Pictures to come soon. . .
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
My Very Own Housewife
It takes a certain type of person to be convinced they will spend the rest of their lives alone at 27. I am exactly that sort of person. When my boyfriend and I broke up for the eighth and final time I found myself miserable and lost like millions have before me. Although I miss him, the aspect of loneliness which concerned me the most was losing my newfound adulthood. In my single life I'm a whiskey swilling, chain smoking, trash talking broad. Late and hung over at work, fashionable but wrinkled, and with an unkempt house. I survived on take out and ramen. After almost a year of being on time, productive, mostly clean, and enjoying home cooked gourmet dinners with the person I loved most, my former life looks about as glamorous as my former eating habits. Normally after a break up you could find me at the bar. Surrounded by a cadre of men, attempting to validate that it was indeed his loss. This time I find myself afraid. Afraid that I will lose all the adulthood I've worked so hard to cultivate over this last year. Without anyone to appreciate the clean house, fine linens, or fancy dinners how the hell was I going to continue that lifestyle? After a week of takeout and trashy television marathons, tonight I finally woke up. To hell with him. To hell with being alone. He was never nearly as excited about the homemade ricotta as I was anyway. He couldn't even pronounce ricotta. So this is my first post as my very own housewife. I am going to continue this life I've started. Continue to do the things that bring joy and order to my life whether or not there's another person here to marvel at how amazing I am or am not, more often. Tonight I became my very own housewife. Sure I cried like hell doing the dishes, because he always did them. But the dishes didn't seem to mind and they sparkled just the same. This blog will be an account of the recipes I try and blunder and try and succeed, the miserable attempts at ironing, but mostly an attempt to honor the domestic without being domesticated. So for my first post I bring you this delicious carrot cake recipe from another of my favorite blogs. Half way through the mixing process I realized I only had half the sugar and flour, but as I added the wet ingredients it turned out this was perfect and I recommend you do the same. The cream cheese icing was to do die for but not to be attempted without an electric mixer, which I did. As much as I enjoyed a little time to identify with the original Betty Crocker, cooking without electric appliances is a misery we don't need to endure.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Utopian misprint
There is a new community. STOP.
Affordable luxury lofts for artists. STOP.
(oxymoron) A smarter girl would've stopped reading there.
I am not very smart but incredibly hopeful. Maybe I've read too many textbooks on planning, maybe too many poems about utopia, maybe I've just got the Barack either way I read the website and believed.
Here's the premise: A site plan with two rectangular renovated buildings affixed at a 90 degree angle. The property includes a community garden, storage & a parking lot while overlooking a park. The first building, a mod 60's renovation composed of 'luxury' lofts at an affordable price for 'creatives'(their word). The second building is a creepy brick Victorian three story with vines crawling up windows and boards masking rotted masonry. I preferred the second immediately. It's 'proposed' to have work/live studios, gallery space, cafes, and shops. Proposed is a lawyer word. You buy the apartment or house and hope for the best, hope for the proposed. Developers pitch potential as reality, the last real alchemists. My parents bought a home in a subdivision when I was a child. There was a proposed lake with a man-made beach. These were the woods I grew up exploring, they had a puddle in the center. Alchemy. Dirt becomes water becomes money becomes dirt. As a planner, I deal in the proposed, not the real. I am a schill posing as a bastion between the public and the alchemist. When I went to see milepost 5, I was not a schill. I was the public, the proposed sucker.
Unfortunately, this proposed sucker is a sceptic & an academic , in practice they are the same. Milepost 5 was not the first to make this pitch. The design is a hybrid of early twentieth century planning principles popular in Europe. European housing markets do not have the same mortgage structure which has become the sinkhole of the current economy. America was once a fabled land was our unique and effective path to home ownership & acquired equity providing the bridge between classes. America's situation was unique for two reasons, our sheer mass combined with populist scrapper ideology. Europe didn't have the space and socialist policies were expressed in communal housing. Smaller units set on parks to provide the practical uses of an aristocratic expanse o f lawn without the payments. Although communes and low income housing gained popularity in the states they were not expressed with the traditional European design methods.
Taking a site in Portland, OR which likes to fancy itself a European city in both attitudes and transportation if not culture or design and applying these principles with the economic tools to create affordable housing for artists sounded too good to be true. I swooned.
I read the website everyday, checked their calendar for 'artsy' events, even started to dream of all the amazing cooperative relationships i would have there. A building - a space - creating the canvases within it. This building would define my life from the outside in.
one could argue, and I have before that true change comes from within. Although, it can't be denied that we feel differently standing in a corner or a portico. A blue room feels different from a yellow room. There is a reason, a psychology, a science behind the design of institutions to create a certain effect on inhabitants. This space was more than a structure. Residents would be hand picked 'creatives'. I know the great artistic communities were organic. Stardust that flashed between the grand lawns of Columbia U and the heroin house in Morningside Heights. If we can design a heart, then why not design a spontaneous combustion of thought? Sure, these developers probably read Richard Florida's 'The Creative Class' at some goddamn real estate convention. But, I read it too in my bed and bled economic theory and promise all over my sheets for days.
So I quieted my fears about what a developer would deem to be 'a creative'. Ignored the intuition in favor of the promise, because Barack DIDN'T get shot so to hell with my negative rational thoughts. It's time to believe again.
Days passed on the calendar and finally it was time to meet the artist in residence/real estate broker. We drove up to the building and I swear it looked different. I'd seen it once in person with no signs of life and all seeds of promise. The sprouts in the garden seemed to be wilting now. An old man walking his dog seemed to shake his head.
Inside the artist in residence/real estate broker was a girl filling in for a friend of a friend. She was neither an artist nor realtor. Basically she was a nice regular girl who happened to live there. The kind of girl you'd see exiting old navy on a Saturday afternoon with a latte in her hand. There was another couple viewing apartments. They were . . . attractive.
The girl was tiny, with crunchy stripper blond locks. He was broad, full of questions, and wearing one of those random garage jackets so popular in the 90's. his questions were not my questions. He demanded to know about ventilation systems, washer dryer hookups, square footage and pricing. Ok, I know artists do laundry too. Utopia was looking a little more no place and milepost 5 was looking a little more everyplace.
Photos & sculptures were displayed outside doors and taped up in the hallway. The cheap concrete glowed grey beneath fluorescent lights. We marched 5 abreast down the hall and opened door number one. It was . . . small. 440 sq. ft. to be exact. That's about two dog houses. There were no appliances, the carpet was cheap, nubby, gray blocks. Concrete walls, more fluorescent lighting, exposed concrete beams. It was institutional, in the way that only places without regard for their inhabitants could be. I have lived in real beat down loft buildings in Brooklyn. The lights are dim bulbs because the landlords don't want you to see the cracks or the rats. The walls are covered in graffiti. The residents are anyone, everyone. Some luxury some broken, some just trying, trying everything. Those were real collectives. Those were real.
We thanked old navy for her time and drove on down the highway. A road once marked by a wild time and infant horizon now reading Walmart,Home Depot, Applebees, WalmartHomedepotapplebees. . . waldepotbeee. . . .
Proposed convenience, proposed happiness. Proposal rejected.
Affordable luxury lofts for artists. STOP.
(oxymoron) A smarter girl would've stopped reading there.
I am not very smart but incredibly hopeful. Maybe I've read too many textbooks on planning, maybe too many poems about utopia, maybe I've just got the Barack either way I read the website and believed.
Here's the premise: A site plan with two rectangular renovated buildings affixed at a 90 degree angle. The property includes a community garden, storage & a parking lot while overlooking a park. The first building, a mod 60's renovation composed of 'luxury' lofts at an affordable price for 'creatives'(their word). The second building is a creepy brick Victorian three story with vines crawling up windows and boards masking rotted masonry. I preferred the second immediately. It's 'proposed' to have work/live studios, gallery space, cafes, and shops. Proposed is a lawyer word. You buy the apartment or house and hope for the best, hope for the proposed. Developers pitch potential as reality, the last real alchemists. My parents bought a home in a subdivision when I was a child. There was a proposed lake with a man-made beach. These were the woods I grew up exploring, they had a puddle in the center. Alchemy. Dirt becomes water becomes money becomes dirt. As a planner, I deal in the proposed, not the real. I am a schill posing as a bastion between the public and the alchemist. When I went to see milepost 5, I was not a schill. I was the public, the proposed sucker.
Unfortunately, this proposed sucker is a sceptic & an academic , in practice they are the same. Milepost 5 was not the first to make this pitch. The design is a hybrid of early twentieth century planning principles popular in Europe. European housing markets do not have the same mortgage structure which has become the sinkhole of the current economy. America was once a fabled land was our unique and effective path to home ownership & acquired equity providing the bridge between classes. America's situation was unique for two reasons, our sheer mass combined with populist scrapper ideology. Europe didn't have the space and socialist policies were expressed in communal housing. Smaller units set on parks to provide the practical uses of an aristocratic expanse o f lawn without the payments. Although communes and low income housing gained popularity in the states they were not expressed with the traditional European design methods.
Taking a site in Portland, OR which likes to fancy itself a European city in both attitudes and transportation if not culture or design and applying these principles with the economic tools to create affordable housing for artists sounded too good to be true. I swooned.
I read the website everyday, checked their calendar for 'artsy' events, even started to dream of all the amazing cooperative relationships i would have there. A building - a space - creating the canvases within it. This building would define my life from the outside in.
one could argue, and I have before that true change comes from within. Although, it can't be denied that we feel differently standing in a corner or a portico. A blue room feels different from a yellow room. There is a reason, a psychology, a science behind the design of institutions to create a certain effect on inhabitants. This space was more than a structure. Residents would be hand picked 'creatives'. I know the great artistic communities were organic. Stardust that flashed between the grand lawns of Columbia U and the heroin house in Morningside Heights. If we can design a heart, then why not design a spontaneous combustion of thought? Sure, these developers probably read Richard Florida's 'The Creative Class' at some goddamn real estate convention. But, I read it too in my bed and bled economic theory and promise all over my sheets for days.
So I quieted my fears about what a developer would deem to be 'a creative'. Ignored the intuition in favor of the promise, because Barack DIDN'T get shot so to hell with my negative rational thoughts. It's time to believe again.
Days passed on the calendar and finally it was time to meet the artist in residence/real estate broker. We drove up to the building and I swear it looked different. I'd seen it once in person with no signs of life and all seeds of promise. The sprouts in the garden seemed to be wilting now. An old man walking his dog seemed to shake his head.
Inside the artist in residence/real estate broker was a girl filling in for a friend of a friend. She was neither an artist nor realtor. Basically she was a nice regular girl who happened to live there. The kind of girl you'd see exiting old navy on a Saturday afternoon with a latte in her hand. There was another couple viewing apartments. They were . . . attractive.
The girl was tiny, with crunchy stripper blond locks. He was broad, full of questions, and wearing one of those random garage jackets so popular in the 90's. his questions were not my questions. He demanded to know about ventilation systems, washer dryer hookups, square footage and pricing. Ok, I know artists do laundry too. Utopia was looking a little more no place and milepost 5 was looking a little more everyplace.
Photos & sculptures were displayed outside doors and taped up in the hallway. The cheap concrete glowed grey beneath fluorescent lights. We marched 5 abreast down the hall and opened door number one. It was . . . small. 440 sq. ft. to be exact. That's about two dog houses. There were no appliances, the carpet was cheap, nubby, gray blocks. Concrete walls, more fluorescent lighting, exposed concrete beams. It was institutional, in the way that only places without regard for their inhabitants could be. I have lived in real beat down loft buildings in Brooklyn. The lights are dim bulbs because the landlords don't want you to see the cracks or the rats. The walls are covered in graffiti. The residents are anyone, everyone. Some luxury some broken, some just trying, trying everything. Those were real collectives. Those were real.
We thanked old navy for her time and drove on down the highway. A road once marked by a wild time and infant horizon now reading Walmart,Home Depot, Applebees, WalmartHomedepotapplebees. . . waldepotbeee. . . .
Proposed convenience, proposed happiness. Proposal rejected.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Barack & Roll?
Now that our world has officially been (ba) rocked the echoes of last tuesdays cheers are slow to fade away. Christmas came early this year, and now it's called Obamaday. It seems that everyone wants to express their moment, have a warm fuzzy with a black person (Maureen Dowd), announce their joy & hope for the new year. Even Billy Bragg is ready to take down the union jack and hang an obama pepsi logo from Buckingham Palace.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Girls, girls, girls
Before we get into this I just want to say one thing - I cried watching "How to Make An American Quilt" and I love "Mean Girls". That said my general world view of girl on girl action is something more akin to "Heathers". Ms. Friedan and the prickly Gertrude Stein shaped my thoughts into a Georgia O'Keefe sculpture pretty early on. Still, it must be said. In fact I'm convinced it's true for most of us, I would prefer my memoir to be entitled "In the Company of Men". In the last few days women have been rearing their curled, shiny, well manicured heads in every landscape of my life.
1. My boss is like Poison Ivy.
I know I hate my boss. How painfully unoriginal. But seriously, your boss is like Shannon Doherty, my boss is like Poison Ivy. I'm allergic to her, she's an infectious oily scum, and she makes my eyes puffy. (This last part is mostly from the crying). This woman is on Anna Wintour proportions, not literally she actually has an awful habit of wearing socks with sandals. This sandals bit is one of my primary points of contention with her existence.
1. My boss is like Poison Ivy.
I know I hate my boss. How painfully unoriginal. But seriously, your boss is like Shannon Doherty, my boss is like Poison Ivy. I'm allergic to her, she's an infectious oily scum, and she makes my eyes puffy. (This last part is mostly from the crying). This woman is on Anna Wintour proportions, not literally she actually has an awful habit of wearing socks with sandals. This sandals bit is one of my primary points of contention with her existence.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Single Town
Almost 30% of Americans live alone. I was happily one of those people until yesterday. Living with someone else seems brilliant. We are social creatures, they'll pay half the rent, they'll share cooking and cleaning, mostly they'll share. Living with someone else is about the desire to share your life, to be constantly social. I only have this desire while living alone. I've lived alone for almost 4 years, there was a brief nightmare in Park Slope where i lived in a railroad with a hoarder and a mute, socially awkward "screenwriter" aka delusional executive assistant. 4 years of bliss: dinner and a book, luxurious naps on the coach, stalking the staircase writing nasty little haikus - and my personal favorite - silence. Dear god, silence. It hasn't all been scenes with leatherbound book backdrops and classical music. These 4 years have been graced with dance parties, rioting songs, and an endless stream of mysterious guests - guests who always left. In fact, that may have been my favorite quality about them. Only when you live alone can you wake up in the morning on your wine stained porch wearing nothing but downy soft boy. Roommates have a tendency to ruin these moments just by existing.
One of my best friends has just moved out from the east coast to find whatever adventure the west coast has been promising for centuries and failing to deliver. At first I was excited, thrilled even. Within hours this excitement developed a sallow pallor and began to cough. I was tired. There was suddenly this girl standing between me and my dinner & a book routine. A girl standing between me and my date with 400 threadcount sheets and pillowtop mattress. It got worse from there. Glasses were rearranged, chotchkes appeared like chimeras. A charming chandelier was nicknamed 'the banana republic'.
banana republic?! the only oppressor in this apartment is you! was all I could think staring down the yellow barrel of a pointed petal (ok, maybe it kind of does kind of look like bananas). Two weeks dredged like two years. Talking. We were always talking. Television became the only passport to that lovely ocean of silence. Somewhere amidst all of this talking I said what mattered. I said those three important words. 'please get out' immediately followed by the three words i confuse with 'i'm sorry', 'i love you'. She did. Four days and three missed planes later.
She called yesterday. She'll be back on my coach by the end of the month. A surf princess who bubbles, froths and drifts in and out of lives like the ocean.
One of my best friends has just moved out from the east coast to find whatever adventure the west coast has been promising for centuries and failing to deliver. At first I was excited, thrilled even. Within hours this excitement developed a sallow pallor and began to cough. I was tired. There was suddenly this girl standing between me and my dinner & a book routine. A girl standing between me and my date with 400 threadcount sheets and pillowtop mattress. It got worse from there. Glasses were rearranged, chotchkes appeared like chimeras. A charming chandelier was nicknamed 'the banana republic'.
banana republic?! the only oppressor in this apartment is you! was all I could think staring down the yellow barrel of a pointed petal (ok, maybe it kind of does kind of look like bananas). Two weeks dredged like two years. Talking. We were always talking. Television became the only passport to that lovely ocean of silence. Somewhere amidst all of this talking I said what mattered. I said those three important words. 'please get out' immediately followed by the three words i confuse with 'i'm sorry', 'i love you'. She did. Four days and three missed planes later.
She called yesterday. She'll be back on my coach by the end of the month. A surf princess who bubbles, froths and drifts in and out of lives like the ocean.
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