This Magic Moment

Are you a stuff person? Or are you one of those minimalists? Do you save concert tickets, buy records and magazines, keep weird boxes and rip out articles and put them on your wall? Have you moved many residences with all these belongings, keeping the heaviest hitters of singles, books and crap?

I am a stuff person. I’m always squirreling things away, tucking the menu into a bag, palming an extra matchbook, I love a good coaster, a keepsake, a notion, a talisman. I like to buy postcards from museum gift shops, they’re my little affordable, portable, personal art. I also love to get the good stamps from the post office, you know what I’m talking about—Toni Morrison, Harvey Milk, Sally Ride, Ruth Asawa, Jimi Hendrix, the Total Eclipse of the Sun stamp! They push the same buttons as set lists, show posters, and menus.

If you are a minimalist, you don’t understand such things, and I can’t intentionally assist you but you can try to walk in my ephemera-filled footsteps in the sand. I keep too many t-shirts, because I have also lost too many t-shirts. I’m jealous of the people who manage to keep their concert tickets, mine probably ended up used as a bookmark. If you’re around when I die, attend the estate sale or help whomever is cleaning out my life. There is bound to be a misplaced roll of cash in a beer koozie and an envelope between some records. It has happened before. I’m a great keeper of things, but not so strong at organizing.

These three pieces of paper are taped up on the wall of the office. The item on the left is from the Noah Davis painting show at the Zwirner gallery in February 2020. This was the last art show I saw before lockdown. My MO for art is see it the second to last or last day of the show. You call it procrastination. I call it process. Noah Davis is an American painter who tragically died from a rare cancer at the age of 32. He and his wife sculptor Karon Om Vereen-Davis founded the artist-run Underground Museum in a working class neighborhood in LA. I went by myself and was really moved by the work. I didn’t know anything about Davis or the Underground Museum.

The picture in the middle is the outside of legendary bar Jimmy’s Corner, located in Times Square/Hell’s Kitchen. I ripped this picture out of the paper and taped it up on the wall five years ago during shutdown. The bar owner, Jimmy Glenn, had just died of complications from COVID. Glenn was a boxer, trainer, corner man and gym owner, every inch of every wall is covered in boxing memorabilia. The music on the CD jukebox is great, the drinks are cheap, the bathrooms work and are clean enough. His son took over ownership when his father passed. I pray this place is landmarked.

I took this menu from Grand Central Oyster Bar on December 18, 2019, I met my friend Annaliese there. Grand Central Oyster Bar is the train station of the same name, a place that always delivers a very New York feel, romance, history and design mingled together. The workers are unionized. The former owner, Jerome Brody, sold the business in 1999 to the staff to preserve the union, so non-union, managerial staff are part of the Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP). The last time I was there, a bartender told me and Vince about how it was all organized while we had martinis before our train to Beacon.

If you are a person who loves to sit at a bar alone, reading a book, staring at the vaulted ceilings, with a drink and oysters and another snack, this is the place for you. I stand by my questionable financial decisions.

I love this picture.

This triptych is pretty COVID-related, but that’s just the most recent massive transition in life, so it makes sense. Here’s a look at some other mementos.

From left to right: A signed menu from Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver from St. John's in London. The Saltie menu. The menu for my 50th birthday party Rick Easton from Bread & Salt made, written on wax paper. It's like the shroud of Turin. An epic, absurd feast.

I'm actually surprised I have this remembrance card from my dad's funeral, just because it's been a long time, and, as mentioned, I don't have a great organizational mind for scraps of paper. To the right is the top of the first Blanton's bottle I ever drank, much less saw. We were cleaning out the bar, so many tiny airplane bottles of Ouzo and Liquid 43. I saw the brown velvet bag on a dark shelf (why didn't I keep that???), took the bottle out and read the fancy beautiful label. It was a beacon amongst all the other stuff. I've been carrying this top around for decades.

Program from an absolutely sublime day outside on the lawn of the Whitney Museum. Kara Walker created a steam-powered calliope housed in a parade wagon. Jason Moran played music. We sat on the lawn. Maybe it was the curb. Same thing.

On the left-notes on big pieces of paper from Amanda at Star Route Farm, who I met five years ago when the farm was supporting communities both upstate and in the city with their beautiful produce. Since then, they have evolved and organized even more. Let it be known, I love large missives. On the right is a dollar given to me on Tibetan New Year at the Wat Buddha Thai Thavorn Temple of Elmhurst by Tavin, a monk. Amanda introduced me to the temple for food distribution and she grew produce especially for them. It is a beautiful place.

This is my old London Tube pass from when I was 20. My hair was greasy, self-cut and dyed some sort of purple, that shirt was a giant also sorta purple t-shirt I also cut myself. I got it from the senior citizen run thrift store I worked at in Ohio. Somehow this is the best photo taken of me. Ever. And I have it.

A note from my Theitsa Vangie (my aunt) she wrote upon checking out of the Wythe Hotel the day after I got married. The Wythe is a fancy, boutique hotel in Williamburg Brooklyn. She lost one of her earrings, she thinks at the hardware store, Crest Hardware, where Vince & I got married in the garden center. Could I find it? Or maybe it was at Union Pool, where the reception was held? She taped a bag with the other earring in it, still on the hard plastic display, to the note, and left it at the front desk. She referred to the wedding as a “gala/event.” This is a rich text.

I keep VIP passes and lanyards and stuff like that. I just found this one going through a drawer and recalled how great this show was. That’s the point.

On the left is a flier for an eating and drinking contest we held for the one year celebration of the Hideaway. My friend Emily Flake made the flier. That was a really fun and debaucherous day. I can say for certain that there are *no* winners in a deviled egg eating contest. On the other side of this flier I wrote down a recipe for watermelon rind pickles and cornichon. Peak organization.