Back When Things Were Relatively Normal (Journal from Summer 2019)

I woke up at 5am this morning, and fell back asleep to a dream. This one was about how I was living in Jimmy Day's factory building, kind of squatting. And one day he dropped a whole load of equipment on the floor that I was living on, which was a whole vast loft. Mechanical equipment that looked like gym lockers full of ancient electronics. And I was not pleased, because I enjoyed the organized way that I controlled the space. It was Jim's way of saying that he ultimately was the one that was in control. It was also our own thing, about how we both have different ideas about how to curate the aesthetic, which is inevitably something we'll come face to face with in real life. Marina was my girlfriend in this dream, and we were having some kind of issue, but it was resolvable. It was a scheduling conflict. I was busy trying to try to figure out where Jim should move the stuff he put in my loft, and she had some other issue about an event we were planning. It felt confusing and it was difficult to plan both at the same time.

I woke up from this dream at approximately 8am. I watched John Oliver's schtick on Amazon as I prepared to leave my bed. Sandwich was resting his head on my legs. I knew it was going to be warm out but I was incredibly comfortable. Got lazy and watched an additional YouTube video about the capture of Whitey Bulger. After that, I got out of bed.

Without taking a shower, I put on the clothes I wore the day before and made my way out the door. I fed Sandwich before we left, and put on my headphones. I didn't charge my phone the night before, and it was awfully low on power, but I listened to Townes Van Zant's song about Pancho and Lefty, and headed over to Willoughby's.

I get my coffee at Willoughby's every morning. I latch Sandwich to a staircase nearby with a carribeaner clip at the end of it. I got an iced coffee. It was three bucks and change. I took the change and tipped the barista. It was warm out so I filled a plastic cup of ice water and brought it to Sandwich. He was sniffing the ground, but waiting for me at the same time. He drank half of it. I threw the water into the bushes and discarded the empty cup into a nearby trash can and we made our way down the street.

Down the street was the Jitter Bus. I usually don't go in there often because i always get my coffee at Willoughby's. I have a thing about that. I love the Jitter Bus. It's run by Sam and Dave, two kids who have a business which is an old school bus they sell coffee out of. I love that, but I'm just an old dog and I can't learn anything new. The time I got hit by a car when I was a teenager and I didn't want to go to the hospital? I went to Willoughby's and got an iced coffee that afternoon to help me feel better. That day, it tasted exactly the same. It's hard for me to switch coffee shops, just like it's tough for me to trade towns.

Sam and Dave were there. So was Susan and Nari, her dog. Sue is an EMT, she's super bad ass and so is Nari. Sandwich likes Nari because my go-to dog sitters, both Zoe and Andrew, take him over to their house and he hangs out with Nari when I'm not around. They're super good around eachother. Sue and I made half-hearted plans to do some kind of hike or something, and she took off. I boarded the Jitter Bus and talked to Paul about potentially asking him to help me with Sandwich in case my work took me to Texas next month. He didn't seem too interested until I mentioned the twenty five bucks a day part. I feel like a jerk, walking on the Jitter Bus with my Willoughby's coffee. That's just how it is.

After that, I completed the rest of my walk. Usually I use my empty coffee cup to pick up after Sandwich but I must have left it on the Jitters, which is double embarrassing. I half heartedly picked up a single turd with a leftover napkin. The security guard from the Yale Library watched on.

When I got home, I checked my work emails. I emailed my boss to tell him that work was slow but I would be keeping an eye out for assignments and I had 30 hours of requested work, within a 2-3 week deadline. He wrote back, 'cool' and we were good after that for the day. The 4th was on Thursday, and seeing as it was the first week of July, nobody seemed too interested in working too hard. Neither did I.

Except Dan.

Part 2

At 11am, I went to the Pizza Spot. My friend Dan owns the restaurant. A couple years ago, I painted his logo on his walk-in cooler. It got moldy though and it needed to be redone.

He wasn't there, though. He texted me to say he was at the commissary. Now, the term "commissary" refers to a kitchen in a military or penitentiary situation, but he refers to it with endearance. I drove my car back to the Square, walked to the commissary, and rang the bell. Trina answered and told me to go around and find Dan at another entrance, so I did.

The commissary is an interesting experience. It's extremely clean and well organized. It has a glass backboard basketball hoop indoors, and two basketballs with a jug of spring water in between. Dan's office has gym lockers and is also sports themed. The rest of the place is impeccably clean, to the point where, as Dan said it, you can eat off the floor. But it's true, it's that clean. It looked like a movie set, which is also interesting if you look up the definition of commissary.

Dan was out of sorts. He was busy as hell. I was there to help him with this painting but I kind of felt responsible for why it needed to be redone in the first place. I knew it needed to be better. It was not symmetrical. It was getting moldy. We talked it over, and I hopped in the van and we got the power washer from one of his restaurants and brought it over to the Pizza Spot. We were supposed to have this guy on the street do the work, but he was there earlier and then was nowhere to be found, so I ended up doing the work myself. I didn't just power wash the surface, I did everything including the walk in cooler and the handicap ramp in the back. I just found power washing so satisfying.

I went home, checked my emails. Found that I needed to redo a graphic, so I did. Sent it out in an email with 2 different versions. Went to Barcade to play Adams Family and Dialed In. Had a pint and played about a couple dollars in games. Returned home and took Sandwich up to Beacon Falls to play this ridiculous frisbee game called Kan Jam. He loves it out there, and he likes the ride. We listened to a mixtape in the car, got there and sat in the field and enjoyed the whole thing. I'm not particularly good at Kan Jam but my graffiti buddy Eddie is there, and I had a bunch of questions about this pizza mural thing, so in between games I asked him questions and he was super helpful.

Afterwards, I went back home and then went back out again. I went back to Barcade for more Adams Family. More about that elsewhere, for sure. I stopped at Cafe Nine before going home, and there was a show happening. I had a conversation with my friend's sister, and we talked about combined products like Mentodent and Pert Plus. I saw Max Heath and his wife, and he told me about how he finally sealed his basement with polyurethane so now he could have a recording studio.

Then I went home, and wrote this.

Interesting Henry Stories

Henry's still around. He moved to Branford a few years ago. Back when I knew him, he lived above a bar called Humphrey's, on Humphrey Street in New Haven. He would walk to the coffee shop I worked at, and would arrive 15 minutes before we opened, sometimes in the freezing cold. We'd let him in, and he'd sit there, hanging out, occasionally getting stuff for free and dropping by for conversation when things got slow.

I learned a lot about life from getting to know Henry. At one point my whole apartment was decked out with his artwork. I remember when I got hit by a car while skateboarding on State Street when I was 19, back in 1999, I showed up to work a few days later with a plastic back brace on. Henry always called me "Homeboy" because that's how I introduced myself. He was like, "Hey, Homeboy- what happened to you?"

And I replied, "I don't know, man. I guess I'm a turtle now." He found this so hilarious. Just kept going up to every single customer, saying "Homeboy's a turtle now."

It became clear that he liked to write and draw, so I got him some markers, construction paper, and crayons. I kept it behind the counter and I'd offer him a free coffee in exchange for some drawings. We would only serve him decaf, as a rule. He'd ask if it was decaf, and we'd tell him no, of course not. And he'd sit there and draw, at the coffee shop, for hours and hours all day long. He drew things like angry bears, Santa Claus, and of course himself, often as Santa Claus for some reason.

The other interesting thing he would do was that he'd repeat the same numerical pattern, notebook after notebook. 1210. It wasn't obvious what it meant, or anything. But I kind of figured something out about it: if you graphed it, 1 - 2 - 0 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 0 is actually the direction of a sine wave. I thought that was kind of cool.

The hardcore kids used to take him to shows back when, in the mid 90's. He became kind of a staple, at shows. He's still the coolest guy that I know.

Helvetica in NHV

Some people say that the world is going to hell. Actually it's going to Helvetica. You see, after the war, we realized we needed something that was not offensive, not defensive, but actually created the illusion of inexorrable truth. In the face of all the fogs of war, we needed to clarify.
Helvetica in #Nhv from New Haven, Connecticut on Vimeo.