January 11, 2007
Look Out World You Know I've Got Mine
Big believer in portents as I am, guess what tune socked me silly by beginning the second I walked into the local WAMU branch to get the GIGANTIC cashier's check for the close tomorrow?
Blue Jean by Mr. Bowie.
Blue Jean.
I just met a girl named Blue Jean.
Oh David. You really never do disappoint, do you?
Posted by Bree at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2007
Luck be a Lady
Two things of note, today - both involving men, both involving luck:
(1) I geekily wrote a fan e-mail to J.R. Moehringer, author of the Salter-endorsed memoir The Tender Bar* and co-resident of Denver - and he answered it. He answered it! I'm officially in love.
Whaaa? Everyone here should well know my weakness for literary Long Island boys. Especially when they happen to be stone cold foxes with Pulitzers in their rucksack(s). As an East Egger himself might say, "I'm only yooman." Slack? Cut me.
(2) I just came from a meeting with a man we will now call MR. L. Who is this MR. L.? Let's just consider him the gent who's about to make all my commercial real estate dreams come true.
Wow.
I don't know exactly how it happened, but I appear to have formed connections with some powerful people up in this piece who want to see my business actually happen. My gaster is flabbered. Flabbered, I tell you. According to this MR., people in his (crazily successful development) company are talking about me - about how to help me - about which property to slot me into - about how to get this Scarlet Conservatory thing going...say huh? Me? I'm so flattered and touched and a million other positive feelings; it's quite overwhelming.
In addition, he gave me a scone.
So that's also overwhelming.
More info TK as they say, but suffice it: I'm going on a real estate tour with him next week that may just include fried catfish. I'll save you a batter-dipped whisker.
*Thanks for the book, Captain Spicer and FYI ANP: tons of interesting Yale stuff up in thar, you ivy-covered brain, you.
Posted by Bree at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2007
Migraine, Migraine, Go Away
Oh hellloooo, ocular migraine. I haven't seen your spazzy, prism-fragmented vision since the dark days of late 2005. You remember, when I would wake up with migraines, go to sleep with migraines, close one eye and keep. on. writing. with migraines, leave yoga class to thow up with migraines, walk into my (working from home) boss' office, shut the door, and lie in the dark on the floor with migraines...oh those were a swell few months. Granted, at the time, my relationship was deteriorating, my job had permanently jacked the old nervous system into "PANIC!" gear and Gotham was sucking the lifeblood out of me - one commute at a time. All things I saw in retrospect: after they changed, after my life got better, after my migraines disappeared.
So, it makes me a little wary that I got one today. My first in over a year. I know there's a lot on my plate, I know I'm scared and feeling freaked out about all the crazy changes that are happening, but I also know I'm a lot more aware of what's going on than I have been in the past. So here's a special request to you, body: how 'bout you not try to get my attention with these kind of pranks anymore? Ocular migraine - that goes double for you. I'm here, I'm doing what I need to do, I'm fighting to make this happen - let's all cut each other some slack, hey?
Posted by Bree at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2007
Thumbs Up From the Universe
Posted by Bree at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2006
Wal-Mart Goin' Down
In the latest New York Magazine, there's an interesting article by the most uninteresting James Cramer analyzing Wal-Mart's recent poor financial performance. While I vacillate betwixt supporting the big boxes and trying - on a personal level - to funnel my buying pesos into the small guy's coffers, I am - as always - a great believer in the free market society. Competition is what it's all about...and if you can't swim, Wal-Mart, it might be time to suck up your pride and strap on some Behnaz Sarafpour-designed floaties.
Here are some tidbits from the piece:
"Going into October, Wal-Mart predicted 2 to 4 percent sales growth. Then, in early October, the company lowered its projection to 1.3 percent. When it finished the month, Wal-Mart turned out to have gained only half of one percent. This at a moment when almost every other retailer was meeting or exceeding its higher targets."
"What's ailing Wal-Mart? People don't mind shopping at a down-market, politically incorrect store, if the prices are low enough. [Amen. - ed.] That was always Wal-Mart's game. But now the other guys have figured it out. A number of Wal-Mart's competitors now offer similarly low prices and a better shopping experience. Take Target. Wal-Mart's sloppy aisles, dowdy clothing, and junky presentation have all the charm of GUM, the grim old monopolistic chain of the former Soviet Union. Target, meanwhile, is a jooy. And its in-house merchandise, the key to its bountiful profit margins, rivals the stuff you can find in much more expensive stores - at price points that still make you feel like you're getting the deal of the century. We live in an era when consumers, more than ever, want to feel rich...In the most recent quarter, same-store sales for Target grew 4.6 percent, compared with 1.5 percent for Wal-Mart."
Naturally, it will certainly follow all sorts of precedence if Wal-Mart, as the leader, also becomes the fall guy. Starbucks and Whole Foods - take heed, my dears!! Heed!
But, even Target has its critics. In fact, the recent development of my own less-than-positive feelings about this, my one-time Mecca, has been a revelation which has shocked and saddened me like the loss of an important toenail or something. My problem with the place is that it's becoming too generalized - the tool section will have a hammer, some nails, a few screwdrivers - but not a hand-sander or a dremel or anything serving a deeper, dorkier need. This goes for every department. Their organic selection is crap, I haven't been able to find a lamp harp to save my life and there is apparently no such thing as cotton boy short panties in the Target world. Say WHAT?! Complicatedly put, I feel that Target's MO is now running counter to the whole "narrow crevasse," customizable experience that consumption is trending towards. Or, at least, that I hope it's trending towards. Granted, it's easy to take potshots at an innovator - and Target has done wonderful things in terms of marketing high-design to the low-denominators, but I fear its sustainability will be threatened by the phony "all things to all people" ethos.
All things to all people don't. exist. because. all. people. want. something. different. period. Amen. Hence? The inevitable decline of the big box dovetailed with a rise in consumer quality expectation.
Oh well. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...la la la.
Change brings opportunity. The pendulum swings. And that's why I'm banking TSC - and boutique stores like it - are gonna really raise quite a bit of hell over the next few years. Buh-bye big box; buh-bye.
Posted by Bree at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2006
999 Words
[photo credit: Matty the Horse]
Posted by Bree at 04:52 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2006
Gmail Key Word Ad of the Day
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This can't be a good sign.
Posted by Bree at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2006
Quoth the English Major Forevermore
In Argentina, I read The Lone Pilgrim by Laurie Colwin. I also read a Frommer's guide, several Star Magazines, a week-old New York Sun and the entire hotel services handbook from my nightside table one drunken evening in Buenos Aires. Dial 187 for room service. They're open 24 hours. As for the Colwin, I am leaving it with Heather in Brooklyn, but wanted to write a bit about one of the passages, as it summarized and reflected a lot of what I was thinking about on the trip. Namely, the ideas of autonomy, accountability and personal responsibility and the ways the Argentinian culture differs from ours in respect to these points of conduct. Well...that and where I was to find my next dulce de leche fix.
I am way too hot to write about this intelligently but what struck me the most - and impressed me the most - was how much more freedom there was there. Things weren't overly explained and simplified the way they are here. Essentially, adults are expected to act like adults, and to know how to look after themselves without countless restrictions and rules and laws of deportment and so on. It was so refreshing, truly, to be given the freedom to take care of yourself and your needs as you saw fit. It was so refreshing, truly, to give up trying to control every surrounding and situation and just accept that things would be okay and that, if they weren't...that would be okay too.
It made an enormous impact on me, and one I'm not soon to forget. I want to think about it for a long time because I feel, in some way, that acting more like they do over there might make me a bit more content over here.
And here's the quote:
"My availability for experience inspired him, he said. One evening, with a look of beautiful affection on his face, he told me: 'The trouble with being prepared for everything the way I am is that one false move and you feel the world is falling apart. Last week, when I lost my keys, I thought I was going to disintegrate, remember? But you - you really aren't prepared for things, so you're much better at life than I am. If you hadn't been with me, I would have just gone to pieces. I would have paid a locksmith some huge sum of money. I would never have traced our trail back to that restaurant and found the keys under the chair. So maybe you're the one who's prepared and I am simply overprepared. You are a great object lesson to me.'"
I need to stop being overprepared. It's just not the way I want to keep on keeping. It's not helping anything.
First thing's first though. What I need to do, what I really really need to do?
I need to go home.
And how refreshing it is, truly, to feel I have one again.
Posted by Bree at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2006
Special Reminder to the Ladies in the House
Guessing this sign is placed on the 'wrong' side of the tracks.
Posted by Bree at 10:35 PM | Comments (1)
April 27, 2006
Yankee Doodle Kill Me
Do you remember your first love? The real kind, the kind that turned your stomach into a roiling mess of nerves, the kind that made you think dirty thoughts inappropriate for your age bracket, the kind that opened your mind to all the power and electricity that can surge between two people hopped up on Marlboros and Ramen noodles?
I do.
He was an unbelievably awesome, incredibly smokin', artsy, long-banged, skateboarding sophomore from a rich New Hampshire family. He was considered the smartest guy in his class - taking five languages at once - and was the best guitar player I had ever heard. He was the first guy to tell me I was pretty, and he was the first guy who looked at me and tilted his head towards the door like, "Hey. You wanna hit it out of here? Just you and me?"
He was also the one I never got a chance to say good-bye to.
So how utterly crushing, then, to discover, as I did this evening, that my all-time lovey loves...is a MAN-AT-ARM in a Revolutionary War reenactment troupe.
Seriously.
Have I not suffered enough here.
Teaches me to use the Google.com.
He is still single though...um...mmm-hmm.
Adding a heaping serving of embarrassed panic, there are loads of pictures up on the "militia's" Web site. But between all the muskets and fifes and tri-cornered hats and good-natured, historically accurate enjoyment, I can't pick him out. And frankly, I'm not trying too hard.
Guess I'll really never be 14 again.
Posted by Bree at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2006
Omen? Oh Man!
Not the most auspicious sign for transplanted Gothamites...gulp...
Manhattan Born NBA Star Shot While Driving In Denver
Denver Nuggets guard Julius Hodge – once a star player for St. Raymond's High School in the Bronx – is recovering in a Denver area hospital after being shot while driving his car early Saturday morning.
Police in Colorado say the 22-year-old was driving down an interstate in the Denver area around 2 a.m. Saturday when someone pulled alongside his car and started shooting. He was hit several times in the lower body.
He was taken to the hospital where he's listed in fair condition. The team says he's expected to make a full recovery.
No arrests have been made.
Hodge is a rookie with the Nuggets. He was born and raised in Harlem.
Posted by Bree at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2006
Handful of Something
Given the decisions I've been wrestling with, I thought this bit from a Haruki Murakami story I read last night was strangely apt.
You heard me.
Murakami. Apt Murakami.
"Our city, these streets, I don't know why it makes me so depressed. That old familiar gloom that befalls the city dweller, regular as due dates, cloudy as mental Jell-O. The dirty facades, the nameless crowds, the unremitting noise, the packed rush-hour trains, the gray skies, the billboards on every square centimeter of available space, the hopes and resignation, irritation and excitement. And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That's the city."
Presenting an alternate view, here's a NY Times picture of a recent protest in Denver:
Handful of zero...or handful of Blanche Devereaux? The pros and cons are staggering.
Posted by Bree at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2006
The Coincidental Hygienist
OK. How's this for some coincidence.
I went out on Thursday night to a bar I like to call "Bounce." Cool place - dim, dark, pool table, somewhat Sweet and Bittery, though my bar will obviously kick this bar's ass in a bare knuckle fight. Obviously. Regardless, the bar was located on the aforementioned Colfax Avenue, which is one of Denver's "enterprise zones" - meaning one can get tax credits for opening a business there. Colfax is a long street with several pockets of hipness - and also several places to get your hair braided or pawn your gat.
So, it was doubly odd that none of my friends had ever heard of this joint. Many conversations were had trying to pinpoint the details of this elusive "Bounce." I was of little, or no, help. Finally, last night, the mystery was solved. Solved, I say!
Apparently my "Bounce" is actually called "Lounge." A-ha! I'm deaf AND blind! Cool! Cooler still: my dear old friend Eric told me he had a 2-degree of separation with the owner, who's looking to sell. Then Marie reminded me that she had told me of this "Lounge" because Brandt's mom used to sing at it.
Hellloooo? This is total fate. I love Brandt! And I love songs!
As a bonus, it's also apparently FULLY HAUNTED.
Just like my old apartment!
Yes!
So, we went back late last night and realized that...[cue the Twilight Zone music]...the carpet is almost identical to that charming brown chandelier pattern you see on this site. I take that as YET ANOTHER INEXPLICABLE sign. It's been proven that NO ONE likes that pattern but me. Me and BOUNCE that is!
Hmm, well - I think the place is a little big for me (two levels) and has a couple, um, troubling "sink-spots" in the floor, but all these coincidences have got to mean something. Something beyond the fact that Denver is really, really small, I mean.
Bounce, Lounge, whatever your name is, watch out. I'm coming. And I'm keeping the carpet.
Posted by Bree at 05:50 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2006
One Part Inspiration, Two Parts Perspiration, Zero Parts Burgess Meredith
Pretty hilarious , even to me - perhaps the one person on earth who has never actually seen Rocky. I know, pure blasphemy for the treasurer of the Dolph Lundgren #1 Fan International Club over here - but true.
Posted by Bree at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)
January 02, 2006
The Not-So-Wonderful Thing about Tigers
There's little worse than listening to a long-winded description of someone else's dream - but I just want to go on the record here and say that I had the scariest anxiety nightmare of me short life last night. And as this is a blog of my whole moving/business-building process, of which this TOTALLY relates in the most obvious Dr. Phil-way imaginable, I absolutely must detail the horror...the horror...
Oh lordy.
In it, I was packing to leave and remembered that I had a little, weird stunted tiger in a box, which I had been ignoring and not feeding and just kind of hoping would go away without me having to take any action. After I happened upon the box (in my tool drawer, natch), I realized I had no idea what to do with it. So I opened the box a little, and the wee kitten-sized tiger was still alive and went a bit nuts and took a chunk out of my hand...and then clawed my cat, Mojo..before I dropped it and it disappeared through a hole in the floorboard. I turned to someone, I think Matt or Elliott, who was sitting on the couch and I said, "Well - problem solved."
But then the thing came back up through the hole.
And I woke up in a state of frenzy.
Whoa. Rarely do I remember my dreams, and rarely are they so darned...obvious.
Tiger in the box is freaky-dekes. Alas, the time has come to deal with it.
Word to your mother.
(And mine too.)
Posted by Bree at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)
December 18, 2005
Wheels in the Sky
Two articles today that have confirmed my need for... Journey...
Posted by Bree at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
October 17, 2005
The fickle finger of fate
A 3-year old girl's finger got chopped off by the escalator in Macy's over the weekend.
http://www.nydailynews.com/10-17-2005/news/story/356411p-303797c.html
Although the family will surely take the store for several million, it gets me thinking...what price the lifelong nickname "digit midget"?
Posted by Bree at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)