodding) You did, you did.
Me: (turning to her redheaded friend standing in front of us) Hey Red, I’m going home to see my lovely fiancee, why don’t you take my seat before Mr. Dull takes my seat and annoys your friend all night.
Her: (laughing) You got it, mister.

Never a dull moment if you don’t want it here.

Location: the office
Mood: insanely busy
Music: my God, just confess, you want it, you want it, you’re just like the rest
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What’s for sale?

It the cynical side of me wondering what’s for sale

PBR for far less than $40 in NYC

Here in NYC, wealthy hipsters drink PBR as an ironic statement of aspiring to the working class. Sensing a marketing windfall, the makers of the drink have decided to package the decidedly inexpensive brew as a luxury beer in China. How high end? $40 a bottle high end.

Silly Chinese – sophisticated Americans would never fall for such bald marketing.

Unless, of course, you consider that the exact same thing takes place here with Stella Artois.

It’s far closer to Miller beer than craft Belgiam lager in Europe, where it’s anecdotally considered cheap brew. In fact, it’s considered discount beer in France, called wife beater in the UK, and barely breaks 10% of beer consumption in its native Belgium.

Here, however, their marketing team went with the slogan Perfection has its price for much of the 2000s and we lapped it up. Quite literally.

Which is not to say that I’m not a sucker for slick marketing myself.

Just a month ago, said that the developers of the NYC mosque were wrong to build so close to ground zero but that it’s their right. Found that there’s already a mosque in the area and it’s been there for some 40 years with no outrage for the past nine.

This reminded me of that Stone Temple Pilots lyric that goes, What’s real and what’s for sale?

Consider what’s real with outspoken critic of the proposed mosque, Rick Lazio, who’s hoping to be our next governor. Perhaps that it’s an election year and he’s trailing the Democratic front runner in the race for governor by some 60%. It’s his outrage that seems to be for sale.

Since changed my mind about the mosque. After all, changing one’s mind in light of new information is never a bad thing. What is a bad thing is using a national tragedy for personal gain, at the expense of the national discourse. For that, despite being one of maybe two moderate conservatives in NYC, he’ll never get my vote. Ever.

Cheap beer in fancy packaging is also probably a bad thing. Then again, Stella Artois is doing quite well around the world. Regardless of geography, it seems it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s for sale – whether that be $40 beer in China or a mosque downtown.

Location: a wrestling mat
Mood: sore
Music: One time a thing occurred to me
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What we do

Location: 9AM, getting choked on 27th
Mood: Certain
Music: there’s no cover for you, no prize when you’ve won

Less a political post, more a legal one regarding the mosque at ground zero here in NYC.

They have the legal right to have a build one there. People may not like it, but that’s the law and religious tolerance is what the country was built on – New York in particular.

Pardon the poor sound, super busy today…
YASYCTAI: Think about what it is we actually do. (60 mins/1 pt)

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Technically…

My memory serves me far too well

Bar at the Soho Grand in NYC

Brother: Remember when he says, Now everybody’s talking about this new decade – that was 20 years ago.
Me: Yeah I remember. Was a freshman in college.
Him: (laughing) Well, now it the start of a new decade again.
Me: Technically next year’s the start of a new decade.

Nuthin exciting to tell you about the past week. The lady and I went out for a fine dinner and were in bed by the time the ball dropped.

What’d you do for 1999? Don’t recall it at all myself. Hafta add that to my lista fuzzy memories.

This time however, woke up early the next day to see the rents – they showed the lady picturesa me when I was a fatty-fat-fat.

Had to drop off the car; too expensive to keep a car in the city these days so that was onea the things that had to go for 2010.

Wrestled with a kid that was born the year I went to college. Demolished me, course. Spent the resta the weekend popping ibuprofen. Did manage to have a drink at the Soho Grand.

The “00s” are ending and the “10s” re beginning. It’s a sobering thought but I’ll never see the “00s” again.

Him: Technically, every year’s the start of a new decade. It’s like that Mitch Hedberg joke when a guy says to him, Lemme show you a picture of me when I was younger. And he goes, Technically, every picture of you’s a picture of you when you was younger.

Today, start working at an office for more scratch.

Still eat-what-you-kill but with a better view.

Lotsa changes for this new decade.

I’m still around, though. See you Thursday.

Location: a law firm off Grand Central
Mood: excited
Music: Don’t you know that the years will come and go? (Spotify)