Tuesday, May 21, 2013
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I'm Jessica. I want to be chic and elegant and in control, but I'm pretty sure that I am none of these things.
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So this just happened.
I assume there are a couple things in play here. One, obviously, is City’s planned visit to play Chelsea at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. Secondly, I think that since there is no current place for this team to actually, you know, play games, they need to figure out a stadium situation as soon as possible.
Thoughts on this news?
My thought?
Where do I apply?
Monday, May 20, 2013
Sunday, May 19, 2013
When Tom Robbins, the longtime Village Voice metro columnist, quit the paper, we all gathered in the newsroom, which was a pretty empty place by then. I still have the champagne cork from that day, so I know someone brought champagne—I can remember the paper cups we were all drinking it out of, though not much else. Anyway Tom, who was quitting nominally in solidarity with the fired Wayne Barrett—and also because as a union shop steward he’d spent a good chunk of the prior five or six years accompanying employees into the editor in chief’s office, where he’d duly stand next to them as they were let go—eventually was convinced to stand up and give a short speech.
Mostly he talked about the people in the room. He said kind things about the work that was still being done there, the writers and editors who were doing it. Tom’s a really nice guy, had worked at the Voice in the ‘80s, was at the Daily News for a while, and then came back. Over that time he’d learned the thing that he was about to tell us all.
“Newspapers will break your heart,” he said.
Then his cell phone rang. It was a source. He took the call. And that was the end of the speech.
Everyone has their own Village Voice. I’m reminded of this all the time, but especially during days like last Friday, when then paper laid off three of the final four or five holdovers from the Village Voice that I knew—meaning the one that existed from 2005, when I started there as an intern, to 2011, the year I left. There are so many of us, people who carry around some arbitrary number of years that they worked there, memories of the golden age during which they arrived, and the fall from grace during which they left. It was always better back then, when Norman Mailer worked there—and Norman Mailer worked there for about four months in 1956, wrote 17 largely terrible columns, and then angrily quit, a pattern that would repeat at the paper, with remarkable consistency, for the next fifty years.
Anyway, my golden age involved Robert Christgau, Chuck Eddy, Ed Park, Dennis Lim, Lynn Yaeger, Jim Hoberman, Joy Press, Jerry Saltz, and a gang of other people—my friends Nick Sylvester and Tom Breihan, Jessica Winter and Tricia Romano, etc. etc.—who to my mind remain evidence of an almost comically loaded newspaper but who were at the time regarded as the decadent and listless remnant of a remnant. The Voice was past it then, like I’m sure it was in 1993, when Colson Whitehead was there reviewing Basehead records, or 1975, when Vince Aletti was writing dispatches from backstage at a Jackson 5 concert. The Voice has been past it for as long as the Voice has existed.
So it’s always strange to watch people pronounce the place dead, as they did last week, and the week before that—I remember all too well what it’s like to go to work at a place that’s ostensibly already dead. My Voice died in 2006, before I even really started working there. Someone else’s Voice died when I left, or when Camille Dodero left, or Rob Harvilla, or Allison Benedikt—it is always someone’s golden age there, even now, with the staff down to 15 or so people. Someone will some day speak rapturously about being edited by Stephanie Zacharek in the long ago year of 2013, and why not?
The Village Voice has way of making true believers out of everyone. One entertaining phenomenon over time has been watching editor after editor switch sides—most recently, Will Bourne and Jessica Lustig, who both walked out in after less than a year on the job, in defense of a paper and a staff they barely knew. Or rather—my guess—they knew it all too well, and that’s why they left, like Mailer, or Tom Robbins, or Tejal Rao and Nick Pinto, both of whom seem to have quit the paper while I was writing this. A big part of loving the Village Voice is leaving it.
It will always have been a great paper. Not now, but just before now. That will be true if it folds tomorrow or in another fifty years. It broke your heart already. That’s the beauty of the place. I miss it, and don’t miss it at all.
“Newspapers will break your heart,” he said.
A big part of loving the Village Voice is leaving it.
(via fek)
Ha sido un honor ser una Madridista durante el capítulo de José Mourinho en la historia de Real Madrid. Ahora miro al futuro de mi equipo y quiero dar muchísimas gracias al mi entrenador favorito del mundo. TQ y siempre tenemos Portugalia.
Grocery game change:
After being asked how my day was, I got free steak.
Butcher boyfriend is a weird serial killeresque hashtag but I’m not mad at free meat so…
#butcherboyfriend it is.
#SINGLELADIESTOUR São Paulo, Brazil (IV of IV)
Our Brazilian Deezer hosts brought us to dinner at Bar da Dona Onça, which is literally a leopard print themed restaurant. I ordered the catch of the day, which happened to be dorado, a popular Brazilian fish.
Sidenote: I just spent twenty minutes googling variations on “São Paulo leopard”, failing to find the actual name of the restaurant. Then I remember someone pointing out Love Story, a club slash whore house down the street, which had me pulling up the brothel on Google Maps and zooming around nearby until I found what I was looking for. #sleuth
In any event, the name of the bar translates to “Lady Jaguar’s Bar” and they serve a mean cocktail and deliciously fresh fish. Perhaps most importantly, everything that could be in not leopard but jaguarprint, is. (Turns out that the jaguar is sort of Brazil’s version of the Bald Eagle.) My favorite decorations were the paintings of famous locations all over the world, where a jaguar was poorly photoshopped in and the whole thing was blown up into giant wall hangings. So silly and yet so perfect. And the restaurant is located on the ground floor of Edificio COPAN, one of the architectural gems of the city. Blame it on the low light or the multiple maracuja caipirinhas, I didn’t get any fotos of the decor. Internet to the rescue! Photo credits here & here.
After dinner and drinks, I ended up going with a few of the band dudes and our local production team to a bar in Villa Madalena, graffiti arthood, called Ó do Borogodó. I was promised live music.
What I got was an amazing six piece samba band with a seventy year old lady vocalist in a small sweaty dive bar that serves beers so huge you have to share them amongst friends in small juice glasses on a crowded dance floor.
It was truly magical.
/jj
#SINGLELADIESTOUR São Paulo, Brazil (III of IV)
As previously mentioned, the official opportunity to travel down to Brazil was because my friend T, who works on the management team for Chicago band, Wild Belle, was invited to play an event down in São Paulo. I can’t say enough nice things about the band for being genuinely sweet and legitimately talented folks. You should probably check them out.
Deezer is sort of the South American version of Spotify, and there were our hosts in SP. They threw a party at Cine Joia where Wild Belle and an electronic dance party group, Gang do Eletro, performed. ADORE.
Translation: They’re rad Brazilian electronic music that isn’t Diplo related.
Anyways, within minutes of getting into the party, our production host handed me a glass of cachaça, the liquor caipirinhas are made out of, so I knew this was going to be a good time. Wild Belle was really well received by the foreign crowd and Gang do Eletro wore neon outfits and turned the party into a dancehall. I wore heels and a sequin skirt. A good time was had.
/jj
PS You guys: Brazilian dudes can move.
#SINGLELADIESTOUR São Paulo, Brazil (I of IV)
We spent two nights and two days in the city. Our hotel, TRYP Paulista, was perfectly located in the center of town and conveniently close to a 24 hour restaurant/ grocery store with an exceptional bakery.
Brazil is all about their bread and cheese, in any combination. Pão de queijo (literally cheese filled bread) is a Brazilian staple food item. You’ll see people ordering them alongside espressos in the morning, as afternoon snacks, or at a late night stand. Delicious in any form you get em. I had researched the city’s best pão and found it to be a brief but steep walk away from our hotel on Rue Haddock Lobo 1408 in the Jardim Paulista neighborhood. It is just an unassuming storefront with a single bench outside but it had a line of people waiting for the freshly baked pão to come out of the oven. The baker arrived and dumped the bread into the big basket above and within minutes, they were all sold out again. Hot item, literally. These guys were pros and even offered to move out of the way so I could photograph their product. The bread itself is best served fresh and has a nice crewy center. The cheese is incorporated into the bread so it’s not really like a grilled cheese where the cheese oozes out when you pull it apart.
The 24 hour mart (Bella Paulista)’s bakery is phenomenal. After the show on Thursday night, we headed there to pick up some desserts and night pão which as if the regular bread isn’t delicious enough, they slice it in half and slather it in a cream cheese. Insane good. I picked up a pasteis de nata, the custard tart pictured above, which I learned about in Lisbon. Flakey and not overly sweet. Lethal combination.
When I researched shopping in Brazil, every site told me that I HADDDD to go to a shopping mall and that’s where all cool Brazilians went. So one day when T was working with the band, I hopped on a bus for 40 minutes by myself to a mall. I’ve never been more retail’ly underwhelmed, sadly. Nothing seemed particularly unique and the majority all of the stores were glorified closets. Spoiled American perspective, I’m aware. I’d much rather spend time getting lost in the boutiques and outdoor urban gallerias, which are sort of mini malls that happen in-between buildings.
I would say that the best part about going to the mall was proving to myself that I could conquer a bus system in a land where I don’t speak the language and have no orientating sensibilities. I not only did that, but I never paid a dime for my rides since I couldn’t figure out how to pay for the damn bus. Good thing a smile goes a long way.
Now the money sitch. The physical bills are gorgeous. And even though the entire internet seems to claim that Brazil is super expensive, I was never mad about the price of anything I ate, drank or purchased. So maybe people can’t do the conversion math or they’re just really cheap. Either way, the most expensive thing about Brazil is getting there.
/jj
Hey! I finally started trying to back update VCM with Brazil details. Check it out.
#SINGLELADIESTOUR São Paulo, Brazil (II of IV)
São Paulo is a hustler of a city. Every street is covered in foot or motorcycle traffic. Every building goes sky high, maximizing occupancy possibilities in the smallest amount of square footage. Every wall is covered in graffiti. SP is visually B U S Y.
This busyness creates an amazing atmosphere for nightlife and artistry, which is where bars, graffiti and samba music come in. I was lucky enough to experience brilliant versions of all three in my short stay.
I’ve always been a sucker for street art and have countless images of beautiful wall paintings from all over the world in various iPhoto libraries. I spent afternoon in Beco do Batman (Batman’s Alley), which is the most famous home to spraypainting art in the city.
With its layers upon layers of paint, Beco do Batman is a constantly changing wonder: there’s a new surprise every day, so it’ll draw you back again and again.”
I found half of my way over to the Villa Madalena after a brief session of getting lost near a cemetery. My lostness was aided greatly by some stolen wifi from a local library, where I was accosted when I walked in the door for daring to try and bring my purse into the library instead of locking it up with the security officer at the desk. The five minutes of me as an English/Spanish speaking American figure out what a Portuguese speaking Brazilian library policeman was saying to me about my purse was probably a mildly entertaining scene. In a city where you spend a lot of time being extra cautious about your belongings, leaving your purse in a gym locker with a padlock and a fake cop seems questionable, but apparently was normal. Either way, I found one spot in the entire building with a free wifi signal, loaded my google map again, and was on my way towards the alley.
I spent a while just wandering the neighborhoods, admiring the free gallery of my favorite style of art. When I found the LOVE steps, I paused to take some obvious fotos and out of nowhere, a dude started walking towards me. Instead of getting my lame nervous tourist on, I quickly put two and two together and realized that I was standing on his street desk. He started to set up shop and I turned to take a look at the piece he was about to work on. (It’s the one with the ladder against the wall.) I complimented his artistry in Spanish, hoping that would maybe work. He introduced himself as Milo and graciously engaged me in a larger conversation about his history in SP street art scene and his global work. Luckily he’s spent a lot of time in England, so we got to chatting in English.
What I found most interesting is that the alley art is a very serious endeavor and it’s a social crime to paint over someone else’s space. Milo said he’d had the space he’s currently working on in one form or another since he was young. I felt lucky to have happened upon an artist in process who was so nice to share his experience with me on a gorgeous Paulista day.
I decided to look him up for the purposes of this blog post and come to find out that he’s definitely a world renowned graffiti artist. The first picture above is of him, which I found here. More of Milo’s work can be found on his facebook, instagram or homepage.
/jj
P A P I ?!
(Source: gfsports, via fuckyeahfernando-torres)
I got to see Violet today! (at Edgewater Beach)
Dear one of Violet’s Moms,
Days App kept failing on me, remember? But don’t you worry: puppy homegirl made her big debut on my instagram. :)
J
Saturday, May 18, 2013
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