As part of my ongoing effort to make the city apartment feel more home-like, I decided to hang a couple of framed printed in the kitchen. I’ve been holding on to these prints with the intention of framing/hanging them for about 15 years (!!) now, and it feels great to see them out of a storage tube and onto the wall.

Both prints were silkscreened by Robin Hendrickson, who I met while we were in the Art+Design program at Purchase College. Robin was immensely talented, and I do wonder what he’s up to now. (Hey Robin, if you Googled yourself and wound up here, get in touch!) The Lost Highway poster (black ink on yellow plasticized paper) was done for a special screening of the movie in the campus theater, and the “Hockey Fight” print was a personal project he did to document a multi-face type family that he’d hand-drawn. We have an alternate version of this poster in what is now the guest bedroom at our house (yikes, old photo!).

There’s a tendency to think small when it comes to hanging framed stuff on kitchen and bathroom walls, but I love putting big posters in smaller spaces. The room immediate feels cozier, happier, and all-around more comfortable. I don’t worry about heat or moisture, either. I probably wouldn’t put anything valuable right next to the stove or the shower, but I’ve never had a problem with anything getting damaged.

Oh, and speaking of the apartment kitchen, remember that giant hole in the ceiling? Well, it took FORTY-EIGHT DAYS (as well as countless phone calls, certified letters and threats of legal action), but it’s finally fixed. What a huge relief. Not being able to cook (and you know, having a giant hole overhead constantly shedding dirt and concrete) was pretty stressful.

Let this post also stand as a reminded to order your 2012 Stendig calendar! It’s already November, and it’ll be a new year before you know it. And remember, the pages make great wrapping paper when the month is over.

Things are still very much all work, all the time around here, but I managed to sneak in a few snaps of Instagram brightness here and there.

Speaking of Instagram, you may have noticed that there is a big update to version 2.0 available right now. My personal advice is to skip the update for the time being. If you’re wondering why, take a look at this very thorough review. I was extremely unhappy with the update, and wound up jumping through a bunch of hoops in order to downgrade to the old version.

And yes, I still love Instagram for all of the reasons I wrote four months ago, by the way—maybe a little too much.

p.s. What happened to September?!

It’s late at night on September 10th, 2011 as I start writing, but in truth I’ve composing this in my head for years.

My story isn’t special. It’s the same as that of thousands and thousands of other people. Everyone in the world has an answer to the perpetual question: Where where you? And everyone who was in New York City on September 11, 2001 has their own variation, too.

I was living alone in Cobble Hill at the time, just south of Brooklyn Heights—a few blocks from the waterfront that looks out across East River toward the skyline of lower Manhattan. I lived alone at the time, and I was running late for work after voting in the primary election at the school down the block. As with every other morning (then and now), I had on the New York Public Radio station, WNYC, whose broadcast center was in lower Manhattan. As the clock inched toward 9AM, the news was starting to get very weird. They had received a call from a listener who had seen what looked like a huge wheel in the street, and was it possible that it had fallen off of a plane overhead? And, in my memory, a simultaneous call that another listener had just seen a plane fly into the World Trade Center.

I don’t remember turning on the television, and I don’t remember at what point WNYC’s transmitter—located on top of the World Trade Center—went out. I just remember picturing something like a scene from King Kong and grabbing my bag to hurry off to work.

I heard the second plane hit the South Tower while I was walking to the subway. I didn’t know what it was at the time, of course, and my route to the train took me out of the line of sight of the events transpiring across the river. I continued to the subway, paid my fare, and road the train in with a car full of people who seemed to not really be concerned about much of anything. As far as I can recall, it was an ordinary commute.

By the time I got to my office in Rockefeller Center, a third plane had hit the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and there was no question in anyone’s mind that the United States was under attack. This was not an accident; there was no King Kong. Over the course of the 45 minutes that I was underground en route to work in Manhattan, everything had changed.

I just had to stop writing for a few minutes and let myself cry. The clock just turned to midnight, and it is officially ten years later.

Let me just say this straight up: I love my coworkers. Some of them have moved on over the 13 years I’ve been there and some new friends have joined the team, but the core group of people has remained same—and I love them. All of us were there in the office that morning, trying to find out whatever news we could online (not as instantaneous then as it is now) and wondering where we should go or what we should do. One coworker’s girlfriend was at work in the World Trade center. He couldn’t get a hold of her by phone, so he just ran. She got out.

Word trickled in that one of the buildings had collapsed. How was that possible? What was happening? We were in the middle of Manhattan in a landmarked building in a tourist area. Were we a target? We didn’t know—we didn’t know anything. We were scared, the phone lines were down, and we could already see military vehicles on the street outside.

So we left. We took our things and we left. We walked about 20 blocks south to my coworker’s husband’s office—they had a TV there, and at least it wasn’t in a building that felt like a target. By the time we arrived, another plane had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. I watched the North Tower collapse on television.

To this day, I cannot reconcile the fact that what I saw on the screen was actually happening a couple of miles away from me. None of it seemed possible. I don’t know if it was a defense mechanism or just a lack of understanding of the situation, but I don’t remember crying—I was just shocked and scared. Terrified. It’s hard for me to admit that now that I know I was never in immediate danger, but at the time it didn’t feel that way. At the time, it quite literally felt as though the whole of New York City—if not the entire country—was under invasive attack.

I remember my boss checking to make sure we all had cash on us. I had to tell him, shamefully, that because my account balance was under $20, I was unable to make a withdrawal from the ATM. So he gave me $20. (Why I remember that, I don’t know.)

At some point, those of us who lived in Brooklyn decided to try to get home. After some debate about which bridge was most likely to be bombed or struck by a plane (probably the Brooklyn Bridge, since it was the most recognizable), we decided to walk to the Manhattan Bridge. It took a long time to get there. The streets were filled with people making an exodus from Manhattan in whatever direction they could—many of them covered with ash, and some with torn clothes and blood on their faces. The closer we got to lower Manhattan, the scarier it got. By the time we crossed Canal Street, we were constantly looking up at the sky. Just to make sure.

Much has been made of the camaraderie of New Yorkers in the time following the attack, but what I remember from that day was silence. Granted, it was a silence filled with sirens and bullhorns and military planes, but for the most part people all seemed to be keeping to themselves. Everyone was just moving forward.

We moved forward, too. We crossed the bridge with a great deal of trepidation. On the Brooklyn side, we were greeted by members of the Hasidic community who had loaded up vans with bottled water. That was the first time I cried.

September 12, 2001 // Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Touching ground in Brooklyn felt like reaching safety. By the time I walked all the way to my apartment it was late afternoon. I was finally able to get through on the phone to my parents and confirm that everyone in my family was safe.

Then the TV went on. And it did not go off for days and days and days. I spent all of my time alternating between watching news reports—the same things, those same horrible shots, over and over—and walking to the waterfront to watch the billowing smoke that continued to rise for weeks. I don’t think I’d ever felt so lonely before in my life. And by the time I gathered myself up enough to get out and donate blood, they didn’t want it anymore—there was no one to give it to. I am sure I was not alone in feeling utterly helpless.

The words I’ve written here so far mean nothing other than that I am very lucky.

Nearly 3,000 people died as a direct result of the attacks in New York, Arlington, and Pennsylvania. They died for no reason other than that they went to work or got on a plane. 411 emergency workers died while rushing directly into unfathomable danger to rescue others. The 33 passengers and 7 crew members on Flight 93 managed to prevent their plane from hitting the Capitol before they, too, died. Countless first responders’ lives will be cut short due to the yet-unknown effects of inhaling dust at Ground Zero.

Thousands have gone to fight in the wars that have followed, and thousands will never return. Thousands of families have lost their loved ones forever, and the number keeps increasing.

It’s now 1:26AM on September 11, 2011. Ten years have passed, and I still cannot reconcile that the Twin Towers are gone, and that something so horrible happened here, in my city. Not a day passes that I don’t think about it at some point, whether it’s fear for my safety or grief over the lives that were lost.

And I am lucky to not have a special story.

Lately I’ve been trying to make the city apartment feel a little more like a home than just a place to crash. When we first rented it last year, my goal was to keep it as spare and minimal as possible—but who am kidding? I like stuff. I like furniture and lamps and art and books and pillows and candles. The entire apartment is only about 450 square feet (including the kitchen, bathroom, and entry area), so it’s really not too hard to make it feel “cozy”—homey is another story, though. I think when you don’t have your favorite stuff with you, the place you’re living in can start to feel a little like it actually belongs to someone else, or that it’s temporary. Either way, it’s unsettling.

Okay, so this is minor, but look! We FINALLY screwed the top down on the fauxdenza. It only took us five months! (Well, it took about five months to think about it, and then 30 seconds to actually do it.)

Speaking of FAUXDENZAS, I have to point out that the official Google “fauxdenza count” is up to a whopping 13,700 hits. To recap, “fauxdenza” made its debut in November 2010. By the following March, we were up to 323 mentions. Less than a year after its inception, “fauxdenza” has become part of everyday language in households across America. Are you listening, Oxford English Dictionary?!

Okay, I promise to dial down the nerd now. But first, here’s an updated FAUXDENZA Google screencap.

See? I’ve been hanging stuff on the walls! For a long time the fabulous bear print by Sarah Edmonds of Banquet was the only thing up there, but I’ve since added three more pieces. The mountain poster is by Elisabeth Dunker (I wish I had a better picture of it in situ, but the glare from the window was fighting me!), the Pee-wee print is by Dan Zettwoch, and I’ve already written about the Superpowers poster from Pop Chart Lab.

A couple of other new things came to live with us, too—both of them from the 2009 IKEA PS collection. The cute little KARLJOHAN side table was designed by Christian Halleröd, and the crazy SVARVA lamp is the from the super-awesome Swedish design collective FRONT. This is probably the only scenario in which I’ll actually be able to afford anything designed by FRONT. I love when designers I love (hello, Hella Jongurius!) do pieces for IKEA.

Ever the bargain-hunter, though, I waited to buy these two pieces until the price dropped to almost 50% of the original cost. It looks like IKEA is phasing out much of the 2009 PS collection now, so if there’s something you’ve been wanting, get on it now.

Here’s a closer view of Dan Zettwoch’s amazing Pee-wee bike print. You’d need to see this thing in person to appreciate the fantastic attention to detail! Dan has some really cool photos of the process of creating it on his blog—check it out. It’s silkscreened in really rich inks (plus silver!) on thick, creamy paper, and it looks SO good on the wall. Dan screened an edition of 30 of these prints, and I think he still has some left, so definitely get in touch with him if you love Pee-wee as much as I do!

(Thanks so much to Matt Roeser for tipping me off to Dan Zettwoch’s work back when I put up this post about my love for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure!)

Today as been quiet. We’re settled down with our supplies at the apartment and waiting for hurricane Irene—she’s just rain and wind right now, and hopefully that’s how she’ll stay. We slept in a bit (or at least I tried to—one foot out of the bed and I lost my spot!), visited with Mamma Biscuit and her dads, and indulged in some amazing vegan treats from our favorite bakery, Sweet Semosh.

Tonight is for getting caught up on Project Runway, watching old episodes of Cheers, eating leftover Chinese, and staying dry inside. I’m trying to fit in a little freelance work now, too, just in case we lose power tonight. And if we do, well—I’ll be making a lot of friendship bracelets tomorrow!

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first: My nails look adorable. After eying those Sally Hansen Nail Effects strips at Duane Reade at least once a week for the past few months, I finally went ahead and coughed up nine bucks and bought a box. I’d read a ton of reviews, so I knew they probably wouldn’t suck, but I didn’t expect them to be quite so awesome.

For my first attempt, I went with “Misbehaving”, a champagne-gold with a fishnet overlay. I’d read that the glittery styles are harder to apply, so even though “Glitz Blitz” was calling my name LOUD + SPARKLY, I opted for something easier the first time around.

The strips are kind of like really thin stickers, but they’re actually made of nail polish. They don’t add dimension to your nails or anything like that. They apply kind of like model airplane decals (sans water) in terms of fragility and placement techniques, but they go on really nicely. The amazing thing is that there’s no drying time, so if you’re like me and tend to decide to do your nails at midnight, you can hop right into bed after and not worry about dreaded sheet-prints screwing up your manicure.

Up close, you can definitely tell that I messed up the placement on a couple of stickers—mostly from fear of getting too close to the cuticle. From a normal distance, though, they look perfect. Oh! And they supposedly last for at least ten days with no chipping. I’m only on day three, so we’ll see how it goes. So far, so good, which is more than I can say for regular manicures. Kind of spendy, yeah, but if you have short nails like me, you can get two full manicures out of a box. Not too bad.

Now onto the other stuff: Hurricane Irene. Yeah. Well, we really don’t know what to expect. We’re staying in the city this weekend because the traffic heading out is bound to be brutal, so things could get exciting. Luckily, our neighborhood (Washington Heights) isn’t in an evacuation zone, so hopefully we’ll be okay. Unsurprisingly, tomorrow’s planned festivities have been postponed (Spike actually wanted to go ahead with it, but once the governor announced that ALL mass transit will cease operation at noon tomorrow, cancellation was kind of a done deal), so we’ll be holed up in the apartment—hopefully with electricity, cell and internet service!

There’s still a giant hole on our kitchen ceiling (grumble, grumble), but the roof seems to have been repaired, so hopefully we won’t get any water coming in—touch wood. I truly hope Irene takes it easy on us all! Everyone please be safe out there.

Yes, that’s right, the kitchen ceiling has been relocated to the kitchen floor. And on its way down, it decided to extinguish both pilot lights on the stove…so the entire apartment was filled with gas. Scary stuff. (This photo was taken after we’d opened the window.)

We opened the window and turned off the gas, but we can’t stay there until the gas clears and the ceiling is repaired. Even just being in there for a few minutes made me feel sick. I think the gas must have been pouring out for days, since this was clearly the result of rain damage to the ceiling coming in through the roof (our apartment is on the top floor), but everything was bone-dry.

After making numerous calls to the management company and our extremely disinterested superintendent, we all got in the car and drove all the way back up to the house. We’re extremely lucky to have that as an option—I don’t know what we’d have done if this was our sole residence!

Let’s see how long it takes for the ceiling to get fixed, shall we? Things like this are exactly the reason why I prefer to be a homeowner. The lack of control you have as a renter can be frustrating—especially since I know they won’t actually fix the source of the leak…they’ll just patch the hole and move on. We could tell it had been “fixed” before we moved in, so this isn’t even a new problem. Argh!

Mark your calendars! For the third year running, SPIKE LEE will hold his annual BROOKLYN LOVES MICHAEL JACKSON birthday party celebration in Prospect Park, Brooklyn on Saturday, August 27th.

The first year Spike did this, 20,000 MJ fans turned out. Last year, there were a whopping FIFTY THOUSAND (!!!) people in attendance, which is really just kind of insane and also completely awesome and amazing. Let me tell you, I’ve been to a lot of gatherings, concerts, parties and open park events in my life, but nothing compares to the BK♡MJ bash! It’s FREE, it’s FUN, it’s HUGE, and it’s all about L.O.V.E. + MUSIC and remembering how much of both of those things Michael delivered in spades. There’s something very special about being in a group that huge and feeling nothing but happiness and camaraderie for six hours straight!

Here are some of my photos from last year’s event. I’ll be there again this this year for sure! As far as I’m concerned, this is the FUN event of the year in New York City. (New Years Eve what? Saint Patrick’s Day Parade who?) My calendar has been booked since the moment Spike announced the date, and I’m already itching with excitement and ready to claim my spot up in the front row. DJ Spinna is as good it gets when it comes to spinning MJ, and I can’t wait to find out what special guests will be joining in on the party.

MA MA SE MA MA SA MA MA COO SA! Hope to see you there. ♡

For more information, visit the Prospect Park and 40 Acres websites.

Designer Fuse Green created the event artwork again this year. Thanks to 40 Acres for letting me share these behind-the-scenes photos of the mural installation at their headquarters in Fort Greene, Brooklyn!

Spike Lee on WhoSay

I’ve lived in New York for my entire life, and as much I love this state all the time, I love it more than ever right now. A few hours ago, the New York Senate voted 33-29 in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, which brings this country a whole lot closer to realizing our founding ideals of equality.

To every tireless LGBT advocate who has fought for equal rights for decades; to every senator who crossed party lines to ensure the bill’s passage; to Governor Andrew Cuomo; and to everyone who wasn’t afraid to SPEAK OUT and ACT UP in order to get this done—THANK YOU.

And to all of my beloved friends who until today were denied the right to choose to marry if and who they wish, thank you for hanging in there. I never took for granted that I could do what you couldn’t without a second thought. And I love you so much.

Now go and have the BEST Pride Weekend EVER.

I promise I have some more substantive posts coming up (like about haircuts and gardening and raindrops and other important stuff), but for now I want to share some of the snapshots I’ve been taking around New York City this past week. In addition to all of the things I wrote here about loving using Instagram on my iPhone, I’ve discovered something else that’s kind of neat: I’m looking at my surroundings all the time. I know I’ve delved into this subject a bit in my previous “Let’s Pretend We’re Tourists” posts, but having lived in the lower Hudson Valley and New York City for my entire life, I sometimes think I don’t really experience everything this area has to offer with as much appreciation and downright fervor that visitors do. It’s so easy to walk 20 blocks in NYC without ever looking up—you get so focused on moving forward and blocking out everyone around you that you forget to be an observer.

I’m trying to be more of an observer.

I admit it: Part of the reason I was really excited to get an iPhone was because I wanted to join in on Instagram.

I never gave Instagram much thought until Sandra Juto started creating iPhone photos with it a little more than a month ago. Sandra describes the app very well as being “like a Twitter for pictures”. She’s exactly right—Instagram is to photography what Twitter is to blogging. The former doesn’t take the place of the latter, but it’s good fun and the results are nice to look at.

I admittedly tend to be a little on the sour side when it comes to faux-old stuff, whether it’s lighting or clothing or photographs or whatever. I have a lot of respect for photographers who still shoot with film cameras and who have kept alive traditional processing and printing techniques despite (though not necessarily in lieu of) the surge of digital cameras that has nearly devoured the film industry. It makes me a little sad to see faux-Holga or faux-Polaroid effects on digital photos for that reason—especially when those effects are so immediately identifiable as such.

But really, I need to get over myself.

See, here’s the thing: ANYTHING that gets people to be more observant of their surroundings and helps them to not be afraid to experiment with expressing themselves visually is GOOD. It’s easy for a designer to roll their eyes when a “commoner” (heh) decides to play around with type and design their own book cover. A painter can snicker at a housewife who sets up an easel in the backyard to paint flowerbeds. I get it, I really do. I’m not a photographer by any stretch of the mind, though, and a fear of being judged in my ability to take a decent photo against the skills of someone who can define themselves as such has really gotten in the way of me feeling like it’s okay to pick up a camera. I’m always embarrassed by how lousy my photos are—there are a lot of things I wish I could do better, and taking pictures is at the top of that list. I took traditional photography classes in art school, and I always felt like I should have sat at the back of the room. I just don’t have whatever it is you need to have. So I’m a graphic designer instead.

But anyway. Instagram!

The best thing about Instagram is that the photos are ultra low-res (612×612), so there’s no need to ensure that they will need to look good in print. The iPhone and the web are the final destinations, so it’s all very low-pressure. Everyone else using the app is shooting at the same resolution, too, and everyone has access to that same set of pre-fab filters. No pretention whatsoever. I love it! The immediacy and lo-fi quality reminds me of the way Polaroid 600 film was regarded when I was a kid—no waiting, no fussing, and absolutely no expectation that the resulting photo was going to be museum-quality. Just instantaneous FUN. Plus, there are definitely plenty of times when I might feel a little silly pulling out my camera to take a picture of something, but a little iPhone? So handy, so easy, and so inconspicuous.

It’s important to just see the fun side of stuff sometimes, and it’s okay to create stuff that isn’t perfect or high-end. In the end, it’s good to just be creating for the sake of creating. Even if it’s just for yourself, and even if everyone else is doing it too.

If you have an iPhone, download Instagram (it’s free!) and see what you think. You can find me there as doorsixteen. (And if you don’t have an iPhone, you can see/subscribe to my Instagram photos in this feed.)

Nothin’ fancy. Just fun.

More importantly, though, the fauxdenza is no longer topped with a too-long, too-wide, perpetually dusty table runner. As of this weekend, it now has a wood top! And it only took us 15 months!

The great thing about mounting IKEA wall cabinets at credenza-height is that they offer a huge amount of storage while taking up very little space in the room (and they don’t require any legs, of course), but the downside is that the top is seriously unattractive. IKEA designed these cabinets to be mounted high on a kitchen wall, so these screws, joints, and gaps would never show under normal circumstances.

We debated buying a length of butcherblock-style countertop from IKEA to fashion a top, but the logistics (How would we get it in the car? And would we have to then lug it up to Newburgh to cut it, and then bring it back to the city? Ugh…) proved too complex. In the end, we just went to Home Depot and bought a ¾”-thick length of pine. It was 6′ long, the exact length of the fauxdenza, so we just needed to have them cut the width down by a few inches. The waste was minimal, and I think I can even use the scrap to make a shallow shelf for…somewhere.

We decided to have the wood cut to the exact depth of the handles. They stick out quite a bit, so this makes the overall look much cleaner from above.

I was hoping that the wood would magically lie flat, but of course it’s warped a little bit. We still have to make a decision about how to finish the wood (I’m leaning toward wanting to live it pale pine and just sealing it with non-yellowing, matte poly, but we’re also considering an ebony oil stain…), and then I’ll put some screws through from the inside to pull the top down.

F-f-f-f-faaauuuuuxdenza!

Cute, isn’t he? No, he’s RIDICULOUSLY ADORABLE. That’s my old friend Oliver, the last of 20 pet rats that have been part of my life. He died in late 2003. He was quite a character—a hairless rat with Dumbo-style ears, a white blaze on his forehead, curly whiskers, and mismatched eyes (one red, one black). I miss having pet rats. They really are like tiny dogs, disposition-wise.

My to-do list this weekend is limited to a few odds and ends around the city apartment that I’ve been meaning to take care of for a while now but never seem to have the time, along with the usual errands and such. I only wish the weather were a little nicer. We had a few spring-ish days for a while, but for the past week it’s been quite cold again. There was even a bout of snow and hail a few days ago!

SATURDAY:
• change lightbulb in bathroom
• re-mount smoke detector
• grocery shopping
• clean apartment
• buy wood for the top of the fauxdenza
• manicure/pedicure
• freelance work

Okay, yeah, I cheated. I made a list of things I’ve already done today just so I can cross stuff and feel satisfied. Please, like you’ve never done that!

SUNDAY:
• laundry
• figure out whether to stain or oil the wood on the fauxdenza
• freelance work
• watch a movie
• freelance work
• freelance work
• go to bed at a decent time

Here I am at Coney Island in 1996, when I was 21 years old. Back when I used to take photos of signs.

Looking at this photo got me wondering whether the sign behind me still exists (I was sure it doesn’t, and I was right—it’s long gone, replaced on one side with a Nathan’s, and on the other with a joint called Cha Cha’s that promises “Live Entertainment For The Hole Family”), and I was led to some other old photos of the Atlantis taken over the course of the past century…

Top: Archival, via Coney Island; Photo by Philip Greenspun // Bottom: Photo by Verplanck; Archival, via Cha Cha’s Club

I haven’t been to Coney Island in years, mostly because I’m afraid it won’t be as beautiful anymore. I don’t say that to glamorize decay, but rather to mourn the loss of so many old and beautifully designed things (like the Atlantis sign!) that should really have been restored rather than thrown in the trash. I feel sad about the little pockets of New York City that aren’t well protected by preservation boards…yes, even old signs on clam bars.

As I predicted, I awoke this morning to a wintry scene of edges rounded with white, trees laced with soft puffs of snow, and, this being NYC, the less-romantic sight of salty, muddy slush down the center of the roads.

Looking at the trees and rock formations bordering Fort Tryon Park, though, you’d never know this is Manhattan.

Click the photos if you’d like to see more detail.

Midtown is another story, though! By the time I got to work, there was barely anything left of the 19″ of snow we got last night. I’ve only seen midtown buried in snow a few times in my life (I think the last was five years ago)—it’s amazing how quickly the city hauls it all away (okay, not always).

I know it’s not the popular thing to say around these parts right now, but geez…I love snow. I said it around this time last year, and I’ll say it again: I never get tired of snow. It always gives me that cozy, safe feeling of being protected and warm when I’m inside, and part of nature when I’m outside. I loathe hot weather, so I try to savor this time of year as much as I can. (Guess what? We’re getting more this weekend, too!)

Photo of Tommy and Mamma Biscuit by John Vairo Jr.

See that? Mamma Biscuit loves the snow, too! Fritz and Bruno are less sure…they’re more content to stay under the covers drinking tea and watching “Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp” reruns.

Once a year, just as it truly begins to feel like winter never really had a beginning and can’t possibly have an end, I read Moominland Midwinter. My brother Gordy, ten years my senior, read all of Tove Jansson’s Moomin books to me when I was very small. (We’re a very Moomin-loving family. Have you seen my mother’s dolls?) I remember being most fascinated by Comet in Moominland back then, but as I got older—and a little darker, let’s be honest—Midwinter was the one I gravitated to the most, coming back again and again until it became this annual winter ritual for me.

I’ve had the same set of editions all this time. I’m sure my brother will claim that they’re his, but I’m not giving them up! The covers are all loose, and the pages are yellowed and falling out. Love.

What I love best about the Moomin books is that there’s nothing “childish” about them, despite being fully accessible and understandable by even very young children. The tone of a lot of them is quite somber, but in the best way—they always, even 30 years after my first exposure, bring me straight to a place of contemplation that’s sort of otherworldly. If you’ve read one of Jansson’s books, you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

The Moomin books are still in print, and English translations are readily available.

Here’s an excerpt from Moominland Midwinter:

And so Moomintroll was helplessly thrown out into a strange and dangerous world and dropped up to his ears in the first snowdrift of his experience. It felt unpleasantly prickly to his velvet skin, but at the same time his nose caught a new smell. It was a more serious smell than any he had met before, and slightly frightening. But it made him wide awake and greatly interested.

The valley was enveloped in a kind of grey twilight. It also wasn’t green any longer, it was white. Everything that had once moved had become immobile. There were no living sounds. Everything angular was now rounded.

“This is snow,” Moomintroll whispered to himself. “I’ve heard about it from Mother, and it’s called snow.”

Without Moomintroll knowing a thing about it, at that moment his velvet skin decided to start growing woollier. It decided to become, by and by, a coat of fur for winter use. That would take some time, but at least the decision was made. And that’s always a good thing.

Meanwhile Moomintroll was laboriously plodding along through the snow. He went down to the river. It was the same river that used to scuttle, transparent and jolly, through Moomintroll’s summer garden. Now it looked quite unlike itself. It was black and listless. It also belonged to this new world in which he didn’t feel at home.

Copyright © 1957 by Tove Jansson

Lovely, yes? I mean…isn’t that exactly what winter is, right there? It’s snowing very heavily in New York City right now. (We’ve had SO much snow this year!) The sky is dark and cold and the wind is gusting. It’s past midnight and the streets are empty. Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and look out on white, rounded edges, then laboriously plod through it all as I make my way to the subway.

This is a sad, sad situation here, right? This mess of cords in the apartment makes me so upset. I know it’s only three plugs, but between the protruding timer on the lamp and the big black monster that powers our radio, there’s really no way to hide the whole thing with a carefully positioned pile of books or a cord channel. For a while I’ve been hiding it behind the giant ampersand, but I want to hang that thing on the wall, not leave it leaning precariously in a corner.

Over Christmas, we received a gift from an author of some baked goods in a large, round wooden box. It’s nothing fancy (a notch above balsa wood, really), but I snatched it because I was sure I’d be able to use it for something.

Unable to look at that cord mess for one day longer, I devoted an unreasonable amount of time yesterday afternoon to figuring out how to get it out of my sight. I abandoned my plans of preparing and freezing meals, cleaning out the kitchen cabinets, giving myself a pedicure, doing photo research, and pretty much everything else that would have made my week easier, and set about turning this round box into a…um…what? An electric outlet cozy?

Since everything looks better with a cross on it (case in point) I used tape to mask one out (sort of the reverse of what I did on my medicine cabinet), then used some leftover wall paint to fill in the negative space. The trick to preventing bleed-under when painting over tape on bare wood—especially when it’s very porous and rough, like this box—is to use a really dry brush. Always paint away from the center so you’re not brushing toward the edge of the tape. The paint will dry very quickly, so you can easily do three very thin coats.

Cute, right? I decided to leave the edges of the box bare wood. I didn’t take a photo, but I cut a little notch out of the bottom edge to allow cords to pass through.

The last step was to corral the cords into a little bundle so they’d pass through the notch easily (all of the excess cord length got wrapped up to be hidden by the box, too), then I put a nail in the wall to hang the box from. It’s not attached to the wall, so if I need to access the outlet it’s not a problem at all. Then I smooshed some books underneath to further distract from the extending cords.

I doubt this is a project that anyone else will be replicating in their own homes, but I figured I’d share it anyway! I know I could have made a very simple box to hide the outlet and painted it to blend with the wall more (or bought something prefab made of plastic, I imagine), but I thought it would be more fun to make something that looks intentional. Intentionally weird, maybe, but at least I can’t see that stupid outlet or the plugs anymore!

EDIT: There has been some concern from a couple of commenters over whether this box poses a fire hazard. The answer is no. First of all, the outlet and electrical box/wiring inside (which are all new) are NOT overloaded. I realize it looks like there are a lot of things plugged in, but that’s an illusion caused by the color, size, and shape of the three plugs and the lamp timer. Second, the box (which is quite large—it’s about 5″ deep and 14″ wide) is NOT airtight by any means. There is plenty of airflow, even more than inside of a TV cabinet, kitchen cabinet, or other places where you might have an enclosed outlet. This is no more hazardous than putting a piece of furniture, a refrigerator, or curtains in front of an electrical outlet—or having an outlet inside of a kitchen cabinet to power undercabinet lights, etc. I am a big fan of electrical safety, and I would never do something like this if it posed a risk.

I got out a little early from work today, so I walked from 48th Street up 5th Avenue up to Columbus Circle. Despite it not even being Thanksgiving yet, Christmas spirit is already in full force.

That tree doesn’t light itself, you know. The amount of work that goes into preparing the Rockefeller Center tree is amazing. Scaffolding everywhere! They drill holes into the trunk in areas that are a little bare and stick in branches from other trees to fill it out so it looks perfect from all angles, and then they string up 30,000 lights on five MILES of wire! Craziness!

Can you believe I’ve never gone ice skating in Rockefeller Center? It’s just one of the many New York activities (including riding in a pedicab, taking a double-decker bus tour, attending the Thanksgiving Day Parade, or spending New Year’s Eve in Times Square) I’ve never partaken in. One of these days.

I love when stores go all out for Christmas. The Cartier store is wrapped up in a big bow. It looks incredible at night, all lit-up and sparkly. A few years ago they had ginormous diamond panthers climbing up the side of the building, too, but I guess the panthers are on hiatus.

Okay, I’m sorry, I know this is depressing. Takashimaya, one of the most incredibly beautiful (and incredibly expensive) department stores in the world, closed over the summer after 50 years in business in NYC. What’s opened in its place? That’s right—Forever 21. It’s probably temporary, but still. Requiescat in pace, Takashimaya. I’ll miss your restaurant most of all.

I don’t care about what’s inside, but I love the façade of the Louis Vuitton store. The original structure was built in 1930, and the layered glass panels were applied to the corner in 2004 by Japanese architect Aoki Jun.

New York doesn’t usually get all up in arms about old-meets-new the way some smaller historic cities do, and I’m glad. Progress + Respect = Modernism.

GET IT?!?!?!

Yes, I am a HUGE dork, and I’m not ashamed to admit it!! My sister Lisa showed me this trick outside of Bergdorf Goodman about 30 years ago (I think my grandmother showed her), and I’ve never stopped getting a kick out of it. Usually I just hold my hand up and giggle a little, but today I felt the need to actually capture the DORFMAN and take it home with me.

Dorfmans of the world, unite and take over!

A lot of the shop windows were either still under construction or totally mobbed with tourists, so I’ll have to go back one night next week and check them out under better conditions.

At the end of my walk today, I made the terrible mistake of going to the grocery store to pick up some vegan ice cream for tomorrow. Now, the Columbus Circle Whole Foods is a total nightmare even on the best of days, so I’m not exactly sure why I was compelled to go in there on the day before Thanksgiving. It was a pretty traumatic experience. Thank goodness for the Salvation Army Santa outside incessantly ringing her bell in time to Olivia Newton John’s “Let Me Be There” on repeat, because that really took the edge off, let me tell you.

Thanksgiving travel for us this year amounts to taking an 8-minute subway ride to my dad’s apartment. What a relief! There’s nothing left to do except avoid temptation for another 24 hours—I baked a vegan pecan pie tonight, and it looks (and smells) sooooo good.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
—Anna & Evan & Bruno & Fritz

See also:
+ Let’s pretend we’re tourists, #1.
+ Let’s pretend we’re tourists, #2.

Our little Manhattan apartment is way, way uptown—further up than even the Upper West Side and Harlem—in a neighborhood that, depending on who you talk to, might technically be part of Hudson Heights or Inwood, but is most often considered to be Washington Heights.

(Fun fact: Our neighborhood in Newburgh is also called Washington Heights. Crazy! That George Washington sure liked high places overlooking the Hudson, didn’t he? Well, yeah, okay, I guess that makes sense now that I say it out loud…)

I’m not sure I’d ever even heard of Washington Heights until we started looking for a pied-à-terre, but once we’d been up here and done some research, it just made so much sense:

1. The rent is cheap. You can get a studio up here for $1000-1200, 1BR for $1200-1300, 2BR for $1300-1700. And the apartments are HUGE! We were kind of astonished by how spacious the rentals are, especially in the pre-war buildings where the walls haven’t been moved all over the place.

2. It’s dog-friendly. Everyone has a dog up in WH. Even big dogs! The landlords seem to be very lax about pets in general. I like that.

3. It’s quiet and pretty. Unless you’re living right on Broadway with an apartment over a nightclub, it’s pretty much dead silent after 8:00 PM. I can hear dogs barking from miles away in the middle of the night. I can see the stars at night, too!! And there are lots of trees.

4. It’s close to the George Washington Bridge. This is essential if you regularly leave the city to go upstate like we do. Our proximity to the GWB means that we can be at our house in just over an hour, door to door.

5. Parking is not insanely expensive. Yes, we use our car to go back and forth between the house and the apartment, because Metro-North is REALLY EXPENSIVE. It’s cheaper to just pay for a monthly space in the garage around the corner. (We would lose our minds trying to deal with street parking. It’s impossible.)

6. Fort Tryon Park. I can’t say enough how amazing it is to have this place for a back yard (well, front yard, actually—our window overlooks the east side of the park). Fort Tryon Park is just incredibly beautiful, with hills and indigenous rocks and fabulous landscaping and secret paths and tiny old buildings and steep staircases everywhere…all of it leading up to perfectly clear, unblocked views of the Hudson River and Palisades (and you know how I feel about the Hudson River). PLUS! The Cloisters! The Cloisters are in Fort Tryon Park! How amazing is that?!

7. It’s easily accessible to the rest of the island. I walk half a block to the subway, and I can be in midtown in about 35 minutes. This was top priority, obviously, since our whole purpose in renting the apartment was to ease the stress of a long commute on late nights or early mornings. It’s made a huge difference. Evan works downtown so it’s a bit longer for him, but still manageable.

The only real downside to the neighborhood is that there is a serious lack of places to hang out, get coffee, eat dinner, especially if you eat vegan. There are definitely mornings when I am DYING for a bagel or an iced coffee, but there’s nowhere around to go. It’s the same story at night—if we want to go out for dinner, we inevitably wind up going to another part of the city. There aren’t really any cute shops, either, but I don’t care about that. This is New York City. That’s what the subway is for.

We picked the right spot to get a little place, for sure. I feel like I discovered a secret land up in Washington Heights. It may not be “cool”, but neither are we…it’s a perfect fit.