TOP FIVE THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT BILLYBURG
10. All those jokes I make about the hipsters? I kinda love the hipsters. I kinda sometimes am one, except less hip, more "ster." I kinda love their outfits. And feeling safely flanked on my way home from the L at 3am by people wearing boot-stocking-"skirt" combos so ugly that no one would even bother to mug us. Like Dorothy says about Jerry Maguire: "I love him. I love him for the man he wants to be. And I love him for the man he almost is." And now Jerry Maguire is like, crazy and knocked up Joey Potter. So there's that.
9. Spoonbill & Sugartown Bookstore. Is Heaven. The cute notebooks. The used books. The zines. The front table of unpredictable and delightfully hipster oriented literature. I cannot possibly love this place more than I already do. (photo courtesy of urban 75.)
8. One time at Wendy's in Ohio, my grandmother saw me talking to a boy (who was telling me I still had the tag on my overall-shorts, this was 1992, p.s.) and was like 'Do you like him? Do you like his lookin's?' Imagine this in a cute Ohio accent and then imagine this: I like Williamsburg's lookings. I love the buildings and the cute stores and this feels like New York to me. Yes. There you go. Make fun of me! I hope to move back here some day, and I'm sad to leave it. Seriously! (seriously, I was just serious!)
7. When I go to coffee shops in Manhattan, I start having heart palpitations and anxiety as I watch all the seats fill up while I wait for my NOT COMPLICATED iced coffee (I really do not understand why this isn't something they can't give you right away at Starbucks, why this is something that requires a Label and a Wait at the Bar with the Anorexic Woman asking "is this skim? are you sure this is skim?" (sub parentheses/confession: that woman is me, 'cept i'm not anorexic, just neurotic.) ) thinking "Oh my God, I'm gonna have this drink and then nowhere to sit, where will I pull out my laptop, I dont' want to share a table with the entire Sunday New York Times and that creepy dude hiding behind it, holy fuck, oh my godomigod i shoulda gone somewhere else but where?!" There have been times I can't find a seat at my Brooklyn coffee shop of choice, but usually I can find a seat. And be safely flanked by an army of matching MacBooks.
6. This:
TOP FIVE THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT BILLYBURG:
5. this conversation with a cab driver:
me: I'm going to Brooklyn, Williamsburg, ****** (sorry stalkers, gonna x this one out. and by stalkers I mean my mother, who thinks that if I put any information about myself on the internet I will get stalked, which is an ignorant and problematic theory on many levels), it's the second stop off the Williamsburg bridge?
cabbie: Um, ok, you want me to take the Ulysses S. Grant ExpressLaneWay (or whatever)?
me: I want you to go whatever's fastest.
cabbie: So um, you'll be able to direct me when we get there? I don't really know my way around brooklyn.
me (glaring at the 'taxi riders bill of rights, convieniently located at primo glare-height): Isn't that like, your job? To know your way around New York City?
cabbie: Well, I do, I just don't know Brooklyn.
me:(to myself) Um, that's a lot of shit not to know. Maybe you should get a job at Duane Reade, where you can not know where the band-aids are. Or better yet, go to pharmacy school, become a pharmacist at Duane Reade, and then not know where my prescription is!!!!!!
4. This conversation:
me:Well, you could come out here.
"friend": Ugh. but you live in Brooklyn.
me:It's actually really close, you lazy asshole. Just close your eyes and imagine that you're still in Manhattan, and it'll take you a lot less time to get here than it would to any of the Manhattan neighborhoods where our friends can actually afford to live.
"friend": Ugh. fine. is the L train running?
me: (shamed) No. But you can take the J-M-Z.
"friend": (as though I have just told the "friend" to get to Brooklyn on the back of a swimming sadistic diseased donkey) the WHAT???
3. C-Town. Why do I always live so close to a goddamn C-Town and nowhere near another grocery shopping option? (This happened in Sparlem, too.) I swear their tomatoes are dustier than the top of my dresser. A girl needs more than Guava Cola to power her aching burning desires. Also the walk from Tod's is too long. And Suamac is overpriced.
2.No Delivery.com. For a phone phobic such as myself, I can endorse the fine services of this revolutionary website with full confidence. First of all, they honestly do check the orders and deliver them, which I tested many times at work AND you don't end up screaming "rice on the side!" to someone asking you "pineapple surprise?" They didn't have a lot of delivery.com in east harlem either (besides this one crazy Japanese-Chinese restaurant that will go anywhere, probably even to Astoria or another far-away land), but Sparlem has claimed to be many things and "good place to find steamed veggies" or "good place to find a salad with very detailed instructions for preparation and assembly" is not one of them.
1. Seriously. What the Fuck are they doing to the L Train? It took like, three weeks to fix up those crazy hoes on The Swan with big tits and straight teeth and like, 50 years to figure out how to get a man on the moon but they still haven't "fixed" The L Train when the only thing that needs to be "fixed" about the L Train is that it's NEVER RUNNING.
This isn't a new joke. But, you know, it's true?
9 comments:
Anchorage is the smallest town ever. I totally cannot relate to any of that. But, you did manage to get that song stuck in my head "some of them want to use you, some of them want to get used by you" and it will take a few heavy blows to that region of my brain before I am freed of it again.
What are you doing up at Harlumbia?
oh, you know; i'm planning on making mayhem, um, ruffling feathers, eating, sleeping, etc. it's where the opporitunity for housing arose and i snatched it like a worm from the mouth of a baby bird in the morning and i'm early. or something.
(noxious: now it is stuck in my head too! "anchorage" was totally playing in some random store the other day, too)
Where are you moving? The Bronx??
i would have read this whole post, but, ugh, you live in brooklyn. its like a mental hurdle that just causes me to shut down not matter what i'm doing. you'll learn all about it after a few months. welcome to life on the island!
as a seven year resident of carroll gardens, i can emphasize with both sides of this post. just sub out the F for the L train and it's like your reading my mind.
the only difference is that freshdirect.com comes to me and my grocery storeless 'hood.
last year i sent a series of angry emails to fresh direct, who claimed to deliver to sparlem but NOT to our addresss, which was a few houses down from the cutoff point, which i was fairly certain was because they didn't know people lived between 1st ave and pleasent. i even wrote them stories about walking home in the snow with gristedes bags and almost dying, but still, no dice,though they said they were "happy to hear" i had "made it home alive."
they did deliver to wburg though. but i eat really fast. so i need re-stocking frequently.
happy to hear you made it home alive? you've gotta be kidding me!
well, maybe you can meet them on the cutoff corner with a grandma cart... :)
this may come as no big surprise..but obviously i totally actually did offer to meet them at the corner with a grandma cart. no dice.
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