A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 22
For the first hour of the dinner shift I shadowed Reynaldo, always staying a few feet behind him, listening and watching him work. He was a master of his craft. First he’d welcome each new table to The Restaurant, then he’d compliment one of the people at the table, usually one of the men, who, to my surprise, would almost always respond by blushing. Then he’d take a drink order. He’d tell the table about the night’s specials, doing so with salesmanship and gusto. He’d say, “And that’s prepared with a whisper of cilantro and it’s $14.95.” The customers would nod at this moment and lock eyes with one another. Sometimes they’d make an “mmm” sound. Then Reynaldo would ask them to peruse the menu at their leisure and he’d promise to return with their drinks in two shakes. More…
A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 21
The East River Club, like all country clubs, had a large number of rich and famous members, many of whom rarely ever set foot in The Club. The richer and more famous a member was, Reynaldo explained, the less he or she visited the place. Reynaldo pointed to the men and women milling about in the atrium dressed in yoga pants with towels over their shoulders. ”The ones who come here every day,” he said, “are desperate to justify the insane membership fees.” The lone exception to this rule was Oprah Winfrey. There was no one in Chicago who was richer or more famous than Oprah. (Except for Michael Jordan, who was also a member, and who had never been to The Club, not once, ever.) Yet, according to Reynaldo, Oprah visited The Club in the pre-dawn dark almost every day to have her workouts in the gym that was reserved strictly for celebrities.
A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 20
Once the Subaru was sold and gone from my life, things began to turn around for me. I got a job waiting tables in a kind of urban country club called the East River Club. The place was located in the financial district and was housed inside several climate controlled warehouses which sprawled across a full city block. Inside the warehouses were multiple swimming pools, various gyms, two spas, four steam rooms, glassed-in squash courts, and not one but two restaurants. One restaurant was a fancy diner for members looking for protein shakes and club sandwiches to go. The second restaurant featured dim lighting and a leather-bound wine list and served cedar plank salmon. My largely fictionalized resume somehow qualified me for a job in the latter.
A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 19
The same way that other dads collected exotic beer cans or signed baseballs, my dad collected acts of foolishness. If anyone in the family did anything silly or stupid, no matter how trivial it might have seemed at the time, my father would take note of it. He’d quietly cobble together the particulars into an anecdote, then find a place for said anecdote in his repertoire of “Foolish Anecdotes Starring My Family.” Identifying foolishness and crafting it into stories was one of my father’s greatest talents, second only to his preternatural gifts for building homemade Lazy Susans and somehow always knowing when The Lawrence Welk Show was airing next. More…
No Kidding, an Update is Coming—Promise.
Dear Readers:
My apologies to the handful of you who come to the site on a daily basis in search of an update. The reason I haven’t posted anything in weeks is simply this: I’ve been going through some personal b.s. lately, and that b.s. has made it extremely challenging for me to write. I know, I know—if I’m going to call myself a writer I should be writing, no matter what the emotional weather is, etc. etc. Well, for whatever reason, I can’t seem to get myself together enough to get a damn post out the door.
On the bright side, as I type this, my desk is covered in stray Post-It notes. That’s usually a sign that the writing is about ready to happen. Expect something soon. And thanks again for your time and your patience. And thanks for hanging in there.
Best, Scott
A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 18
One of my early discoveries as a newly minted city slicker was that nothing relaxed me at the end of a long, futile day of job hunting the way that a heaping, steaming plate of spaghetti did. Some might enjoy a day-ending bath or listening to meditation recordings. Me, I ate spaghetti. I’d make a big show of it, too, inserting a napkin into my shirt collar and everything. Then I’d wolf down two, sometimes three plates of the stuff, along with half a loaf of bread. I’d chase it with a glass of cold milk. Afterwards, I’d yank the napkin out of my collar, then spread out on the futon and rub my swollen belly, feeling the waves of “Old World Style” Ragu-induced contentment radiating through me. More…
A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 17
I still very much fancied myself a literary type, and when you fancy yourself a literary type you are obligated by law to seek out all nearby bookstores. My favorite bookstore was Barbara’s on Broadway. Barbara’s stocked all sorts of things that I couldn’t find elsewhere—the two volume set of the collected works of William Carlos Williams; Charles Simic’s Hotel Insomnia; even the obscure chapbooks of the writer Carolyn Forche. I had fallen madly in love with Carolyn Forche based on two things: her poems, which were pretty terrific; and on the postage stamp-sized photo of her on the back cover of Gathering The Tribes. Writers, particularly poets, were usually hideous by nature. The women all looked like men, and the men all looked like Robert Lowell—crazy-eyed with tufts of hair sprouting from the sides of their bald heads. “No poet worth his salt is going to be handsome; if he or she is beautiful, there’s no need to create the beautiful,” the poet and scholar John Berryman once said to his student, Philip Levine. “Beautiful people are special; they don’t experience life like the rest of us.” Then he added, “Don’t worry about it, Levine. You’re ugly enough to be a great poet.” More…
A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 16
I read a story in the paper about a Los Angeles man who painted a 16-word pitch for his screenplay on the front and back of a sandwich board, put it on, and wandered the streets of Hollywood for six weeks before a movie executive, idling at a red light at Sunset and Vine, spotted the man and signed him to a six-figure screenwriting deal. More…
A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 15
Now that I had a place to live, the next logical step was to find gainful employment. I combed the want-ads in the morning paper, hoping to find a position as a bartender. I had some bartending experience under my belt—those two summers that I’d spend frowning behind the bar at the seafood restaurant while reading Russian novels and begrudgingly serving $1.25 drafts to old drunks. And I owned a copy of Mr. Boston’s Official Bartender’s & Party Guide, a small, crimson colored book that was bound in what appeared to be the hide of a defeated hellhound. The book taught me the difference between dry and sweet vermouth. It taught me how to make Slow Comfortable Screws, Cape Cods, Manhattans, and Tokyo Teas. I was the greatest bartender in the world, as long as I had the MBOBPG with me.
As I got dressed in my sharp, can’t-miss bartender outfit—white Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, topped with an unbuttoned suit vest—I imagined that a rumor was already circulating about me through the Chicago bar and nightclub scene, that people were talking about me and my bartending skills. “I hear this guy can make anything,” one fictional nightclub owner said to another fictional nightclub owner. “He’s like the Jesus of bartending. He waves his fingers around, and poof, it’s ambrosia time.” More…
A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 14
My first apartment in Chicago was a sixth floor studio on West Roscoe. When the rental agent informed me that we were going to look at a studio—and this is embarrassing to admit—I immediately pictured a light-flooded loft with vaulted ceilings, cathedral windows and an industrial elevator, the type with doors that rolled up from the bottom and down from the top. I thought, Maybe I’ll put an easel in the corner and try my hand at oil painting. Maybe I’ll put up a basketball hoop and shoot baskets during my oil painting breaks. These were the sorts of activites that I imagined studio denizens doing.
The apartment, as anyone who has ever lived in any city anywhere could have told me, was only slightly larger than a department store changing room. More…