Roof Alexander's Blog, page 25

We spread it loudly. We have to be heard.

We spread it loudly. We have to be heard.

Monkeys love To Be Heard!

Monkeys love To Be Heard!

You name it, they’ve been there.

You name it, they’ve been there.

I was being forced out of Manhattan. This was years...

            I was being forced out of Manhattan. This was years ago. It was years ago when there were ten of us, sometimes eleven living in our illegal Chinatown apartment. In the building’s half-century existence, it had started as a bar called the Black Horse Tavern, then it seamlessly transitioned into an infamous no-named brothel for several decades, and then came us, the ten or eleven kids paying as cheap of rent that one could find in Manhattan. No one came for the bar anymore, but we got a daily visit from a variety of old horny Chinese men. In fact, they came by so frequently in the beginning that we had to disconnect our door buzzer. They were unaware that the hooker’s rooms were now occupied by what they call ‘gweilo’ which is sort of a Chinese insult for white people. Anyway, Manhattan was forcing me out, because I could only afford to live in old illegal brothels with ten other roommates, and those were tougher to find than you would think.

This was the end of 2005 and by 2006 our home would be cleared out for its next phase, the New York way. I decided that Christmas day would be the ideal time to find a new residence, based under the assumption that no one else in the oversaturated world of craigslist would be looking for an apartment that day. The $270 a week I was receiving for unemployment needed to possess a strategy. Being poor and strategy worked together like a couple of bad thieves.

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"Writing is something that you dont know how to do. You sit down and its something that happens, or..."

““Writing is something that you dont know how to do. You sit down and its something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? Its beyond me, because you yourself dont even know if youre going to be able to. Im always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes Ill sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I dont go up there to write. The typewriters up there. If it doesnt start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.”

― Charles Bukowski”

- Happy Birthday Bukowski! (via thetinhouse)

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From A Moveable Feast / modified for To Be Heard: A story about...

From A Moveable Feast / modified for To Be Heard: A story about Williamsburg Brooklyn

My Favorite Farm to table to craft beer bar in Northern New...

My Favorite Farm to table to craft beer bar in Northern New York.

View from Williamsburg bridge, building cartoon street art.

View from Williamsburg bridge, building cartoon street art.