riding home from the uppa uppa

crisp cold breeze…

head Fulla high life…

the wife texts me…

am I on the way home?

sure I am but this poor crazy woman is screaming at the top of her lungs in broadway…

NO! NO! NOOOOOOOO!

as they try to cram her onto a gurney…

into an ambulance…

the city, she still ain't all that safe at night.

make no mistake, oklasota…

I'm tawkin to you wiscotucky…

the city may be candyland to you…

but I remember a time when it wasn't so nice…

and sometimes I get to see it.

on the 2 train I sit across a crumbling beauty…

she's using…

clearly she is…

I wonder if her parents know where she is…

what she's doing…

who she's doing it with…

and whether or not her parents will need to take that call in the middle of the night…

you know the one.

hello mister and missus…

we need you to come down here to identify the body…

yeah.

my city is beautiful city…

but she is flawed…

whoop…

the doors are closing on the 7…

I'll be home in 10 minutes…

things to do…

lunch to make…

sleep to get.

—the bastard

life in these Long Island cities

I want you to know…

it's knives out.

the bastard likes adversity in his life.

with conditions of course…

I likes it in my professional life.

it's across the river from here where I can manage it.

over here it isn't where I want it.

there's trouble afoot on my street.

the breeze texted me the other day while I had a mouthful of pizza to tell me that there had been a mugging on our block.

the vic ran in off the street and had us call the po pos.

the bastard doesn't know how that story ends yet but the long knives are out now.

and in my jacket.

the thing of it is…

the bastard can keep a watchful eye out.

always has.

there's a tiger around every corner and I want to be prepared.

downside is during the ride home…

I get ready and ready means adrenaline…

and by the time I get to Vernon Blvd…

I want to crawl out of my skin…

welcome to the new normal

at least until the family feels easy.

cause I can be easy like Sunday morning…

but if they worry…

I make sure to keep an eye out.

oh well…

go to hell…

—the bastard

life in these new york cities

the ride is short these days.

but the ride has become more and more populated as the neighborhoods along the 7 line have become more sought by folks as the next affordable heaven for those of you who come here from oklasota or wiscotucky or even long-g-g giland for that matter.

and the touchstone conversations the bastard overhears are starting to become more and more interesting.

it seems that hipsters travel all across these new york cities in search of other hipsters so that they can talk about how funny it is to judge some other hipsters from oklasota and wiscotucky when they order a chocolate bagel when they should clearly be ordering the authentic flavors

like cinnamon raisin.

shit is hard when you a graduate degree and a bad 80's haircut and your friend from out of town orders the wrong kind of bagel.

you see.

some bagels are more equal than others.

however to the bastard, you're all from out of town.

the more you blather on in your midwestern accents that you try so desperately to hide from the likes of me...

...the more we know how fearful you are of us finding out about your redneck past...

and no amount of copies of 100 years of solitude (apparently "atlas shrugged" is no is no longer in print) clutched under your arm will ever ever change that.

give it 9 more years according to gothamist.com. then you can consider yourself authentic.

so until that day arrives, judge not.

because i am already judging you too.

—the bastard

monkey see… monkey do…

it's a dogs life in the mag biz…

…and the bastard is not made of iron.

straight out of the office…

…full of the tunnel vision

I see a guy book across park avenue and the bastard thinks to do the same.

mistake.

here's a protip kids:

look both ways lest you dance with the cabs.

and then sleep with the pavement.

— the bastard

caged…

don't get the bastard wrong.

he likes his vacation and all.

but he goes home tomorrow and he can't wait to get back to his perch on the east river.

so he can drink whiskey.

and dream of magazines he could make.

lots to do.

fresh hell to have.

I'll take two helpings you dirty fucks.

thanks for playing.

—the bastard

…in which my big mouth gets me into trouble

the bastard was in the paper recently.

no it wasn't for that string of liquor stores I robbed (whoops)

some guy from the daily news rolled up on me and wanted to ask me about my new hood.

so I took my hand off the knife and decided to answer his questions.

in said interview I complained about something that needed to be done with my shower that the owners wouldn't fix because it's too much work. but after my shower started leaking into the apartment below me. then they fixed it.

this is what dan in the daily news.

that was a month ago.

two weeks ago (3 this Friday) the story ran and they had ripped out my shower again because they missed the leak.

and the repair job is going much slower this time.

it's starting to piss me off. not that my big mouth hit the newsstand on the eve of this work in my place. no. it's because I haven't had the use of one of my bathrooms in fucking 3 weeks. damn thin skinned fuckers.

serves me right to be talking to reporters. well maybe I'm a little remorseful but, not as much as I could be.

there's always losing my shot and running around the owners office with a machete. that is IF the bastard had a machete.

—the bastard

meat of the matter

it's a good thing I brought my work laptop home with me.

because the bastard has NO idea when the 7 train will be up and running again.

—the bastard

…aftermath

…and the bastard isn't speaking of the rolling stones album.





at the end of Borden avenue.

three blocks west of my apartment is the sole evidence of any of the mayors warnings about last night's storm.

I could jab and jest about mayor mike's crap command of the Spanish language and talk about how this was most hyped storm of century but I won't.

jersey took the hit for us kids.

as they so often do.

and yes, the promise of a hurricane always fills this empty month of news cycles which has pretty much been preoccupied with president barry's vacation.

shit like this is a godsend for a politician on the ropes.

but I digress.

here I am

drinking a beer on my balcony,

which has been swept clean by a big assed rain storm,

blown dry by 25 mph winds.

and I'm still grateful that this is all here as I sit in my beach chair watching the east river go by.

—the bastard

the bastard ain't a man to put the cart before the horse…

… but I think the media is having us on








last night. the bastard sat in his living room with three fingers of rye on ice waiting for the world to end.

the news: there's a hurricane on yo!

the bastard: oh SNAP. rilly?!?

the news: yeah shiteyes. there's gonna be rain and shit and the east river is gonna run roughshod on your ass. and there's gonna be 100 mile an hour winds

the bastard: oh wow guy. I best shit my pants now

so there you have it. when I went to bed, there were saying 75 mph winds.

when the bastard woke up, the national weather service said 45 mph winds but the news is showing footage of the same block in Howard beach that flood when there's is any strong rain and saying 80 mph winds.

I'm seeing a discrepancy here.

stupid sensationalism. stop scaring the shit outta people.

—the bastard

…on spare time

normally the bastard doesn't have time to post about the commute.

it's usually 10 minutes

but

today there are mad delays

no express service. only local

I'd settle for a goddam train at the point regardless of it's orientation.

and every local is crowded.

oh well. go to hell

—the bastard

…on the simple things

the bastard never looks a gift horse in the mouth

wait.

scratch that.

the bastard ALWAYS looks a gift horse in the mouth.

it's a deep seated issue he needs to work on with his parole officer.

anyway it's like this.

I really like living in the liquid city.

nice view.

nice commute.

better quality of life.

but it ain't cheap.

so after almost two months of paying upwards of 24 bucks a bag every week not to mention the hefty tab for dry cleaning.…

our washing machine finally arrived and you guessed it bitches

I did me some laundry.

now if I could only get a handle on the job, everything would be easy peasy.

but that's tomorrow's problem.

hrm

wait

that's my problem in like 10 minutes now

god dammity damn

—the bastard

the bastard is givin that stuff out to ALL. those graffiti guys

…or



…things the bastard liked about 5pointz


…and






…THING the bastard DIDN'T like about 5pointz

so on Friday night,

the wife days to me, "bastard, you like teh graffiti, yes?"

"why yes wife… I likes teh graffiti"

so she schemes to me on having us walk up to the graffiti installation known as 5pointz which is STUPID touristy these days but the bastard has accepted this as a known quantity.

that way, I can digest the bullshit well enough.





so I agree and we take the family up there. the boy hasn't seen reasonable tagging since we were at the river wall in at Louis in 2009 and we were much more preoccupied with eating cold Arthur Bryants at the time.

so we headed up.

and while at first blush a family of four with a stroller looked out of place at an abandoned building covered in some fair to excellent work, the bastard has to say that he was a fucking breath of fresh (F-R-E-S-H. fresh fresh fresh fresh fresh) air compared to the pack of wild kuwaii girls and there attempts at myspace style self portraiture in front of the graffiti.

a breath of fresh air compared to the eurotrash who asked my son to get out of the way of "thaa peece" he wanted to photograph.



and a goddam sight better than the black turtleneck crowd who ogled the same stuff they scorned 10 years ago when this stuff was the symbol of urban blight rather than that of urban renewal.

but what took the cake for me was this…

a monster truck pulls up the block

with the monster logo on it and a bunch of chuckleheads swarm upon the place in monster energy drink shirts on.

and a couple walk by and the man says to the woman , "the attention to detail is incredible".

"yeah", she concurs and then I kind of went back in time for a second.

I was at the Greene street gallery with art school and we're looking at a crappy sculpture of an apple core made of plaster and the guy in the black turtleneck leans over to the girl half his age and says in a throaty voice, "it's so dynamic. it's very indicative of the fall of man."

meanwhile back in 2011, the bastard is getting a laugh at how all of these white folk who would have never given this a second thought 10-15 years ago sees this stuff I grew up around as full of attention to detail.

don't get me wrong, it was some dope looking examples of wild stour circa the mid to late 80's and definitely more evolved but I would never quote anything out of artspeak to elevate it to anything more than what it is…

graffiti.

and I wouldn't paint three murals for any of the ass this guy was trying to pull down. unless you like that sort of thing.

oh well, it was still good to look at and I made burgers later on.

—the bastard

new and improved…

it seems that around 7:30,

the boy and I are excused into the outside world to hang out at the park while my wife puts the baby to bed.

and the bastard is finding,

a few rotten apples withstanding,

that the parklife here in el ay sí is decidedly better than it has been in previous places of residence.

sure mad square park was a goddam mile better than pot deals out in the open in Braddock park but,

there's something about watching your son play tag and tossing a football around in a park with a view of the river and the setting sun on the longest day of the year that says

"you may have chosen wisely for a change shiteyes"

not bad.

—the bastard

…on cycles

"this shit runs in cycles", the bastard says to himself.

no really.

I said this to myself on the train this morning.

you move into a hood.

everything is shiny and optimistic

then shit ensues.

it happened in fohi

it happened in the reverse in manhattan.

and the cycle seemed to start up.

you see, we moved into a new building and in the back is an old building that used to be a bar.

and it turns out it's gonna be a bar again.

so the bastard is thinking it's 2000-2008 on metropolitan all over again.

I decide that I don't want it to be like that again.

also, the guy who is going to run the place is doing a build blog.

so rather than let history repeat itself, I decide a better man (the better man I want to be) will ask upfront what's gonna happen.

and he responded.

turns out he's a reasonable guy.

doesn't want to make the hood mad. he wants to be a good neighbor. because he wants the hood to come drink beer at his new place. this seems like a foreign concept with relation to my experience in forest hills.

the bastard is optimistic about this. he likes when a businessman wants to work with the community.

be a good neighbor.

not just some guy trying to turn a buck.

nothing like Danny was.

and as I sit out on the balcony overlooking this new bar, sipping bourbon, I wonder if Danny still walks the earth.

karma dealt him a bad hand after his restaurant closed and I'm not altogether unhappy about it.

I just hope the fates don't give me pancreatic cancer for being a dick to my neighbors.

—the bastard

today's weather report

tut tut.

looks like ewwwww.

—the bastard

there is a place in our fair city...

…where the bastard found himself a frikkin elk burger



yeah

that's right bitches!

while walking to dukes the other night the bastard came across an awning he had never seen which promised three things the bastard loves that aren't whiskey

burgers

shakes

beer

so he said to himself, "self, we will eat lunch there right fucking soon".

so in his sooner than expected fashion, the bastard came home too drunk to make lunch.

such is the style of drinking with the old hood.

so next day there he was reeding up a bacon cheeseburger with onion rings.

and then he heard the magical words

"what kind of meat do you want?"

"what?!?"

"what kind of meat do you want guy?"

overtaken by options of this magnitude was almost too much for my dukearita riddled head to handle

"whatcha got", hoping to hell human wasn't an option as I might have taken it

"beef, bison, lamb, ostrichch, turkey, elk…"

"that one"

"what?"

"that one. and a black and white shake", cause if you don't go big, go the hell home.


and it was glorious.

elk is a magical meat that doesn't taste like chicken.

it tastes like elk.

it's kind of like beef…

but not like beef…

and better.

it's the bastard's favoritest of all the meats.

that and caribou.

go out and get some. now. not later.

—the bastard

scenes from the end of an era

the bastard's time on this island started with a bike crash on a damp February night in 2009.

which culminated in a surreal evening in the elmhurst hospital emergency room.

that was my last night as a queens resident.

in a hospital that had become more known for where inmates from riker's island go when someone stabs them with something they made in the machine shop.

this later turned into a whirlwind of baby preperation.

baby birth.

and making my summers with the boy work for myself, the boy, and the family in 340 square feet of alternative family fun.

we had some laughs.

and we had some times where it wasn't so goddam funny.

but we're getting towards the end of our time here on the rock.

and soon we'll begin our sojourn across the east river, back to the borough which is thorough.

and like my initial crossing into manhattan, the bastard finds his crossing back to the hunk of mud he was born on to be equally bittersweet.


so I've been popping off pictures.

sneaking off on secret food missions to sample fare I may not make the time for anymore.

and thinking hard on my brief time in this manhattan

'the city' as those who are old school call it.

nah kids, manhattan is just part of this fair Gotham and don't ever forget that as you old rusticos look over the east river towards the spires of the island.

know this, you kids from oklasota and wiscotucky as you pile into my city that we are five boroughs not a city surrounded by new yawkahs. it's a greater whole

and the bastard is gonna take pictures while he gets all nostalgic of walking these streets at night.

with his kids

with his wife

with a big assed whiskey on.

not necessary at the same time.

but nostalgic either way.

—the bastard

get in the van…

…in which our hero raises his own bar on street meat




ok, here's the situation,

may parents went away for a weeks vacation.

but I digress. the bastard has gotten into paying attention to food again.

mobile food.

street meat.

part one, piqued: this comes from checking out no reservations after it had gotten popular.

the bastard didn't like it first time around. it seemed too forced and I though the "a cooks tour" show that food network dropped was a littler more sentimental at the time.

and at the time, the bastard wanted sentimental, not forced lou reed of the food set stuff.

but these days, I was looking for something else in this age of crap economics and lack of vacation fun.

and bourdain spoke much about street food.

part two, the seed: there's this guy I went to junior high school who I'm friends with on foursquare.

he kept checking in at this truck called korilla BBQ.

at the time, I had been going to the wafel truck and have been loving it. but I needed to see about this korilla truck.

Korean BBQ.

no.

Korean BBQ burritos my friend.

picture this. Korean BBQ pork on a wrap with

bacon kimchi fried rice

with veg, cheese, sauce.

and that's your burrito.


part three, opportunity: another old friend of mine from small times was working in manhattan this week. Sherman. and he did some time on the Korean peninsula. and he has three kids to show for it.

we were looking to meet up anyways so I suggested the korilla truck so we could at least chat while online.

hashed out some smalltalk while waiting on a line that ran around the corner on park and 24th until it was our time to get our repast… the porkinator.

it was glorious.

so much so, I burst into my editor in chief's office over it.

we haven't had big talks of late but he was there so he looks up mildly curious and inconvenienced and asks what's up.

"totally unrelated to the book, I just had the greatest burrito ever".

now he cracked a smile because he was on board with this.

and I told him of my lunch.

and apparently, he's a big fan of kimchi.

asked me to let him know if I was going next Friday and to hit him up for it.

hell, not a bad way to kick off the weekend.

—the bastard

off mission…

parenting is one of life's great equalizers

it is also one of life's great ironies.

you're always told that you're going to grow up to be just like your mother or your father.

and the bastard doesn't know which one he falls more in line with.

because neither of his parents grew up to sit alone in the dark while drinking whiskey and watching anime and complaining to the Internet about the whole lot of it.

my brother would tell me I'm more like my mother because I'm more of a reactionary.

more full of gesture and loud talk over others.

more in you business…because…well I'm in your business.

make your peace with it. the bastard has.

but I was thinking how my own kids will turn out for starters.

you see, the little girl has become an early riser.

a demander of things.

this doesn't sit well with my late night whiskey drinking and truth to tell is the young lady has to start sleeping in more often or shit's gonna go badly

mostly for me.

but on Sunday it was raining.

and the wife and I are in the midst of a big move

with big paperwork

and 350 square feet makes for big cases of cabin fever.

so upon her highness' afternoon nap I explain to the wife that I was going for a walk because if I don't shake off my cabin fever, there was going to be fucking murders.

so I set out into the pour.

which let up actually for my hour outside ( I set a time limit to be fair).

and I went in search for lunch.

now when cabin fever sets in, the solution to what ails me is always comfort food.

you see, by and large, the bastard gave up cigarettes and he doesn't use booze as a crutch.

he uses it as a tasty beverage instead.

so he relies on comfort food to take the blues away.

or the blahs.

or the "I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU ALLs"

so headed to dukes and without a menu I got me blackened chicken sandwich and a dukearita.

because that's what the bastard finds comfortable.

my time on this rock is growing short and I know I can come back any time to enjoy these things

but it won't be the same for me as I can't just roll out of bed in the middle of the night and get a banh mi sammich ( unless of course I find a place that has) from my local spot.

so I'd like to spend this remaining time enjoying these simple things I like about the rock I live on.

clocks a tickin' shiteyes, make the most of your time.

—the bastard

a…b…c…

always…be…closin'

today was a better use of our time.

hell this weekend was a better use of the bastard's time.

after last weak's awfulness came a tense number discussion between my ladyfriend of mine.




this lead to some stress as to where we're gonna land.

but after expanding our search to other hood this weekend, our stress has been eased.

it didn't hurt that we saw a building is Astoria that was surrounded by what the bastard could only describe as "too much queens" for my wife

and

it didn't hurt that we read about the shit daycare options in greenpoint (sorry Brooklyn, you ain't got it all).

that said, we look with a more narrow eye and hope for the best in the lands we have been betting on from the get (well the plural is because the bastard always bets on mote than one horse in a race).

so we will see.

—the bastard