Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 183

“I was a police officer in Baltimore for 21 years. I was...

“I was a police officer in Baltimore for 21 years. I was addicted to heroin the entire time I was on the force. A lot of the guys had their addictions. I don’t think people understand the fear involved in the job. We were scared all the time. Baltimore was the murder capital of the world. It was tremendously stressful. I never used needles. Just powder. I was too scared of needles. My partner knew about it. One time he walked in the bathroom while I was using. He told me: ‘The moment I feel like you’re putting my life in danger, I’m turning you in.’ I did feel guilty when I was arresting drug offenders. But I always told myself: ‘You’re doing them a favor.’ One morning I looked in the mirror and saw death. I had no soul. So I made myself quit. I took two weeks leave, locked myself in a hotel room, and quit cold turkey. It was the darkest two weeks of my life. I can’t talk about it. But I never used again. My wife was never able to quit, though. She committed suicide six years ago. I woke up one morning and she’d been dead for seven hours, right next to me.”

“My friend convinced me to go to church last weekend for the...

“My friend convinced me to go to church last weekend for the first time in five years. At the end of the service, the pastor told everyone to line up at the altar for a one-on-one prayer. I was the fifth in line. Everyone else got short prayers. Just a few seconds and they were done. But the pastor looked at me with a weird face. He announced that he had a vision of me getting locked up. Then he had the whole church form a circle, and he put his hand on my face like this, and he started shaking my head for fifteen minutes. He said he was trying to cancel my destiny. My friend was laughing and filming the whole thing. I’ve got to admit though—it’s got me nervous. I’m going back this week to see if I can get some more details.”

“After I finally learned the ropes, they changed all the...

“After I finally learned the ropes, they changed all the rules.”

“I graduated fifteen years ago with a degree in theater, but I...

“I graduated fifteen years ago with a degree in theater, but I wasn’t really doing anything with it. I was working at a theater box office. I was writing just enough so that I could tell people I was a ‘playwright.’ I’d tell my wife I was going to the coffee shop to write, but I’d end up just staring at the screen. I was about to give up completely. The city has a way of crowning young geniuses that makes you feel old. But my wife always had an unending belief that I had something to offer. It got to the point where even that belief was hard to hear because it made me feel like I was letting her down. Finally a friend of mine convinced me to do a small reading at his theater. He just kept bothering me about it. And when I finally agreed, so many other people stepped forward to help. I wasn’t living in the vacuum I thought I was. Once I lit the fire, people came and sat around it. So many people were willing to lend their craft to my idea. I’ve put on four plays in the past three years. They’ve all been very small productions. I’m much more frantic and stressed now. I lay awake at night wondering if I’m going to sell any tickets. But at least my life has urgency and purpose. My wife is proud of me. Though now I’m sure she wishes I wasn’t so absentminded. And that I’d remember to close the front door. And that our living room wasn’t always filled with props.”

“I’m going to Matthew’s birthday party. He...

“I’m going to Matthew’s birthday party. He loves to play trains with me.”

“I help maintain properties for absentee landlords. I think...

“I help maintain properties for absentee landlords. I think most people imagine landlords to be rich guys on Long Island. But most of my clients only own one or two properties. A lot of times they were inherited. Part of my job is helping to get squatters out of the buildings. There are professional squatters out there. You can’t even call them criminals. They know the laws and they’re working within the system. If you catch somebody breaking into your house– that’s ‘breaking and entering.’ But if you happen to live out of state, and somebody breaks into your house and you don’t notice for six months, then that person becomes your tenant. It doesn’t matter if you gave them permission or not. If you want to evict them, you have to go through the legal system, which is very expensive. So it’s usually cheaper to pay the squatters off. The laws themselves aren’t bad. They were enacted to keep predatory landlords from evicting people without due process. But like all laws, there are people who have figured out how to abuse them. I have one squatter who has been living rent free in an old building for six years. He hasn’t paid a dime. He’s well dressed. He’s always very polite and professional when he answers the door. But we’re offering him $80,000 to leave and he’s asking for more.”

“I got in trouble because I hit my classmate during our math...

“I got in trouble because I hit my classmate during our math exam because he was calling me names like he always does. The teacher said: ‘Why did you hit him?’ And I said: ‘Because he called me frog face.’ And then I had to sit alone for ten minutes. And then when I went home I got in trouble but Mommy gave me one more chance and next time if someone calls me frog face I’m just going to tell the teacher.”

Today in microfashion…

Today in microfashion…

“I turned thirty-five recently. Everything is one big question...

“I turned thirty-five recently. Everything is one big question for me right now. My dog died in January. I quit my job. I chopped off my hair. I got in a huge fight with my boyfriend last night and now I don’t know what’s going to happen. I feel like I’m about to fall apart. I’ve never been the type of girl who thought too much about kids, or dreamed about her wedding day, or thought about her wedding dress. But I’m thirty-five now. And I can’t help but wonder if it’s ever going to happen. And when is it going to happen? And who is it going to happen with? I’ve been a bartender since the age of eighteen. I got used to it. It was safe. I couldn’t mess up. There’s only one way to make a Manhattan. And the whole reason I quit my job was to pull the rug out from under myself. I wanted to use my cosmetology degree and pursue a career in hair styling. But I’ve interviewed with several salons now, and nothing has come of it. I’m really losing my self-confidence. I feel like everything is crashing down around me. I think I spent seventeen years stuck as a bartender because I was so afraid of feeling like this.”

“My first wife Eileen passed away suddenly when she was 48. I...

“My first wife Eileen passed away suddenly when she was 48. I was in a fog for a year or so. We didn’t have any children together. And I’m just not good at meeting people. I don’t have that personality. I’m not assertive enough. The only reason I’d been able to meet Eileen was because we worked at the same office. The funeral parlor held an event once a month, where you could go and just talk. That helped a little. But other than that I was pretty lonely. The only real hobby I had was Irish dancing. I tried to keep it up, but it reminded me too much of Eileen, so I quit. I discovered walking by accident. It was a fluke. Somebody left a brochure at the office for something called the Appalachian Mountain Club. It was run by volunteers. They’d organize walks in the Catskills. I started going on the weekends. It’s not like they were hugely difficult, but it felt great to accomplish something. And it was really conducive to meeting people. There’s not much else to do when you’re walking next to somebody. I loved it so much that I started travelling to other countries and doing walking tours. I met my current wife on a tour outside of Florence.”