Who are the people in your neighborhood?
New year, newsletter.
I spent over 2 years not knowing any of my nearest neighbors, despite living in an apartment complex containing dozens of units. The sweet couple across the street I knew from work, and that's different than being simply neighbors, isn't it? These were the latter years of my Dutch time, and it was arguably the tiniest downgrade in neighbor-knowledge from the previous year. During that phase, my housemate and I knew the other unit in the house by name and sight, but nobody else on the block. (Commercial establishments on that block were a hedonistic wonderland: an adult bookstore with a soup vending machine, a hair salon that also sold sneakers, my Wednesday bar.)
This was all a marked difference from the previous 2+ years when I had a community down the street from me of multiple houses, including a woman who once threw a 1974-themed party, hours before which her power got cut. To it, I brought Canadian Club and a mix CD that I worked way too hard on. Across the street from her were some lovely young women who enjoyed swing dancing and pot brownies. I was friendly with another, yellow, house of college kids who took the bus on the same schedule I did most days.
Another house near the coffeeshop was home to a half dozen guys, all pious Christian gentlemen, who knew how to host generously. Another group of guys, towards the taco place, were in an a cappella group, though you wouldn’t know it from the exterior of their house. These days I’m in touch with 2-3 of these characters, though I think of them all with fondness and a perhaps surprising regularity. We were all in our twenties, energized and relatively unburdened, and had some loose social ties beyond proximity.
I grew up in a neighborhood where almost everybody knew everybody else, a suburb of a small town is often how I describe it. I spent time in over a dozen of the houses for one reason or another, play dates and family gatherings. Some of the folks are still there, 40 years on. I wonder how my adult life hasn't included the same familiarity. At least, not yet.
On our current block, we recognize Frank and his housemate/ex-wife Angel, plus a pod of two young families we know by first names, then some nameless others. I do not know any names of the folks on either side of our house, though we all say “hi” cheerfully, especially when encountering each other at odd hours. I only could remember the name of a little girl who used to live next door because it was her family’s wifi network SSID.
Here’s my November stuff! December’s roundup will hit your inbox sooner than you think and that’s a threat!!
Reading: At some point, I got on a kick about reading profiles of the guys from Jackass. It’s a franchise I hadn’t paid attention to for 20 years, and then I watched Jackass Forever twice and became intensely curious. GQ profiled Johnny Knoxville, and the New York Times talked to Wee Man. They seem like they're goobers who've evolved?
I randomly on Twitter came across a writer who shares my rare last name AND an alma mater. We literally do not know if we’re related. Regardless, I find her sporadic NYC party newsletter gripping. A food writer named Folu has a newsletter about snacks that draws me down rabbit holes. Its website is weirdly down this morning, but perhaps that'll be up when you see this.
An essay made me think about the different texting styles I have. I checked out Joyful from the library after a friend kept recommending it. It’s good but I’m still slowly making my way through, and I know it's good because I keep referring in conversation to the one chapter I've finished.
Eating: I ate breakfast sandwiches from Penrose Diner, The Dutch, Meta Cafe, Rosy's Cafe, Darnel’s, Sulimay’s, and Caphe. We enjoyed a South Indian feast at Amma’s with my grad school friends Vik and Rachel. Starting around Thanksgiving, Kelsey was making rosemary butter cookies which are a delight. Thanksgiving dinner was Kelsey & me, Jay & Marisa, my mom & her best friend. Somehow through the magic of Google Sheets and aggressively cooking in the days leading up, we convened Thursday morning and discovered we had to only cook three things from scratch that day, one of which was the slow-cooker turkey breast. (Highly recommend!) There’s a story from that day as well about my family collectively borking one of my failsafe recipes, but that’s not important right now!!!
Beating: New Kleptones projects were hitting Soundcloud and providing superb working music: I tried to wrap my brain around how Phish created a new identity and album for themselves, just as a Halloween stunt, because of course they did for the second time.
Deleting: While I was in my childhood basement over Thanksgiving, Mom had me go through some boxes of old items she’d been saving. No, I did NOT need to keep those mid-semester progress reports from junior year of high school. Yes, I DID want to keep that penguin I made in sixth grade art class: its new home would be my in-laws' kitchen.
Retreating: We spent a night with Philly friends at a Poconos cabin playing a dinosaur game and making s’mores. We also had a night in New Hope and toddled around Goat Hlil Preserve.
Meeting: As previously mentioned, I ended up on an episode of Hopkins Hacks and an episode of the JHU Life Design Lab’s When U Grow Up podcast. The episodes are pulled from the same conversation, so there’s a bit of overlap. The “When U Grow Up” episode is probably more interesting to those without a Hopkins campus experience.
I wrote part of this newsletter in a train station parking lot, and part while watching the season premiere of The Bachelor. We take what we can get, eh, friends?