NYPL Reading Room, April 2025. Sometimes you walk through the NYPL main reading room to work at golden hour and catch the sun just right.
NYPL Steps, April 2025. Me, finishing an autofiction novel that will never see the light of day.
Chi Restaurant, April 2025. Chef Dr. Lo hooked it up for the last supper I got to enjoy with my chef homie Elliott. Me and Elliot grew up down the street from each other from when we were like 3 years old. He was always a wild child and I was the demure foil. He was the first kid I knew who was competent on the family computer because he somehow figured out how to access his dad’s browser history (probably Netscape, it was that long ago) and showed me a doctored image of topless Monica Lewinsky standing next to a cigar-chiefing B. J. Clinton. (I thought it was real and asked my mom about it, inadvertently busting us both. My early history is fraught with hapless self-narc behavior.) We lost touch for a minute in high school and reconnected when I moved to the city in 2019. This latest go he was a foil to all the self-serious academic and LinkedIn people I find myself surrounded by as a dude in my mid 30s, performing my utility as a mate.
But so Elliott knows Chef Dr. Lo, a remarkably golden person who went to Yale, survived 9/11 (which is also his birthday), went to med school to become an anesthesiologist, then a chef, then a restaurateur. Elliott has introduced me to more doctors than anyone else I know. But Chef Dr. Lo and Chef Tom Lei run this restaurant and comped our entire meal because they both love Elliott. Elliott got an un-turn-downable salaried kitchen position at Stage Kitchen in Boca and moved to FL. He appears as Eitan in stories I write.
Bushwick, Late Summer 2020. This shot of Elliott swinging a hanger steak with tongs is from a COVID-era asado we threw on the rooftop of this studio space my then-ex was renting. We had a few grills going with charcoal. We had 20 friends pull up and eat the short ribs we cooked offset from the heat. It took a while. This was the day I learned to always bring 2 spoons for whatever prep requires; not sure of the rationale beyond the self justification that 2 spoons are better than 1 for outdoor prep.
Mulkilteo, WA, April 2025. I was out there because Saulty and his wife Cayphe had their second kid, my first nephew. A couple days into the trip, I went to the driving range to spend some quality time with my old friend Steve, another kid I grew up with and who coincidentally lives ~15 minutes from Saulty in the burb north of Seattle. He and his missus are expecting a kid this summer so the passage of time felt particularly acute. We drank nerdy hoppy beers and swung on some golf balls. I can’t play golf at all but it was still fun. My late grandfather was devoted to the game and played multiple times a week, nabbing free rounds at the public course he worked at in retirement outside Middletown, OH. He tried to teach me, get me into the game as a kid, but I didn’t have the patience or foresight to learn, or the desire to get good. Anyway, I felt like this rainbow was a wink from him from the hereafter, or wherever. RIP Papa Don. Me and Steve got strip mall sushi after this and retold jokes from the movie Eurotrip (2004) we were amazed we could still laugh at.
Seattle Phish Show, April 2025. The shot Saulty’s coworker took an excruciatingly long time to produce, phone flashlight on, asking about how the simple point-and-shoot camera fired, composing the frame, albeit poorly. Proof my dad attended a Phish show with his 3 kids. It’s good that I don’t look at all lit.
Everett, WA, Easter 2025. Easter dinner at the in-in-laws. Prime rib, expertly prepared and served with au gratin potatoes and asparagus. I never celebrated Easter growing up, but we don’t get enough holidays and this particular one works as welcome harbinger of spring.
Everett, WA, April 2025. Petting Keith the Cat. I was living with Saulty and Cayphe and their homie Rob during my last year of undergrad and Saulty and Cayphe’s best couple friend duo Derek and Lauren got Cayphe a kitten for her bday. Wildness of the gift notwithstanding, Keith has been around a minute. He once munched a medicated cookie someone left out on our kitchen counter and is believed by Saulty to be permastoned. But he’s a sweet guy. After being cooped in various apartments with Saulty and Cayphe, he’s now the feline mayor of their neighborhood.
Newark, April 2025. Morning sunrise prior to the flight west. A few weeks before the air traffic control situation festered into a public safety embarrassment.
Whidbey Island, WA, April 2025. Just look at the shape of this structure. Just somethin about it.
Whidbey Beach House, April 2025. Saulty harvesting the oysters he’s been cultivating in mesh sacks at his in-laws’ beach house for the past 3-ish years. The yearlings are smaller and edible straight from the sack. They can sit in the sun for days at a time, closed up, enmeshed in their bags. And it was weird eating a warm oyster, but after shucking one fresh from the sea I can’t eat oysters anywhere else because their provenance fundamentally begs questions. This type of hobbyist aquaculture is why western Washington state is such a magical spot to live.
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-ALJ