Bad Walking in NYC

In my travels in and around NYC over the past 3+ years, I have found that there are several sub-classes of urban walking that I would like to present to you, dear reader. These people often make working and commuting to Times Square a veritable hell . . .

• Chubby girl in flip flops- they waddle down 42nd street with dirty feet and day glo shower shoes—be forewarned never to get behind this person if she has to ascend stairs in a subway station as they will breathe heavily and stop several times for breaks over the course of 15 steps . This specimen generally is chewing gum and compounds her slow walking by texting and not paying attention as to where she is walking. 6/10 on the bad walking scale
• Dumb tourists- this group travels in a pack and is often wearing sweatshirts/t-shirts/baseball hats with their home state university (i.e. Wisconsin, Penn State, Ohio State, Georgia, Tennessee). They walk 4-8 abreast and are difficult to circumnavigate as their collective gaze into the skyscrapers of Times Square leave them largely unmoved by the crowd around them. These are the people who actually eat at the Olive Garden in Times Square and speak with the amateur rappers selling mix tapes and the “do you like stand up comedy” asshats. 7.2/10
• Angry minority (or want to be minority) person who walks right at you looking for a fight- Enough said. 4/10 (10/10 on the scary scale)
• Sideswipe Walker- seemingly normal person who cannot walk in a straight line and instead travels in the same manner that an amateur skier takes down a trail. A big swooping “S”. This person slams into you as you try and pass them and rarely offer an “excuse me,” just a vacant look as they bounce back in the opposite direction. 5/10
• Mothers with their extra wide strollers- this specimen is most often found in the Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill neighborhoods of Brooklyn. They feel that just because they took a shit load of fertility treatments and spent a lot of money to have strange looking kids for their nannys to raise they can take up the entire sidewalk on Saturday and Sunday afternoons (they only days that they are not working too much in media and/or finance). Be wary of crossing this specimen when near pastry shops, the Tea Lounge and Ola Baby on Court Street. 8/10

CSKA Moscow vs. Zenit St. Petersburg--Beautiful Hooliganism (?!)

Watch and marvel at the unbridled ultra-violence that the firms from CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg unleashed on one another recently. Head stomps galore! Via Dirty Tackle/Deadspin

Wish Shannon Hoon Could've Played at Tipitina's That October Night in 1995

Going to New Orleans in a few weeks and each time I visit that fine quasi-American city I cannot help but to think of Shannon Hoon . . .

A Fan's Notes--The Cleveland Edition

Can you feel it? I can.

Its in the air like the toxins from a DeLillo novel and on my tongue like the guilt you can only find in the catholic church. Its right in front of my face and empirically impossible to deny and the smell, the smell is akin to the Merriman Valley in Akron when the wind shifts and brings the stench of the nearby waste management facility into the faux trendy bars. Its fall and its time for varying degrees of failure dressed in Brown and Orange as well as Scarlett and Grey.

Born into this like MF Doom we cannot help but to live and mostly die on autumn weekends with only alcohol to numb the embarrassing pain that New Yorkers and Bostonians cannot fathom. We die young and we die often with our Bernie Kosar jerseys but like demented lemmings keep coming back for more.

Most people cannot understand it and my affinity for this pain is ineffable, irrational. But right now, right this second as the lights of Times Square invade my office I am looking forward to kick off at 4:15pm this Sunday. Hoping that I will sleep soundly and wake up unafraid of the sports section and ESPN.com.

Pray for us.

Fashion Week in NYC

It is Fashion Week here in NYC and I, for one, find myself once again annoyed. While I cannot deny that they overall beauty level has risen in and around 4 Times Square it is unfortunately eclipsed by the rude, solipsistic and bizarre behavior of the participants. Every couture minded freak has slipped out from behind the downtown shadows and largely inaccessible clubs to move their show to Midtown for the week. Designers, with noses firmly planted in the early fall azure, clad in polychromatic (meaning, unmatching) outfits that dare regular folk like yours truly to stare. And, oh, I do.

Yet the worst behavior lies with the stick legged, straw and mirror loving set who have unlearned how to see civilians on the street and in the Conde Nast cafeteria. They lurk behind oversized sunglasses while inside and leave behind them a trail of names like Isaac, Marc and Anna for the rest of us to stumble over. If, for some strange reason, one does dare to make eye contact with one of these glossy gals the reaction is what a Jacobin could have expected if they crossed paths with Marie Antoinette. Some, yes, are indeed attractive and some even act normal. Yet the vacant stares as they push past the crowd to get to the salad station in the cafeteria are too much to bear ...

Give me back Bryant Park at lunch, I plead!

Destiny

My good friend from Akron, who now lives in that little enlightened hamlet by the sea full of hills and medicinal marijuana shops, burned me a reggae mix a few years ago that I play while drinking strong coffee from D'Amico's on weekend mornings.

This track from Buju Banton, with its sun infused effervescence, always provides a treat . . . although I do fancy myself as more of an existentialist and the idea of having a destiny strikes me as bullshit.

Poster in Carroll Gardens Brooklyn