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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Issue 38 BINGE/PURGE
CONNECT
12 Issue Contributors
ADVERTISING & DISTRIBUTION hello@blockclubonline.com
15 Letter from the Editor
SUBSCRIPTIONS blockclubonline.com/subscribe
16
The Conversationalists Interview by Ben Siegel After a decade at Artvoice, Geoff Kelly left and started his own alt-weekly. He discusses life in The Public eye.
BRANDING & MARKETING blockclubonline.com
20
Food to the Rescue Case Study by Lauren Newkirk Maynard There’s a food revolution in New York City, where restaurant chefs have organized to put their waste to good use.
22 You Are Here Essay by Ben Siegel Our love/hate relationship with Facebook. 26
Paul Mariah’s Boxes By Ben Siegel Photos by Max Collins Assessing a cultural legacy at home in the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection.
36 Binge/Purge Photo essay by Block Club The creative process rears its ugly head. 44
A Brand New U By Mark Byrnes Photos by Michael Horsley In one Washington, D.C. neighborhood, a wave of nostalgic brands are raising eyebrows for all the wrong reasons.
56 Zhou Ling and Jolene Short fiction by Sarah Ruth Offhaus The sisterhood of a traveling sweatshirt.
EDITORIAL & CONTENT ben@blockclubonline.com
DESIGN & OFFICE BLOG clubhaus.tumblr.com FACEBOOK, TWITTER, VIMEO and INSTAGRAM @blockclub #blockclub #BCM38 PRINTED SUSTAINABLY. This magazine is printed on FSC®-certified post-consumer and post-industrial recycled paper. Production of this brand of paper consumes five times less water than the industry average, reduces air emissions, frees up landfill space, and saves the world’s mature trees. 731 Main St. Buffalo, NY 14203 716.507.4474 blockclubonline.com ©2015 BLOCK CLUB INC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported License. This work may be reproduced and shared for personal or educational use only, and must be credited to Block Club magazine. Such use for commerical purposes is strictly prohibited.
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61 Simple Stuff Comic by Emily Churco
ABOUT BLOCK CLUB Block Club is a branding and strategy agency founded in 2007 in Buffalo, NY. We work to build and strengthen brands for forward-thinking businesses and organizations. In Block Club magazine, we tell stories about a better Rust Belt. Learn more at blockclubonline.com. BCM 38 11
ISSUE CONTRIBUTORS
Mark Byrnes pg. 44 Mark Byrnes lives in Washington, D.C. and is the Visual Editor for CityLab, The Atlantic’s urban-centric website. He is a Buffalo native and a graduate of UB’s School of Architecture and Planning.
Emily Churco pg. 61 Emily Churco is an illustrator/photographer originally from the Adirondack region. She’s lived in Buffalo for seven years and totally loves it. Her autobiographical comic “Present Tense” is available through One Percent Press. Max Collins pp. 18, 26 Max Collins is a Buffalo-based photographer and public artist who is currently teaching digital photography at UB where he is pursuing his MFA. He loves stand-up comedy, psychology, and finds it uncomfortable writing about himself in the third person.
BLOCK CLUB MAGAZINE EDITORIAL STAFF
PUBLISHER PATRICK FINAN patrick@blockclubonline.com
EDITOR BEN SIEGEL ben@blockclubonline.com
Michael Horsley pg. 44 Michael Horsley is a Washginton, D.C.-based visual artist working primarily in photography. His work has been broadcast on BBC America, MSNBC and WETA, and has been published in The New York Times and International Herlad Tribune. michaelhorsley.com
CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRANDON DAVIS brandon@blockclubonline.com
PHOTOGRAPHER STEVE SOROKA steve@blockclubonline.com
Lauren Newkirk Maynard pg. 20 Lauren Newkirk Maynard is a Buffalo-based writer and editor with an acute allergy to wasting food and ruining the planet. That said, she’s still figuring out what to do with banana peels and pistachio shells.
DESIGNER JULIE MOLLOY julie@blockclubonline.com
DESIGNER TIM STASZAK tim@blockclubonline.com
DESIGNER RYAN McMULLEN
Sarah Ruth Offhaus
pg. 56 Sarah Ruth Offhaus recently returned from two years in Western China with the Peace Corps. Her writing has been published on Buffalo Rising and in the poetry journal Buffalo Carp. Her China experience is documented on asiamericana.tumblr.com. 12 BCM 38
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Binge/Purge All or nothing. These are the perilous ends we go to when we get fed up with something we care about. “Either you stay, or I go.” “Take it or leave it.” “Now or never.” We love an easy decision. We love to have options. We love an easy out. How easy life is with these two doors to choose from: in/out, on/off, yes/no. The first impression most of us have about the word “binge” probably brings to mind that of a bulging house, stuffed to the gills with old papers, bags of trash and rotten food. This abundance is not a pretty sight. That person’s indulgence, if you look at it in such an unfair light, is not in his or her things, but in the relief those things bring. A hoarder’s compulsion is not the accumulation of stuff, but what the stuff attempts to conceal. It’s not surprising that we think poorly of those who binge—on newspapers, on junk food, on drugs. “Purge” paints an equally gruesome picture of malnourishment. Like those who collect more than they need, those who hold onto less than they need are ultimately operating out of balance, albeit involuntarily, against their will. But even those of us without these compulsions and ailments notice the examples of these extreme ends. We know what confinement does to our inner-peace, our clarity of thought, our physical strength. We know how all or nothing robs of us moderation, evaluation, collaboration. We know that we must be more than one or the other if we want to be all that we can. Revisions are crucial to definitions. All of our creative projects rely on evaluation and editing. Layers are peeled
back, truths emerge. Our initial binge is purged over and over, and sometimes over again. Every writer knows the moment when their favorite line pours out of them; you know gold when you read it, even if you’ve written it. And yet, nine and a half times out of slightly less than 10, that line gets thrown out. Not easily, not immediately, but ever judiciously. It’s as painful a deletion as a virus’s unruly hack. And yet, it forces us to revert to a time and place we fear the most: the beginning. Fortuntely for the creative process, and however that came to be the truth, persistence and practice prove stronger than anything a first draft could dump out. At least that much we can trust, even if we can’t bring ourselves to approve. This issue is not about the middle, but about the extremes. It’s about both ends of the wick, and the light and darkness that drive us to a safer middle. It’s about the lust of creation, the dread of expulsion, the necessity for equilibrium. But more than that, if there’s anything more important than that, there’s the idea of a loop. The perpetual, infinite loop that proves that life’s extremes continue to answer themselves. They do not always balance, but they always answer. We are here for the balance. Our minds, our ideas, our conversation—these are the balances we can and must edit our circumstances with. Life is about editing. Every first golden line, every reflective second draft, every careful third revision. Every morning of every day is another red pen. Thank goodness for that.
BCM 38 15
THE CONVERSATIONALISTS
LIFE IN THE
PUBLIC EYE EDITOR GEOFF KELLY, FORMERLY OF ARTVOICE, NOW OF THE PUBLIC, TALKS CANDIDLY ABOUT WAVING GOODBYE AND SAYING HELLO.
I
Interview by BEN SIEGEL
f there were an annual prize, like that given out by Time Magazine, of Buffalo’s Man of the Year, 2014 would hold stiff competition . Some might point with gratitude to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz for his valiant management of emergency and recovery services during the famed Snowvember storm. Many might call Terry Pegula, Buffalo Sabres owner and now, to many a fan’s relief, Buffalo Bills owner, the champion to beat. But if you ask around, and consider those whose work insists on improving our ability to lead informed, inquisitive and interesting lives, and who, despite these far-reaching efforts, exist quite happily, even responsibly, behind the scenes, all signs point to Geoff Kelly, former editor of Artvoice. Readers of the long-running alternative weekly newspaper found Kelly on the other side of the byline this year, when it was announced last spring that Kelly would be stepping down from his nearly decade-long post. By late summer, the city’s worst-kept secret had been confirmed: Kelly would launch his own alt-weekly called The Public. It would exist in direct competition with his former home, among other advertiserdriven media. He would also be bringing with him several Artvoice staffers, including an executive account manager, and contributors. Kelly and Artvoice publisher Jamie Moses were both quoted in the media about these developments, and not always civilly—somewhere appropriately between diplomatic and thinly veiled. This was gripping news, about the news, in the news. Kelly spoke to us in late November, just three issues into The Public’s distribution, and described the twists and turns of a relationship that would take Kelly from the dawn of his journalism career to the height of public approval to quick departure, and now, competitor. It’s time, Kelly says, for a clean slate. 16 BCM 38
BS Paint us a picture about how Geoff Kelly, the journalist, was born. GK I will tell you I sort of stumbled backwards into journalism. I was editor of my high school newspaper and I was a cartoonist for the Middlebury Weekly Newspaper when I was in college; I did a weekly one-panel cartoon. But I never wrote for them and I never thought I would write journalism at all. I always imagined myself becoming a writer but, at first, messed around with poetry and short stories.
In my 20s, I followed the advice of a professor I had in college who told me when I was graduating, “If you really want to be a writer, don’t go to graduate school and don’t take any sort of long-term job.” He said, “Those are the only things you say no to and everything else you say yes.” Which was basically a license for me to screw around. BS What was your first professional writing job? GK The first regular engagement I had with journalism was with Artvoice. I was 29 or 30. Jamie Moses, I believe he, in fact, first asked my older sister to write a story, and she didn’t have the time, but she recommended me. I began freelancing for them, and then for some other people, and in 2000 I was asked to sit in as editor for a month while Jamie went on vacation. And when he came back I said, “You should just hire me to do this.” He said, “Yeah, okay.” BS What was it like for you, being an editor? GK At first it was a stretch. I didn’t know exactly what I was
“People want narratives. All of our lives are defined by narratives: stories we tell ourselves, the stories we see, the stories that guide us down the street,” says Kelly.
photo by MA X COLLINS
BCM 38 17
supposed to do besides maybe be a traffic manager and be able to liaison. I don’t think I really became good at being an editor—in as much as I’m good at it even now—until I left Artvoice in 2002. I moved to Pittsburgh and there joined a startup alternative weekly, now defunct, called Pittsburgh Pulp. I walked into that paper and it was brand new. The people were brand new. The city was brand new. Everything was a blank slate for me, so I really got to consider what it is an editor does. I got to put, in some way, my imprimatur on an actual newspaper for the first time, rather than coming into a set institution. It also clarified for me what an editor does, which is to try to keep the cohesive vision of a publication’s personality, its function, what it is it’s meant to do for readers, who those readers might be. To decide on behalf of those readers, to some degree, what’s important and what’s not. To make sure that you do a good job treating those things that are important, helping writers to say what they want to say, to find what they want to find. That’s one of the most gratifying parts, to be able to think all the time about what is good and bad about writing and to help people who want to write do it better than they do it on their own. BS Do you like working with writers? GK I do. Yeah, I do, especially when there are writers who really love to be edited, right? BS Oh, yes. GK They’re always the best writers. You can drill down deep with them about a single sentence, about what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes it’s inconsequential, it’s like a comma or the placement of the sentence and you can just—I can spend half the day talking about it. BS How about your relationship with the public? GK I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there’s something sort of egotistic about it because you are basically allowing yourself the privilege of saying, ‘Hey, I know what you want to hear and I know how you want to hear it.’ And, of course, it’s not always true. Sometimes you’re wrong. Yeah, that’s a strange relationship. BS I look at our publications as documents of our time, building blocks of our legacy. I’m working on this story about archivists at the Poetry Collection at UB. It’s about, in some sense, how when you’re charged with editing someone’s legacy, in documented form at least, you are the arbiter of what makes the cut and what doesn’t.
18 BCM 38
GK You know it’s interesting you put it that way because I’ve always felt that it’s always been important to me that publications like the ones I’ve worked for, that one of the functions they provide is when talking about issues of the day—whether it’s politics or the whole spectrum of culture, from arts to development, environmental issues—that at first we go a little deeper and try to offer historical context. That we make the conversation not just about what is happening right now, but use our knowledge to provide that deep context. It enriches the conversation. I think that’s an important function of journalism, more than just running around and reporting on who’s saying what right now. BS I think that’s what people like to read. GK Well, people want narratives, right? All of our lives are defined by narratives: stories we tell ourselves, the stories we see, the stories that guide us down the street. Presenting stories that way with narrative drive, with narrative development, with character development, that’s the way you actually grab people so that they really absorb what you’re saying. BS So can you talk about how your time at Artvoice came to be, and how it ended? GK Sure. So after I moved to Pittsburgh I lived in the Middle East for two years doing journalism of all kinds— politics and development and war, but also I was senior motoring correspondent for Qatar Today; I reviewed cars— and at the end of 2005 I decided I was going to make my way back to Buffalo and Jamie Moses asked if I would sit in as editor. I said I would—six or eight months—and I was just immediately pulled right back into this crazy wonderful dysfunctional Artvoice family and into my hometown.
It’s a privileged point of view to experience your hometown from, as editor of the alternative weekly in town. I was very happy to be back for a lot of reasons, personal reasons. Everything seemed right. But it was a frustrating place, too, because it was not that long after I came back that the paper started to shrink. The revenue began to diminish, not that it made much difference to the editor or the editorial department because we had no access to any resources anyway. It was sort of frustrating to watch the paper sort of skid off track. It had been such a vital place when I was there in 2000 and 2002 and there was such a broad community of people involved in producing content for the paper, and advertising in the paper, and that community seemed to be shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. It was frustrating to watch. From time to time I would
It would deeply sadden me if Artvoice closed, because I am still part of this.
your decision are. In a place that is already culturally fixed, you don’t always get to do that. BS How do you feel about the hypothetical prospect of Artvoice closing in the wake of everything that’s happened, and with a new competitor now. GK Well it would deeply sadden me if Artvoice closed
really sort of lose my own engagement with the paper and then it would come right back. It was a great instrument to engage things that were important to me and to help other people engage things that were important to them. So it was on-and-off-again for a few years and then this past spring happened, and what we learned in February of this past year, which was that the paper has gone deeply into debt. This paper was Jamie’s creation, in concert with a lot of people. He was the right man at the right place at the right time, back in 1998. There is this company that gathered around him. He was the guy who gathered it together. So he deserves credit for that and this was his baby, it was his identity and he treated it so shabbily and it was a paper into which I had invested a lot of my time and love and identity, and so it was deeply offensive to me to learn that he had driven the paper nearly to its death, deep, deep, deep. A bunch of us tried to put together a strategy to save the paper but in the end that strategy didn’t [work]. So I quit, because I didn’t want to work for a guy who had treated his creation so shabbily ever again. I took the summer off. There were a lot of people, including much of the staff at Artvoice, who said, ‘You should start a paper next week,’ and I was like, ‘I’m not sure, it’s been eight years and this has been sort of heartbreaking and I’m not sure that this is what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.’ In August, I realized everybody was right: this is what we should do. I called everybody and said, ‘Are you serious about this?’ They said they were and so we all sat down and said, ‘Let’s actually do this and let’s actually do it in two months,’ which is what we did. BS You’ve published three issues of The Public so far. How much does it feel like Artvoice, working everyday on this alt-weekly with some of these familiar people? GK It feels different, actually. It feels much more like the paper in Pittsburgh because it’s brand new. There is no cultural rigidity. Every decision we make, we recognize as a decision that we can make, and [that] we can talk about. And that’s delightful, to be able to face the decision and roll it around in your hands and think about what the consequences of
because I invested so much of my time and energy and identity into it and because I am still part of this. The weird dysfunctional Artvoice family is forever. Part of the reason that all of us thought that it was a good idea to start this new publication was not just because we thought we could do something new and better, but because we were afraid Artvoice would die. That’s part the reason that we started, because we thought, you know, Artvoice is really still financially screwed up and it’s got issues with its management and leadership, and it could just die. It might not. Perhaps this competition is going to give it a little kick and they’ll pull together and get better, which, in turn, will make us better. That’ll be a great arc, if we were just pushing each other and as a result the city had two better publications. BS Do you feel like you’re on the other side of town? GK There’s a little of that. Actually, more than I would like. BS When I told you about this issue’s theme a number of months back, your eyes widened. Do you feel the weight of those words when you think about the last year? GK It’s the purge that I find myself thinking about the most. There’s no doubt that that change—leaving Artvoice—felt immensely cleansing. An opportunity to really, sort of, wipe the slate clean and readjust my thinking about things. But there are certain friends of mine who were very close to this process with whom I revisit that last frame all the time and there’s part of me that says, “That’s not healthy, Geoff. Just leave it behind, complete the purge.” But that’s when I’m wrong. Keeping a little bit of it I think is incredibly healthy and to tell that story again and again so that I remember how that happened and what happened and why it happened, not only keeps me very close with those people with whom I went through that but it also reminds me what to do with that next thing, and what not to do. BS How are you a different editor today, compared to a few months ago? GK I say yes a lot more. BCM 38 19
CASE STUDY
Food to the rescue NYC’S CITY HARVEST RECYCLES FOOD WASTE FOR THOSE IN NEED.
A
by LAUREN NEWKIRK MAYNARD
t the first annual New York Times Food for Tomorrow Conference last November, food was discussed from a variety of competing angles: sustainability and profitability, quality and equality. A 2012 report published by Harvard University’s Food Law and Policy Clinic stated: “Despite high rates of hunger and food insecurity, recent years have seen huge growth in the amount of food that goes to waste.” Local numbers on food insecurity—the lack of access to affordable, healthful food—are sobering. According to the 2010 Hunger Study, since 2006, 82 percent of WNY food pantries have seen a rise in the number of people who need emergency food assistance. Over half of the households who seek help have to choose between eating and paying utility bills. In 2014, food assistance programs across the country saw significant increases in demand following budget cuts to federal food stamp programs. This changes how we look at food as a business; sustainability is no longer only a financial issue, but an environmental and ethical one as well. What if high-quality, locally sourced food were made more available to all income levels? What if routine waste management practices included gleaning, or collecting, surplus food for donation? What if chefs, restaurateurs, cafeteria managers and supermarket CEOs all had viable, if not profitable, incentives to donate? In 1982, a group of concerned New Yorkers founded City Harvest, a donation and distribution network, in order to answer these questions. The non-profit now moves through the entire New York City food chain, from farms, manufacturers and major supermarket chains down to the little guys, like corner groceries and bakeries, to gather surplus food and distribute it to more than 500 community food programs. Looking ahead to 2015, City Harvest has pledged to collect 50 million pounds of excess food and deliver it to 500 community food organizations. It says it can do this at an average cost of 25 cents per pound of food. Although most food waste happens on the agricultural and manufacturing sides, the problem isn’t just down on 20 BCM 38
the farm; the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that around 15 percent of all food waste in landfills comes from restaurants—either scraped off plates or as un-served, unsold surplus. Some restaurants donate their extra food, while other chefs do valiant jobs cutting waste through the nose-to-tail approach. One local chef, Joe George, straps boxes of extra food onto his bike and makes regular deliveries to Friends of Night People, an Allentown soup kitchen. But for many food retailers, it tends to be more feasible to embrace the farm-to-table movement from the frontend—sourcing, buying and serving fresh, local food—than getting it into donation or compost bins after service. As another Buffalo chef puts it, “With time and staff constraints, it’s hard getting it all prepped, cooled down and packaged, and we don’t have extra refrigerator space for it.” To help facilitate donations, City Harvest provides refrigerated trucks, a four-hour delivery window and packaging to donors that request it. Amid the new lofts, bistros and micro-breweries that serve as visible proof of Buffalo’s economic boom, talk has begun in earnest about how the city can better bridge the gap between haves and have-nots. Several organizations and countless individuals have been working for years to get surplus food to the people who need it, but there is still a need for a more connected, well-integrated food system. Promising local food rescue models include the Food Shuttle of WNY, a group driven entirely (and literally) by volunteers, who pick up 40,000 pounds of non-perishable food every week, in their own vehicles, from supermarkets and a few restaurants. It was founded in Williamsville back in 1989, just a few years after City Harvest. City Harvest told Block Club that its independent restaurant partnerships are still important, but the lion’s share of its donations comes from large retail brands and manufacturers, such as Whole Foods and General Mills, in addition to non-food industries such as hotels and entertainment production companies. City Harvest takes advantage of New York’s native resources and deep pockets. So what are Buffalo’s existing resources, and how can they contribute to a surplus food rescue initiative?
photo illustration by RYAN McMULLEN
BCM 38 21
VIEWS
You are here EDITING AN ONLINE LIFE. by BEN SIEGEL
D
oes everyone hate Facebook? I think everyone might hate Facebook. It’s all I seem to read about, when I’m reading about Facebook, on Facebook. It doesn’t seem likely to be leaving this party anytime soon, unlike phone books, which have yet to call for a cab. When we’re not participating in the Facebook thing, and regardless of what we’re contributing to it, we’re talking about it. As of late, we’re not saying nice things. I mean we’re talking about it right now. This is a piece of writing about Facebook, and though it doesn’t exist there, it takes place there. Because that’s where we all take place now. The town halls and squares, the public forums and committee meetings that we claim to attend, but that only really exist in Grover’s Corners or River City, Iowa. They exist in theory, in our patriotic hearts. But we don’t have to lift a finger to go to there. If Facebook were located on a map, it would be labeled: “You are here.” In the last 22 minutes it took me to come up with and edit the words you just read, I left here to check Facebook twice. I don’t remember what I saw. I left here, and stayed here, at the same time, in different places, from the same seat. What a trip. The hate for this thing is understandable; it annoys me as often as it helps me. The all-knowing ads, the filtered (censored) news feed, the notifications that, despite my settings, don’t understand when “no” means no. I don’t get any of these annoyances, but then again, I don’t understand why we can’t buy cable channels à la carte, or how watermelons can be made seedless. I don’t understand a lot of things. It doesn’t make me boycott them. The paradox persists, though, even when we believe we are too aware of it. Facebook makes it easy to forget what room I’m in. I forget that it’s not a real room, even if the people in it are. I liken interacting on Facebook to walking into a cavernous school gymnasium, and noticing a bunch of people you know. Most are lined up against the walls, too far away 22 BCM 38
to hear or even see you. A small sample of your people is huddled in the middle of the gym floor, at the basketball court’s center circle. As soon as you walk in, they start coming toward you, some screaming in full sentences and some suggesting in lowercase whispers. They sidestep each other to obtain your immediate attention, telling you what they think about X, Y or Z. They proudly show you the photo they just took of themselves and their dog, who this morning looks like an angry old man, of their neighbor’s niece who loves “Frozen” so much she sang about it in front of the fireplace, acting as though these just magically fell out of their wallet and into your line of vision. They offer their hackneyed philosophy of last night’s “New Girl,” as if it was university homework; they exalt their adoration of a recently discovered combination of meat, cheese, condiment and bread, and how nothing in this world matters as much. You’re part of the exchange, too. None of what you have to say is any more important or relative to any collaborative discussion, and yet, for some reason, it feels like a transformational cultural exchange, popular discourse at its most immediate, accessible best. And this gym is where you spend your downtime, your work time, the time you take while eating dinner at a restaurant. Toes are dipped in and out of this room all day long. At some point you realize that it was never a place of clarity, but information, and this information, no less. At some point, you grow tired of this gym, of these people, of your center circle. At some point, you retreat to the back of the auditorium, hidden under a row of seats that, while sticky and musty, is at least quiet. I have no problem hating this scenario, but despite these unfortunate factors, I am not hateful of the gym. The gym is a great venue. There, we can be players in the game, or we can watch. We can cheer from the sidelines, or we can referee from within. I just wish the game were better played. I wish the teams remembered they were playing a game. I wish the fans were more focused. I wish the cheerleaders clapped like real people. I wish the referees were judicious. What you share matters. It matters what you say to other people, how you represent yourself. It matters. Doing this doesn’t mean others will, but it presents to them a language for how one could exist in this forum, if it were up to them. (Because it is.) Trust yourself with the people you know in real rooms, at real tables. It matters what you share. It matters if you’re selfish; it always does. But it matters more that you know your audience, and where they are. They’re never where you think they are. I’ve found myself in the penalty box before. One time I posted that I loved being able to post my post. I said I found
illustration by TIM STASZAK
Why can’t I just say something without attracting commentary, I thought. it to be a joyous freedom of expression, a responsibility of citizenry, the single link between brotherhood, sisterhood, babyhood, animalhood, baconloverhood. I must have been having a good day. It was weird, because no one commented on it. A few liked it, but that’s not a real metric, is it? Surely, I thought, they felt pity for me, the jerk who decided to get corny about our freedoms, using one of those freedoms— the most important freedom, as far as I’m concerned. Surely, the headline to the right of my silly words, about student riots in Asia, about young people picking a fight against their big, bad government for their infringed right to do what I had just done, surely that’s where everyone’s attention was at that moment, right? Or the time I said that I didn’t care for curry. Holy baloney, that was a catastrophe. One time, recently, I decided to get angry first. I got frustrated at a friend’s comment, a response to a lyric I posted. I was having a difficult time with something, and posted this line from a song that said everything I wanted to without saying anything I couldn’t. Ehh, it happens. Maybe if I evoked a feeling with a song lyric, I felt, maybe, I don’t know, maybe someone will mail me a winning lottery ticket or knock on my door and give me a hug. Or maybe they’ll just know something’s up if they run into me, and engage accordingly. How absurd a request, I told myself soon thereafter. Why can’t I just say something without it attracting commentary? Why can’t I just be heard and left alone, I
thought. Because that’s not what this place is. You’re in the wrong room, Ben. I broke someone’s window trying to get in. I removed my post, and not an hour later, received a message from my friend, who I had feared would connect dots. I told him all the excuses that might get me out of this character fraud: that I had been having a bad day, that I let go of my own principles. While not a catastrophe of character, it was a reminder that this place matters, too. It is not meaningless. It is only as meaningful or -less as what we put there. I subscribe to the idea that we really can’t know what Facebook means, anyway. We know how it makes us feel, if we stop to think about it. We know how it rewrites what we used to know and do, our former standards of practice. But I’m hesitant to label what this baby of a communication device means to humanity, or something. I’m responsible for the company I keep, and for what I say in their presence. That much hasn’t changed. If anything, it is only amplified. We bear the symptoms of our own misunderstandings, but that much is not new. We’re the ones, and not merely the rules and properties of its environment (which, to be fair, are worthy of their own examination), who are responsible for the freedom-granting attitudes we still hold in our hands. I don’t hate Facebook. I don’t love Facebook. I hate and love some of the things I say and read there. Because no matter what takes place there, I’m still here. BCM 38 23
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Paul Mariah’s Boxes Story by BEN SIEGEL
Photos by MAX COLLINS
Count Elliot McNally among Paul Mariah’s closest confidants. She knows everything about him: his secret cruelties, his unedited wants, his unfathomable potential. McNally can tell you things not even Mariah’s mother knows. “I think he’s a great guy. He has a little bit of a short fuse, but I think that’s what makes people respect him and deal with him. He’s very straightforward, and he says what he means,” says McNally. She picks her words carefully, proud to explain her friend’s strengths and flaws in context. She’s almost in awe. “And you know, I’ve never met him.” Mariah, the poet credited for pioneering San Francisco’s gay literary scene in the 1960s and ’70s, is best known for founding Manroot Books, a smallpress imprint that published monographs, bilingual manuscripts and a literary magazine featuring emerging and established gay and lesbian poetry. When it mattered, Mariah was a trailblazer, functioning via megaphone from a small corner of a secluded world. To those who were there, who read his work and who needed his leadership, his documentation of what was happening in San Francisco at that time, he was a friend and a champion. To McNally, Mariah remains the central character of an epic story. He died of pneumonia on Jan. 12, 1996, at age 58. What remains of his life, at least in documented form, is McNally’s portal.
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It is an unseasonably warm November afternoon. People aren’t wearing their coats outside, where they’ve retreated to play. McNally sits quietly at a long conference table to sort through this day’s batch: four boxes, each bulging, as if their hundreds of papers have compressed into one thick page. The papers are considerably old, though not apparently fragile. Their sundried edges soak with a range of colors befitting a fall palette. It is unknown when they last saw the light of day. It is also unknown what significance they hold. “This guy, specifically, he had a really interesting and hard life,” says McNally. She’s been going through Mariah’s documents since October and will continue to for the next four months, with the help of interns. She is the project archivist at the University at Buffalo’s prestigious Poetry Collection, a section of the university’s archives housed on the fourth floor of Capen Hall, the undergraduate library on the North Campus. It, being a part of a state university, is open to the public, but its halls feel a tad hallowed, too pristine for general foot traffic. The archives that this collection acquires, sorts, assesses, catalogs, displays and lends are as impressive collectively as each of its stories is individually. Among its most popular tenants, is the world’s largest collection of James Joyce manuscripts and materials. The poets Robert Duncan, Helen Adams, John Logan, Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas and E.E. Cummings are among the collection’s notable holdings, amounting to more than 140,000 individual titles of Anglophone poetry, the largest collection of its kind in North America. The formats of these documents are varied—manuscripts, letters, personal libraries, pieces of mail, photographs, small-press magazines, hand-bound zines, literary journals, independent periodicals, promotional materials and more. It is an immense body of work, and all of it must be documented. For McNally, today, she’s making sense of a few bills. “I think the saddest part of this for me is going through the financial stuff—hepatitis tests, AIDS tests for his partner, bankruptcy notices, the more intimate, personal things that, for me, would be really hard and devastating
Previous: Elliot McNally reviews Mariah’s things. Left: Inside the Poetry Collection’s research library. Next: The collection includes many poets’ paintings.
to deal with. He becomes a nurse so that he can take care of his friends when they die of AIDS,” says McNally. “He takes it so gracefully.” Bankruptcy notices and hospital bills that convey all that. They’re not just invoices and receipts, clearly, but trails of support, evidence of loyalties, decoded by McNally’s curiosity and training. (She holds a MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh and a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design). Her ability to discern what is relevant to Mariah’s archive, however, and what might be relevant to a researcher looking to access it, is a difficult task. Among the published titles that belong in the public domain are personal documents that fill in so many gaps. They’re breadcrumbs of a person’s lived life, the triumphs and mistakes, the deep ditches between. This thoroughness reveals unknown nuances, which, while relatively insignificant, bring stale papers to life. “What’s great about this is he’s kept his side of correspondences. I see his handwriting and typing style, and I know to skip the first paragraph and go right to the second, which is where he says what he wants to say, and then jump to the closing to see what he means. I see that he writes on the back of the envelopes that he keeps,” says McNally. There’s more than sorting going on here. There’s active reading. Understanding. Visiting. “I don’t need to read the whole letter,” says McNally, before cracking a smile: “Sometimes I do, because they’re interesting.” And what she finds is innumerable. “I learn something new every day. I probably know Paul Mariah better than some of his friends. I know that he [hadn’t] talked to his dad since 1950. They had their first Thanksgiving together in 1966,” says McNally. These insights are hard to give value to, and perhaps harder to catalog. What they mean to a person’s legacy, however, is priceless. There are many hats that an archivist must wear, some of which are empirical and academic, some of which are intuitive and interpersonal; an interpreter is necessary, in any case, not unlike a good friend who understands eye contact. “I think to be a good archivist, there’s a balance between investigation and organization,” says McNally. “Also making sure that you get this done in a timely manner.” There is a particular pristineness about these four boxes, one of which is currently being sorted into a dozen different piles. The university purchased some of these boxes from a book dealer, while others came later from Mariah’s BCM 38 29
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sister—about 70 in total. A personal archive often gets tions as he or she fits, and each comes with his or her own split up and reunited, depending on how it’s been parceled agenda and hypothesis. Therefore, the decisions McNally over time, on how mindful a custodian it has. makes require flexibility to serve future researchers, down These boxes arrived mostly sorted and labeled, uncom- to the nitty gritty. mon for a collection this large. Sorting through them is no “The way I write dates should be the same way someone less intricate a task, though. in Nevada is writing dates, so that anyone can find them,” “I’ve already been through everything once. This is my says McNally. second-go, and there will be a third and a fourth,” says That’s the science in Library Science, the coding of qualMcNally. itative data for the sake of discovery. Regardless of condition or completeness, there are a “Librarians like rules.” seemingly infinite number of pivots on which to hinge these papers’ relevancies. McNally must decide what goes where, and how it is referenced. She begins at the begin- The criteria for what stays and what goes is not ning. an arbitrary one. It begins with a little matter of context. “He organized by name and then date, so that’s how I’m James Maynard, Ph.D., associate curator for the Poetry going to organize them as well,” she says. There is a duty in Collection, spells it out. her proclamations. She is a caretaker of 70 boxes, yes, but “Let’s say somebody cleaned out their office and they more so of his legacy. She is his proxy. found things like their pens, and their nameplates, things A collection’s organization methods depend on its like that; those aren’t part of a collection,” says Maynard. condition upon arrival. Sometimes items are delivered in “But if it’s a poet and these are items on their desk where boxes, labeled and in folders; sometimes they arrive in they created their work, the context of those items is very, very different. The provenance of it is so important that plastic bags, resembling a junk drawer. An intake this large will yield some discards. What re- you would keep those.” mains must be cataloged and cross-referenced for the sake These items don’t contain the meat and potatoes of a of a researcher’s benefit. Usability drives most decisions. poet’s cultural contributions, yet they convey nostalgia This is a library first and foremost. and historical artifact for the context in which this poetry “I’ll start with big piles, and then each pile will dwindle was written—what tools were used then, what furniture into smaller piles, and will eventually get folders, and then and creative environments were customary. These things, usually we enter the database either at item level, folder alongside the work they supported, tell a more complete level or series level,” she rattles off. “If it’s all tax records, I story about the famed person who used them. It connects don’t need to make an individual [entry]; each tax record us with them. We, too, use pencils and desks and chairs doesn’t need to be entered. I can file a folder of tax records and paper. We, too, could make things using them. and say, ‘You can find them here.’” “It’s what they did with the pencils,” says Maynard. “Go The manner in which the subject arranged his or her back in the reading room, you’ll see the Poetry Collection items might also open a door to their thought process, has typewriters. You know if you have my typewriter it’s which might be useful to understanding their creative just a typewriter. But if you have an author’s typewriter that’s very, very different.” process. “I think of how psychological it is. I don’t want to take At the end of the day, though, the value of these objects that away from the researcher, being able to find those relies on a number of factors, relevancy in research and rarsame discoveries. If [a subject] organizes things one way— ity in availability being chief among them. unless it’s a total mess and there are unforeseen circum- “There is a conflict there because on the one hand you stances, and things need to be organized from scratch— do have to make certain value judgments based upon the most of the time I try to keep it how the author would have known reputation and value. On the same token we have a them in their own personal [possession]. At the same time, long history in the Poetry Collection of collecting for the it’s pretty standard; I’m separating his personal life from future, and to do that you have to be very value-neutral his professional life,” says McNally. in terms of your judgments, because one never knows in It is up to the researcher to sort through these collec- five years, 50 years, 500 years what’s going to be your inter32 BCM 37
“Sometimes I think that there’s a historical record that an archive merely reflects passively, but actually the archive is the historic record. It’s always happening at the intersection of the past and the present.” est to scholars. So there is that tension between having to both provide for current temporary scholarly and research requirements and interests, but still be looking towards the future,” says Maynard. The Poetry Collection’s mission entails that it be inclusive of a poet’s life and times, creating an exhaustive research record of not only their written works, but the myriad connotations of their lives, locations, cultures and eras. The collection is specific to English-language poetry of the 20th and 21st centuries. Titles typically hail from North America, Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. “If someone is publishing something somewhere and calling it poetry we’ll collect it. Other collections won’t do that,” says Maynard. “We have been intentionally trying to document the widest possible vista of poetry at any given historical moment. And we’re still trying to do that now for the 21st century.” One doesn’t have to be an appraiser to know that’s not an inexpensive proposition. An item’s financial value is certainly in play, though those concerns remain internal, if not exactly irrelevant, knowledge. There is business involved in collecting, but this is not a commercial enterprise. “Everybody always wants to know how: How much is it worth? And for reasons which I’m sure you can imagine we never emphasize the financial value. We always emphasize the research value,” says Maynard. There’s a more important value than cost. “It’s not the art world where every time a show presents one of your paintings the market for that painting goes up. But there is a whole cadre of writers for whom their cultural value, they feel, changes when they deposit their works here. That’s what motivates a lot of people to donate their books, their anthologies, their poems; because they want to be in the company of the larger collection. There might be a cultural cache that’s attached to being part of our collection. Here they could be in a very large and distinguished company,” says Maynard. The questions of relevancy yield many answers. Without academic and cultural viability, these are merely pieces of paper laden with lead and ink.
So, too, for the people who made them. Consider the things we keep. They meant something to us at one point, and maybe we foresaw a value in them down the road, but until then, they remain in our possession, stuffed in a drawer or packed in a box. We move with these things, without even needing to open them. We know what’s in them; what’s in them is in us, too, facsimiled onto our various nostalgias. In another way: We refer to the turn of the 20th century as Buffalo’s heyday. We reference the things we used to have, the money we used to spend, that was spent on us, and we marvel at what an era that was. If we could ask those who were living then what that era meant to them, we might be disappointed with the answers. That’s because they couldn’t possibly know the meaning of their era. None of us can. That’s for our kin to inherit and determine. So what of our things? What of the things we acquire today? Will they be seen in a historical context in the future? Does it matter what we save or what we get rid of? It comes down to an impossible guessing game, in which we are forced to define the referential needs of the future to justify the evidence of the present. “Sometimes I think that there’s a historical record that an archive merely reflects passively, but actually the archive is the historic record,” says Maynard. “It’s always happening at the intersection of the past and the present.” One might deduce that the smartest way to maintain a record of one’s life, of an exact time and place, is to keep it all, and determine its value later. “It sort of goes both ways. Things both fade out of and into consciousness with archives,” says Maynard. “If you don’t collect it, it’s never going to be there.”
Before McNally came to work at the university, in early fall, she worked in a similar capacity at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. That institution has its own circulatory archive of items from Warhol’s famous factory of creation, much of it dependent on the enforced evaluation of our mundane things. Warhol’s packaging of commercial products as not BCM 37 33
only everyday ephemera, but as art, poses nearly identical questions of value, purpose and legacy. Making decisions with that in mind stripped McNally of her expectations of these things, the minutiae of a person’s life. “I don’t think I can ever be surprised again. The bar has been set so high for weird things, that no matter what I find, whether it’s somebody who kept every pressed flower or leaf that was sent to them, or somebody that kept every candy wrapper, everything is still very exciting,” says McNally. “I think Warhol gave me a sense that, I don’t know, there can be anything, and there will always be something, to be discovered.” If working on Warhol gave her a view of the public’s shared experience in this world, her time with Paul Mariah has opened a much smaller window onto one man’s world. 34 BCM 38
McNally pauses before she answers what might be the most obvious question in this exercise: What are we to glean from Paul Mariah’s life? What purpose did his life hold for those who would never meet him? What is his legacy? She waits for the right answer. She wants to get it right, for Paul. “When we think about AIDS activism, we think the 1980s. He’s been doing this since the early 1970s. I think the scope is a lot larger than my understanding of it was before,” says McNally. She looks around. “There are just so many things.” “I hope this archive gets used a lot. For one person to be able to use this, and for it to change their perspective the way that Paul was trying to change the public perspective, I think there will be some sort of cosmic justice.”
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Binge/Purge Photos by BLOCK CLUB
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A Brand New U Story by MARK BYRNES
Photos by MICHAEL HORSLEY
Rum, Kalani coconut liqueur, pineapple nectar, grenadine, lime and champagne. Those are the ingredients in the Street Corner Girl at Red Light, a cocktail and dessert bar in Washington, D.C. The name, cringe-worthy under most circumstances, is even more uncomfortable when you take into account the neighborhood the bar arrived in last spring. Red Light is on the corner of 14th and R Street in Northwest D.C., an area that has seen perhaps the most dramatic change during the city’s decade-long economic boom. A corridor that stretches from U Street to the edge of downtown, the neighborhood looks far removed from its worst days. In flames for days during the 1968 riots, the area suffered from extreme poverty and neglect for decades after. Historically a vibrant commercial corridor, it was most known for its open-air heroin market and robust prostitution scene in the 1970s and ‘80s. “You could go around on a Friday or Saturday night when it was warm, and find any kind of prostitute you could have wanted,” says local poet and Howard University professor, E. Ethelbert Miller. “You wanted a midget? There’s your midget.” Miller lived in an apartment complex on 14th and Rhode Island Avenue in the mid-’70s. “When I look at the community now; all the renovations, the nightlife, it’s unbelievable.” The U.S. Census Bureau estimates D.C.’s population to be 646,449 as of 2013, up nearly 100,000 from ten
years prior. The changes around U Street and Logan Circle reflect that change rather starkly. While the 1990s and early 2000s saw a slow stabilization of the neighborhood involving police crackdowns and developers looking for bargains, the boom has unquestionably arrived. Since just 2012, more than two dozen restaurants and one dozen residential buildings have opened on the 11-block stretch of 14th Street between Florida and N Street. Replacing mostly one to two-story buildings and surface lots, are luxury apartments, trendy bars and expensive restaurants, like a former laundromat-turned-French restaurant which had squeaky floors imported to recreate the idyll sound of an “authentic” bistro. Visually, let alone culturally, it’s a lot to take in. Perhaps out of a need to process the change, photos of the very recent past are found at businesses up and down the street. Currently on display at an art gallery storefront is a black and white photo of a building on 14th and T when it was vacant and covered in a wheat paste depicting the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers strike. That was in 2012, a work by French street artist, J.R. It’s now a stylish Italian restaurant. Three blocks north, the south side of a building facing an auto dealership’s parking lot had long hosted an unforgettable mural depicting two naked androgynous characters (one with a crown, both with what appeared to be wings) floating above what seemed to be water and connected only by an apple in both of their mouths. The
sides of the mural spelled out “LOVERS”, the bottom, “I wasn’t trying to make D.C. look like a hellacious en“MADRESELVA” (Spanish for “honeysuckle”). Long host vironment at all, it’s just how that part of the city looked to a thrift store on its first floor, the peeling mural sudden- back then. One of my missions though was to depict ‘facely disappeared last spring, covered with a fresh coat of blue less’ people,” says Horsley, “meaning people who were paint as a falafel shop moved in. A local chain, the restau- part of a community that really didn’t have any advocates rant’s inside red walls now hold up photos of the building’s working for them.” past, providing a safe and disappointingly sterile view into Red Light is just one of the new places in D.C. with a the neighborhood’s past, mural included. name that goes out of its way to reference the past. That But if anyone wants to experience the neighborhood’s tendency is especially noticeable along the U Street corhistory though street photography, the best option is to ridor. look at the work of Michael Horsley. A suburbanite who In a 2012 Washington Post article, writer Stephen A. got caught up in the city’s now legendary punk scene of Crockett, Jr. referred to D.C.’s branding habits, specifithe 1980s, Horsley moved into a flophouse on 14th and cally along U Street, as “swaggerjacking,” where developS right after high school. He and his friends ran a coffee ers and restaurateurs appropriate local black culture, from shop downstairs, called Javarama, without a single permit. street art, to jazz, to gun violence, as a way of establishing Studying photography at the Corcoran School of Art and authenticity. The naming tendencies vary from subtle to working at a camera shop at the time, Horsley’s straight- questionable. forward shots of the people and places up and down 14th There’s The Louis, a massive luxury apartment comprovide arguably the best photographic record of day-to- plex at the very intersection where the ’68 riots began and day life during the neighborhood’s most distressed period. across the street from an equally huge, oft-chided city gov “It was a very interesting time to be in D.C. White ernment building constructed in the ’80s, when crack and flight meant no more density. Photography-wise, that al- AIDS ravaged the community and few developers dared lowed for a lot of freedom. Now, the area looks ten times invest. more populated than what I see in my photos,” says Hors- Using tongue-in-cheek branding, the developers ley. brought out a man dressed as Louis XIV for a ceremonial The area had been so devastated after the ’68 riots, so groundbreaking. Besides the nod to a far-from-modest many properties hardly touched after the fires were put French king, they say that the name of their “urban oasis out, that Horsley remembers a distinct, slight hint of for D.C.’s avant garde” also references Louis Armstrong. burnt wood in the air when he walked around U Street or After all, U Street and its jazz clubs were once known as “Black Broadway.” down 14th at its quietest moments. Horsley’s approach was a calculated one. With safety in Another luxury apartment complex on U calls itself mind, the photographer did most of his work early Sunday The Ellington, just blocks from Duke’s childhood home. mornings, when the pimps and drug dealers were wind- Next to The Ellington is a Belgian-soul food fusion bistro ing down their day and the church ladies were starting called Marvin, after the late Marvin Gaye, a D.C. native theirs. After strapping on construction boots (to avoid whose old high school sits four blocks north, and who stepping on needles or broken bottles) Horsley used the spent two years of his life in Belgium (steak frites and film he stole from the camera shop he worked at and shot chicken and waffles are both on the menu). One block up everything he could with viewers 20 years into the future is the Langston Lofts, a nod to Langston Hughes who was in mind. discovered while working in a hotel nearby. “I was looking for subjects that were nostalgic or looked There’s also Dodge City, an otherwise low key bar that like they wouldn’t be around much longer,” says Horsley. inexplicably gives itself one of D.C.’s most unflattering “When I was walking through the streets back then I felt nicknames, a reference to the neighborhood’s days of like I had a sixth sense about those things. My friends rampant gun violence in one of America’s most dangerous would joke that my camera could destroy buildings; I’d cities before the turn of the century. Ironically, the city’s come back a week after I shot something and it’d be gone.” NBA team changed its name from the Bullets to the Wiz The results along 14th show a place with few people, but ards in 1997 specifically in hopes of reducing gun-related violence in D.C. all of them fighting through a tough life in a tough city. 46 BCM 38
“There’s a total misconception that a nod or wink to a history absolves you of your appropriation. It’s such an obvious grab at being part of something and being cool.” “Young white kids, usually who went to good schools, In her experience, the worst perpetrators tended to be they think it’s funny,” says Miller. “I think they’re being residential developers. irresponsible. It says something about you. That you think “When you’re working on these kinds of projects, you this history is a joke.” know you’re already thinking about a neighborhood Aaron Gordon, one of Red Light’s owners, also ran a you’re shaping, some of them that haven’t been gentrified short-lived donut shop in posh Dupont Circle nearby yet. You’re putting your flag in the ground. You’re shap(real-estate developers once had the habit of calling the ing what the future will be. The developers know it, the area around Red Light “East Dupont” as a way of at- creative team knows it—they have mood boards and detracting more development and higher rents) that was mographic studies for what kind of people they’re trying supposed to be called Cool Disco Donut. That name was to attract to these places.” replaced, just before it opened. The name was an obvious That lack of self-awareness often means an inability to appropriation of the city’s most prolific graffiti artist of anticipate the future, something Lucy thinks about a lot the ‘80s, Cool Disco Dan, its name spelled out in a spray on big branding jobs, especially residential ones. can-like font and the shop’s interior covered in new graffiti. “Neighborhoods change. Buildings change. And after Dan is still alive but hard to contact and often homeless. the area gentrifies, your specific development could still With nostalgia for a grittier time in the city’s history fall into disrepair or the neighborhood could lose its perin high demand, he’s received a lot of attention lately, in- ceived coolness,” says the designer. “Your branding is gocluding a documentary and prominent mention in a local ing to look garish then.” museum exhibit about 1980s D.C. After receiving enough Understandably, Lucy has since decided to stick to miscomplaints about using Dan’s likeness without consent, sion-driven clients. Gordon changed the name just before the donut place’s “I got out of the game, I really disliked it.” opening in January 2013. He kept the graffiti theme but Some places do get it right though, establishing their called it Zeke’s DC Donuts until it eventually closed. own identities and reputations all while making it clear Even within the local design and branding community, they’re aware of the past. In nearby Bloomingdale, one there’s a sense that many clients just don’t have the aware- of the city’s newest and most beloved dive bars is called ness necessary when it comes to what they want out of “Showtime.” The bar’s name simply references the barber their own image. One designer, who asked that her name shop that once occupied the same space before moving to be withheld for reasons of professional objectivity—we’ll U Street recently. The owners kept the window signage, call her “Lucy”—was used to D.C.’s steady stream of mis- which still spells out “walk-ins welcome” by the entrance. sion-driven, mostly non-profit work. But in the last few Inside, old, yellow, safari wallpaper and plenty of real dogs years, she and other local designers had started picking up sitting with their owners create one of the most relaxed more and more luxury clients, a clear sign of the changing social scenes in a city known for its seriousness. times. Another bar, “Ivy and Coney,” a Detroit and Chicago Accepting the new work at first, Lucy quickly found themed bar for the large community of Midwestern expats, luxury clients uncomfortable to work with, their visions has an almost camouflage-like appearance on 7th Street rooted in a disconnect from the places they were setting in the Shaw neighborhood. Iron bars still cover the first floor doors and windows. Above it, a plywood sign reads up shop in. “There’s a total misconception that a nod or wink to “LEASE,” handwritten with marker and followed by an a history absolves you of your appropriation. It’s such an illegible phone number. Flags for D.C.’s, Detroit’s and obvious grab at being part of something and being cool Chicago’s baseball teams hang from the second floor over but the research isn’t deep enough. These references being the bar’s inherited vinyl siding. Inside, bartenders heat up used, you could find on page one of a Google search or at hot dogs in a toaster oven before preparing them Chicago or Coney Island style. Ivy and Coney is clearly meant to the top of a Wikipedia page,” says Lucy. BCM 38 47
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“I would never name anything ‘Red Light’ because I understand what that means to the history of women.” attract those who miss the cities they’re from but, like “If you were arrested and put in jail in D.C. 15 years Showtime, it projects a genuine interest in being a part of ago,” the poet, Miller tells us, “you’d come outside and the neighborhood. have no idea where you were. You went to jail when your As for the names that don’t pass the sniff test, the ones mayor was Marion Barry, a black man busted for smoking that wink at a past that could only be romanticized by crack, and now you have an openly gay white man [local those who didn’t live it, that trend doesn’t seem to be near lawyer, David Catania] running for mayor. You’d be like its end. With a relentless influx of new people moving ‘Man, I need a drink!’ And where would you even go for into the city still, most patrons inside D.C.’s newest bars that drink?” says Miller. and restaurants, or tenants in the city’s newest apartment Red Light doesn’t seem to have a problem drawing buildings, are understandably unaware of the city’s his- crowds. A popular place for fancy, dimly lit dates, the tory. With no connection to the past, there’s nothing to be name is vague enough to a newcomer to be nothing more offended by. As a result, any sort of outrage over tone deaf, than a justification for the small red lanterns on each table. contrived, or just plain silly attempts to appropriate the In fact, its popularity alone is a reminder of how many city’s past ends up being limited to conversations among new people live in the District, too often unaware of what friends, Twitter rants or blog posts. existed before them and what has left since. The lack of “People would have to be more than just snarky as a pushback about the name suggests anyone who’d be hurt response for something to change,” says Lucy. “There will by it has already moved away. But for anyone who did have to be more of a backlash against one of these projects live there before the condos, before the cocktail bars, it is hurtful. because people don’t want to be embarrassed.” For Horsley and Miller, their own experiences make “I would never name anything ‘Red Light’ because I them aware of how cyclical everything is, especially the understand what that means to the history of women,” booms and busts of a neighborhood’s development. 14th says Miller. “We have a generation where they think Street’s change has been so extreme, and come so fast, so things are funny but I remember when I was living on obviously meant for one particular demographic, that 14th and Rhode Island, I saw a single mother—I didn’t know her personally, but I’d see her—around the neighthey can’t help but wonder if an ugly disruption awaits. “I’m glad places aren’t getting knocked down and that borhood from time to time. And I saw her decline over the places are getting renovated and getting better,” says Hors- course of one year, where her circumstances clearly left her ley. “But there are times when I look at that area today and no choice and she became a prostitute.” I think about the people who used to live there. The people Horsley still comes back to the neighborhood on occawho are there today, they assume things are great and that sion but just two blocks from his old apartment, he can’t they always will be. But it’s a cycle. We’re just on an up- imagine ever stepping inside the bar that winks at a past he cycle now. It’s not like I wish for a crime wave or anything, remembers all too well. but they’re all just one step away from something going “I had a pimp pull a knife on me in that area. A name wrong. And if it did, they would be out.” like that, it’s just such a divorce from reality. When I hear stuff like that, I worry. I worry about what people think Miller sees a similar fragility to this current up-cycle. “Something could happen and people will trash every- they’re doing because I really do remember what those thing again,” says Miller. “They won’t be able to tell you days were like. I miss those times on some level, but I don’t romanticize it. It was just so fucking scary sometimes, why they did it, just that they were filled with rage.” Places change, and the District’s turnaround in the last and now there’s somebody who’s gonna drink some crazy two decades is nothing short of astonishing. While out re- cocktail? I remember someone running down that same shooting some of the same spots he shot 20-some years ago, street, screaming their head off, high on PCP. That shit burns into you. It scars you a bit.” Horsley found himself lost. “Some places had completely not changed whatsoever, For Horsely, it’s a matter of principle. but other places? Things have changed so much, I couldn’t “I couldn’t have [that] cocktail,” says Horsely. figure out where I was,” says Horsley. “I couldn’t go in that place.” 52 BCM 38
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POETRY
Zhou Ling and Jolene They all seemed so tall, and they strode down the aisles with a sense of agitated purpose. Nobody paid attention to my sweater, until she arrived. by SARAH RUTH OFFHAUS
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his story is about a sweatshirt. It’s not important how I came to the Tai Ping Yang Garment Factory. In fact, I didn’t allow much in life to feel important to me. Most of my family dissolved early on, victims of the same fluttering heart condition that I had inherited. In life, I had no talents. I didn’t like studying, and my heart caused me to miss too much school anyway. I always knew when it was going to act up—it began with a bone-weary exhaustion. A strange, sick feeling would rise in my chest, as if my heart was a fighting cricket and my ribs were its bamboo cage. I could feel the cricket frantically searching for an escape. I wasn’t good for school. I wasn’t good for hard labor. Baba’s friend had a cousin in Shenzhen; he said I could get easy work up there and make enough money to wire home. I took the train ride alone and somehow found my way to the Tai Ping Yang Garment Factory. Once there, I was assigned to a small dormitory that was already occupied by two other girls. They were nice enough, but I never had enough energy to invest kind words or selfless acts. I told myself that I was too tired to care. Zhu Min was the oldest and she had a boyfriend who also lived in the city. Fang Yuan was bookish and spent her evenings studying English. We left for breakfast each morning at seven o’clock, and slurped our rice porridge as quickly as possible. The 56 BCM 38
canteen was crowded, so many workers and not enough seats. I was always hungry and wanted to buy a bigger breakfast—steamed bun or fried egg. Baba’s friend had told him my exact salary, however. If I didn’t send enough money home, there would be trouble. After breakfast, we took our positions behind the sewing machines and stitched until dinner. The factory specialized in custom sweatshirts, the same cut and style with different embellishments. I’d finish one color and begin on another. Sometimes those colors felt so boring. Stitching the neckline of a shirt, I’d try to read the words that had been printed onto the fabric. We studied English in school, but I was too shy to speak. I was always better at math. One day, after the lunch bell, Zhu Min and I walked down to the canteen together. “I think Wang Jie is going to propose to me soon,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. I smiled. “Then I’ll be finished here and I’m never going to look at another sweatshirt in my life. What about you, Zhou Ling?” The question caught me off guard. What about me? “I don’t have a boyfriend.” “I know that. I mean, how long do you plan on staying in Shenzhen?” I chewed on my lip and shrugged my shoulders. My chest tightened and I stopped walking.
illustrations by JULIE MOLLOY “Are you OK?” Zhu Min said, turning back to me with a look of annoyance. I leaned against the wall. The concrete felt cool on my palms, I tried to breathe deeply and evenly. “I’m alright,” I said. “This happens sometimes.” Lunch was more rice porridge, with a smattering of pickled mustard greens. For once, I wasn’t hungry. I tried to ignore the cricket inside me. It wasn’t hopping yet, just burrowing down and making a home for itself. I imagined the inside of my chest like a little dormitory for the cricket. It set down its things, unpacked its bags. Before lunch was over, my cricket had fallen asleep. I hoped there would be no wild leaping sensation. The cricket woke from its nap not two hours later. I was stitching through a case of ugly gray sweatshirts. They were embroidered with kittens. I held up a shirt. Who would wear it? Where was it going? It was sized XXL, and I could not imagine a person large enough to fit in it. Back home in my village, there was a man who sold watermelons at the night market. In the summertime, he would roll up his shirt and expose his ripe belly. Maybe he could fit into it, I thought to myself. My heart twisted suddenly and I gripped the worktable. That cricket wasn’t just playing house anymore. I tried to control my breathing again and looked around to see if anyone had noticed me. The collective buzz of the sewing machines seemed far away and another sharp twinge racked my body. I tried to turn toward Zhu Min’s station, but instead I felt my body betraying me. The first person to scream was the woman working directly behind me. She shrieked and leaped away from my body, and others followed suit until there was a ring of curious onlookers maintaining a cautious distance from that pile of ugly sweatshirts with a dead 24-year-old slumped on top. I saw all of this. I heard Zhu Min telling anyone who would listen about how I’d been feeling weak at lunchtime. I was there, but I wasn’t there. I was dead. This shocked me, of course. I tried to speak, to call out. No one responded. I stopped a moment and realized that my heart didn’t hurt. There was no fluttering, no shortness of breath. If anything, I felt light and soft. I can’t explain this. I tested myself and breathed in deeply, no pain. It felt wonderful, really. I walked toward Zhu Min, but she couldn’t see me. I tried to pull her hair, tap her shoulder. Nothing happened. Two men came forward and moved my body into the aisle. The Tai Ping Yang Garment Factory is famous for its output. They do big business. The death of Zhou Ling wasn’t enough to stop production. Another worker came along, scooped up my kitten shirts and walked back to her
station. I watched her walk away, and felt an indescribable tug. I had to follow that sweatshirt. The one I’d been working on. Somehow I knew that I had to stay with that shirt. My family wasn’t religious. Baba didn’t even make an altar when Mama died. I didn’t believe in much of anything. But as that worker walked down the aisle to the back of the factory, I knew with every fiber of my being that somehow my soul had been stitched into a size XXL kitten sweatshirt. I raced down the aisle, hopping lightly over piles of unfinished garments. I felt oddly free. I won’t tell you about the boxed time. It was dark and dull and I followed my sweatshirt from truck to boat to truck again. Sometimes I felt mad with loneliness, but too scared of the emptiness outside the sphere of my shirt. What would happen if I stayed put, and the shirt traveled on to its destination? What would happen to me? We ended up in America, of all places. The shirt was unpacked in a gigantic store with high ceilings and uncomfortable fluorescent lighting. I couldn’t believe I was in America! It almost felt more surreal than the fact that I had died and was now fated to follow a shirt. There it was, hanging on a rack with more kitten sweatshirts in varying sizes. I stood nearby, watching all the foreigners shop. In China, we call foreigners laowai. I knew that in America, I was the foreigner, but I couldn’t stop thinking that all these people passing me by—their carts brimming with packaged foods and bulk cleaning products—they were still the laowai, not me. They all seemed so tall, and they strode down the aisles with a sense of agitated purpose. Nobody paid attention to my sweater, until she arrived. She was my XXL. Round and plump, with a halo of frizzy blonde curls, she was alone except for a blue plastic basket filled with various boxed foods. She felt the material of my sweatshirt, and took it off the hanger. She put the basket down and held the shirt up to her body. She whispered something in English, and smiled to herself as she tossed the sweatshirt into her basket. I followed her through the store, stood nearby as she made her purchases and slid into the back seat of her car when she tossed her groceries in. I tried to speak to her, but she couldn’t feel my presence at all. I was nothing, but she had suddenly become everything. America blurred by. It was raining and cold, but I was already shocked by the green world around us. Trees everywhere! The woman had her own house. She drove her car right into her very own garage and we went inside. She put her bags down on the floor, nestled onto her couch and turned on her television set. I felt odd, an intruder in this woman’s BCM 38 57
space. I stepped further into the home, feeling warmer as I got closer to my sweatshirt. Across from me was a tiny hallway with photographs along the walls. At the end of the hall, I noticed a large, ornately framed portrait. I walked closer to examine it. A beaming couple held onto each other; their big-cheeked smiles shone through the paper, striking me with their happiness. The man wore a pale blue suit. The woman wore white, with a floral bonnet. This must be a wedding portrait, I thought. The picture was at least 30 years old, but I could tell that this was the same woman who had bought my shirt. I read the words painted onto the frame: “STEVE AND JOLENE, 3/8/82.” Jolene, her name was Jolene. I found myself learning all about Jolene’s life through the photographs on her wall. Babies, so many babies; four girls, to be exact. There were photographs of little girls with matching Jolene-haloes of blonde hair. Girls in dance recitals. Steve and the girls sitting on a blanket near a lake. Teenage girls with pastel knitted sweaters and strange hairstyles and metal braces on their teeth. Each year, they had family portraits taken. The photographs slowly changed. In one photograph, Steve looked different. He was thin and small, and he was in a wheelchair. After that, there were only individual photos of the girls. Where was Steve? Had he died? The house felt heavy with a sadness I hadn’t anticipated. Why did I care? I died, too. So what? I returned to the living room. It was getting darker outside, and Jolene was bathed in the blue light of the television. I watched her soft, dimply hand reach into a box of cookies and then lift up to her mouth. She finished the package and opened another. And another. As the hours passed, I counted five empty packages resting on the carpet. I couldn’t believe it. I knew she was a large woman and I’d always heard that Americans ate a lot of food, but this was something different. With considerable effort, she got up from her couch. I watched her trudge to the bathroom. She didn’t shut the door. She flicked on the light, stopped in front of a mirrored medicine cabinet and stared at herself. I felt strange and frightened, as though she were the ghost in the room. Jolene sighed and turned toward the toilet. I watched her kneel down and lift up the toilet seat, watched her position herself over the porcelain bowl. With her left hand, she gathered her hair and held it at the base of her neck. In a quick and definitive movement, she jammed the fingers of her right hand into her mouth and made an awful retching sound. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I ran into the living room, but I couldn’t block out the awful sounds. 58 BCM 38 34
The cookie boxes stared up at me from the floor. I had never had a chocolate cookie in my life. How much time had I spent dreaming of something as small and insignificant as a boiled egg? How many times had I gone to sleep hungry in the dorms, salivating at the idea of a single steamed bun with a bit of red bean paste in the center? Here in America, in the soft confines of her very own home, Jolene had eaten in excess only to forcibly expel all of that precious food. It almost felt as though my heart was beating again. I hadn’t allowed myself to feel anger in a long time. Not when Baba removed all of Mama’s things from our home. Not when he took me out of school. Not when he sent me away. But hearing Jolene’s gags brought my ghost heart to life, and I was angry. Without thinking, I ran into the hallway and flung my arms out. I wanted to smash all of Jolene’s photographs. For years, I had been quietly eating my anger. It felt as though I couldn’t eat another bite. It took me a moment to realize that I had done it. I saw the frames slide across the hardwood floors, heard the shatter of glass. I even felt the impact of my hands brushing against the walls. I couldn’t believe that I had shattered the portraits! How did I do it? Jolene was at the bathroom door, holding her hands over her mouth and staring at the trail of smashed portraits. She almost stepped on a photo of Steve that had skidded down the hallway. She gasped and crouched down, cradling the photo. “Steve,” she cried, hugging the broken frame and looking around frantically for the source of the crash. I felt shocked, too. What had I done? It was as if I had expelled all of my anger in one unplanned action. “Steve,” Jolene called out again. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but I knew she was talking to him as if he were there in the room with us, as if it was Steve who had done this. Jolene was crying, but she was also smiling. She held Steve’s photograph tightly, ignoring the sharp points of broken glass. My own invisible heart was aching. Something long dead inside me had risen up. I left my sweatshirt still in its plastic bag, beside the cookie boxes. Jolene had gotten a broom, and was sweeping up the broken glass. She was talking animatedly, searching for Steve in the silence. I slipped away, feeling myself becoming lighter as I floated further away from my sweatshirt. It felt good to be empty, it felt so very good.
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BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
Simple Stuff by EMILY CHURCO
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