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1 May 2003
Re-ordered the stuff to the left to better reflect what I’m doing. A day of firsts: first croissant from Half & Half (Kaleidescope’s replacement), first cuppa coffee at Intelligentsia, first visit to the new gym, first wacky street theater in a while.

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27 April 2003
So I’m sitting by my window, reading quietly, when someone on a motorcycle outside decides to rev up a loud (unmuffled) engine. The vibrations from that set off a car alarm. And now I’m pissed. Damn rude noise polluters!

Your duty: leave the city

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“Now that the war is nearly won, I’m thinking I should buy a car. I figure it’s my patriotic duty to burn my share of the fossil we’ve just liberated in Iraq. Then I think, if I really wanted to own a car and shop at Ikea, I could just live in Elizabeth.” TONY

Also: “The modern city is the most unlovely and artificial sight this planet affords. The ultimate solution is to abandon it. We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city.” Henry Ford

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25 April 2003
The renovation of the North Avenue Baths really is quite nice, but not all historic buildings have a ready market of $2,000-a-month rentals and James Beard Foundation-honored restaurants, or zoning that wouldn’t allow more floor area (and thus makes a teardown silly).

War of mass distraction

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“More distressing even than the president’s lies, though, is the public’s apparent passivity. Bush just seems to get away with it. The post-September 11 effect and the Iraq war distract attention, but there’s more to it. Are we finally paying the price for three decades of steadily eroding democracy?” TAP

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21 April 2003
“Like ugly clothes and extreme sports, Pabst [Blue Ribbon]’s value lies in its expression of individuality and choice, a rejection of consumer society by those who feel manipulated by it… While most young consumers buy clothes and cars to make themselves seem as affluent and desirable as possible, the materialism of many of today’s counterculture youth is just the opposite. It is meant to reflect the economics of “reality,” of working-class thriftiness, of the notion of America at its best, at its most optimistic, at its blue-collar prime. Of course, this is not America. This is Americana — and an appetite for what was good when things are going bad.” As poetic a description of hipsters’ attempts to overcome pomo ennui with false nostalgia as any, from the Washington Post.

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20 April 2003
Perhaps hope does spring eternal: “That grown men and women can make a living pondering such matters [in this case, topology] is a sign that civilization, as fragile as it may sometimes seem, remains intact.” NYT