By Corinne Flax

January 15, 2006

I Work At Astor Disaster

So here's what it's like to live in Harlem: absolutely amazing. Here's what it's like to work at the busiest and largest Sbux in Manhattan: insane. Here's what it's like starting graduate school in two days: fun but nerve raking. During the three days I stayed at our apartment by myself, without any heat, I thought 'perhaps this was all a big mistake and that possibly I should have attended community college or something.' Luckily I have since gotten over those negative feelings. Tonight is the first night I've come home to an empty apartment, and it just feels so good to come in, shrug off my coat, chuck my shoes down the hall and chill out.

Working at the Astor place Sbux has been intense! We have some of the craziest costumers in the world. There's the pink lady, a transsexual who believes that pink lipstick is the only makeup she needs, and applies it liberally everywhere, from her cheeks to her eyelids. There's this homeless guy who goes around destroying people's chess sets. There are hundreds of trendily dressed twenty somethings who always seem to have something cool to do, and intriguingly asymmetrical haircuts. My favorites are the tourists who look lost and confused, but also hopeful that we, the baristas, will be able to help them out.

I specifically did not want to transfer full time to the Astor Place Sbux. Honestly the other people who work there call it Astor Disaster, and it's not only that fact that makes me a little hesitant. My roommate (or rather one of my roommates) from college is the assistant manager there and I thought it seemed like a bad idea for the two of us to work together all the time. I expressed my concerns clearly to the manager, and he threw them all aside and practically begged me to transfer there. Why that is I don't know, but it made me feel very warm and fuzzy inside. It's always nice to feel wanted. It's not only my old roommate who makes me a little nervous about working at Astor. A big factor of anxiety for me is that the store doesn't close from Friday morning until Sunday evening. This means that some people have to work the grave digger's shift, and that I, specifically, will have to do it every now and then. Working at 4am at a Sbux is not my idea of a good time, and as we all know the freaks definitely come out at night, not that they aren't hanging during the day too.

All in all things are shaping up pretty damn well. Now that the heat's on, the windows are in, and it's finally feeling like January out there it seems safe to say that I'm beginning to relax. The morning I made eggs in a pasta pot because we hadn't brought any regular pans with us seems like it happened to someone else. I am finally beginning to relax and discover exactly who I am when I have an entire city to work with.

Last night I went to The Beauty Bar to get a drink with T after I got out of work. As we were leaving the bouncer offered her a light for her cigarette, and then offered me one. I told him 'Thanks but I don't smoke. I don't have anything for you to set on fire.unless of course you could set my world on fire.' I'd had a couple drinks and /I was just feeling silly. The bouncer (a man of about 45 who had to be six feet tall and 250lbs) then proceeded to sing to me. It was one of those quintessential NYC moments, where the unexpected happens, and it seems like you were waiting for it all day.

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January 11, 2006

Written at the Harlem Starbucks

It hasn't slipped my mind that I am the author of a blog. Despite the fact that I haven't written anything in over a week this website hasn't been far from my mind. Every day I think, 'wow this would be an awesome thing to put in my blog', and every day there are ten thousand things to do besides sit down and write about what I've been doing. So here we go, my first blog now that I am moved in.

Firstly the fact that Leah and I are actually moved in seems like a dream come true. I honestly thought that it was never going to happen. After the window fiasco our radiators didn't work, there were no rods to hang things on in the closets, the bathroom sink leaked, and the water pressure was (and is) abysmal. I spent three nights sleeping on an Air-O Bed bundled up in sleeping bags and waiting for Franz (the super) to show up and make things work. Part of the reason that I haven't been writing is that I didn't feel settled enough to look at my life and come to any conclusions about it.

Being settled is something that I have grown to prize over the years. I've spent so much time shuttling from college to home, from home to summer occupations, and then back to college that it makes my head spin. When I think about the many different temporary beds I've slept in it makes me appreciate my brand spanking new mattress a hundred times more. Another thing I'm all about appreciating right now is Harlem. Every morning I wake up go outside and instead of the quiet of Connecticut I see people everywhere. People going to work, people just hanging out on the corners, people selling incense, people handing out religious literature. Some people hate cities but I find them very life affirming. Everywhere you look there is evidence of the spark that keeps everything moving.

Aside from enjoying my new bed, new apartment, and New York I've been registering for classes and getting acclimated to working at Sbux in the big city. I registered for classes on Monday, and everything gets started off next Tuesday. At Drew we registered for classes online, and only had to go to the registrar's office if some sort of complications arose. At Bank Street registration is a live in person affair, with scheduled times and an auditorium. As a first year matriculated student (did you know matriculated means involved in a graduate program? I didn't) I was in the very last wave of registration before open registration, so a lot of courses were already full by the time I got there.

The letter I received concerning registrations said that I was supposed to be at registration at 5:30pm, so that's when I showed up. My advisor told me that next time I should just get there an hour early. Luckily only one of my classes was full, and I'm the second person on the wait list, so in all likelihood I'll be able to get in. This semester I'm taking Intro to Education, Remedial Math, and Art in the Classroom. Hopefully I will also get into Elementary School Literacy. I know that this blog isn't very funny, and in all likelihood it isn't all that interesting either. Lots of things have been going on in the last week, and I feel incapable of detailing them here right now. I promise that my next entry will be funnier. Until then just know I'm having an awesome time up in Harlem.

Also I've got a bunch of cool new pictures, I'm just not sure where the cord that links my camera to the computer is right now, and so you'll all have to wait until I find it to see my pictures.

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January 2, 2006

Screw a Room with a View, I'll Take Windows

I should be moving into my new apartment right now. The keys are in my purse, the lease is in a folder, most of my room is packed up into boxes, so why am I not moving? The reason is that the are not enough window panes in my apartment. There are six windows, two of which have no glass in them at all, and two of which have broken window panes. I could deal with the broken windows, but the six foot gaping holes with nothing in them really crimp the whole 'moving in' thing for me.

Today I'll have to go back to the apartment and see if anything has changed. Of course nothing will have changed because it is a holiday. Phone calls will be made, and will go unanswered until tomorrow, because today is a holiday. I will bang on my super's door. He will probably not answer it, but even if he does what can he do? He's not going to install four new windows for me. Aside from the windows there are further things that need to be installed, like a fire alarm. Nothing in this life is ever easy or stress free, so I don't understand why I thought this moving to Harlem thing would be.

On a happier note I had a very interesting and fun New Years. I went to a high concept restaurant called Monkey Street in Williamsburg and ate truly awful food while sitting in strangely uncomfortable seats while listening to unpleasant music. The waiters all wore jump suits and looked like underwear models. The food was some fusion of awful and terrible with an accent on disgusting. On each wall there was a video screen on which a 100 minute long movie comprised of one minute long short films about slow motion were being shown. Unfourtanetly the decorations that were hung in the center of the room blocked my view of the screens.

After dinner we (there were seven of us) went to a party that nobody could get into. Everyone was standing on the street, the stairs, or in this big warehouse room below the party. As midnight drew closer the mood got strange and kids who clearly knew better began setting fireworks off inside. What is it about New Years that makes normal people behave like wild animals? After the sprinklers went on because of the fireworks we decided to leave the party. The streets of Williamsburg quickly became a rowdy party of drunk hipsters. Someone pulled out a menorah that they'd gotten from the Williamsburg Chabad and we lit candles. Then we headed for a bar called the Levee and I played the best game of darts I've ever played. So all in all it was a satisfying and interesting evening. There was never a point when I felt bored, and I didn't get hit by any of the firecrackers.

My sister got home on Sunday morning and seeing her again after so long is really wonderful for me. When I woke up this morning I couldn't wait to talk to her. She made me eat breakfast and drink tea with her, and now she's over at our grandparents showing them photos and getting her Chanukah presents. Our room is an unholy terror of packed boxes, half packed suitcases, and cute toys from Japan. While she was away she cut off her hair, and got even more awesome then she was before she left, a difficult thing considering how awesome she is already. So today I'm going to go raise some hell in Harlem and try and get a)windows and b)some rent reimbursement. I know it's a holiday, but it's not going to be a holiday for me until I've got a home to call my own. The reason, by the way, that all the photos going up are old is that my digital camera is spending New Years in Paris.

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December 27, 2005

Fighting with my Father

I've only been awake for about forty minutes. When I woke up I felt excited. My window showed me a world bathed in sunlight. After such a wet and dreary Christmas it's nice to see the sun again. Since I didn't have to go to work I watched the last twenty minutes of "Vertigo" before getting out of bed. As the credits rolled I thought 'wow what a great day lies ahead of me.' As I brushed my teeth I remembered that my relatives from New Hampshire are visiting tonight, and I wondered if my cousin Emily would be and spending the night at our house, or staying with our grandparents. If she stays here I'll have to make up my sister's bed for her.

Then, without any warning it struck, the fight with my father. My father and I are a lot alike, which is probably why we've always fought so well together. Both of us tend to think our decisions are correct and just, and to hell with the other guy. Today we are fighting about the apartment in Harlem. He wants to see it on Thursday. This is fine by me, as far as I'm concerned he can go out there any time he damn well pleases.

Where we ran into problems was on the topic of transportation. I want to take my mom's station wagon so I can move some of the lighter furniture out of my room. I also want to move some clothes and books. My dad wants me to take my car, instead of my mother's. His reason is that on Monday he will be picking my mother up with her car, and he doesn't want anything bad to happen to it. I don't want to take my car because I'm selling it and I don't want to extra miles and possible extra dents in the bumper. Imagine a fifteen minute long argument about this, now take that fifteen minute argument and put a back plot of 24 years of arguing on it. Right now I feel like a complete mess, and that's the reason why.

I ended the argument by asking my father exactly why he wants to go see the apartment anyway, since he refused to actually carry anything from the car to the elevator. (His refusal was on the grounds that if we left a car with boxes in it alone on the street someone would surely break in and steal the boxes.) My father's answer "I have to make sure that this neighborhood is safe for your sister." Now this comment rankled with me for a variety of reasons. First off safe for Leah but not safe for me? Secondly he doesn't trust my opinion of the safety of the neighborhood? Thirdly I thought he wanted to help me, but clearly he didn't apparently his only concern was the location of the apartment, not the whole moving into it aspect.

So on all counts right now I am upset with my father. The worst of it is that I didn't want to go into the city with him anyway. From the very start I thought it sounded like a bad idea: the two of us doing anything together without the family running interference between us. Right now it's just my father and me alone in the house because my sister and mother are in Japan. The way we work things out is that we try very hard to never be in the same room together for longer then five minutes. He comes in, I go out. I hide in my room, he stays in the kitchen. The whole situation stinks, but that's the way it is. All we do is fight if we're given the opportunity, and this morning is just one more example of it.

I'm sure it'll all get sorted out by Thursday, but the way I'm looking at it right now I'll be taking my car, without my father in it, into Harlem on Thursday. I'll be carrying everything from the car to the apartment, bum arm and all. I will leave the car unattended with boxes in it, and I'll just have to hope that nobody breaks my car window in order to steal my collection of art books.

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