every week I need a new address....

Having a week of vacation without school or work for the first time since I was fifteen was amazing but I really don't mind coming back to the routine, now that the apartment is as clean as it'll get, I got plenty of socializing and time to read books, listen to good music, drink tea and watch awesomely terrible Ernest Angley Christmas specials ("And Jee-zus IS the Christmas Tree!), white rapper videos from the likes of House of Pain, 3rd Bass, and Snow, and Krull with my neighbors around the corner.

Everyone acts shocked when we get the annual thaw, and it was great to leave the house in a hoodie instead of a winter coat to pick up a fellow DJ and go up to the station on Friday afternoon to do a "Grungy New Year" with the sweet and sludgy sounds of the Pacific Northwest. We did the more obscure bands (Green River, Mudhoney, the Wipers, the Gits) and then the b-sides and rare cuts from the ones that get played on the radio still.



It being the middle of the day meant that we couldn't play most of the requests we got for fear of being smacked by the almighty FCC so we threw in some Stooges and midwest 80's punk like Naked Raygun but it was fun to play Nirvana covers, dig through the racks of vinyl, and have guys in Lakewood singing this song over the phone to us.



I wanted to take pictures of the frozen lighthouse on the lake but it had already begun to melt like a wicked witch but we went to Whiskey Island and took pictures anyway and I fell through a snow drift into the lake but the water was only up to my ankles. The park was closed technically but everyone was out there with their cameras and pets.



It's days like that when I feel damn lucky to live in this city when the lake is greenish blue and icy, the shore is littered with sticks and Black & Mild stubs and I got a full tank of gas and no plans except to be a slacker for the day.



We got food and went up on the balcony at the West Side Market before making excursions to the Glass Bubble Project to hang out with random friendly people who give me history of Parma while I take pictures of Morty the chicken, random stuff on the walls, and lamps that I would have in my house if I had money.





I took her to the graffiti walls before it started to rain, and we took pictures of paint and general Rust Belt disintegration that never gets old. It was too cold for the skaters and the gangbangers, but "Cleveland/LA" graffiti covered the art that was left and the skaters had built jumps and ramps on the concrete.





I had a lot of New Year's Eve invites, but really wasn't in a mood to be social among strangers, or drink so Lindsay and I went to Algebra for strong cardamom-laced coffee and Scrabble and overhearing earnest conversations from zealous recent converts to Islam on the evils of Facebook as a tool of Western fornication. It seemed like every major social ill went back to the other major branch of Abraham's descendants owning the media or fornication which I should have counted because it was said more times than I've ever heard anyone use it.

Meanwhile, we dispensed with scoring and the banning of proper nouns and Shabba made an appearance on the Scrabble board before going back to her parents' house to watch the ball drop and bang on pots and pans. I still don't understand boy bands or Ke$ha, but I probably never will.



I came home and stayed up awhile longer thinking about all the crazy that transpired over the past year as the gunfire crackled a few streets over. One of my friends stopped over the next night with her dog and we're plotting trips to Boston and road trip excursions to weird places, with my flexible vacation time and her teacher's schedule. It's too bad This Noah's Ark/Tabernacle extravaganza is on the other side of the country because she said it's amazing.

My great-aunt died this weekend as well, making it into the new year at the age of 99. She was sassy and completely lucid up until the end and spent most of her last days going to Mass and playing pinochle. It's the side of the family I don't know nearly as well with cousins I only see at funerals, but the ones I did know outside of that were telling me about their trip to Poland, giving me some family history and asking when I'm going to make something of myself and go to law school, considering my lack of income and matrimony.

"I'm happy with the way things are," I insist, knowing that I can't explain my cynicism about the rat race of modern society or this whole idea of romance, that I prefer cheap rent and something that looks like bohemianism but is really more that my interests are eclectic and that all my furniture has been inherited from previous roommates and elderly relatives.

And yet I enter 2011 with uncertainty, wondering if I'll still be employed by the end of the year, wondering if having something on my record really means it's expunged if I try to get another job, wondering what proverbial shit is going to hit the fan this year, trying to trust God with an increasingly uncertain future.

I'm ok with the possibility of downward mobility but I know that there's not too much further down that I can go, knowing that while there's a lot I contribute, I'm ultimately disposable, with little seniority and being constantly reminded that I'm just a kid by my boomer overlords even though I'm closer to 30 than 20. We were all young once, right? Right? Or maybe everything was just handed out back then, the right hands were shook, the right credentials earned back when it meant something.

Is part of the fight of climbing the ladder a response to this anxiety, because it's better to be knocked down a few rungs than be at the bottom completely? Is the whole culture of sucking up and tooting one's horn born just as much out of desperation as ambition?

sweetness

This is pretty awesome.

Broken Fingaz -Graffiti Stop Motion from Broken Fingaz on Vimeo.

holding onto what's golden...

A little minor drama aside, the birthday was good and Thanksgiving weekend ended well.

Kristy and I went out on Thanksgiving morning before the festivities for another round of graffiti photography/driving around Cleveland listening to Soundgarden. This has been a tradition of ours since we were freshmen in college and homesick like crazy, taking advantage of gray skies and the cold to drive around with our cameras and a stack of CDs.

We went back to some former haunts, and found a new one, ended up climbing up the hill to an old warehouse in the Flats covered with paint. The colors of the building and the spraypaint were a beautiful combination.





Went over to the east side too, because I know there has to be good stuff I haven't seen.



Also stopped by to shoot a piece of family history. This was where my grandparents lived after they got married and where my dad was born.



For some reason, I had to shoot this too:



Came back to the west side and shot some murals





... I've always loved Scott Radke and this time I had a decent camera to document with...



Friday I thought I crashed my laptop and it took me awhile to get it back to working order again. It was cold outside and no one was around and I didn't want to go and shop anywhere so I moped around and was profoundly antisocial. Easier to hang around in a grungy old t-shirt and jeans than go out anywhere. Ended up not totally wasting my time because I began working on another art project and it was turning out beautifully.

Saturday, it was gorgeous outside and me and the roommate decided to randomly go out to the east side in search of adventure. We ended up at Whole Foods where we felt very west side as we tried out all sorts of sweet smelling organic hand lotion and wondered why everything was so expensive because we usually shop at Marc's or Save-a-Lot.

After a failed trip down Lee Road in search of hair product and such, we ended up hiking around Shaker Lakes, driving around Shaker listening to reggae, and detouring over to the Rockefeller Greenhouse off East 88th. I have a feeling this will be a favorite destination as the weather gets colder and I crave heat and the sweet smell of tropical fruit and flowers. And it's free.







Then we stopped at Edgewater for the first time in forever since now it's too dark when we get off work to go down there.





The leaves were golden and the water was as blue as it gets here.

The rest of the cousins and family came on Saturday night and we had a great time as we usually do. It's cool seeing everyone get older and get out of high school and get more awesome.

And I hear rumors of snow and I don't care, because this fall has been gorgeous and amazing. I'm so used to crappy weather around my birthday that I just appreciated it so much.

photoweekend

And of course, life in Cleveland is not all mid-20s angst all the time...

There is still graffiti to be photographed, even as it looks like the Metalcrete building by the funwall is being buffed and fixed up (who would buy that anyway) and there's a camp of homeless people now living underneath the 25th Street bridge.









And, on the way out to the east side, we had an encounter with the Heaventrain in a parking lot on East 30th.





I need to start carrying my camera with me everywhere. There's too much I'd miss otherwise.

where the streets have no name.

I spent my day off pretending that I really didn't have a cold, popping cough drops, drinking orange juice, and going out on photography adventures with Mukhtar. He had to work later on that day, but we hit up a few spots and got some good pictures.







Usually there's no one around when we go on adventures like these, just the occasional kids wandering around like us, but there seemed to be people everywhere this time around.

We encountered a wild dog, random vagrants, and shady junkyard creeps who assumed that my parked car was fair game ("oh I'm sorry... looked like a piece of junk to me") but that didn't stop us from taking some good photos and chilling at the West Side Market, sitting on the balcony enjoying falafel and spinach pies from Maha's.

I'm an amateur who can't afford crazy good equipment and considers the upgrade from disposable to digital something epic. But I get endless inspiration from this place where I've spent most of my life and I honestly get uncomfortable in areas where there aren't rusty bridges and old buildings and the possibility of undiscovered corners and small wonders.

rust belt christmas

This Christmas was the Christmas that my sister got engaged and the car crash that left me in a state of thanking God and awe at still being alive.

We were on our way to get some Ethiopian food on the east side Tuesday night and got no further than the Cleveland-Lakewood border when my friend started skidding on the ice and we spun across four lanes of interstate traffic before getting rear-ended on the other side of the road by the on-ramp.

As scary as it is to feel like you're on a Tilt-a-Whirl but with huge cars sliding towards you, I felt this weird sense of peace as my roommate and I prayed and realized that even as we weren't in control at all, God definitely was.

It looked like it was going to get ugly when the one guy got out of his car and started screaming at my friend about how his car was brand new and he was a Cleveland cop and that we were all in trouble but when I started dialing 911, he shut up pretty quickly. Didn't ask us if we were ok, just ranted about how his shiny new Ford Fusion was smashed up.

Meanwhile, we're standing on the side waiting for the real cops to come as cars slide like bowling balls down the highway. When they told us to move the car off the road at the next exit, we refused saying there was no way we were getting back on there.

Nobody was hurt too badly and we walked up the hill to a White Castle and I was craving everything on the Church's Chicken menu but decided against it and Kristy and her dad showed up to pick us up. In the meantime of Triple-A towing Daniel's car, her dad made a new friend that we gave a ride to.

But it really was a good few days here, the usual good food and good times with the family. I'm realizing more and more that these things are not something that everyone has, when I talk to friends who say that they spent Christmas alone. If you've got no one to spend the holiday with and it doesn't have any spiritual significance for you, that's got to be depressing as hell.

In the coming years, when this wouldn't involve inviting a crowd of lost souls over to my grandparents' or whatever, I'd like to at least make this time less solitary for others.

Checked out that Faberge/Lalique/Tiffany exhibit at the art museum, which is the first time I've been there in forever. The new wing feels so different, but the exhibit was great even though I couldn't look at the Faberge eggs without thinking about how the Romanov family died a few years later. As far as modern art goes, I love the whole Art Nouveau era and still don't understand why it fell so drastically out of favor. The museum store isn't as cool as it used to be though, because it now sells things like this:



Otherwise, totally loved the momentary thaw, spent the day with Kristy doing our usual running around with cameras taking graffiti pictures, hanging out at the West Side Market, getting cold at Edgewater Park. We revisited the Fun Wall, but someone painted over the building down there with that nasty gray color.



Still some good stuff around, but I wonder if the legendary spot's days are numbered.





Sunday, my roommate's sister was in town and we ended up hanging out with people from church doing the potluck thing, watched the Browns lose pitifully, still finding ways to laugh. Her sister and another good friend of ours were Steelers fans so they were entertained. I still still can't totally hate on Pittsburgh due to some kind of misguided Rust Belt solidarity I inherit from my dad, so I hope they do well since we were hopeless this year.

Had dinner with the Ethiopians, watched cute little kids run around, joked about how we nearly killed ourselves earlier in the week in pursuit of savory dishes and injera, and ended up with beautiful jewelry and scarves that our friend's wife brought back for us.

I only work 2 days this week, which still feels weird. But I do get to see a very dear friend tomorrow that I haven't seen in two years, and that's going to be a wonderful thing

the world is just around the corner...

So I ended up checking out the graffiti festival down by the West Side Market. We were supposed to meet up with a friend but we ended up missing each other by an hour or so because we ended up walking around drinking half gallons of ghetto tea and enjoying the gorgeous day.





The artwork and breakdancing were cool and all, but the best thing was that we ended up hanging out with these awesome little kids from Burundi at this church where a good friend of mine teaches ESL classes. Most of them speak very little English, but we were able communicate with a combination of basic words and gestures and the universal language that is sports. The girls taught us hopscotch games and the boys played catch with us, when they weren't playing with my camera or running down to the Wendy's at the corner and getting free food by being super cute.





We stayed there for most of the afternoon and early evening playing games with them and then having dinner with the families and watching the kids dance and sing. I felt like I was in another country hanging out in this basement where everyone is speaking Swahili and we've been completely adopted.

what we do...

soooo...

the artwalk ended up being really nice. jody and i went down there after we got off of work and we didn't check out everything, but walked around tremont taking in the sights and people-watching. asterisk had all this really good stuff that made me get all inspired to do new things and awed at the genius of others, looking at these beautiful charcoal drawings, stained-glass windows, paintings, and sculptures. also ran into my high school AP history teacher and his wife there, and it reminded me of what a great teacher and person he was.

the other exhibit that was very cool was the southside offensive show at doubting thomas, which was cleveland's finest graffiti writers covering entire walls and canvases of what looks like it could have once been a small apartment in a house. didn't get my shots off the camera but here's one courtesy of flickr's clevelandangel.



lindsey came up on saturday afternoon and we had a mini-roomie-reunion, got indian food and drove out to the east side listening to mixtapes, went to lakeview cemetery and walked around admiring the architecture of the family vaults and giggling at some of the names of people buried there (hubby! honey b. lee! DILLA!) which is kind of irreverent i guess, but i don't believe in ghosts anyway. but really, it is a beautiful place, and i feel like i need a whole day to explore it.



sunday, paul and jocelyn came over and i made us a lunch that was thrown together quickly (pasta, peppers, orange slices, tea), we met up for ice cream with her friend mousa, talked music. he plays piano and drums, got a crash course in middle eastern and indian music theory. we're all going to try and get together to play music sometime.

came back to the house, she got her viola out, we got out my guitars, called dave and he came over with his guitar and mandolin. jocelyn's viola sounded gorgeous, dave and paul are amazing at guitar, and i messed around dave's mandolin with the few chords i know (the only song i've taught myself is 'losing my religion'). played lots of irish reels and such for a few hours, crashed feeling all refreshed for the coming week.

jody said there were doves perched on our front porch listening to the music.

weekend cleveland vacation

some people i know went to either coast this weekend, but given the gas prices and the lack of other motivation, i stayed in cleveland this weekend, but, as usual, had adventures anyway.

jody and ernie and i went on a late saturday night adventure involving numerous cups of green tea at various locations, my first experience at steve's lunch (a 24-hour hot dog place with incredibly cheap food and fantastic people-watching) and then a late night cleveland drive.


having gotten inspired by the architecture and the bridges and the graffiti, we repeated our route sunday afternoon after church with our cameras. there were other people chilling down on train avenue so we didn't hang out there long, but ended up taking some great pictures down at the funwall, where there's new painting so fresh that you can still smell it and the colors are glowing. the pictures are still on my camera but they are amazing.



my old housemate dan came in from pittsburgh and me, him, and alex hung out at edgewater, flying kites and people-watching. there was a guy walking around playing an stratocaster on the beach hooked up to a small amp, and bowler hat segway man made another appearance. this guy is always impeccably dressed like someone out of a bbc drama and rides his segway around the park.

i've been dogsitting the past week and will be doing that this week as well, after the weekend break. as i was walking them on saturday morning, this lady on the porch of one of the houses called me over and was asking me if i lived in the neighborhood and how i felt about it. she's from a suburb to the west where it's pretty nice and she was disturbed mostly by the fences in everyone's front yards because they're "ugly" and "people don't do that where i'm from." that's true, but it's a different place.

i tell her that like anywhere, you just need to be aware of your surroundings and not do anything stupid, and that i know a lot of people down here and spend a lot of time down here, that i don't worry too much. and that it's more likely that your car will get stolen down here more than anything else. she doesn't seem that convinced but i'm sure that if i have kids someday, i'll worry about them too.

i didn't tell her about the day before when i was walking the dogs when i saw what looked like the beginnings of an ugly situation starting to go down in a corner store parking lot... death threats and swearing and people crouched behind cars, hearing the one guy yell "go ahead and shoot me, but you better kill me, because i know where you live and i'll come after you..."

as i turned the corner, i thought i saw another guy pulling a gun out from his back pocket, but i wasn't going to stick around to be sure.

adventuring...

i hung out with kristy this afternoon before she went to work, and we made a trip to the west side market for lunch (black bean, cheese and tomatillo enchiladas from orale), and then out to take pictures. we drove along train avenue because she'd never been down there. we took a few pictures down there, and noticed some tagging on the bridge above us so we climbed up the side to get a better look.

we kept going up and there was all this amazing graffiti by the tracks (at this point the batteries in my camera died so i didn't get the really good shots).

we realized we were on the other side of the fence by the fun wall, so we got in the car and drove up to the gas station there to get double-a batteries and continue the venture.

i had heard all about this place from friends in high school who used to tag here but it was the first time i'd actually seen it for myself. and it was good.