Who was it who said that you can only live in a tiny studio apartment for so long? Oh right, that was Jen, probably starting about three or four years ago before we finally bought our own place last April.
It's not as hard as you think to make yourself believe that a tiny studio apartment is a viable option in perpetuity. How much space do you need anyway? Think about how good the rent is, especially after six years! And besides, there's no way we could find something this close to the subway. Do you really need a sink in the bathroom? Of course you could put a baby in the living room. It goes on and on.
I was hesitant to buy something. We'd be on the hook for water, heat, property taxes and whatever other costs came with home ownership. Cooperative or condominium living sounded miserable, and the idea of paying maintenance fees that easily surpassed our monthly rent sounded absurd.
But then Goober and Jen started talking. Goober's lease was coming due and he was tired of living in a studio apartment with no natural light to speak of in a building managed by one of the worst real estate mega corporations, one known for harassing rent-stabilized tenants and generally fucking people over. Which is to say, the idea was formed to buy a two-family house. Neither of us could afford our own place and a two-family house was sort of like a co-op, except without the maintenance fees. Jen argued that a mortgage was kind of like permanent rent control. This could work.
So where to live? Where would be in our price range? We were flexible, but for our price range, online prospects looked hairy: "Interesting but it's in a very remote corner of Ridgewood," "This one doesn't look like the picture, though if we had an accurate view, I'd look at it," "This is too close to the elevated tracks," "I'd consider this one but I want to see that it actually exists," "I'm skeptical of stuff north of Myrtle Avenue — too far from the subway and too sketchy," "This is being very generous calling this 'Clinton Hill' — it's .4 miles from the subway," "I'm skeptical of this but I'd look at it — a little more Bed-Stuy than Clinton Hill, I'd say," and "This is more 'Prospect Heights' than 'Lefferts Gardens' — it's a house we already knew about, the infamous men-on-bicycles street view."
That last one was wedged between some auto parts places and when you plugged in the address on Google Street View, you saw a bunch of guys riding around on dirt bikes. Now it could be just an accident that these guys happened to be hanging out on the street at the particular moment when the Google Street View car zoomed by, but in a way I kind of don't think so. We scratched that off the list.
A friend of Goober's recommended a broker. He was sympathetic to our admittedly constricted price range and pointed us toward a few open houses. We were thinking "Yay, the outer reaches of Williamsburg!" or "Exciting, the up-and-coming areas around Bushwick and Ridgewood!" or "A real-life brownstone!"
The two places we saw in Bed-Stuy were OK. One was a third of a mile from the C train and the other was a half-mile from the J. It's funny — open houses, probably by necessity, are done early in the afternoon on a Saturday or Sunday, which is probably the very best time to see a neighborhood. People are coming home from church. The neighborhood is quiet. It's as close to an ideal time as possible and even then I wasn't excited about living in a remote neighborhood with no foot traffic to speak of a half-mile from the J train. On our way to the train we passed what looked to be a NYPD stop-and-frisk.
A week or two later, the broker sent two more open house listings: The first property in Bed-Stuy was in our price range and only a block or so from the subway but the broker thought it was probably too cheap to be habitable. A second in Crown Heights had bars on the windows and was a half-mile from the subway. But there was a Chinese restaurant just across the street . . . we decided that none of us had spent enough time in Bed-Stuy to feel like we should be buying property there.
And just when we were getting ready to write off Brooklyn altogether, we found a house in our price range only a quarter-mile from the Grand Street stop on the L, just four stops into Brooklyn. We had an appointment for 1:30 p.m. on a Saturday. We got there early and checked out the street. Sure, there was an active meat supplier right across the street, and yes, this wasn't exactly a "residential" block, but come on, it was four stops from Manhattan!
The owner lived next door with several large dogs. She had been renting it out to some post-collegiate kids who the realtor had to rouse out of bed. There was a laundry hookup in the basement. There was large backyard. There was a front door! There was an apparent roof! In short, it was perfect.
We decamped to a very popular pizza establishment just eight-tenths of a mile from our new house to discuss it. We were going to put down an offer. We were definitely going to put down an offer. This was going to be fantastic. We went to our respective homes and settled in for the evening.
"So about that house," Jen said sometime later after she had been clicking around on her computer.
Yes?
"I'm not so sure about it."
But why? I am stubbornly oriented toward the status quo, and sometimes once I settle on an idea I tend to cling to it.
"I don't know that I'd feel safe walking home from the subway."
But it was less than a quarter-mile from the subway! If you can't feel safe walking a quarter-mile, then . . .
"Did you see those dogs that lady had?"
But there is that lovely hipster art space just down the block! Did you see the events they have there?
We went back and forth like this for a while. Eventually I called Goober and we talked about it.
Which is to say, after thinking about it some, here are some immutable facts about the house that emerged:
1) It was one block from a very large housing project. Then again, it was buttressed from said housing project by a large public high school.
2) It was a half a block from a high school. No one wants to live half a block from a high school.
3) It was in an Industrial Business Zone, the City's attempt to preserve its dwindling manufacturing base, which basically ensures that you will have no new neighbors, no high-end condos, no cute streets, etc. But there will be a meat supplier right across the street.
5) Last but not least, the two stories in the 22-by-26 foot building footprint meant that we'd have two units of approximately 572 square feet each, excluding the basement. 572 square feet is not something to grow into, you know? The studio apartment was roughly 21-by-22, or about 462 square feet. A mortgage for 110 more square feet? I guess there's that backyard, but jeez . . .
An axiom developed: Sometimes you can either get a crappy place in a nice neighborhood or a great place in a less-nice neighborhood. And thus ended our abbreviated search for places in Brooklyn.
It's a little silly to write liner notes for something like Boutique, but this is happening whether you like it or not, so whatever. Consider this my Walter Mitty moment to luxuriate a little, OK? Anyhow, we'll do it this way: Songs in order; links are to individual song pages followed parenthetically by direct MP3 links.
Technical information: Part of the vision of Boutique was to make a toy drum (or I guess a kids' drum) sound totally awesome. I don't know that I succeeded, and for better or worse, the toy drum is there. I recorded the sounds while Jen was out of town back in September 2010 and later figured out that you can use a demo version of Fruity Loops to create short drum loops using whatever sounds you want. Sort of like what that guy who was profiled in last Sunday's Times Magazine does, except not as "bombastic," "skittering," "operatic" or whatever other five-dollar adjectives Times Magazine contributing writers can shift-F7 and come up with. I used Audacity to record the stuff. The guitar/bass business is recorded through Goober's Pod. I also used Goober's microphones and mixing board to record the vocals. I basically understand mixing stuff because there's not a lot to understand but don't know much at all about equalization, so like everything else, I Googled it. This and this were both helpful, although I only understood about 20 percent of each. Yes, for better or worse we eschewed reverb; that part was intentional; there's a fine line between "vision" and general laziness.
Why "Boutique"? I don't know. I always liked how good I felt about a boutique opening in a neighborhood where I lived, even though the stores were the least useful establishments and I never ever patronized them. They just make you feel like your neighborhood is good enough for a boutique, which is something I guess, unless of course you don't have a laundromat or something, and then they're just ridiculous. The Boutique once served as a catch-all for whatever idea I had at the time; eventually it became its own thing. Etc., etc.
OK, go.
1) "Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar" (mp3). These fliers are all over bodegas and laundromats in Manhattan. Dan Smith has this earnest look and the headline always reads "Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar" like, dude, he's going to teach you guitar. One night I left an establishment and another one of these fliers in the window of the dry cleaner next door and was like, "But what if I don't want Dan Smith to teach me guitar?"
2) "Even For A Song" (mp3). Probably the only song that actually needs an explanation. A friend once told us that such-and-such boy from high school once wrote her a song and she found the lyrics in a stack of teenage ephemera at her parents' house, so of course we all (read: I) wanted to see the lyrics. She didn't have a recording of the song so I decided to write my own music and record it for her. This is just carrying out the experiment; lyrics are inspired by the song, just from the other person's point of view; phrasing is the same. It's a fun experiment: take a song that you don't know and write music based on the lyrics, then lyrics based on the lyrics to the music, a kind of "double blind" songwriting.
3) "We Need New Curse Words" (mp3). There are just so many things that deserve new curse words, and it's hard to fit all of them in four lousy verses. I've included a karaoke version (mp3) if you want to fill in your own new-curse-worthy agenda. New lyrics are fairly recent. Like a few weeks ago recent. $40 mayonnaise came after the original four-track version, for example, and besides which the original lyrical layout didn't work as well, so the thing evolved some. Like I said, there are just so many things to pick from, it's meant to be kind of fluid . . .
4) "Get Drunk And Do Your Taxes" (mp3). I think I'd still screw up our returns no matter how much beer I've had. Jen keeps wanting me to use an accountant. Maybe this year. "Not all that incredible a function" = First of two Paul Westerberg allusions herein.
5) "World Series Game Three" (mp3). Several things converged during Game Three of the 2009 World Series: 1) A Phillies loss; 2) A Yankees win; 3) The end of Daylight Saving Time; and 4) The most egregious abrogation of democracy in the history of the U.S. The drive back up to New York was dreary. I had just heard The Weakerthans' "One Great City" and couldn't get it out of my head. Also The Replacements' "Here Comes A Regular," which has been in my head for a gazillion years (thus the line "Some places leaves drop from trees — nothing to rake on this bare street"). The line "And when you tire of the taxes there you can buy in Broward County" used to be "And when you tire of the taxes there you can buy in Bergen County" but that didn't make any sense, because the taxes in Bergen County suck, right? The Ray Rhodes quote is one of the greatest in the history of sports. As for the critique of that certain Academy Award-winning film, did you realize that the film's true-life inspiration didn't even live in Philadelphia? Finally, Why fuck Curt Schilling? Why not Mitch Williams? True, Mitch Williams was the one who served up that down-and-in meatball into Joe Carter's wheelhouse, but an interesting thing has happened in the years since — basically, fans there still like him. It's interesting, for one, that Williams stayed in the area, which is pretty cool given that he received death threats after Game Six. He then opened a bowling alley. He started analyzing baseball on the local networks. In short, it seemed like he slowly built back the respect the fans had for him, which I don't think is something you usually see in the business of sports. Do you think Tom Glavine really gave a shit about blowing the final game of the 2007 season for the Mets? If he did, he kind of had a hard time showing it in the post-game interviews. And that's not really even a knock on him either — he was just another free agent for a franchise that lately seems best equipped to lull players into not giving a shit. I'm not even sure Mets fans care that much about 2007. But Philadelphia seems to have forgiven Mitch Williams (this WSJ piece from 2008 nails it; Google "A Baseball Goat Finds Forgiveness in Philadelphia" if you run into the Journal paywall). Which is to say, there's no reason at all to fuck Mitch Williams. If you see him interviewed about the pitch today (there was a good one recently where MLB Network paired him with Joe Carter to watch that game), he explains how it happened but doesn't make any excuses about it. I've even seen some Mitch Williams jerseys recently. You know whose jersey I don't think I've ever seen? Curt Schilling's jersey. You see way more Jim Thome jerseys than Curt Schilling jerseys — and Schilling was their ace in 1993. In retrospect, Schilling seemed like an overdramatic prima donna during that series, what with that towel over his head and such (funny — the WSJ article also mentions Schilling regretting that). So yeah, fuck that guy.
[Flip record over here, if this were one.] [If this were a record, I would also want "We have to do this song because we have to do it" etched on the Side One lead-out groove; not sure about what to put on Side Two.]
6) "Rockin' (In The Present Tense)" (mp3). One night shooting the shit with our favorite bartender Justin, he brought up the fact that most rock songs about rockin' are written in other tenses: "For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)," "Rockin' in the Free World" (as in "keep on . . ."), "We Will Rock You" — the list goes on and on. I pledged to write a present tense rockin' song for Justin. I figured I should Google it anyway and found a fucking Chuck Klosterman piece about it. Clearly the lyrics had to be adjusted accordingly. And then I wanted to be Chuck D.
7) "My Team Came Dangerously Close To Winning The Super Bowl" (mp3). It didn't hurt as bad as World Series Game Three because "Who would have thought?", etc. but all the same there's still that same feeling of utter failure, writ large on the largest stage in the world.
8 ) "Here's To My Sweet Satan" (mp3). Of a piece with "Even For A Song," it's — if the chords on the Internet are to be trusted — that famous portion of "Stairway To Heaven" backward: Am, F/G, C; Am, G, C (or some semblance thereof) — then the supposed words. If you're unfamiliar with it, check it out here. The lyrics are a house favorite: "Sweet Satan," "Sad Satan" and "Toolshed" all are in our local lexicon . . .
9) "Turning Away Song" (mp3). In which I experiment with blockquote, a cross between a song and a research paper — Research Paper Rock. Another thing that's been in my head for a gazillion years is Phil Ochs' introduction to "I Ain't Marching Anymore" on the posthumously released "There and Now" CD (Rhino Records, 1990). He sounds so ridiculously resigned — the thing is devastating. Anyway, those are his exact words (I dug out the CD and noted them verbatim). Michael Schumacher's biography is not bad, by the way.
10) "All That Hot Air" (mp3). A true anecdote: We were vacationing in Florida and in passing I said something to a storeowner about being in from New York and he said "Oh, up where there's all that hot air?" This was in November. I slunk out feeling like an asshole. As Goober would say, "Take it to heart, man."
