age of unfulfillment

continues

College Point Class Conflict Pub Crawl 2007 Update

It's on! I've been meaning to have an update here since early summer, but times are busy. For those of you who are just joining us, the CPCCPC is an urban alchotourism exploration of the blue-collar New York City neighborhood that spawned the Bellinger brothers. We take a group of white-collarized native New Yorkers, mix in some out-of-town friends, and go drinking in a neighborhood where our ilk is not supposed to exist. Last year, we had great conversations and were given free drinks all night.

You can read the preview of last year's adventure here, or see a Dan Meade Photoset of the tour itself here. Dan also posted a summary here. I've yet to finish writing mine.

There will be some important changes to the routes this year. First, the Point Bar and Grill has finally gone out of business after a long decline. I'm honored to have pissed in the venerable trough there less than a year before the bar went out of business. Our Uncle Len said that back in the 60s, College Point was known as a town of "barbershops and bars." The Point Bar and Grill was probably the only existing establishment whose roots reached back that far.

We also have two new establishments to work with this year:

1. A. R.'s Tavern. Which actually has a website, and free wi-fi. Pre-opening photo here.
   
2. Halligan's. Offers free breakfast at 8am, as well as a free first round to all Pepsi route drivers based at the College Point bottling plant. Was formerly J.R.'s, which had been shut down by the NYPD.

So here's a proposed route, which will start either at 8am or 8pm the day after Thanksgiving (or the day before Thanksgiving):

1. Bellinger Family Homestead
2. Pour House, 9th Ave at CP Blvd.
3. A.R.'s Tavern, CP Blvd at 14th Rd.
4. The Five Corners, 14th Ave at 15th Ave. and 127th St. The last German restaurant in town, which will probably go out of business soon. Have never eaten there.
5. Metal/Sports bar at 14th Ave and 130th St. We had bet on having a fight here last year.
6. Return to "downtown" CP for memorial viewing of Point Bar and Grill's remains, CP Blvd. at 15th Ave.
7. Rob Roy Spirit's [sic], CP Blvd between 18th and 20th Aves
8. Halligan's, CP Blvd at 23rd Ave (or, tour could start here with breakfast)
9. The SPORTS GARDEN at 23rd Ave for 2nd annual grand finale--lasting past 3am.

Again, the rules are no cars and no weapons, which puts us at a distinct disadvantage in Queens but holds up well with juries.

WUMB's audio stream fucking sucks

It's bad enough that you can't get the station on the airwaves 5 miles from UMASS, but you can't exactly get it on the internet, either.

Creating the Next American Psycho: "Sex offenders corralled for Halloween"

Check out this article on extra special, pre-emptive treatment of paroled sex offenders nationwide. Locking ex-cons up a few nights a year for protective purposes shouldn't make them any more dysfunctional, right? Happy Halloween!

Horseneck Beach

In between meetings last week. I believe these old brutalist things are being torn down this off-season.

insomnia, satisfaction

I don't sleep until I am satisfied with the productivity of my current bout of awakeness.

Checking in...

Still plugging away. 6-day VA/DC/TX/MN trip starts Thursday am.

Found note to self on Miyako Hotel (San Francisco) stationery , circa April 2007

WRITE ABT
THE VALLEY!
THE FOG!
THE BEER
THE CABS!

I

don't know what to tell you.

MAGNUM with Prayer Hands

Our vehiculo at Oral Roberts University, Tulsa. As seen on the KC SIEGE.

Elmer's BBQ, Tulsa

From the KC SIEGE this summer. Actually, Elmer's is in Tulsa. See below for details...

The Badwich: It be bad!

Our curiosity increases. We came here after reading a Citysearch review in which the reviewer said he had been coming here for 17 years and never had anything but the Badwich.

THE BADWICH!!

Beek brisket, split hotlink, SMOKED BOLOGNA, pickles, and jalapenos, on a bun, with a pork rib on the side, with beans and slaw, for about $7.

school is where all the people who want to go to school for the sake of being in school are.

f.

auto-baub

In New York, my family calls me BAHB. In New England, people call me BAUB. They flip the accents like that. I went to a different liquor store in North Cambridge to get my first bottle of Maker's in a year or two. When the heavily tattooed proprietor viewed my license, he called me Bob. But before I left, he had also called me Baub and told me to have a good night, Baubby.

photos not yet posted include...

• NCBBQI, July 2006
  
• Vancouver, July 2006
  
• Wichita, Lawrence, and KC, June 2007
  
• Old Orchard Beach, August 2007
  

Modeling & Massage

Austin, TX. Spring.

JR's Barbeque, Culver City, CA

JR's in Culver City, which is surrounded by LA, was so good that I went back a second night and got the exact same entree again. Thin-sliced, well-smoked brisket, delightfully greasy beef hot links laden with garlic, and above average sides (dug the beans, potato salad, mac 'n cheese). Their meats may be "tender as a mother's love," but their mud-black and mud-thick hot sauce will sting your ass numb like daddy's belt.

Food shot below.

Brisket, Hot Links, and Hot Sauce

JR's BBQ. Culver City, CA.

Black Watch

Transatlantic visitor docked in Old Montreal.

Yet another place I've been to this month:

This is me unwrapping the hand soap

in the Holiday Inn, Charlottesville, Va.

Ben's Chili Bowl

The half smokes are less smoky than I'd expected.


Washington, DC

STAMEY'S

That reddish-orange stuff is the best western-style bbq dip I've tasted: perhaps half ketchup and half vinegar. Only the chicken gets it; the pork is average ketchupy stuff. The curly things are what hush puppies are supposed to look like. Greensboro, NC.

Dear Kendall area private security guards,

You asked me "what gives you the right to photograph private property" from a public street?

The Bill of Rights.

Plastic Shitcam Returns from Pittsburgh

It's back--came in the mail yesterday. And the image above, which PSC took at the University of Miami this spring, has just been published in the Schmap Miami online tour guide.

However, I'm not sure why visitors to Miami would want to check out college campuses...unless they were selling textbooks...

redeye dreams/other

When I finally slept I dreamt that I had a street map of a city I had just visited tattooed on both forearms. There was a buzzing, slight pain in my skin but it looked worth it. Then, I was driving and under assault from a superzombie. As the superzombie clung to the vehicle, I slammed it into walls and pillars and other cars and my car was dented by the uninjured zombie. It turned out that the zombie was actually the father of some anonymous male companion. I had to help him fight his alternatingly living and undead dad, who turned out to be the captain of a small coastal oil tanker. We plotted and planned on the deck of the tanker, but the man who emerged from the cabins before I awoke was not a zombie but a father.

Also, I wish that I:

• were eating fresh brownies with milk
  
• were not physically and mentally exhausted (feels like having a fever)
  
• spent less time in front of laptop screens trying to communicate with people I can't see
  
• had a functioning girlfriend
  
• were not a tourist in my own body and mind.
  

Body Splattered on Congress Street in Soulless Southie

I really didn't want to be in a cab this morning, and when the Terminal A ATM turned out to be out of cash, I just took the Silver Line. In the glass and glitter part of Southie were many flashing lights, belonging to Boston, Massport, and State Police vehicles. In front of the building that Silver Line buses pass through, a lump under a white sheet with a spurt of escaped blood slowly drying on the dewdamp asphalt. What happened?

geography vs. everyone

coming down from the mist above rural montreal in a CRJ the earthenness of the landscape bounds upward, solid, undeniable, even in what little light is available. patches of brown and green cropland, choking pathetic rectangular patches of hemmed-in forest. the roads are dirt. the structures are well-intentioned jokes: corrugated metal beat by the wind, sun, snow, rain, mist, ice, etc. etc., without suggestion of permanence or dominance. canada is its land. hints surround the cities. the truth is out there if you want it.

fast forward to los angeles. the promise of the west looms large as soon as the plains end and the rockies begin. nothing but immemorably complex, reddish and rugged majesty until the clouds over the coast. descent, touchdown. the surface of the earth bears all the empty promise of ten years of useless dating. everything is designed to look filthy. gray and graying and sometimes grooved concrete is smeared over everything, across the surface, sideways, in columns, in curving linear shapes atop the columns. the grooves trap grit and oil and grime. chain stores everywhere; the only majesty to be found in the thousands of refinery lights atop fractioning towers and steam-spewing structures between long beach harbor and the road. car lots everywhere. land of in n out. a system of small cities designed for the automobile, whose flatness defies everything east. the promise of the west? nothing hasn't been fucked up.

Number of minutes watching TV news in LA hotel bar:

Less than fifteen.

Number of stories about fatal auto wrecks: 5
Number of stories about sexual predators: 2
Number of stories about O. J. Simpson: 1

I can't believe

I'm awake.

Expired Film: Giant Mole Rat Speared by 2x4

Highland Ave, Somerville

I have republished all my drunk posts from Montreal below.

I feel better about the aesthetic balance of photos and words now. Now I'm going to watch Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, which I've had out from Netflix for nearly two months. I was supposed to see it with my brother at the Film Forum in Manhattan about three years ago, right when it seemed that our paths were converging and that our backgrounds and educations hand melded us into something similar and productive and we ignored it and didn't make it to the Film Forum and only now do we continue together. After the film, I will try to do and mail my expense reports, then sleep five hours, then go to the airport at 6:15, then fly to Los Angeles. On the plane I will work for about 5 hours. Off the plane, I will rent a car, meet a colleague, and work for several hours before retiring to my hotel. I will be very tired tomorrow night. This post powered by one Zombie and one other rum drink from the Emperor's Garden in Boston's Chinatown. Oh, wait--before the movie I'm going to get a little paper carton of milk and have some more of the milk chocolate I got in the Montreal airport.

Revenge of Plastic Shitcam

A new set of fixed focus/expired film exposures is now up on Flickr.

It cost $9.99 for one set of prints and $3 for a CD of 256-dpi scans (averaged about 350kb/photo--useless). I can't believe any casual consumer still uses film.

to the crackhead c___suck_rs who stole my jacket and flask at the hong kong--

you owe me $100.

i'm going to lunch at victor's

& i'm going to come back with some goals

re/un-publishing

too many good photos on this page to leave all this junk at the top. will republish later.

btw

if you're only into the more atlantic-friendly content such as that which you link to, please continue scrolling downward until you find something more palatable to your level of palatability.

p.s.

fuck you!

bartenders and waitresses

valid??

it was the best of times...

marooned in downtown chinatown montreal in a selective chain hotel. opportunities for drinking, filth, and white collar work abound.

i think i'll go to bed.

NY

The first crisp-appearing day of autumn, and I miss my hometown. The full range of New York looks fully different in autumn light. I want to stop by and make sure the geography and infrastructure are still there. The people don't really matter. They come and go. They don't know that Manhattan is a borough. They think they are worshipped by their families back in the Midwest for living in Park Slope. They think they are worshipped by pained artists and almost cool kids everywhere for living in Williamsburg. Sometimes I hate my education because it allows me to see these virulent monstrosities that dent the image and my own memory of the city. Working-class Queens life is just one tiny puzzle piece of the "eight million stories" of the city, fodder for the transplants to grab in their grubby hands and make sitcoms of.

The better version of softening twilight:

This is a late April in Maine shot. The trees are budding, though the days remain short. We have a lot of shit to get through to reach the purported optimisms of spring. Be prepared.

Coast Guard

Security team on the Oakland-Alameda ferry.

Stop-By Mart

The Richmond, San Francisco.

More Mission Pigeons

See also this shot. I took 30-40.

Zucchini Pupusa

Extreme closeup. El Salvador Restaurant, the Mission.

Horned Thing with Sunlight

Lower Haight, San Francisco

Pigballer

Additional SF.

age of complacency

1. our ancestors traveled thousands of unknown miles under steam and sail (lately wing) so that we could do this.
2. we go to trade school, work in our hometowns, and die

VOTE

One more from San Francisco, late August 07.

Downtown Digs

San Francisco again.

Traffic Signals

Out of focus in San Francisco.

Pensive

San Francisco.

Retropublishing Alert

A stored draft called "Scum of the Earth," about trying to find an apartment in Somerville, has been uploaded to the public blog.

STEINBECK

Quotes from The Wayward Bus.

On the American bourgeoisie:

Mr. Pritchard was a businessman, the president of a medium-sized corporation. He was never alone. His business was conducted by groups of men who worked alike, thought alike, and even looked alike. His lunches were with men like himself who joined together in clubs to so that no foreign element or idea could enter. His religious life was again his lodge and his church, both of which were screened and protected. One night a week he played poker with men so exactly like himself that the game was fairly even, and from this fact his group was convinced that they were very fine poker players. Wherever he went he was not one man but a unit in a corporation, a unit in a club, in a lodge, in a church, in a political party. His thoughts and ideas were never subjected to criticism since he willingly associated only with people like himself. He read a newspaper written by and for his group. The books that came into his house were chosen by a committee which deleted material that might irritate him. He hated foreign countries and foreigners because it was difficult to find his counterpart in them. He did not want to stand out from his group. He would like to have risen to the top of it and be admired by it; but it would not occur to him to leave it. At occasional stags where naked girls danced on the tables and sat in great glasses of wine, Mr. Pritchard howled with laughter and drank the wine, but five hundred Mr. Pritchards were there with him.

On the sexual imprisonment of the monogamous heterosexual male:

Her husband's beginning libido she had accepted and then gradually by faint but constant reluctance had first molded and then controlled and gradually strangled, so that his impulses for her became fewer and fewer until he himself believed that he was reaching an age when such things did not matter.

On roads:

The highway to San Juan de la Cruz was a black-top road. In the twenties hundreds of miles of concrete highway had been laid down in California, and people had sat back and said, "There, that's permanent. That will last as long as the Roman roads and longer, because no grass can grow up through the concrete to break it." But it wasn't so. The rubber-shod trucks, the pounding automobiles, beat the concrete, and after a while the life went out of it and it began to crumble. Then a side broke off and a hole crushed through and a crack developed and a little ice in the winter spread the crack, so the resisting concrete could not stand the beating of rubber and broke down.

Then the county maintenance crews poured tar in the cracks to keep the water out, and that didn't work, and finally they capped the roads with an asphalt and gravel mixture. That did survive, because it offered no stern face to the pounding tires. It gave a little and came back a little. It softened in the summer and hardened in the winter. And gradually all the roads were capped with shining black that looked silver in the distance.

white man's burden 2007

remember: as americans, we are entitled to columbus day off. we don't have to work just because we can. i wish people understood that. but they don't.

add

the appalachian trail
drinking mate in uruguay instead of at my home office glass desk

to the to-do list

important

considering replacing girls with drum lessons

life goals

5 novels
at least 2 albums of funk/jazz-rock with r-rated folk lyrics

the most fucked up social life ever

Last night, my colleague couldn't make it to dinner so I went drinking with Lott and friends in DC. Tried to out-disaffect an Asian Hipster bartender on U Street and watched the heart and soul of the city falling to the gentrification forces. Today it turned out that Zoe was flying to Stockholm out of Logan and 9:30 and I was getting in from Baltimore at 7:50 so we had dinner in the airport. I took pictures to prove that it happened.

DC redux

Everyone wears a suit and tie in DC. Work in suit and tie, date in suit and tie, Ben's Chili Bowl in suit and tie. The girls don't wear ties. Crazy-haired senators bubble up out of the metro tubes and stalk through stuffy air. It seems one of the most sexless (or depraved) places ever.

DC!

Everywhere is more the same with alcohol and tobacco.

fung wah in the superbourgeois

coasting crests
buscando un parking and a comet tail of whores

EXPIRED FILM UPDATE

Today I acquired three six-packs of 24-exposure Fuji 400 rolls that expired 9/07. As of 13 minutes ago, it's 10/07.

Too bad I left Plastic Shitcam in Pittsburgh last week. It's coming back soon, though.

I also have a shot roll here that needs to be developed. It features an overturned tractor trailer in Terre Haute.