The Downtown Arcade 5 - Stuff I Like Edition
Hello, Downtown Arcade subscribers! Here we go again.
One of my favorite news features is My Ten in the arts section of The New York Times, wherein celebrities identify the ten (10) things that matter most. Nick Offerman's recent entry was a classic ("2. The Sycamore It’s the biggest of the deciduous trees.").
So in honor of My Ten, here are my ... five. Five is enough. For today at least. As always, just reply to this email if you want to holler back.
1. Irene Kral, "The Gentle Rain" My recent obsession is certain niche internet radio stations. Quiet Village Radio plays exotica à la Martin Denny. Lots of tiki music and gongs. KCEA, a high school station in the Bay Area, plays big bang music. Lots of Artie Shaw. And Cleveland's WKHR, another high school station, plays midcentury vocal pop -- Peggy Lee, Dean Martin, that sort of thing. WKHR is where I recently heard "The Gentle Rain." I was awestruck. I marveled at Irene Kral's deeply emotive singing and Alan Broadbent's tasteful piano playing. I love this sort of thing. "The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album" is one of my favorite art objects. So I bought the Kral LP on eBay, and now I can put it on whenever I want to feel sophisticated. Internet radio stations are a freaking marvel.
2. The Walgreens greeting card section on Valentine's Day if I'm not buying a valentine On Monday I went to Walgreens to buy a birthday card for my mom. As I browsed I started to notice a commotion, or at least what passed for a commotion at the Natchitoches Walgreens on a weekday afternoon. The valentine area was low-key mobbed by men doing last-minute Valentine's Day shopping. They live by my motto: Meeting the deadline is meeting the deadline. Among them was a prominent local official whose identity I will protect. He doesn't need any trouble.
3. This Tupperware Ereck regularly bakes cakes and I am the luckiest man in the world. However! Usually we chill cakes in our giant cake thing, and making space for it in the fridge is a concern. (That doesn't make me not the luckiest man in the world, don't get me wrong.) So recently I was happy to learn a lemon cake minus two slices fits perfectly in this upside-down Tupperware. Which calls for more lemon cake.
4. The L Chicago's rapid-transit rail system has fascinated me since I was 12, when my mother remarried and moved to the Windy City. As a kid in suburban Nashville I depended on adults with cars to take me where I needed to go. But thanks to the L, Chicago was my oyster. Do 12-year-old kids still ride the L alone? I continue to follow L developments. All hail the new Brown Line flyover!
5. The downtown arcade I don't think I've mentioned why this newsletter is called the Downtown Arcade. I named it after the 109-year-old shopping center in central Nashville. I loved it when I was a child. It's one of my favorite places. I think Nashville hasn't known quite what to do with the arcade since, oh, 1950, and I'm intrigued to learn the old place is getting a reno. Here's to the ongoing vitality of the downtown arcade.