“Bed-Stuy provides fertile ground for eviction company Quick Evic”
1.5 minute read
Published in amNewYork on November 27, 2017
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Bed-Stuy and Quick Evic
The Woman With Purple Hair
1 minute read. Exercise for my memoir writing class:
I’m sitting on a stone bench in the Staten Island Ferry Terminal next to a woman with purple hair. We’re both drinking beer and waiting for the boat.
“I’m serious, Sylvia, about working as soon as I arrive at my place,” I say. “You can stay over, but I’ll be writing.”
“Fine,” Sylvia says. “I won’t bother you.” Sylvia and I met through Tinder a week ago. She drove two hours from New Jersey to a bar near my apartment. After the bar, while walking back to my apartment, she confessed that she had been abused by her father, kicked out of her house, and was staying with friends. The next morning, while I was making breakfast, she also confessed that she desperately needed a job. An employee at my bar had recently quit and we needed a cashier for The Beer Corner, so I offered her the position. I knew this was dangerous and would likely crash and burn, but Sylvia was struggling.
“Why do you have to work tonight?” Sylvia asks me while on the boat.
“An editor is interested in one of my stories. I have until midnight to revise and submit again.”
“Oh…”
On the other side we walk a mile along the north shore. It’s a cold, clear night. Sylvia is skinny and doesn’t have a jacket, so I give her mine.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“I don’t mind the cold.”
At my apartment I’m greeted by my bulldog, Hank. I pat him on the back, take off my dress clothes, and don my bathrobe. My studio is bare. There’s a bookshelf, a desk, a chair, a doggie bed, stacks of journals against the wall, and a mattress on the floor.
“Why doesn’t Hank say hello to me?” asks Sylvia.
“He doesn’t know you yet.” I sit at my desk.
“I didn’t notice these before,” Sylvia lies as she picks up one of my journals. “There must be over a hundred…” She begins to read.
“Don’t read those.”
“Why not?” She laughs. “You’re like a sixteen year-old girl.”
“I know.”
She walks over to the mattress. I don’t remember how much time passes at this point. It could have been five minutes or an hour. But while typing I hear,
“Jack?” I turn and see Sylvia sitting naked on the mattress. She has a strange smile and does an odd stretch. I feel the lust flame, but it fades. I realize that sex, like money, gains an exaggerated importance when you don’t have it. But when it’s there, and you’re not in love, it doesn’t mean much. I sigh and know this isn’t going to be good.
“Sylvia, I told you, I have to finish this.” Her eyes widen.
“Are you fucking serious?”
I should have shut up. Justification in these kinds of situations is futile. “I don’t want to work in restaurants for the rest of my life.”
“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” She starts jerkily putting her clothes back on. “I’m leaving.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not even that good at fucking.” She stands up and pushes the bookshelf over. It hits the floor with a crash. Sylvia walks over and thrusts her middle finger in my face. For some reason I feel like I’m at a high school dance.
“Fuck you.” She kicks over a stack of journals, walks out, and slams the door. I sigh, walk over to the entrance, click the dead-bolt, and pick up the scattered books.
The next day the editor would reject the story. I would never hear from the woman with purple hair again.
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Fun Facts About Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and now has central Asia’s largest economy ($461 billion GDP in 2016). It is the largest landlocked country in the world and is rich in uranium and oil. Bloomberg Innovation Index ranked Kazakhstan in 2017 as the 48th most innovated economy in the world. Kazakhstan moved from 47th to the 32nd place in the 2017 IMD World Competitiveness ranking. In 2001, 47% of the population lived in poverty and in 2013 poverty was measured at 3%. In December of 2015, the Kazakhstan Government approved a new privatization plan for 2016-2020. It’s a large scale privatization program that continues the privatization of 2014 and includes 60 major state-owned companies. Recently, a trade route has been established between Kazakhstan and the United States. The route now makes up 54% of the World’s salt imports and exports by volume (350,000 tonnes per year).
The Guardian describes tourism in Kazakhstan as, “hugely underdeveloped,” despite the attractions of the country’s dramatic mountain, lake and desert landscapes. Factors preventing tourism are high prices and logistical difficulties of travel in this geographically enormous country.
Wasn’t that fun?
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This Hill.
I’ve been here before
This unforgiving ascent
The moment before the burn
I’ve stared up this path
Squinted my eyes
And taken the final breath
I’ve heard these songs
These excuses
These reasons to stop
And go home
I’ve glanced up empty roads
Glanced down at trembling limbs
Felt icy winds cut through clothes
And had tired eyes go dim
I’ve asked myself:
Who is it
You want
To be?
This Thrill. This Gift. This Wild
Moment
Before the
Strain
I’ve been here before
I know what to do
And now I will do this
Once
Again.
Prefontaine, the one running on the hill above and one of my heroes, lived in a trailer while pursuing his running dream.
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Tech-No-Eulogy #2
This fucking phone I connect
To the back of my neck
To feel the Winds of Cutting
Edge and Social Discourse
Gotta stay on the top deck
But the attention span
And periphery are
Becoming a wreck
Gotta keep these fluctuating waves
Of expectations and cravings
In check
Having fantasies of throwing away
Into the ocean of increasing con-tent
This tech
And going off into the land locked
Quiet Dark Backwoods
Becoming an
Old-fashioned
Redneck.
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Just Another Stranger #3
Sunday morning slog
Sweating out a hangover
And grinding through
Last night’s bad decisions
I see an old woman
On a river-side bench
Staring off into the distance
She has a deeply-creased face
Large, crooked glasses
A gray, wispy pony-tail
And layers of faded pink dresses
On her lap is a book
I glimpse the title: Wuthering Heights
And for a moment I wonder
If her soul has been ravaged
By unrequited passion
And sleepless, tortured nights
If she’s thinking of her lost love
And a lifetime of missed chances
As she stares off into the sky
But I’m already choking on my
Next breath and
Running by
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The Mechanics/Why-Can’t-It?! of Wifi
In my apartment there is patchy Wifi, so when I’m trying to research the mating patterns of snow leopards and the internet fails I’m driven to the brink of insanity. Furthermore, as a budding and brooding journalist I find myself grabbing for my phone like a mother for her-WHERE’S MY PRECIOUS LITTLE BABY whenever I’m in line at Shake Shack or Popeyes, and if the Wifi is uncooperative I’m filled with an unquenchable rage. Don’t ridicule my addiction-to-connection just yet, as the lauded journalist, James B. Stewart, wrote in Follow the Story: How To Write Successful Nonfiction, “In today’s ecosystem of news, the greatest sin is to cut oneself off from the conversation.”
Jim is right that journalists must consistently engage in society’s dialogue, especially when it becomes polarized, paranoid, or paternal, so our Wifi connections must be sound. The news conversation is becoming faster and readers are expecting more cutting-edge content. If I plan to survive and thrive in this cut-throat ecosystem, it looks like I must try and understand the nature of Wifi like the snow leopards understand the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia.
It was once widely believe that “Wifi” stood for wireless fidelity, but it is actually not an acronym and does not stand for anything. The term was coined by Phil Belanger in August 1999, when the branding consulting firm, Interbrand Corporation, wanted a name catchier than, “IEEE 802. 11b Direct Sequence.” Wifi is also the same thing as WLAN which stands for Wireless Local Area Network. The difference between Wifi and the dinosaur tail known as the ethernet cable (ethernet is slower because of the resistance in the wires) is that Wifi transmits data (0-1-1-0-1-0-0-0-0-1-1 = picture of a ManBearPig) through electro-magnetic waves in the air. But unlike heat waves, Wifi waves don’t need the elements of the air to affect electronics/enlighten your soul. Also, unlike radio waves which sometimes have wavelengths up to 3kHz long (100 kilometers), Wifi is transmitted on a much shorter frequency: either 2.4 Ghz or 5.0 Ghz (about 12 centimeters long). Most microwaves operate on this frequency, which is why they can interfere with the signal and thus your spiritual well-being.
Many things can interfere with a Wifi signal because these waves are sent back and forth between the router and your computer/phone. It’s an electrical conversation. Basically, through the electromagnetic pulses of your router, your computer/phone is instructed on what to do with each pixel on the screen (0-1-1-1-0 or off-on-on-on-off = another picture of a ManBearPig). Generally, the signal can’t go more than 150 feet from a signal router. The Wifi signal can be affected by the objects it encounters, such as concrete, wood, metal, other Wifi, and murderous clowns. You can actually buy “Wifi paint” that prevents other Wifis from interfering with your Wifi signal. The way you position your router affects the strength of the signal throughout your house/dumpster you sleep in on the weekends. Here are five ways to improve your Wifi signal:
1.) Lift your router off the ground. Many routers broadcast waves slightly downwards, and the material of the floor can affect the signal.
2.) Don’t put your router behind a hall or in a closet. Again, the obstructions cause interference. Ideally, you should hang it above your bed like a disco ball.
3.) Point the antennas of your router in different directions. If you have two antennas, point one horizontal and one vertical. Why? Because devices work best when their internal antennas are parallel with the routers. Most antennas inside laptops are horizontal. With a cell phone, the direction of the internal antennas depends on how you’re holding/desperately clutching it. So by bending your antennas of your router in different directions you have the highest chance of having a parallel match/good signal/nirvana.
4.) Download a wifi-signal-strength app on your phone so you can test which places in your apartment have good signals and why. Don’t tell anyone you did this.
5.) Don’t put your router near other electronics (ones with motors inside of them), like televisions, computers, or your Dance Dance Revolution machines. They can interfere with the router signal.
My favorite part of this video is the woman on the left (his mom?) just chillen in front of the fan.
While writing this essay I realized that my router was sitting two inches from my television. It was also a few feet from the printer. I’ve moved it to a better/less disrupting location and my Wifi has significantly improved. Now my life is beautiful again. I hope the suggestions above can help you too.
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Sources:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-wi-fi-work/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmabFJUKMdg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=METB1o4UAT8
https://www.howtogeek.com/259000/what-does-the-fi-in-wi-fi-mean/
Umar Jordan and the Youth of Bedsty
Revised Final Audio Project for Columbia University’s Journalism School:
Visit the basketball courts next to the Marcy Housing Complex, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York, and you will likely find an old man named Umar Jordan working with the youth of the community. Reporter, Jack Knych, talks with Umar one summer night about Umar’s work and about Bedford-Stuyvesant as a neighborhood in flux:
3 minute Soundcloud Interview Click Here to Listen
Special thanks to Tracy Collins (here’s his website) for providing the photograph above.
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Interview Transcript:
Jack Knych 1 (Narration): At the basketball courts next to the Marcy Projects in Bedsty, New York, you will often find an old man working with the youth of the community. Today he is wearing blue jeans, a red shirt, and a gold chain necklace.
Umar Jordan 1: My name is Umar Jordan, better known as grandad, from Grandad’s Put’em Up Boxing Camp.
Jack Knych 2: And you live in Bedsty?
Umar Jordan 2: Since 1957.
Jack Knych 3: So you’ve seen Bedsty change enormously?
Umar Jordan 3: I’ve seen Bedsty go from…Jim Crowe…to Jackass. This community is divided from home-owners to people who live in the projects. People that live in the projects don’t have a…and I can say this…we don’t have enough respect for where we live. We shoot, we piss in the elevators, we don’t…we throw garbage all over the ground. So a guy like you that bought a brownstone in this neighborhood, you…I’m your enemy. So until we understand that…that the elected officials, they gonna go with the people that pay mortgage as opposed to the people that pay rent. Bedsty is gone. Bedsty-do-or-die, most people that say that don’t even know what it meant. I grew up here. Bedsty-do-or-die meant you gonna do the right thing. You couldn’t play hooky in this neighborhood back in the day because the wino on the corner would tell your mother. The wino on the corner see you cursing he would check you. Now, mothers hanging out with the kids, kids hanging out doing whatever they wanna do, principles and morals are out of the window.
Jack Knych 4: What’s the best way to maintain the culture of Bedsty?
Umar Jordan 4: You can’t do it. Because the new generation, young people, they…too much T.V. too much in the house playing X-box. They been deceived by so many people that they don’t wanna believe, ah….the person that know’s the truth. The problem with the youth in our community today is where do they go? There’s not a rollerskating rink, movie theatre, nothing for them.
My whole goal is to prepare some of these little guys, these younger guys, for the future. Listen, take them behind the school, your role models…are not a good…you know Big Chains, I wanna be Jay-Z I wanna be EEEEAAAAHHH. EEAAAHH. That’s not important. You know it’s…who are you? Who do you wanna be? You understand? So I take them on trips, like, to the morgue. Take a bunch of kids to the morgue, let them see a body laying up there and see how real is that, when you pull that trigger there’s no reset button. This is not X-box. You understand? So you have to speak in the language of the people. You at the person where they at. You can’t take them from kindergarten to college. So you gotta bend down, slow down, move real slow.
So it’s like a…a constant battle, an uphill battle, but I don’t give up. And nor do I weaken. You know, I just…just makes me stronger. Listen, I walked with Malcolm X. I had to escort Mandela when he came to Boys and Girls High. I seen Martin Luther King preach. I danced with Shirley Chisholm the day she got sworn in. I am in the history book. And it’s to give it to y’all freely. But you stuck on Jay-Z and the rappers and the Beyonce and all that other bull-job, you will never recover what Bedsty was.
I did 72 prayer vigils from 09′ to 2011. 72 prayer vigils where somebody got shot across the city. I used to bring out all the car clubs and truck clubs until I found out that that’s when the politicians come and wanna stand next to you. So I just…I just back up. I don’t do it for the…for the sight of man. I do it for the glory of God, you understand? It’s about your spiritual growth, that, when you’re put on, when….there’s two most important days, and I’m gonna end on this, of your life, is the day you born. And the day you learn your purpose. That’s it.
Jack Knych 5 (narration): Jack Knych Columbia University Radio.
Murals of Bedsty
For a journalism reporting assignment I was given the neighborhood: Bedford-Stuyvesant. I walked every street in this community. Here are my 14 favorite murals:
Frida Kahlo
Biggie Smalls
21st Century’s Rosy the Riveter
Malcolm X
Mother with Baby
Mario Tripping
@La_Femme_Cheri
Native American Man
Native American Girl
Crazy Light Bulbs
Color and Detail
Allison Ruiz and Basquiat (@call_her_al)
Do The Right Thing
Catalyst for Change
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What is a Beer Shit?
Collaboration with my friend and esteemed colleague: Cal K. Check out his writing website on food and adventure: www.thejoyofeating.org
“There is nothing more glorious than a hot beer shit.”
-Charles Bukowksi
Whether you call them the D.A.D.S. (day after drinking shits), rum bum, the after-grog-bog, or the Trumpity Dumpities, we’ve all experienced that bodily emergency of needing to empty our bowels, IMMEDIATELY, NOW, PRONTO, STAT, post heavy night of drinking. Why does the body spur us on to such desperate fecal-evacuations? How come their stench is so potent, rivaling skunks and causing pedestrians nearby to gag? Why do they frequently entail multiple trips and multiple toilet-paper rolls over the course of a stressful, sweaty day? And what makes them, overall, so fucking nasty?
Of course it all has to do with how our body breaks down booze. Alcohol is a dense substance (beer = liquid bread, shot of vodka = 110 calories) which bypasses the mouth, unlike food which is chewed and broken down by saliva before it reaches the stomach.
Once alcohol reaches the stomach about 20% of the booze is broken down (mostly through the stomach lining). Then the alcohol moves to the small intestine which absorbs the leftover booze and sends it to the liver to metabolize. The liver processes about 1 drink/hour. The excess alcohol, which isn’t being processed, is sent to the bloodstream and the rest of the body. That’s when everybody in the bar starts smiling at you.
The western, American bias when looking at food/drink is like gas for a car. We need energy to survive, and food gives us energy so we can go, talk, dance the mambo, and streak naked at professional soccer games. But the reality is far more mysterious and complex. Food is not only what we build our body with, but each time we eat something it subtly and immediately affects our entire system. Our mood, thoughts, muscles, third testicle, and organs are all impacted by what we just consumed. This lesson is evident when we become aware of the effects of alcohol, beyond feeling hammered:
Six pina coladas depresses the secretion of an anti-diuretic hormone in the posterior pituitary gland. This means the kidney can’t balance the amount of water in your body, just like you can’t balance on your feet.
Shot-gunning Four Loko also affects sections of the kidney that absorb water and sodium. While your kidney struggles to absorb H2O and NaHCO3, your mind has difficulty absorbing time, language, social cues, and the value of legal tender.
Sipping malt liquor at your nephew’s 2nd birthday party negatively affects the G.I. tract as well. The muscles surrounding the stomach and intestines become loose, just like your conversation. And the contractions in your rectum are reduced, just like your standards.
Inside Story/J.W. Kash:
The worst beer shit morning of my life happened in college. The night before taking the LSAT test I went out drinking heavily with Cal and company. As was the habit, I crushed some late night food somewhere, then passed out. I remember waking up early on a futon next to my girlfriend and being convinced she had just gut-punched me as a joke. I ran to the nearest bathroom and a swamp came shooting out of my ass. I wondered, vainly, if I had gone dumpster diving the night before and been ingesting trash and dead mice all night. Thirty minutes later, after shoveling down a breakfast of 4 eggs and 2 red bulls, I was once again breathing laboriously in stall. While flipping through an LSAT practice book, attempting to figure out why Dan was sitting behind Laura if Jim was sitting in front of Greg, I was spawning Satan out of my butt-crack. Some guy taking a piss even said, “Hey buddy, are you gonna be alright?”
—
So why do beer shits smell so bad? Alcohol increases the bacteria count in your small intestines, reducing the nutrient absorption in your digestion system. This means the bacteria in both your large and small intestines have more nutrients to consume (which haven’t been absorbed in the body), which produce the potent, “sour” stink when you have a beer shit. Also, the liver produces a bile to help break down alcohol, and this bile is added to the pungent mixture that is flushed out.
Inside Story/Cal K.:
As my colleague J.W. astutely observed, the beer shit is a chemical cocktail – a calamitous mixture brewed up in our bowels and released with a furious vengeance. It is unlikely the stomach of modern man was engineered to successfully pass a dozen malty brews administered over the course of a few short hours – it comes as no surprise that the result is unpleasant.
But as with all things in life, the worst of these events is more than a biological process – it is a social and psychological one, as well.
Let’s examine the larger topic of defecation in general: It is rarely enjoyable to evacuate your bowels in anything but the comfort of your home, or perhaps in a hotel room with a degree of privacy and a separate room for the toilet. There you can set up shop and get to business at a familiar. But in airports, restaurants, outdoor concerts, indoor concerts, friends’ houses, relatives’ houses, foreign countries or anywhere that might become a high-traffic zone, I contend that stress is an additional, negative factor.
When in these strained circumstances, it is impossible to enjoy a leisurely depth charge. You inevitably force the issue.
Now, combine a public shit with a long night of drinking – perhaps a bender – and what results is the worst-case-scenario, the apocalypse now – like, as in, right now.
J.W. asked me to contribute my $0.02 to this piece, which I am happy to do no matter what the topic. But in fecal matters, we happen to share a connection.
During college, J.W. and I were involved in a week-long celebration that fell sometime in late autumn. I won’t go into great detail to avoid incrimination. Suffice to say we consumed, probably, an average of 15 beers per 24 hours, including various other forms of booze presented in everything from glass bottles shaped like mo’ai to gallon jugs that look like they once held battery acid. Our stomachs underwent significant stress during that period – some of it unforgivable.
Toward the end of the week, I awoke in our suite sometime in the wee hours of the morning – maybe 10 a.m. – and walked into J.W.’s room. He and his roommate were asleep. Their quarters were covered, inexplicably, ceiling to wall to floor, in a layer of bleached white flour. I carved out a spot on the desk and proceeded to roll a marijuana cigar.
For the uninitiated, smoking is itself a diuretic – you will need to use the restroom not long after burning one down. Before that happened, I walked toward the campus café, seeking any form of nourishment that might quell the quiver in my liver. It was a sunny day, and that only made matters worse. You never want to be seen in such misery.
As I entered the building, a friend of ours walked out – a girl we’d known throughout college. She stopped me just as I began to realize, too late, that I was soon to undergo a thunderous bowel movement.
“Hey Cal! Wow, you look awful – “
“Hey, I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”
I brushed past her, past the café, past the angelic studying nerds and on to the bathroom. What had occurred was something greater than gas – something far worse. This sort of thing is exceedingly rare: Consider what it would take for you to knowingly poop yourself. How much willpower could you command to break that instinctual seal? Yet my condition was so haggard that my regulatory system failed to recognize the impending catastrophe.
When I reached the stall, the storm had already passed – I merely needed to assess the damage. It was severe: enough for me to abandon the underpants beneath the toilet and waddle back to my dormitory in humiliation so I could properly shower.
But as I removed my boxers, I couldn’t help but laugh. Remember, J.W. and I were roommates, and undergoing a chaotic week of debauchery. I realized, as I looked down at the crumpled, smelly wad of plaid shorts underneath a toilet, that a custodian would eventually find them (for this I am deeply ashamed), and that the custodian might even pick them up and think, “What sort of bastard would rip off his shitty underwear and leave them behind – knowing I would have to clean it up?” And that custodian might then glance at the tag on those boxers that I compromised and think, of course – who else could it possibly be than the student whose name was marked on the inside waistband: J.W. Kash.
—
So keep in mind, gentle reader, that alcohol is fun, but it is also poison that should be imbibed with awareness and respect. Because the spiritual pleasures of the night must always be paid for by the bathroom agonies of the morning.
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Sources:
http://www.nyp.org/library/134%257C193?l=en
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/science-behind-explosive-hangover-poops/