Don't Mess With Messengers (Female or Otherwise)

This here is a little something from the mean streets of Toronto. Apparently, this guy picked the wrong girl to vent his road rage against. Check out the whole series here

Man Do I Love Democracy

Today was an interesting day of radio listening. My Tuesday through Friday job allows me to listen to WNYC all day. It allows me to chew the cud over the news of the day. Todays news had some good little bits to it, I'll break it down thusly.

-Hamas won democratic elections in Palestine. How the hell d'ya like that?

-Bush: Loves democracy, doesn't like Hamas.

-Bloomberg: no more guns dammit, he's sick of that shit!

-James Frey: Dodged a freaking bullet. He only had 20 minutes of grilling from Oprah and her audience before the show was inturrupted by the President's address. Hamas has a friend in James Frey, or Bush. Only time will tell. All I know is that I won't buy any of Frey's book till they're in the 50% off bin.

Roastin'

Laura and I checked out Gimme Coffee this morning with Laura and The Pig. The coffee itself was good, damned potent. I asked the lady if I could have a little milk and sugar in mine, but she referred me to the coffee and milk station. I hate that, I hate it so much. You have this wierd bottleneck when you're adding sugar and milk and it never leads to interesting interactions between people. You just have this wierd sensation as someone hovers next to you waiting for you to hurry up and garnish your coffee. I won't repeat that in my own (future) establishment.

My newest obsession is roasting. There is a shit-ton about coffee that I don't know and need to if I'm going to open a place of my own. It's a hell of a lot cheaper in the long term if I roast my own beans, and I can sell my own brand of coffee in the store and on the internet. The problem is that I haven't the foggiest about what goes into a good blend and roasting batch and a good roaster costs about as much as a used Kia Spectra. After the wedding Laura and I talked about going to Florida or Idaho (depending on the brand of roaster we'll buy) and take a three day coffee course.

In other news, Laura and I are training for a half-marathon. We ran 5.3 miles tonight, (our front door to Manhattan over the Billyburg and back). We did about 4.5 miles last Sunday and this week we kicked a hell of a lot more ass. Tomorrow's delivery should be pretty grim, looks like frozen rain/snow. I just got some new rain gear, lets see how she works.

Violent, But Satisfying Fantasy

A couple of nights ago, I was watching "American Idol" with Laura. Some aspects of the show bothered me and my subconsious was good enough to right some of the wrongs as I slept.

That night, I had a dream that I was somehow cast on a reality show (not Idol). I figured that since I was basically going to be prodded and poked till I fit into whatever archetype the casting people had given me, that I would fuck with em'. Every time I opened my mouth I would be very articulate or just smile like a dope. Soon enough I was asked to leave and as I left the host of the show (Seacrest) said something to me that just didn't sit well as I left. I looked back at him and something about my stare spooked him, probably since I had been doing all that smiling, and he started to walk fast and then run in the opposite direction. I watched him run for a second, thought about chasing him, then though better of it, THEN though way better of it and started booking it like a motherfucker after him. I was running behind him and he was looking back and pumping his legs like a crazy person. I chased the smiley sonofabitch for about a quarter mile before he keeled over wheezing, looked as me then started blubbering for me not to hurt him. I think I either hit him once or made as if to hit him and he collapsed on the ground and pissed himself.

"Try not to get a hard-on." (from pissing himself. Dude, it totally made sense) I said, and walked off.

Now tell me, folks, what the hell was that all about?

Poppa's Got a Brand New Bag

Over the weekend, Laura and I built some shelves/bike cubby for my former co-worker, Petra. We went to sleep a little too late and a little too drunk on Friday night, so we drank way too much coffee and headed on over to her place. Laura watched Petra's son, Magnus, who I first met as a lump in Petra's belly a little over a year ago as we got all the lumber at Home Depot. The whole experience was pretty rewarding, I got to say that I've made a set of shelves (nope, never done that before) Laura got to feed a bit of her baby jones (the clock it ticks, softly, but steadily) and Petra gave us her smaller shelf that the bigger one displaced. I was also paid a bit and Petra gave me this old but very new looking Kozmo.com bag that she had had lying around for a while.

I love this thing, it's one of the few surviving artifacts of the dot-com boom.

For those of you who weren't in New York circa 2000, Kozmo was a fantastic failure of a messenger service that allowed you to have everything from ice cream to porn delivered to your apartment at no extra cost. Everyone who worked for them got paid an hourly rate plus tips. They tried to do this very complicated delivery system that never quite worked and because 1. they had no minimums, people would just use Kozmo to order little things that they were too lazy to go out of their dormrooms to get and 2. the people that started it were internet people, not delivery people. At one point, I was going to get hooked up with a job with them, but they went tits-up before I had the chance to apply.

Each of the messengers got these high-quality Chrome bags that were bright Orange and had this Green little guy running across them with "Kozmo" written all over them. The business plan was bad, but bags they bought were quality and you can still see them on messengers backs all over the city.

I actually worked for a summer with this woman, Hannah who designed their little logo and told me great stories of being taken out on company dinners at Nobu and making $80,000 her first year out of art school. She also told me about round after round of layoffs as the cookie crumbled and long, long periods of unemployment afterwards.

I did my Monday Morning deliveries with it this morning and it works pretty good. It doesn't have the patented Timbuk-2 strap release, which can make it a little difficult to take things out of, but it fits around your shoulder and back like a baby sloth clinging to its mama. It also holds a hell of a lot of stuff. It's bright, florescent Orange and when I wear it with my bright yellow helmet, I look like an important piece of text that's been highlighted. This thing is the shit!

A Million Little Pieces

So about a week and a half ago I finished "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey, the brutally honest, beautifully written non-fiction book that turns out now to be not all that honest or non-fictional. As far as I can tell from the internet, TV and radio a lot of the legal problems that he had were hyped up and I'm sure more aspects of it will turn out to be demonstrably false.

It seems he made a faustian deal with himself and his publisher which caught up with him this week and may eventually fuck him. Apparently, Frey had the door slammed in his face 17 times by publishers before his book was accepted (perhaps after a rewrite or two) and was released as a work of non-fiction, against his initial wishes. The book contains no forward, no preface, no disclaimer about artistic license. It just begins with him waking up on a plane with no wallet, four missing teeth and no recollection of what happened or where the plane is heading. That is some gripping shit I have to say and actually true to boot. I took everything he said in the book as the truth, he went on Oprah several times and to many, many book signings and events and said that it was an honest, accurate portrayal of what happened. Even the part about having a double root-canal with no anesthesia, local or otherwise.

It looks like Big Jim kinda fibbed about his legal problems, former arrests and god know what else. The fact of the matter is that I really liked his book, liked the message and I think he's a great freaking writer. The problem is, his whole book is predicated on honesty, total blaring honesty and I took him at his word. If we were friends, I'd clock him one and we'd be cool. As it is, I'm just a reader and the furthest I'll go is to not plunk down $23.99 for his other book.

Laura took it with a grain of salt, much like you would watch an episode of Law and Order based on an actual event. We sparred for a bit over the book and in the end, she was a hell of a lot righter than I was.

Put Down for the Rock

Laura and I went for our second visit to "Push" a custom jewelry place on Mulberry street. This time, we came back and I bought the ring, it'll be ready in 6 weeks. It's a handsome sucker, platinum with pave black diamonds, I'll post a pic once it's ready. I think this is the biggest purchase I've ever made. Feels good though, it's going to look great.

What a nice day

Aside from normal anxiety about getting up at 5:00 this morning (I've been up since ten after four) deliveries went very smoothly. Today's high was in the 50's and aside from being sent on something of a fool's errand as a favor to my boss, all was well. Instead of going home, eating a huge meal and passing out for a couple of hours, I got a lot of stuff done. Laura and I are still looking for a venue for our wedding and nothing can go forward until after we find a place. The current ticket is to have it done at Galapagos Arts Space on North 6th in Williamsburg. A few months ago, before we were engaged, Laura told me about a friend of her's that didn't have very much money and had the wedding at Galapagos. At the time it seemed to us the epitomy of young bohemism but with the budget we have and now faced with the reality of the costs, it's looking mighty good. This is not to say that it's cheap by a long shot, no sir. I can see why there's such a huge industry around this.

In other news I'm in the process of trying to get some kind of credit card. In the first few weeks of my freshman year of college, I got more offers to get a credit card than to buy weed in Washington Square park. I figured that to get a credit card was to play with fire and over the years I've had lots of friends who have gotten burned. Now, at the ripe old age of 27, credit card companies just aren't interested in extending a line of credit to someone who has kept up with his own finances makes a living wage and has never saddled himself with credit card debt. I understand the business logic behind it, but it's still a little screwy to me. I don't even want a credit card really, I just want one to raise my credit rating, get a business loan and then eventually have come kind of line of credit for my business expenses. As it stands now, it looks like I'll have to get a "secured credit card" which means I give them money, they hold onto it and my monthly limit is the amount of money that I have given them. If I default, the keep they money that I've given them and I'm back to the drawing board.

Does anyone know of a better way of getting a credit card, business loan or have $200,000 that I could hold onto for the next half decade?

The Week

Had a good meeting this week with the hard workin' folks at NYBMA. I'll be helping them with a campaign to contact buildings that are hard to get in and out of.

My regular Monday job was moved to Tuesday because of a building union holiday. If you'll remember, this Tuesday featured freezing rain. It was bad, real bad but it was not the worst day of biking in the elements, not even in the top five. When it was over, I took a real hot shower and slept like the dead

Still looking for a place to get hitched and a place to start a business. Laura and I checked out Supercore at 305 Bedford Ave, it's beautiful and well designed if we had the chance to take over their lease tomorrow, we would.

In completely unrelated news, I've been thinking a lot about Isreal's Prime Minister Ariele Sharon. He's in some bad shape, he might survive, but he will not prosper. I only hope that whoever comes next will be crafty enough to fill whatever gap he leaves. I've never been a big fan of his, but I deplore a power vacume, particularly in that part of the world and at this time.

Happy New Year's All!

A damned good time was had by all. Many thanks to Kristi for having everyone over to her beautiful downtown pad. Everyone was there, booze flowed like water, and the new year was rung in quite loudly. At about 1:00am, everyone went to Mehanata (Bulgairan Bar) and Archie was able to get everyone in for free by using his Homeland Security badge. I had forgotten that Bulgaria was part of the coaltion of the willing. Laura and I danced like crazy people for about 20 minutes before we both realized just how drunk we were. We made it back to Brooklyn and I had to drag Laura to bed like she was a sack of potatos.

Jeremy brought this polish vodka that comes in the shape of a sniper rifle and I took a bunch of photo's of people with it.

Happy 2006 Y'all!

Melissa with Sniper Vodka:


Sam with Sniper Vodka:


Laura with Sniper Vodka:


Kristi with Sniper Vodka:


Josh with Sniper Vodka:


Jeremy with Sniper Vodka:


Nadine with Sniper Vodka:


Wes with Sniper Vodka:

New Year's Eve

Two Thousand Five has been a pretty good year all told. I managed to procure and build a new office for Transportation Alternatives, got engaged and did a couple of shows. 2006 is going to be a year of tall orders. I haven't announced it to a good many people or to the world-wide-web but Laura and I are going to open an cafe/venue in Williamsburg or Greenpoint. I've been kind of shy about talking about it, but I really want to do this freaking thing. In the spirit of Josh's book I'm going to start saying it more often and make this sucker happen.

No, I haven't figured out how I'll come up with the seed money, but my subconscious is working overtime on it. I woke up at 6:45 this morning after a vivid anxiety dream where Laura and I found all this money on a near sunken ship. We got in an argument about how much to take, I just wanted to take enough to start the cafe, but she wanted to take a lot more so we'd be set for life. I tried for a half hour to get back to sleed then crept to the bathroom and read for a few hours so as not to wake our houseguests, John and Noreen.

In other amazing news, that fixed gear bike that I referred to the other day was actually a surprise present for Laura and my friend Emily. It was a gife from her boyfriend Chris, who is, as you might imagine, a rather thoughtful guy. Yesterday, Emily moved and we helped her and when we were almost done, Chris fetched the bike and we were there when he gave it to her. She was a pretty happy camper to say the least.

This is the before picture:


This is after:


And this is Chris with the bike:

TWU Strike, The Holidays ETC.

It's been a bit, but I won't dwell. To me, the strike was a big, huge amateur hour on the streets of New York. When you bike regardless of the weather, you kind of get like a crotchety Cape Codder: there are "the summer people" and then there are the locals. There were roughly the same number of bikers on the road as one sees on the third consecutive day of spring, only it was cold as all hell and no one was too happy. There was a conspicuous lack biking etiquitte and I saw people getting really pissed at cars. I followed one woman for a couple of blocks just to see how she successful she would be at screaming at every car that was rude to her.

I work in Brooklyn four days a week and so I only had to go over the bridge into Manhattan one day. It was terrible. Teeming humanity, wall to wall cars and a sea of unhappy campers on foot.

Laura and I went to St. Louis for Christmas. It was a good time, if a little stressful. I got to see my bro's new dog, Milo who he spent his entire summer vacation training. I also got to see his completed bar that he built in one of the three bedrooms of his house and try a good amount of the beer that he's been brewing.

St. Louis for the holidays can be very stressful on the system. Lots of family stress, eating huge meals, drinking and almost zero exercize save for walking from the house to the car. Laura and I feel like bloated slugs. Laura was a real trooper I have to say. We're back in the city now and if all goes well, I'll be putting together a fixed gear from an old frame I've had for a spell and getting to the gym.

Not So Shadenfreudelicious

Well, the strike finally happened. As much as I'd like to be all smug about how I have my bike and all and this doesn't make a goddamned lick of difference to me, but it's cold out there. Really cold. I've gotten into the habit of using the G train by my door to get to work in the morning and taking my bike back, and this would be just such a morning. I hope everyone has a bearable commute or at best, a good day off.

Fun At A Funeral Home

Laura and I went to our friend and former Lyric Lounge regular, Archie's holiday party last night.

Archie's family is in the funeral home business.

Archie lives above the funeral home his family owns.

His place is huge.

The food was good, the drinks were plentiful and I got to see an embalming table. What the hell could be better? We did a little Yankee gift swap and I came home with a "Happy New Year's pack" which included three different types of novelty condems, a couple of packets of Alka-Seltzer and some Power Bars.

Not Working With a Computer During The Day

I work primarily with my hands during the day and my computer time is relegated to quick peeks at the internet in the morning and night. Little time to make content, though I feel I need to change that somehow.

As everyone and their mother knows, there is not strike right now, but kind of a strike maybe later. Maybe. I thought it woudn't happen at all, Laura thought that it would, but it turns out that we're both wrong. It's rainy and nasty outside, I intend to take my bike on the subway....while I can.

Little Giant Owners and Staff Have Read My Blog

I started to worry that my favorite restaurant, Little Giant, was out of business. I spent three days trying to get a reservation for this Saturday. I kept getting either a fax squawk or a busy signal on their reservation number. So tonight I decided to stop by there and make sure for myself that they were still kicking. It turns out that they were and that they were just having trouble with stupid Verizon. I was working out the reservation business with Julie, one of the owners when Tasha, the other owner, came up the stairs to say hi.

"So Frank, why are you so anal these days?"

I was confused

"Hey Julie, this is the guy who wrote on his web site that Little Giant was gauronteed anal sex"

Before I could clarify and say that their mutual brainchild that they spent years of hard work building was LIKE gauronteed anal sex and not a real gaurontee, the bartender chimed in, "oh yeah, I remember that. Heh heh."

I would like to now say two things regarding my November 12th post:

1. Little Giant, with its incredible selection of seasonal American dishes, wine list, decor, music and service makes the payer of the tab the feel entitled to their date's forbidden, star-shaped fruit but in no way gaurontees it.
2. I challenge anyone who works at, owns or has eaten at Little Giant to quote me just one line from the glowing reviews given it by the New Yorker Magazine, the New York Times or any other publication.

Little Giant is located on the corner of Orchard and Broom Street, for reservations call: (212) 226-5047

"Little Giant: The Place To Close The Deal"


UPDATE: Julie pointed out that the number was wrong and that's why I didn't get through. I corrected it above and I'm now a little mortified at the thought of going into the restaurant on Saturday with my parents, my fiancee and a family friend.

If you want something done right...

So Frank, how does it feel to be engaged? Not so different, it's a weight off my shoulders but now there's the immense production of getting hitched to worry about. What does feel different is that since I've gotten engaged, I've been increasingly worried about Laura's well-being and she mine.

While I was doing my deliveries this morning I got several calls from her. She was extremely upset because she fell three times trying to climb the Williamsburg bridge. By 8:30 this morning, the DOT had yet to put down salt so that now the cleared snow which had melted slightly was now frozen in icy patches. This is Laura's first winter on a track bike and it is a tricky thing to ride a slick, fully inflated, 25mm wide tire on ice and snow. You need to put your weight roughly in the middle of the bike and hover your butt in front of the seat to get leverage in your pedal stroke but not too forward so that you're rear tire will skid. It takes a lot of fucking up to get it right and doing it for your first time on a 40 degree incline while trying to get to work must be just awful. To add insult to injury, Transportation Alternatives chose this of all mornings to stand at the bottom of the bridge and remind bike commuters to slow down on the bridge and watch out for pedestrians. I don't think anyone was going that fast this morning unless they were out of control or had a death wish.

The whole thing pissed me off so much that I bought a 20 lb bag of rock salt from a hardware store on Mott and Delancy and salted off the two major turns on the bridge, both of which still had lots of snow and ice on them. The DOT had done a little bit of salting by that point, but I just decided to really lay it on thick. I coulda just called 311 and bitched to the DOT, but it was way too satisfying to just dump out a crapload of salt on the spots on the bridge they always miss.

Ahhh Love

So the pot luck went over damned well. Lots of good food, friends and wholesale consumption of affordable wine. Kristine brought her dog Milo over and the two of them fought and humped to everyone's amusement. Afterwards the party moved to The Palace, a bar in Greenpoint where everyone got beer by the pitcher.

So then......

Laura and I chatted about marraige, something that had happened before and had been left unspoken in the morning. I've realized for a while that she was the one, it was just a matter of when and where etc. etc. We went back to the house and passed out. I woke up at about seven in the morning and remembered instantly what we had discussed. I had thought to ask her this summer, probably on a small island off of the Croatian Coast. Now I was like, "oh shit, gotta do it now!"

I waited till she woke up and asked her. She said yes, we made calls, we searched for a ring (and found one for an undisclosed amount) had dinner and, since we felt to damned awful from the night before, we pretty much called it a night.

As for the response, I think my mother, who is paid for her ability to orate and is currently writing a book on parenting techniques said it best, "what took you so fucking long!"

Pot Luck At My Place

In the interest of promoting Churchillian values and eschewing those of Hitler, Laura and I will be having a Pot Luck dinner at our place this Friday. If you're reading this, you're invited, just shoot me a line to confirm. If I'm being read by people in somewhere like Kazakhstan instead of just a coterie of my 1st degree friends, well, come on through as well, it'll be interesting.

Results Finally In

So Ken at The New York Bike Messenger Association was good on his word and posted the final results for Cranksgiving. It turns out that Laura and I finished better overall among finishers, a respectable 28th and 29th place overall. If Loren is a girl's and not a boy's name (I've never seen it spelled that way to my recollection) then Laura actually placed 5th amonth the women, again, damned good for a first shot. Full results and pictures here

The ride into work today was especially nice this morning and evening what with the unseasonably warm weather. I passed the freshly reopened entrance to the south side of the Williamsburg Bridge bike path and went up and down "the chute" to see what I had been missing for the last two years. The Chute, the narrow two laned bike/pedestrian path on the Brooklyn side of the bridge comes down at a rather steep angle and has corderoy texture to the concrete. The loose headset on my bike jiggled as I attempted to go down the bridge without using my brake. This bike path is an ugly stepsister compared to the wide, gently sloped, asphalt ramp on the north entrance that will probably be closed all winter for repairs. On the Brooklyn side, they have yet to put the large circular mirror up to warn pedestrians that bikes are about to deposit themselved onto the dark sidewalk. I'm going to chat with Transportation Alternative's Noah Budnick about the best way to get that thing back. I'll keep you posted.