I’m All Lost In, #100: The White Horse Tavern; the Patio; warp speed Wharton.

I’m All Lost In…

The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week …

#100

1) The White Horse Tavern

Have I told you about my idea for a Netflix movie called When You Say Dylan.

It’s based on a true story about 1950s Smith college student and Mademoiselle guest editor intern Sylvia Plath stalking her literary hero, famed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Trying to meet Thomas while he was staying in Manhattan, 20-year-old Plath loitered outside Thomas’ Greenwich Village haunts including the White Horse Tavern and the Chelsea Hotel. (I learned about all this in Red Comet, the telephone-book-sized 2020 Plath bio.)

Neva Nelson [a fellow Mademoiselle intern] remembered hearing that Sylvia hung around the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, where Thomas eventually drank himself to death. “Sylvia was ready to move heaven and high water to see him.” After the St. Regis dance, Sylvia commandeered Carol [LeVarn, another intern and Plath’s co-housing chum at the Barbizon women’s hotel in the Upper East Side] to keep vigil with her outside Thomas’ room at the Chelsea Hotel. But Thomas never showed up.

In my fictional version, a high school-aged Robert Zimmerman (aka, Bob Dylan) hitchhikes to NYC from Minnesota on a quest of his own. He too wants to meet the rock star poet during the hip bard’s penultimate trip to NYC in 1953; like Plath, young Zimmerman idolized Thomas as well. As Plath and young Bob unsuccessfully circle Thomas on their separate missions, they inevitably bump into each other like people crashing carts in the grocery aisle. They reluctantly—at least on Plath’s part—team up. The pair never meet Thomas, but a sweet coming of age love story—at least in Bob’s imagination—ensues.

Maybe the Timothée Chalamet Dylan flick stole my thunder—for the record, I came up with this movie idea long before No Direction Home came out—but I think my imagined secret history of these two mid-century American icons (and heroes to brooding teen coffee house mavens everywhere ) would be a hit.

At the center of Sylvia and Bob’s gyroscopic paths? The aforementioned White Horse Tavern, now a bit of cliché tourist spot I hit every time I go to NYC. I’m a brooding coffee house teen at heart.

A far cry from its mid-20th-century heyday as the bohemian enclave that Thomas and other proto-counterculture figures made into an artists’ third place circa 1953, the White Horse Tavern is now a normie but warm neighborhood bar with TVs. It’s still open late, though. Until 3 am.

I went there twice on my visit this past week.

First, looking for relief after a morning spent walking around the East Village and the muggy heat, I went to the White Horse midday Friday. I took the L to the West Village and beelined there from the subway stop at W. 14th and 8th. Such divine alliesthesia stepping into the air conditioned, easygoing, and clean place—checkerboard tiles, brass keg taps, holly snaking across the umber walls—and sipping horseradish-heavy virgin Bloody Marys at a corner table by the door. I also, as I always do, got the “Dylan Thomas,” which is a whiskey poured neat. I happily lingered in the lightly crowded room at my table (directly in the line of the AC) for 90 minutes or so watching Carlos Alcaraz beat Novic Djokovic in straight sets in the U.S. Open men’s semifinal.

Second time, and I wrote about this in my U.S. Open recap last week [I’m All Lost In, #99, 9/8/25]: I ran there from Soho on Saturday afternoon—during a biblical rainstorm—to watch the women’s final where I ended up bonding with the tranquil bartender; it was the same mellow woman who had served the savory Bloody Mary mix a day earlier. Today, she provided an unflappably beatific contrast to the bro and sorority girl crowd that had taken over the place; this TV- football-crowd nearly sapped the cozy tavern of any remaining Dylan Thomas karma. I managed to secure a spot at the far corner of the stained oak bar where I settled in for the tennis match and several neat whiskeys, including one on the house.

Over the course of just three days in New York, my two visits to the White Horse Tavern may have been my favorite moments. This is true despite some other high-quality outings: going to a cheeky comedy club in Bushwick; taking a moonlit stroll in Chinatown to get deep fried veggie dumplings at an all-night Sichuan place; going to freaking Arthur Ashe Stadium to see the U.S. Open women’s semifinals live; getting Saturday night slices, including a Grandma-style slice, at Williamsburg Pizza on Union Ave.; hacking the 7 train at 2am; and getting an upgrade at my fancy hotel.

Pell St., Chinatown, Manhattan, 11:15 pm, 9/5/25

The Tiny Cupboard comedy club, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 9/5/25

The view from room 2101 (quite the upgrade), Soho, Manhattan, 9/6/25

Famous Sichuan, Pell St., Chinatown, Manhattan, 12:10 am, 9/6/25

Euphoric about Daffy Saby’s straight sets win an hour later that Saturday afternoon, I stepped out of the White Horse onto Hudson St.

I cast my eyes south.

In addition to visiting the Dylan Thomas shrine every NYC trip, I always commune with Jane Jacob’s former apartment just three doors down at 555 Hudson; there’s a plaque, though it was only set there sometime in the last five years. Jacobs was another mid-century intellectual light who hung out at the White Horse, or at least name checked it (pg. 40) in her seismic 1961 urbanist tome The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She incorporated the popular spot into her description of the urban ideal noting how the tavern provided energy and safety to her block; the NIMBYs who complain about night spots ruining their neighborhoods have it backwards. The WHT’s patrons, Irish longshoremen and chatty intellectuals, were part of Jacobs’ famous “sidewalk ballet” depicted in her famous book. I love how this passage celebrates those strangers as a benefit.

Strangers become an enormous asset on the street on which I live, and the spurs off it, particularly at night when safety assets are most needed. We are fortunate enough, on the street, to be gifted not only with a locally supported bar and another around the corner, but also with a famous bar that draws continuous troops of strangers from adjoining neighborhoods and even from out of town. It is famous because the poet Dylan Thomas used to go there, and mentioned it in his writing. This bar, indeed, works two distinct shifts. In the morning and early afternoon it is a social gathering place for the old community of Irish longshoremen and other craftsmen in the area, as it always was. But beginning in midafternoon it takes on a different life, more like a college bull session with beer, combined with a literary cocktail party, and this continues until the early hours of the morning. On a cold winter's night, as you pass the White Horse, and the doors open, a solid wave of conversation and animation surges out and hits you; very warming. The comings and goings from this bar do much to keep our street reasonably populated until three in the morning, and it is a street always safe to come home to.

I cast my eyes up to the post-rainstorm-sky and snapped this tipsy photo:

Jane Jacobs Way, W. 11th St. & Hudson St, W. Village, Manhattan, 9/6/25

2) The Pad Ped at the Patio Fine Thai Cuisine Restaurant

This may as well be a lifetime achievement award.

I’ve been ordering the Pad Ped at The Patio, one of the five-plus Thai restaurants in my neighborhood, for a decade.

Once again, I ordered it on my latest visit to the low-key, family-owned spot on 15th Ave. E. this past Monday night. And though it’s my regular order, it was notably wonderful this time. I think the fact that the red curry (generally made from dried red chilies, lemongrass roots, garlic, shallots, coriander, cumin, coconut milk, and soy sauce) was more wicked than usual while the generous serving of fresh veggies (carrots, onions, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots) was more generous. I order it with tofu. And unlike many places these days where blasé tofu seems like a second rate and maybe spoiled afterthought, it’s always a soft and simmered-in-flavor highlight at the Patio.

I can’t speak to much else on the extensive menu—though you’ll devour the crispy eggrolls with plum sauce and fish cake appetizers. But if the other entrées are at the level of my sacred Pad Ped, you’ll be happy you chose this Thai spot over Seattle’s many others.

In addition to feeling warmed by my go-to dish, I was prompted to write about the Patio this week because I buttonholed the guy who was manning the place solo to ask what was up with the extra special Pad Ped tonight. This young man, who rattled off all the inferior (by his own estimation) Thai places he currently worked, lit up with food expertise and love and delighted in describing the specifics of Thai cooking.

3) Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep, Again

I must report that I’m still [I’m All Lost In, #99, 9/8/25] obsessing about Edith Wharton’s 1927 novel Twilight Sleep, an LOL sendup of New York City’s mystically enlightened, white, Jazz Age bourgeoisie.

Here’s a sample from the comedic onslaught that sets the tone at the start of Book II where among other things Wharton, who’s busy ridiculing busybody socialite Pauline Manford, tells us about “Spiritual Vacuum-Cleaning” and “Inspirational Healing.”

In this scene, Mrs. Manford finds herself “painfully oppressed by an hour of unexpected leisure.”

An hour--why, there was no way of measuring the length of an empty hour! It stretched away into infinity like the endless road in a nightmare; it gaped before her like the slippery sides of an abyss. Nervously she began to wonder what she could do to fill it--if there were not some new picture show or dressmakers' opening or hygienic exhibition that she might cram into it before the minute hand switched round to her next engagement. She took up her list to see what that engagement was.

"11.45. Mrs. Swoffer."

Oh, to be sure . . . Mrs. Swoffer. Maisie had reminded her that morning. The relief was instantaneous. Only, who was Mrs. Swoffer? Was she the President of the Militant Pacifists' League, or the Heroes' Day delegate, or the exponent of the New Religion of Hope, or the woman who had discovered a wonderful trick for taking the wrinkles out of the corners of your eyes? Maisie was out on an urgent commission, and could not be consulted; but whatever Mrs. Swoffer's errand was, her arrival would be welcome--especially if she came before her hour. And she did.

She was a small plump woman of indefinite age, with faded blond hair and rambling features held together by a pair of urgent eye-glasses. She asked if she might hold Pauline's hand just a moment while she looked at her and reverenced her--and Pauline, on learning that this was the result of reading her Mothers' Day speech in the morning papers, acceded not unwillingly.

Not that that was what Mrs. Swoffer had come for; she said it was just a flower she wanted to gather on the way. A rose with the dew on it--she took off her glasses and wiped them, as if to show where the dew had come from. "You speak for so many of us," she breathed, and recovered Pauline's hand for another pressure.

But she had come for the children, all the same; and that was really coming for the mothers, wasn't it? Only she wanted to reach the mothers through the children--reversing the usual process. Mrs. Swoffer said she believed in reversing almost everything. Standing on your head was one of the most restorative physical exercises, and she believed it was the same mentally and morally. It was a good thing to stand one's soul upside down. And so she'd come about the children. . .

Evidently, contemporary critics did not applaud Wharton’s novel; though, after being published in serial form by Pictorial Review, a contemporary women’s magazine, it was promptly put out the same year as a novel and became an instant bestseller. It’s certainly a chatty departure from Wharton’s neo-Victorian drawing room affairs; not that House of Mirth isn’t eloquently bitchy. But in dramatizing the trifles and frippery of the Lost (and rich) Generation, Wharton adopts the frantic pace of her characters’ lives to conjure a warp-speed rendition of her own classic prose.

I’m All Lost In, #99: Returning to Edith Wharton; giving up sugar; and an overdue trip to the Korean restaurant in my neighborhood.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#99

1)  Edith Wharton

When I think of Edith Wharton, which I do! … I don’t think of the Jazz Age; Wharton, judging from what I’ve read by her—House of Mirth plus a transcendent collection of New York-centric short stories—is all about the last generation of Americans holding on to the Victorian era on the cobblestone streets of Manhattan.

Given that Wharton is one of my favorite writers—she’s been on this weekly list a few times [I’m All Lost In, #71, 2/23/25, most recently]—I’m happy to report that last week, I came across her little known “Flapper” novel, a 1927 best seller called Twilight Sleep.

The novel has the same crystalline Wharton prose that sparkles on every page. But this time, Wharton’s philosophical inquiries and acerbic cynicism are focused on ridiculing the newly enlightened post-World War I set more often associated with F. Scott Fitzgerald than with her early 1900s summer house crowd. Flapper feminism and Eastern mysticism are Wharton’s easy Roaring ‘20s targets here. What a treat to have Wharton’s cutting insight turn its attention to an emergent rather than elapsed generation.

Twilight sleep was the term for a trendy medical practice of the era that professed to banish the painful throes of childbirth with an opium-like motion sickness medicine and morphine mixture plus a stay in a posh clinic. Sardonic Wharton uses the term as a metaphor for phony liberation (particularly of wealthy women) as she sets out to savage both the leisure class of 20-somethings who dance until 4 am in blasé quests to live their best lives, and their overly-earnest mothers who are equally intent on saving the world by practicing the woo-woo wisdom of pseudo intellectuals and charlatans.

I’m only 100 pages in and things are getting good: Pauline Manford, a matriarch and bourgeois do-gooder—and an easy mark for eurhythmic exercise gurus, silent mediation retreats, and avant-garde art dealers—has just discovered (I think!) that her free-wheeling daughter-in-law Lita’s photo has shown up in a scandal sheet. The picture was snapped at the younger crowd’s (racier) version of Pauline Manford’s own Mahatma’s “return-to-nature” ceremonies at a retreat center known as Dawnside.

Passing over the noxious caption “Dawnside Co-Eds,” [her eyes] immediately singled out Bee Lindon from the capering round; then traveled on, amazed, to another denuded nymph…whose face, whose movements…Incredible! … For a second Pauline refused to accept what her eyes reported.  

She had never seen anything of that kind herself at Dawnside—heaven forbid!—but whenever she had gone there for a lecture, or a new course of exercises, she had suspected that the whitewashed room, with its throned Buddha, which received her and other like-minded ladies of her age, all active, earnest and eager for self-improvement, had not let them very far into the mystery. Beyond, perhaps, were other rites, other settings… Wasn’t everybody talking about “the return to nature,” and ridiculing the American prudery… The Mahatma was on of the leaders of the new movement… But Pauline had supposed the draperies he advocated to be longer and less transparent; above all, she had not expected familiar faces above those insufficient scarves… 

Written more in the fast-paced, reader-friendly language of scandal sheets themselves than in Wharton’s trademark retro-Jane Austen rhythms, Twilight Sleep has me staying up reading (and laughing) into the twilight hours.

2) No Sugar

You heard it here first.

2026: Oat milk out

It’s easier to capitalize on a good trend than reverse a bad one. Prompted by some good numbers from the doctor, I’ve been zeroing out the processed sugar in my diet. I can now count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a sweet treat this month.

Once I started rebuffing the cookies and other assorted coffee shop gems, I found myself going all in. This week I started isolating the remaining sickly sweetness in my life: those alt milks in my lattes. I’ve since switched my daily order to matcha with almond milk instead of all the sweeter, fattier ones. Oat milk, for example, has 19 grams of sugar, the highest of the non-dairy alternatives, versus almond milk’s zero grams.

The OG alt milk elixir, soy (“for a refreshing break in your busy day,” the classic Eden Soy carton used to declare) has the most protein but lots of sugar, 9 grams, unfortunately.

I did have two black sesame Oreo cookies this week, an exceptional and knowing gift from XDX [I’m All Lost In, #43, 8/9/24]. But otherwise, with my switch to almond milk symbolizing the turn away from sweets, I’ve been sugar free.

3) Tofu Seoul

Regular readers may remember a restaurant recommendation I made earlier this year, Broadway Wok, an overlooked standout on the long list of Capitol Hill’s Asian dinner places [I’m All Lost In, #83, 5/18/25]. I only ate there by happenstance; the original plan had been to check out the spot next door, Seoul Tofu & Jjim, a Korean hot soup place on Broadway between Harrison and Republican. Fortunately/unfortunately, it was closed that day.

I’ve since—as of last week’s spur-of-the-moment, what-to-do-for-supper decision—now eaten at Seoul Tofu. An excellent and overdue move.

I got the sizzling and spicy veggie soondubu with two go-rounds of the fixed side plates: pickled kimchi, potato bites, firm seasoned tofu wedges, and savory bean sprouts. I nearly ordered a third helping. Who knew bean sprouts could be a scrumptious delicacy—crisp and delicate, plain and seemingly marinated all at once in this attentive Korean rendition. The two pickled kimchi dishes weren’t as surprising, but they were as tasty.

The main dish, soondubu, is similar to a clay pot Turkish güveç; it’s served—in this instance with soft tofu and veggies—in the same bowl it gets cooked in. Appropriately, the bright red cast of this comforting concoction gives it a homey simmer that matches the hot spices.

This traditional soup-and-sides classic comes with bowl of rice and notably affectionate service.

———

And before I sign off, something else to savor. On Saturday, my favorite tennis player, World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, won the U.S. Open. For the second year in a row. (I was there live when she won it last year.)

I didn’t go to the women’s finals this year, but I did return to NYC this weekend for my second trip to the U.S. Open in two weeks for a quick arrive-Thursday-leave-Sunday visit so I could see the semifinals. It seemed likely to me when I bought the ticket months ago that Sabalenka would be on the bill. And she was. Daffy Saby (as we call her in my household) faced off against World No. 4, American Jessica Pegula (her opponent in last year’s final, actually) this past Thursday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Saby came back from one set down to beat Pegula 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.

Thursday evening also included the other woman’s semifinal match—one that a NYT/Athletic reporter subsequently picked as the best of the tournament—between World No. 5, ascendant young American Amanda Anisimova (who would go on to play Sabalenka in the final) and former World No. 1, Japan’s Naomi Osaka. Anisimova won in three sets of elite tennis.

Anisimova in action, Women’s Semifinal with Naomi Osaka, Thursday, 9/4/25

Sadly, Anisimova’s victory came with the seemingly racist intensity of an older woman sitting in the row directly in front of me whose taut, precise clapping at every Animisova winner or Osaka error seemed disproportionately aggressive. That’s not a knock on Anisimova who I’ve grown to respect for her flawless backhand returns. I saw Anisimova play live in one of her earlier matches at Armstrong Stadium on my trip during the first week of the tournament too.

As for Sabalenka’s straight-sets win over Anisimova in this year’s Saturday afternoon final, which included her record-setting 19th steely tie breaker win to finish out the 6-3, 7-6 (7-3) match: I watched it from a crowded West Village bar, my favorite White Horse Tavern of Dylan Thomas lore. And yes I drank whiskey neat in Thomas’ honor. After walking over from Soho in a crazy rain storm that soaked my new shoes, I managed to squeeze in at the corner of the bar with a great view of the TV where the bartender, a zen and mischievous young woman, befriended me and, incongruently for such a hipster, allowed that she too “loved Sabalenka.”

Who are you rooting for?, she asked me first. Sabalenka I acknowledged coyly given that Belarusian Saby was playing Animisova, an American with this season’s Cinderella story. And more over, despite Sabalenka’s insuperable talent on the court and comically klutzy vibe off the court, she’s invariably rendered as a tennis villain. The bartender and I weren’t having it. She slid me another whiskey. On the house.

This was the second instance of Sabalenka serendipity this weekend that threw me in with a fellow unabashed yet bashful Saby fan. Less than 24 hours earlier, standing on the sidewalk in front of a Bushwick comedy club on Friday night where I’d just seen the show, a young lesbian couple bounded out. Aren’t you the vegetarian? one of them, a pretty Latina, asked me. She knew about my diet because one of the comedians on the night’s bill had picked me for some of his crowd work. Ha! To his chagrin!

Aren’t you the German from Turkey who’s in town to see the U.S. Open? I asked the nerdy white woman who was standing next to the Latina (she had also been in a comedian’s sights at the show.) Soon enough, I was talking to this fellow U.S. Open visitor. It turned out not only had she been at Thursday’s semis, but she was a Saby fanatic. Your living her dream life, the Latina said pointing to her GF when I told them I’d also seen Sabalenka win live at last year’s final.

She cried! the girlfriend continued teasing.

As would Sabalenka the following afternoon when—after making but losing both the Australian and French Open finals earlier this year, as well as losing in this year’s Wimbledon semifinals—Sabalenka won the U.S. Open at Arthur Ashe in New York this week.

Sabalenka breaks down with emotion after serving for game, set, and match to win this year’s U.S. Open, Saturday, 9/6/25.

At which point, I stepped out of the White Horse Tavern onto Hudson St., walked to the 8th Avenue & W. 14th St. subway station and caught an L train to Brooklyn to debrief with my New York pals.

I’m All Lost In, #98: Map; app; and piano trios.

I’m All Lost In…

The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#98

1) Trying to Visualize the Map of Manhattan

Remember: Bleeker St. is one block north of Houston.

I’ve been visiting New York City regularly every year since the late 1980s, even going two or three times a year lately. I also lived in New York City in the summer of 1985 when I kid you not my band played CBGB; I stood in the bathroom mirror of Keith’s apartment at 102nd and Riverside Dr. afterward marveling over the fact that the red magic marker I’d scrawled on my t-shirt before the gig had bled through onto my skin and now appeared written backward on my naked chest.

This is all to say, despite spending all this time in Manhattan, I still get flummoxed trying to find my way around in the swath of 10-plus neighborhoods between Chelsea to the northwest and the Lower East Side to the southeast.

I’d like to think part of the problem is that the orderly street grid north of Greenwich Village—streets numerically ascending as they run exclusively east to west—gets cast aside in lower Manhattan. The streets in the heart of the Chelsea-to-Lower East Side carnival axis run east to west and north to south. Canal St. left to right, for example. Orchard St., up and down. It doesn’t help that world-famous W. 4th St. at the epicenter of the Village lulls you into a sense of order only to capsize you later: After running east-west block after block, heading past Washington Square Park to the south, and on into the Village proper, W. 4th suddenly tacks north around Christopher St.

Bleeker St. is deceptive in the same way.

During my most recent visit last week I fixated on being able to conjure a map in my head. Personal challenge thrown down: Be able to pinpoint exactly where I was at any moment, both by the name of the neighborhood I was walking in and also in the context of nearby neighborhoods. For example, if I alight from the subway at W. 4th St. and Washington Square where am I? And how do I beat a path to Chinatown?

Home base for me in Manhattan is a friendly hotel on the Lower East Side called Untitled; with it’s piano and pool table coffee lounge, it reminds me of a college dorm. It’s located a couple of blocks south of Houston (though not in SoHo?) between Bowery and Chrystie St. in a colorfully graffitied alley off Rivington St.

Using mnemonics such as: the “W” in Bowery means Bowery is west of the hotel, I constantly tried, sometimes with success and other times in utter bewilderment to locate myself. A success story: Feeling amiable and tipsy on Sunday night after a groovy jazz show in Greenwich Village at the Zinc Bar on W. 3rd St., I weaved my way via Thompson St., Bleeker St., Mercer St., Houston, and the Bowery to a nightcap at the Wren, a bar in the Bowery. Or another: On Saturday night, I confidently set out from the Lower East Side East on Houston, north on Ave. B toward E. 11th St. to settle in and write at Hekate Cafe & Elixir Lounge in the East Village.

But then there was Monday. Completely disoriented, I circled Lafayette St., Spring St., Mott St., Prince St. and back around to Lafayette St. never knowing when or if I was ever heading east back to the hotel.

For more flaneur diaries, check out my ancient 2015/2016/2017 blog The Amazing City: The World is Dull, but not Today) where I posted a mini-history of my favorite walks. The list includes a tale from my aforementioned 1985 summer in NYC: “On Friday nights, I realized 10 million people were drunk, and I imagined the sidewalk bending like an amoeba under my sneakers.”

A New York footnote: When it comes to wayfinding, I am always able to find a late night bodega for a custom made, all-veggie sub sandwich. It’s a highlight of every New York trip, just as it was on this latest adventure. I scored a gyro jammed with artichoke hearts, green olives, tomatoes, black olives, broccoli, corn, red onion, green peppers, sun dried tomato, cucumber, and jalapeno pepper late Friday night into Saturday morning. Perfectly, this was also when the calendar was flipping over into my birthday transforming my favorite late night snack routine into a birthday celebration in the brightly lit, crowded Brooklyn deli. The three guys working the counter had the late-night sandwich making rush down to assembly line perfection. Despite the long line, the leader of the crew slid my XXL sub across the stainless-steel counter in less than five minutes: a birthday present wrapped in silver foil.

12:48 am, Union and Grand, 8/23/25

12:51 am, 8/23/25

12:59 am, 8/23/25

Back at Lee’s, aka, Gregor Samsa, celebrating my birthday, 1:08 am, 8/23/25

2) The U.S. Open App

The reason I was in New York City this past week in the first place was to watch the U.S. Open live. I had a ticket at Louis Armstrong Stadium for the Tuesday day session; this gets you an assigned seat for the two back-to-back daytime matches scheduled there. Seating 14,000 fans, Armstrong is the Billie Jean King Tennis Center’s second largest stadium; center court is the 24,000 capacity Arthur Ashe Stadium. The first match on Armstrong’s day schedule turned out to be a men’s match I wasn’t interested in seeing. Next up, though, a WTA match starring ascendant young American Amanda Anisomova (No. 9). The way ticketing works at the U.S. Open is this: Along with your assigned seat for either the day or night session, you also get all-day free access to any seat at the BJK Tennis Center’s other smaller stadiums and arenas, sidecourts, and practice courts located across the maze-like complex.

With so many matches going on and/or with one of your favorite players potentially scheduled to be hitting on a practice court, it can be dizzying to figure out where you want to be. Pretty often you’ll want to be two places at once: One of my favorite players, Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk (No. 27), was scheduled at Grandstand (the third biggest stadium) at 11 am—where I went instead of that men’s match at Armstrong. And my absolute favorite player Aryna Sabalenka (No. 1) was scheduled to practice on Court 2 at the same time. Meanwhile, French sensation Loïs Boisson (No. 46), accompanied by her cult of singing fans, was scheduled on Court 10. Another personal favorite, Ekaterina Alexandrova (No. 12) was playing on Court 11.

Enter the elegant and useful U.S. Open App. This is the rare app that gives you exactly what you need without frills or distraction: the schedule; the scores (choose live or completed); player info, match previews and reviews, a BJK Tennis Center grounds map, and snack options, all either clearly displayed on screen or one intuitive tap away.

With the dignified U.S. Open app as my ally—and given that I also decided last minute to attend Friday’s (free) final round of qualifying matches along with poaching a cheap ticket to Monday night’s Armstrong matches (World No. 12, Norway’s Casper Ruud , World No. 56, American Alycia Parks, and World No. 5, Russian’s Mira Andreeva were all playing)—I navigated three days of bouncing from stadium seating, to the practice court breezeway, to up-close bleachers, to standing-room-only at the smaller courts, to sitting down at the Food Village for a tofu and kimchi rice bowl lunch.

Qualies, 8/22/25

World No. 9, American, Amanda Anisimova versus World No. 83, Kimberly Birrell, Armstrong Stadium, 8/26/25

Ball Kids’ sneaks, 8/22/25

Speaking of tofu and kimchi for lunch: while the word of 2025 is acquiescence, it’s not so at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center. This is a woke, global event that would rile Trump to his last nerve. The USTA isn’t shy about DEI. First of all, as if skywritten with this year’s bold Althea Gibson logo, the Open isn’t interested in Trump’s sad and ornery effort to erase Black history. The Open is openly celebrating Gibson’s historical breakthrough as the first African American woman to play at the tournament in 1950. The heroic Gibson logo, designed by the first Black theme artist in tournament history by the way, along with signage and recurring PA announcements that proclaim Gibson’s status as a “trailblazer” and a “barrier breaker” seem more Free to be You and Me 1975 than reactionary 2025.

Anti-transit Trump and his anti-transit secretary of transportation Sean Duffy, who are currently trying to shut down NYC’s locally devised pro-transit congestion pricing plan, have also been put on notice by U.S. open fans. Riding packed and friendly subway trains—take the 7 to Mets-Willets for just $2.90—tens of thousands of transit riders from working class Queens descend on the their local stadium, the classy and tacky Billie Jean King Tennis Center (named after the lesbian equal rights legend) side-by-side with tens of thousands of others from across the country and the world. All of us tapping onto the subway to go watch international athletes from Argentina, China, the U.S., Mexico, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Japan, Brazil, Italy, Russia, Spain, Canada etc. compete on the hard courts. Welcome to the U.S. Open where an international roster of often eloquent and quirky tennis heroes take the stage at Arthur Ashe Stadium (Black American civil rights champion) and Louis Armstrong Stadium (Black American genius) to face off as the smell of both waffle fries and vegan kimchi tofu rice bowls linger in collective defiance of Trump's provincialist retreat.

8/26/25

18-year-old Czech Qualifier Tereza Valentova 8/22/25. She beat Dutch player Arantxa Rus, and went on to upset No. 57, Italian Lucia Bronzetti in the first round. Valentova eventually lost in the second round to superstar Khazak, No. 10 Elena Rybakina.

Ball Kid and Russian World No. 12 Ekaterina Alexandrova on Court 11, 8/26/25.

Ukrainian World No. 27, Marta Kostyuk beats Katie Boulter 6-4, 6-4, Grandstand, 8/26/25

8/26/25

3) Piano Trios at Dr. Yelena Grinberg’s Apartment

“Because you’re a new guest,” Dr. Yelena Grinberg told me as she escorted me to my front row seat. Like all 30 folding chairs she’d set out in her small apartment, mine had a name tag delicately laid on the cushion. Gesturing me to sit, she scooped up the sheet of paper emblazoned with my name (handwritten in cursive) and efficiently tucked it somewhere out of view for her immaculate record keeping, I presumed.

This was last Sunday evening at a private house concert in Grinberg’s Upper West Side one-bedroom. An at-ease virtuoso pianist, Grinberg, who teaches music history and chamber music at Fordham University, had programmed four piano trios this evening: one by Haydn, one by his successor Mozart, and two by his successor Beethoven, completing the “Classical Triad”—Haydn “the root,” Mozart the “beautiful third,” and Beethoven the “powerful fifth”—she explained to the gathering of what seemed mostly the familiar faces of her friends. She plunked out a C, E, and G on the piano to make the point.

This performance was, according Grinberg’s earnest, color mimeographed and stapled program notes, the 352nd chamber music salon she’s hosted. I learned about Grinberg’s DIY classical music gigs last year when after finding nothing on the calendar at the precious chamber concert series upstairs at Carnegie Hall, a google search turned up this more intimate affair.

I didn’t want to take a picture during the performance—as you can see from the music stand and my shoe (lower right), I was seated less than a foot away from the violinist. I snapped this before the program started, 8/24/25.

Mind you, before and after each piece Dr. Grinberg ushered her crackerjack cellist Amy Kang and her violinist Greta Myatieva in and out of the curtained-glass-door bedroom stage right of the living room concert hall to warm applause, presenting as if she and her accomplices were nowhere other than Carnegie Hall.

The exuberant expert playing was certainly concert-hall level, particularly Grinberg herself on piano, who happily relished the athletic dynamics, quirky moment-to-moment segues, and precision of these late-18th Century Viennese masterworks.

One piece wasn’t well-known, actually: the Mozart’s Piano Trio in D minor. Featuring three discrete unfinished compositions, it was posthumously glued together by a Mozart colleague. Grinberg, who only just learned about the piece while “doing the research for tonight’s salon over the last few weeks,” read a detailed precis about this as she did for all the pieces before summoning Kang and Myatieva once again from the wings/her bedroom. Her book report essays distinguished themselves from advanced AI thanks only to Grinberg’s heart strings; she clearly loves music, music composition, and the exercise of close reading itself which had her pointing out notable measures and rhapsodizing about Mozart’s “divine hand.”

It was mostly an older-to-elderly crowd, though a lively one, including a hipster Gen X couple dressed as if they were at a Nine Inch Nails concert. Grinberg seated me next to the one young person on hand, who despite sharing the front row with me, was not new to this club. “I come to all of these,” she proclaimed. “She’s incredible.”

Amped afterward, I signed the guest book with a reverent thank you note about feeling I was now in on a secret handshake. Then I took the elevator down to the tiled lobby, walked south on Broadway to the 96th St. station, took the 1 train to 59th St. Columbus Circle, transferred to the C train, and exited at W. 4th street to see a South American jazz band play the Zinc Bar on W. 3rd. They broke out a Japanese drum for the encore. It seems, as with the Billie Jean King Tennis Center, the Zinc Bar is defying 2025 as well.

I’m All Lost In, #97: Marinated tomatoes; the Tennis Podcast live; a tomato throw rug.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessed with THIS week.

#97

1) Marinated Tomatoes

A generous slice of tomato will add flavor to any sandwich. But to reach Gourmet levels, I suggest making this vinegar-driven potion of chopped garlic, chopped red onion, minced fresh basil, lemon juice, two tablespoons of olive oil, some salt, a pinch of pepper, and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Just place your freshly sliced tomatoes in a medium-size bowl and douse them with these savory vinegar vibes.

Apparently, I went a little cuckoo with the raw garlic; the recipe calls for one clove, and I chopped up four.

This was for a vegan cream cheese and marinated tomatoes sandwich I made on sour dough toast this past Monday night with my own add on: a scoop of red kidney beans from the can. The red beans soften the sweet cashew-based cream cheese.

This marinade is sure to make your sandwich oily and messy.

Mouth watering too.

Marinated Tomatoes + cashew cream cheese on toast.

2) The Tennis Podcast Live at the Gramercy Theater, 8/21/25

Luckily, on our way to get a pre-show drink, my fellow tennis-obsessed-pal Lee and I passed the theater and saw that a queue had already begun forming outside. It was rapidly stretching down East 23rd toward Lexington. We opted out of our drink plans (there was a bar in the theater anyway) and we got in line. It was a general admission show, and thanks to this wise pivot in plans we ended up in the 5th row for my dream evening: cheering on my favorite trio, witty sportscaster Catherine Whitaker, veteran tennis reporter David Law, and young sage Matt Roberts. They were recording the latest installment of their show The Tennis Podcast live at the intimate, 650-capacity Gramercy Theatre in New York City for a special U.S. Open preview. With their usual improvisational ease, they used the pending tournament’s hot-of-the-presses draw brackets (men’s and women’s) to make predictions, cast aspersions, talk shit (poor World No. 66, Reilly Opelka), and in the case of Roberts, speak with near-poetic wisdom about tennis.

Roberts, a tennis dork who has ascended from his role as the show’s former intern, is clearly the star of The Tennis Podcast these days. And he played his role this Thursday night dispensing wisdom whenever he spoke; unfortunately, I made up for skipping the pre-func drink by buying a strong vodka at the show so the only notes I took are cryptic. I quote Roberts saying: “We’ll be playing tennis until 3am forever.” And, accidentally taking a video instead of a photo, I also have him saying: “I think one of the beauties of tennis is that one day you can be the World No. 1 and lose….[video cuts out]…”

Matt Roberts, the Tennis Podcast at the Gramercy Theatre, 8/21/25

L-R, Catherine Whitaker, David Law, Matt Roberts, the Tennis Podcast live at the Gramercy Theatre, 8/21/25

But I’m pleasantly surprised and a-okay reporting that normie 50-something David Law held court this packed evening. Unphazed by Whitaker and Roberts’ youthful chemistry and pop culture sarcasm, his commentary provided the conversation’s gravitational pull all night. I strongly disagree with his bizarre prediction, though, that former (2019) World No. 1 and current No. 25, erratic and melodramatic Naomi Osaka will win this year’s U.S. Open.

I will say, despite my favorite player Aryna Sabalenka’s current No. 1 ranking, I don’t think she’s going to win the tournament either. While Sabalenka did win the U.S. Open last year, she seems distracted and off her game this month.

I agree with Matt and Catherine that World No. 2 Iga Swiatek will win this year. After being World No. 1 in 2022, 2023, and most of 2024, Swiatek fell to No. 8 in 2025. But she suddenly looks like herself: unbeatable once again heading into the tournament.

3) Scouring and Organizing

Last week, I noted in passing that I was tidying up my apartment. This was my segue into talking about the actual obsession at hand: paying off my credit card debt [I’m All Lost In, #96, 8/17/25.]

This week, the tidying turned manic. I went on an apartment cleaning, scrubbing, and re-org crusade.

Light switch fixtures, baseboards, drawers, window sills, counter tops, the stove top, the burners, the dishwasher, the refrigerator, and the bathroom could not escape the Eco-clean and scouring pad treatment. Piano dusted. Fan taken apart and dusted! I rearranged my closets and clothes too.

Also: following up on the proper recycling bin I bought last week, I ordered a recycling sticker this week so I can label it. I also bought three throw rugs, including two pseudo Turkish rugs and a bright Sesame Street tomato rug (which feels plush on my bare feet); I’ve been fed up with my worn out and besmirched 12-year-old carpet for months.

I put my bulky desk chair in storage and replaced it with the stately and simple chair that’s been crowding my bedroom. I also staged my plants, draping one snaking vine strategically across the piano.

I was clearly preoccupied with energizing the apartment this week. But if I had to choose the emblematic obsession that defines the whole enterprise, I’d go with scouring pads.

I’m All Lost In, #96: Trump’s war on American cities and Subway sandwiches; my credit card debt; Iran 1979.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#96

1) An American President’s War on American Cities

The federal attack on NYC’s congestion pricing plan [I’m All Lost In, #71, February 23, 2025] is one early example of how the current administration in the White House is leveraging federal power to trump local control.

Specifically, it’s an example that President Trump’s animosity toward American cities transcends any stated Republican allegiance to the principle of a smaller, restrained federal government. As with MAGA’s sudden silence about the tyranny of armed federal troops descending on cities like L.A. and now this week D.C., it’s a 180 on the right wing’s “Don’t tread on me” posture. Hypocrites!

And don’t even get me started on the fact that the Trump administration is commandeering a profit sharing arrangement with a private company like Nvidia and taking an ownership share in U.S. Steel. National Socialism, anyone?

But Trump’s extremist war on American cities—a cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face venture given that U.S. cities account for 90.8% of U.S. GDP—is certainly in line with MAGA’s fever dream that cities are an anathema.

Real Americans have long demonized cities, those dens of inauthenticity where both left wingers and slick capitalists, degenerates and loafing artists, wicked women and soft men, elites, godless intellectuals, Blacks, runaways, gays, and drug addicts all live.

It’s a commonplace American trope: The honest aspirations of the simple man versus the corrupting forces of the metropolis. The narrative is as old as Bible stories about Babylon and/or Sodom and Gomorrah juxtaposed with the Bible’s framing fable about the untainted natural world in the idyllic Garden of Eden.

Notice: Right and left wingers alike share the righteous fantasy of tossing marketplace mongers out of the proverbial holy temple just as Jesus did, or of descending from the mountain as Moses did to shatter a false idol, the golden calf. For the quintessential American example see William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, the anti-city “holy cause” jeremiad he delivered at the 1896 Democratic convention. Bryan, “the Boy Orator” from Nebraska, called out the “merchant[s] of New York” for being a corrosive force in America that was besieging “the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth.”

*No one should be surprised that Bryan is the same orator who showed up later in his life as the lead prosecutor in the ridiculous 1925 Scopes monkey trial where he unambiguously revealed the reactionary values at the core of this populist vision by taking on those godless scientists.

We haven’t evolved. Tapping directly into the same old holy fire narrative, Trump’s animosity toward U.S. cities stems from his own apocalyptic visions.

When he called in federal troops to quell his urban phantasmagoria this week, Trump described D.C. as being “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.” But “we’re going to clean it up real quick,” he added.

It’s a fantasy forged during Trump’s bigoted 1960s upbringing in Archie-Bunker Queens at a time when cities, hollowed out by intentionally racist federal housing policies and formalized racist zoning policies, were recast as war zones. Subsequently, white flight came to define the American Dream.

Occupying D.C. with federal troops on the pretense of a crime wave that doesn’t exist is the most brazen step yet in Trump’s assault on American cities. This show of force—along with sending the National Guard and U.S. Marines to L.A. in June and sending border patrol agents to intimidate California’s anti-Trump Gov. Gavin Newsom in downtown L.A. this week as well—is an authoritarian transgression that accompanies Trump’s long list of anti-city policies. Some of his targeted policy attacks on American cities include: an edict to cut federal funding over DEI principles, which disproportionately threatens the missions of urban institutions such as public transit agencies; his HUD rules against metro area density; and his war on educational freedom at the nation’s Ivy League universities such as Boston’s Harvard University and New York City’s Columbia University.

I will continue to register my objections to Trump’s petty provincialism by singing my body electric with YIMBY poetry. Here are the first lines of an ode to city beauty I started this week:

“Airports remind me of the fertile crescent./The hanging gardens of Babylon suggest Saarinen.”

I may also arm myself with Subway sandwiches. Honestly, exorcised D.C. resident Sean Dunn, the former U.S. Air Force officer, DOJ employee, and now prankster folk hero who confronted federal officers on 14th and U. this week by pelting a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Officer in the chest with a Subway sandwich hilariously undermined Trump’s Il Duce theatrics. Dunn’s impromptu patriotism revealed just how absurd Trump’s flex is. Even funnier is the getaway chase. Dunn, 37, is hardly a speed demon. But still: those officers had difficulty running him down as he jogged away down U. Street. (“Probably a good thing Dunn isn’t' Black. Could have gone down differently,” a POC friend noted. “Glad he used his white privilege for good.”)

Following his heroic “assault with a deli weapon,” the DOJ fired Dunn. They are now bringing felony charges that call for eight years in prison as they seek a grand jury indictment. The judge released Dunn on his his own recognizance later in the week which seems to indicate they think the charges are trumped up.

I cannot stop watching the video of Dunn’s Subaway sandwich insurrection.

The D.C. Hoagie Party, Sunday night, 8/10/25

2) Paying Off My Credit Card Debt

It was a week of tidying up my apartment. I organized documents (found my social security card), tossed irrelevant papers into recycling (why did I still have my rental agreement from two apartments ago?), and threw out unimportant keepsakes (a mysterious cracked cassette case decorated with sparkles and nail polish.) Plus I got an actual trash can instead of my empty Amazon Prime box and Trader Joe’s bag setup, replaced a dilapidated reading lamp with a sleek LED gooseneck light, and ordered a new iPhone case.

But the real cleaning spree was about my finances. I’ve been taking a piecemeal approach to my bills for the last few months. And more worrisome: to my mounting credit card debt.

Part of the problem is that I’ve stupidly been using a credit card to pay for daily purchases; my debit card chip broke months ago, and I haven’t replaced it because it’s set to autopay on several subscriptions and accounts. I already had to replace my debit card twice last year after it was stolen and later when someone hacked the account. So, I’ve stopped using it for POS purchases. Those daily purchases add up quickly on a credit card. Obviously, it’s much better to monitor and manage your spending by paying as you go from your checking account.

But the main culprit this summer has been my bourgeois travel spending, including buying tickets to the U.S. Open. As a result my balance has taken on a grumpy personality. Not wanting to jeopardize my “Excellent” FICO rating—a satisfying rebuke of my financially wobbly 20s, 30s, and 40s—I made some bold decisions and maneuvers this week wiping out my debt in one fell swoop.

The other financial fix: Prompted by using my iPhone to get on the subway in New York last month [I’m All Lost In, #94, August 2, 2025] I’ve now stopped using the credit card for daily purchases. I’ve started tapping my phone for those POS purchases instead.

3) My Longest Running Obsession

As a precocious 7th grader I read the Washington Post every morning before school. During the weekly current events quiz in Mr. Timberlake’s geography class I was the only kid who raised their hand one February afternoon with the answer to a question about Iran. The answer was Ayotollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the weirdly charismatic reactionary cleric who had just returned from exile. His triumphant homecoming stirred unrest on the streets of Tehran against the fledgling monarchy and provisional government, eventually sparking the Iranian Revolution. And nine months later, on November 4, 1979, the seizure of the U.S. embassy by radical Islamist (and some Marxist) students. It was epic.

I was obsessed with this. The dramatic scenes at the U.S. embassy. The competing revolutionary factions (secular left and religious right). The historic events unfolding in real time. And in my time as opposed to the famous and dominant events of the 1960s and earlier 1970s. What struck me most about this historic inflection point though was that under Khomeini Iran became both ardently anti-U.S. and anti-U.S.S.R. something I found eye opening and oddly cool.

Prompted by a new book about this multifaceted revolution that “belonged as much to students, feminists, merchants, liberals, and industrial workers as to clerics…one could [even] find hippies and Jews,” the 8/11/25 New Yorker ran a must-read think piece this week on the Iranian revolution: Nobody Expected the Iranian Revolution. Not Even the Revolutionaries. A Cascade of Oversights and Accidents.

The New Yorker piece by historian Daniel Immerwahr leads with a lovely discussion about Hegelian dialectics and “consequential contingencies.” Immerwahr asks whether quirky events in the runup to the revolution and the hostage crisis were random drivers of history in of themselves or convenient signs of history’s own inexorable script.

One such quirk: the fact that Khomeini’s original directive to “kick them out” [the radical students who seized the American embassy] was ineptly mishandled by his foreign minister.

Of course, the students were not kicked out. Khomeini embraced them. And the rest is my obsession.

(For the record, I don’t buy Hegel’s concept that history’s “agents” act out preordained events. For example, I firmly believe that my choice to raise my hand in Mr. Timberlake’s geography class rerouted my wide open life.)

P.s. Turn the page at the end of this riveting piece and next there’s a captivating article by the New Yorker’s outstanding poetry critic Dan Chiasson. It’s a review of a new book about eccentric mid-20th-century American poet James Schuyler.

I’m All Lost In, #95: America stays home; Alex Dimitrov goes out; Seattle’s primary election results.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#95

Two things I want to note before I get into this week’s list. First, this off-handed expression I appreciate you. I know it’s not a new phrase. But it’s now ubiquitous as a stand-in for “thank you” or “goodbye.” Or else it’s used to acknowledge your friend’s point during a conversation. Or it can be a casual call out by a service worker after ringing someone up. I noticed the non-stop usage of this vocal cliché during my recent trip to NYC. Like on Saturday night in trendy Brooklyn when a stocky, young finance bro wearing (probably) a Nirvana t-shirt said it. “I appreciate you,” he told the floor manager at L’industrie Pizza who was totally cosplaying the Bear as she re-stocked the TP

Weird times. Everyone dost protest too much. Though I’ll admit: It’s not a terrible refuge and rejoinder to Trump era discourse.

Second, a midyear resolution: Whenever lobbies, cafés, bars, restaurants, rec centers, the gym have free water, drink it. As much as you can. Even if you’re not thirsty.

Onto this week’s obsessions:

1) According to the Data, America is Becoming a Nation of Homebodies

American land use planning has de-prioritized walkable communities; those neighborhoods where you don’t need a car to go out and buy dish soap, go out for a drink, get to the park, access public transit, or peruse a local shop.

Noting that “less than 2 percent of America’s metropolitan areas consist of spaces where people can easily move their bodies and make or maintain social connections,” the Washington Post published a dispiriting essay this week by urbanist Diana Lind laying out the deleterious results:

Americans now spend an average of 99 more minutes at home each day than they did in 2003, while this generation of 15- to 24-year-olds spends 124 more minutes at home than their counterparts two decades ago. Meanwhile, just 30 percent of Americans spent time socializing and communicating in person on an average day, down from 38 percent in 2014, according to the American Time Use Survey.

In addition to bad zoning, Lind’s essay cited a few other factors for this “great retreat” indoors that’s contributing to our fraying social bonds and poor health. She points to: Screen time and online life; out-of-reach housing costs in the exclusive neighborhoods where walk scores are high; online shopping; and the post-pandemic shuttering of “third places,” “from churches to movie theaters.” (This “third place” factor seems like a bit of circular logic to me. Maybe movie theaters are closing because people aren’t going out in the, da dum dum, first place.)

There is one notable quirk in the data here: While model urban neighborhoods are increasingly unaffordable (leading to a boom in the more affordable burbs and exurbs), Lind simultaneously notes that “more educated and affluent Americans spend the most time at home.” Both things can be true. But it certainly lets us know, sorry MAGA, that urbanites aren’t America’s only elitists living in bubbles.

Judging from this week in Seattle, we city slickers with our commercial hubs, human-scale zoning, and public transit are definitely defying the norm and going out. Crowds filling up galleries during Thursday night Art Walk in Pioneer Square. Mobbed midnights on Capitol Hill. Roomfuls of revelers on Primary Election night. South Lake Union buzzing with pedestrians during workweek mornings, lunchtime, and happy hour. I was out and about at all of the above; I got some art on Thursday night at CoCA on 3rd Ave. S between Yesler and Washington (a spur of the moment birthday present from XDX.)

From clubs to parks, from coffeehouses to light rail trains, from shops to grocery stores: it’s all bodies. This was certainly true at the gyro counter at 1st and Washington Thursday night where they happily ceded their tables to the crowds; Med Mix kept the kitchen open late to meet the-line-out-the-door demand as XDX and I, and everyone else orbiting the kitchen, clutched their order numbers and settled in to have playful or serious late-night conversations over falafel, hummus, and lentil soup .

And, unlike the Seattle of 10 to 20 years ago, it’s not all-white crowds.

After Midnight, Capitol Hill, Seattle, Pike St., 8/2/25

First Thursday Art Walk, Pioneer Square, Seattle, 8/7/25

First Thursday Art Walk, Pioneer Square, Seattle, 8/7/25

I’ll say this about the supposedly homogeneous (but actually diverse) urban bubble I live in; I refuse to be lectured on living in a bubble by people who are building a wall and are gleefully dead set on deporting immigrants.

2) Ecstasy by Alex Dimitrov

Another urbanist who’s defying the data and going outside: gay NYC poet Alex Dimitrov.

Dimitrov gets a lot of attention; I read his 2021 book Love and Other Poems a few years ago, and I’m not exactly sure what the big deal is. If you ask me, he’s too on the nose with his Frank O’Hara cadences.

But even as he doesn’t strike me as writing deep poems, Dimitrov’s clipped verse is addictive, exciting, and a joy to read. You can drink it down like a glass of lemonade—or a vodka and lemonade. Dimitrov is a bon vivant. As the cover photo here—a still from Andy Warhol's 1964 movie Blow Job—makes clear, this new collection drops any pretense of being erudite. That’s not to say it’s not smart. Or written by a dedicated smart-aleck: “The last day I was a virgin/I got a speeding ticket.” But chatty Dimitrov is more dedicated to embracing his seven-deadly-sins persona with a manifesto of human sexual agency than with being the next Amanda Gorman.

I was looking to pour some easy yet legit poetry into my head this week and Dimitrov’s short new book hit the spot. I will say, following his example (reading while drinking vodka), I found myself drawn to a 10-poem sequence toward the end of the collection (“Baby,” “Baby, No,” “Ketamine,” “Highway,” “Wednesday,” “Thursday,” “Friday,” “Saturday,” “Sunday,” “Sunset”) that elevates the conversation with sharper lines of inquiry and angst ….

I stared at my phone and I hid in the hallway./I really thought God would be somebody else. —from “Baby, No”

and with better poetry:

I went to Switzerland that winter./The lake was full of birds./The women carried flowers./And God forgot the world./

I know, I know/that even the highest branches/

(even the highest branches will be touched)./

And men are maps of evening./And weather’s all we have./

And only the sky./ —from “Highway”

©2025, Ecstasy by Alex Dimitrov

3) A Progressive Reset on Election Night

I did not see this coming. Seattle’s progressives won big in Tuesday night’s top-two primary.

I thought incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell (a banal mix of I’m-from-here-you’re-not NIMBYism and sports-metaphor governance) was perfectly repping trite white liberal Seattle. Even more perfect for that privileged constituency, Harrell is Black.

I also thought the Mamdani comparisons to Harrell’s progressive challenger, 43-year-old Katie Wilson, were facile. For starters, Wilson is not proposing socialized, public grocery stores. More important, she doesn’t have Mamdani’s easy charisma.

But bam, this week’s numbers do not lie.

What Wilson is…. a thoughtful policy nerd. A dork even. Emerging from years of earnest pro-transit activism as longtime head of the Transit Riders Union and writing some well-researched pro-housing journalism (some for PubliCola), Wilson bested macho charmer Harrell at the polls. After the first night of returns, traditionally the most conservative votes, Wilson was actually winning 46.2 % to 44.8 %. Stunning. By week’s end Wilson was winning by an astonishing 50.1% to 41.7%. (You can listen to ECB analyze the results here.)

Is a seismic change afoot for November? My hope is that Wilson wins and summarily reboots City Hall with a new deep state staffed by the younger generation she represents.

People are quickly making cautionary comparisons to Seattle’s last anti-establishment winner, one-term mayoral shit show, Mike McGinn. That doesn’t track. McGinn was a brash, egotistical dude. Wilson is humble and collaborative.

Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson of (per Socialist Kshama Sawant’s derision) “Liberal Activist Layer” fame.

Meanwhile, the pro-Harrell establishment is confident they can take Wilson out in November by likening her to former city council firebrand, Socialist Kshama Sawant. It could work, but in reality Wilson is a classic reformist liberal not an ideologue. As I posted on Wednesday morning:

Harrell may want to tie Wilson to Sawant (conservatives' only tiresome play these days), but back in 2019, Sawant's camp itself ID'd Wilson as a dreaded "liberal" who was undermining Sawant's Socialist agenda.

An ultimate Wilson win would be a much-needed rebuke of 2021’s conservative, law-and-order backlash that gave us Harrell and reckless conservative council president Sara Nelson.

More good news: Nelson is also losing to a progressive policy brain, the totally charismatic Dionne Foster. Foster, the former ED of the Progressive Alliance of Washington and before that, a young policy staffer at city hall, is beating Nelson 57.89 to 35.77.

Dionne Foster speaks to a crowd of raucous supporters on primary election night, Stoup Brewing, Capitol Hill, 8/5/25

I’ll conclude this week’s installment as I did last week—with a must-watch recommendation. And like last week’s 1949 B-movie, this one is also a YouTube find.

In America’s wonderfully woke heyday between 1969 and 1974 when the 1970s were still the 1960s, ABC aired a prime time show called Room 222, a seriously multiracial high school drama. It doubled as a syllabus of nuanced PSAs about topical taboo subjects such as sex, gender, race, the media, the generation gap, pollution, and most of all, power.

I know I know: the baby boomers didn’t get it. Particularly those naive liberals writing sitcoms. But check this show out and check your conventional Millennial wisdom at the door. This is sophisticated, no-easy-answers stuff. (My favorite episode ever features an examination of corporate lobbyists, the environmental crisis, and compromised newsrooms from the POV of brainy goodie goodie A-student Richie and his cool angry sidekick, Jason.)

Richie (Howard Rice) and Jason (Heshimu Cumbuka) take on the Man in Season 1, Episode 20, January 1970.

This week, I watched two more excellent episodes. One was a feminist primer from 1971 with a guest star turn by pre-American Graffiti Cindy Williams (warning, the raw sexism on display from the high school boys is hard to take.) The other was a show stopper from 1970 starring pre-American Graffiti Richard Dreyfuss. He plays an angry, mouthy high school senior who, thanks to Room 222’s regular squad of groovy young faculty, gets to give the student speech at graduation. As a disgruntled late bloomer, Dreyfuss’ pent up character Stan gives a fiery anti-establishment rant about how high school doesn't teach kids to think. Some bristling older parents try to shut him down, but the always- reasonable and gently sardonic principal Kaufman (Michael Constantine) won’t let them. He urges Dreyfuss to continue.

I’m All Lost In, #94: Tap-and-go; ta-da!; portable magnetic wireless power bank.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#94

1) Tap-and-go (and other Transit Notes)

The MTA is phasing out its iconic yellow fare cards by the end of 2025; no more swiping only to be greeted by an obstinate turnstile. It’s all tap-and-go now: Tap your credit or debit card; use an MTA OMNY card, which you buy at vending machines much like traditional pre-loaded cards ; or easiest of all, tap on with your phone, as I did this past weekend on my excellent NYC visit. There’s also a fare cap: You ride free of charge after 12 taps per week.

Hewes St., Brooklyn, 9:45 pm, 7/26/25

And there’s no fumbling around. You don’t have to open your smart phone wallet first and then double click and hold your card to the reader. All you have to do is touch your phone to it. Shazam. You’re in—to midtown for a movie at the air conditioned MoMa Film Center (Jean Renoir’s ridiculous 1955 flick French Cancan); to Bushwick to see late night comedy at the Tiny Cupboard; or leaving town from Delancey St. and Bowery on the J Train to Sutphin Boulevard where you catch the AirTrain to JFK.

And here’s another note on transit system innovations from my travels back East last week; this one from WMTA, the DC Metro:

On my train ride to the northwest Maryland suburbs for my visit with Mom, I was bemused that during the first leg of the commute on the Silver Line from Dulles, the announcer kept saying: “This is a Silver Line Train to New Carrollton.” New Carrollton is not a stop on the Silver Line. It’s at the end of the Orange Line.

Stare as I did at the map on board the train, which showed that while the Silver Line runs parallel to the Orange Line (“interlining”) through the city, it does not continue to do so in the suburbs out to New Carrollton. Rather, it showed, as I thought, the Silver Line staying course through to Downtown Largo, its own suburban terminus to the south of New Carrollton. None of this was relevant to my trip, I was changing trains at Metro Center and taking the Red Line Northwest to the NIH station. But still. I was curious and flummoxed. Was there a shuttle at Largo that went north to New Carrollton? How did this work?

When I alighted at Metro Center, I saw an updated Metro map. And indeed, indicating a seamless change up with a hatched line, it showed that every other Silver Line train split to the northeast onto New Carrollton as the train made its way into Maryland. This type of heads up routing—based on things such as where the train yards and turnarounds are (New Carrollton) and transit hub efficiency (go to slide 12 here to understand the smart overall frequency benefits)—demonstrate the kind of nimble and simple construction-free changes you can make to fixed-right-of-way subway infrastructure (as opposed to highway infrastructure for cars) that improve commutes for more people proportionally speaking.

As I texted my Sound Transit workmate Eliza upon this discovery: “Cool. Silver Line doesn’t merely interline w/ Orange; it has two different termini. Every other Silver Line train takes you to New Carrollton (trad Orange Line only) without a transfer.

One last transit planning win I noticed this week. Hitting NYC for the weekend after my stay in DC, I sent Eliza this picture from Manhattan showing a subway stop at W. 4th St. embedded in the entrance of an Uzbeki grocery store.

I captioned it: “Fantastic TOD.”

“Be Still my heart,” my transit bestie Eliza wrote back when I sent over this pic of Transit Oriented Development perfection from the West Village in Manhattan. 7/26/25, NYC

2) ta-da! at the Greenwich House Theater

ECB is an expert at finding plays for us to see whenever we’re in NYC; not the easy-to-scout-out Broadway shows, but sneaky gems playing in the Village. On ECB’s prescient recommendation during last year’s trip together, we saw the Tony-award-winning Broadway hit “Oh, Mary!” long before it took center stage. Theater Cred: We saw it back in March, 2024 in the West Village at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher St. We had front row seats.

This week, just a few blocks away from the Lortel, we saw a show called ta-da! at the Greenwich House Theatre on Barrow St. 5th row.

ta-da! at the Greenwich House Theatre in the West Village, 7/26/25

.Like the madcap Oh, Mary! this was an amphetamine-tempoed comedy showcasing a self-deprecating gay guy. Unlike Oh, Mary!’s ensemble-cast madness though, this was a one-man show—an 80-minute monologue delivered by a lanky muppet-like actor/writer named Josh Sharp. Occasionally slowing things down with his brainy former-SAT tutor chops to explain how things like parallel universes work, Sharp otherwise performs the piece as a Ted Talk on Benzedrine, chasing a wordy PowerPoint that spits out jokey amended commentary on the script. This smart aleck slide deck plays the role of traditional Greek chorus standing in as Sharp’s candid alter ego.

It’s an I-laughed-I-cried (though, mostly laughed) stand-up routine about Sharp’s belabored coming out journey. He didn’t come out until he was 22 when his still-young, once-vibrant mom is dying from a rare form of cancer.

One side-splitting bit from this bittersweet coming-of-age story features Sharp, who grew up in the closet in the rural south, recasting a hayseed bro’s drawling boast about “wrestling parties” where the ladies “lift they skirts and show you they pussies.” Hilariously, Sharp turns the boorish rap into a thespian poetry reading (in iambic pentameter). He caps this absurd sample by leading the mostly gay male crowd in an audience-participation read along.

Unbeknownst to ECB and me, ta-da! was directed by Sam Pinkleton, the same guy who directed Oh, Mary!

We got to town right on time. Here’s the 7/22/25 NYT review. ECB was tipped, though, by a fairly unclear 7/25/25 New Yorker review.

But all my comparison’s to Oh, Mary! are misleading. Where that show charged along without dynamic variety, Sharp adheres to the competing drama masks. He gives us both play and poignance, nonsense and nuance.

3) My New Wireless Portable Phone Charger

As I write this, it’s petering out on the table at the coffee shop. But still. The portable Belkin magnetic wireless phone charger I bought in the throes of my latest bout with an Apple iPhone that refuses to connect to the cable cord and take a charge, is a revelation.

After getting the scripted empathy at the SoHo Apple Store from a salesperson (I’m not blaming you) about maybe a mutant dust bunny in the charging port or a possibly fraying cord—thanks for acknowledging how shoddy your products are— I charmed my way around scheduling a dreaded appointment at the Genius Bar and fast forwarded the process.

Why don’t you first try the portable charger to see if the problem is the cord ? a young salesperson asked me standing her guard position atop the escalator (where I’d been sent by the first nice salesperson).

You have portable wireless chargers?, I asked glimpsing a table off to her left dappled with wireless portables—and also glimpsing my light at the end of this tunnel.

No less than five minutes later, I was back out on Prince St., early on a Friday evening, with this elegant best-thing-since-sliced-bread fix tucked away in my Apple bag.

Death to phone charging cords.

It packs two 100% charges-worth of power once it’s all filled up itself; which admittedly, you have to do with a charging cord.

And I do have some complaints. “Magnetic” is an overstatement. It’s never evident if you’ve securely locked the phone in position to receive a charge; you have to blindly suss this out without ever feeling the phone click into place. Furthermore, when the phone is actually in position, you have to or don’t have to? press the power button to start charging; it’s hard to tell because, again, it’s never clear if the phone is in the proper position. Additionally, there’s enough awkward delay time between getting the phone into place and getting some sort of sign that the phone is actually charging, that you often assume it’s not and are inclined to keep nudging it around the slippery block. Shall I continue? The sometimes satisfying oversized charging icon that appears as a green circle on the face of your phone to display the battery’s charged percentage, comes on or doesn’t without rhyme or reason; often it doesn’t appear even if the phone is in fact being charged. In this instance, it half-heartedly sometimes says “charging” in small print at the top of your phone.

I’m impatient. I’m a Gen Xer. Which certainly explains some of my maybe-user-error disappointments. But I’m all in anyway. This $60 solution to the predictable and interminable erratic life of Apple’s shitty charging cables rates right up there with the charm of using your phone to tap-and-go on the subway.

My watch recommendation of the week: a 1949 B-movie classic, Side Street.

Lastly, this week’s movie recommendation: 1949’s Side Street, a noir B-movie starring Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell. I came across this enchanting number because when I got back to Seattle this week, I couldn’t let go of my trip to the Big Apple. You see, this tell-tale heart, cat-and-mouse police procedural starring a tripped-up working class hero and his benevolent loving wife, a crooked lawyer and his cold-blooded henchman, a no-nonsense detective and $30,000 gone missing, a sad lounge singer and a compromised Upper East Side financier, plus lots of bartenders, decoys, and dead bodies, was filmed on location in NYC. Check out one fan’s obsessed blog post that maps out the whole thing with screen shots from the 1949 film that morph into the present day sites of the locations. One of the locations is the same as it was in 1949, a bar called Marie’s Crisis. During our trip, ECB and I actually went to Marie’s Crisis. We didn’t know anything about Side Street at the time. We went because the place is evidently a historic Stonewall-adjacent queer piano lounge. (I could have done without the pianist’s baby boom pedagogy on the night we settled in there, though.) I figured out the Side Street connection after the fact when I was googling Marie’s Crisis and the entry mentioned that it shows up in this old movie. That was my cue to search out Side Street on YouTube. The bar shows up the film’s stand-out scene. It’s when the aforementioned forlorn lounge singer traps our working class hero into his final misstep.

I’m All Lost In, #93: IAD at 6 am; heroic water misters; Reagan fashion revival.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#93

1) Dulles International Airport

Dulles Airport, 6:15 am, 7/21/25

For me, airports symbolize melodrama. I’ve long longed for that great airport moment, a tender goodbye (like the “far freakin’ out” moment between Peter Parker and Mary Jane in Amazing Spider-Man #143) or a joyful hello. Kinda had one with XDX picking her up from Beijing last summer. And did I have one last week at the Sea-Tac light rail parking lot?

It’s 2001’s Dr. Heywood Floyd on his layover at Space Station 5 en route to investigate Clavius Base. It’s Case in Neuromancer en route from Istanbul to the Villa Straylight on Freeside. I wanted to have it in 1989 picking up my then-ex on her way back from England. No luck. I witnessed my mom’s tears when we dropped her dad off after his sweet visit, probably his last, from Israel in the mid-1980s. There was the time a high school pal picked me up after my first semester back from college. I never really had one with my parents, and only really remember the time when they were getting old and increasingly confused and couldn’t find me at the arrivals gate.

I wax about my airport longings in plenty of my poems. Here are excerpts from a few…

…I flew to an airport made of parks/    

and ponds and hiked to the stargazing area. 

•••

“When the line to the airport opens, it will be the end/

for multiple routes being discontinued.”/

At this very airport, decades ago,/

I knew possibility for the only time when/

a school friend met me at the arrivals gate holding/

a courteously wrapped gift./  

I now know possibility is another word for psychopomp

•••

7) After the airport, at home, we throw our coats/

      over the chairs and stand in the kitchen/

      under fluorescent lights before sitting down at the table

•••

Go to the airport without any explanation

•••

the magnitude of airplane wheels retracting >/

 > pavement irrelevant.

•••

Wayfinding: JFK Airport to Diana’s sister’s apartment

Descend into New York’s ascendant skyline > AirTrain > the 8th Avenue Express toward Ozone Park > Hoyt-Schermerhorn > it’s late > exit at 59th > step toward the river > the hospital > the high school of sky hooks > to the food truck at the corner of 60th & Columbus > eat dinner on wiseacre infrastructure > Home (the apartment is your younger sister’s) where there’s a cache of date cookies > stay awake on the couch watching the History Channel > Cyrus the Great captured Babylon in 539 BC > an open city > he preserved its ziggurats.

All of this to say, I love Dulles International Airport. I landed there at 5:40 on Monday morning after a red-eye from Seattle; I visited my elderly mom in suburban Maryland this week. It may just be that the airport is relatively empty at that tranquil hour, but the clear signage, logical layout, hushed walkways, mellow lighting, effortless trajectory to the baggage claim, and seamless subway connection are IBM-immaculate mid-1960s-mod and 22nd century cybernetic aesthetics all at once.

Dulles Airport, 6:20 am, 7/21/25

Dulles Airport Metro station, 6:35 am, 7/21/25

2) Cooling Down at Mubadala Citi DC

I took advantage of my week in DC (suburban Maryland) to trek into Rock Creek Park on Thursday for a day’s worth of pro-tennis action at the Mubadala Citi DC Open (pronounced moo-BOTtle-lah as opposed Moo-BAH-DAH-LAH as the Slavic tennis star ladies pronounce it on Instagram and TikTok.) It’s only a 500-level tournament. So, while most of the big names were not competing, there were a few Top 10 players and a crew of exciting challengers on hand. At a county-fair-sized tournament like this, I was able to get up close. So close that I could see the beads of sweat falling off No. 36 Leylah Fernandez’s face onto the court as she aced World No. 4 Jessica Pegula on her way to major upset in the 90 degree DC heat.

Leylah Fernandez at the Mubadala Citi DC Open, 7/24/25

Tennis legend Venus Williams, Mubadala Citi DC Open, 7/24/25

However, this item isn’t about my endless obsession with the WTA. It’s about the 90-degree heat and the heroic industrial-sized water misters that tournament organizers strategically placed at every nook of the outdoor complex. Nirvana for overheated spectators suffering in the blaring, simultaneously crisp and muggy sunshine.

Gaggles of enervated tournament-goers huddled around these hydro Shangri-las, entranced human bodies going immediately limp in euphoria as the palm-frond-sized fan blades whirred with mechanical grace. Coupled with a blue razz lime icee, misters are a source of earthly bliss I hadn’t previously pondered nor given their due.

3) Reagan Fashion Reboot

Speaking of tennis, I’m seeing women wearing tennis dresses everywhere in NYC. Apologies to my New York friends for not saying hello, but after spending time in DC with Mom, I took Amtrak up to Manhattan for a quick, personal getaway weekend. One fashion observation from this trend-setting capital of the sartorial: The same staid style that ruined the 1980s—think women’s high-waisted stone-washed jeans—is back. It’s not high-waisted jeans specifically; I haven’t seen many of those. But an athletic, clean cut, country club look has taken hold.

I can only surmise that just as boring aesthetics accompanied the reactionary Reagan era, the MAGA backlash against anything that hints of counterculture has similarly given way to a homogeneous retrofit. It’s characterized by pleated tennis skirts, activewear sets in neutral colors, tiny floral prints, and ironed polo shirts.

I’m All Lost In, #92: New Woody Guthrie songs; buildings > trees!; and beta blockers.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#92

1) New Woody Guthrie

I haven’t heard these new 1951 songs yet—they’re coming out on August 14th according to an exciting NYT article. But this seems like the space time continuum handing out some beautiful and historical comeuppance.

Given that Guthrie already pinned the tail on the donkey in the early 1940s with his anti-fascist folk song “Lindbergh,” a perfect exposé of the first America First movement, this new find isn’t entirely surprising.

Wait for it:

The 13 new songs, previously known only as written lyrics, underline the variety of Guthrie’s songwriting. One standout is “Backdoor Bum and the Big Landlord,” a parable about two characters trekking toward heaven. The bum has practical skills — building a fire, cooking a stew — while the landlord weighs himself down with gold, expecting to buy his way into salvation. In a Woody Guthrie song, that doesn’t happen.

(Guthrie’s landlord at Beach Haven was Fred Trump, the president’s father. Guthrie [also] wrote a song, “Old Man Trump,” denouncing him for segregation. )

2) Tall Buildings are Cool

Thanks to my pal Glenn for pointing me to this opinion piece.

File it under the most contrarian essay ever written.

Buildings > trees this article argues, positing that as our environmental crisis accelerates, the public needs to see tall buildings and their “shadows as a form of urban cooling.”

Outlining the stunted trajectory of urban planning that has stigmatized tall buildings, this piece pushes back against the conventional wisdom that open space dappled with trees is the only and best deterrent to climate change.

Although New York and other American cities badly need more shady spaces like this, it’s far too difficult to create them. Planning codes discourage new high-rises in many neighborhoods, and urban designers claim their thousand-foot shadows make the open spaces around them less inviting. But the opposite is true on extremely hot days: The monolithic shade of buildings can actually enhance parks, playgrounds and plazas by cooling them down. As extreme heat becomes more common, urban dwellers need to relinquish their bias against daytime darkness and embrace the shadows.

While the nervous author does too much editorial hiccupping and hemming and hawing to reiterate the favored urban planning tenet that trees are awesome and that new development is problematic, he nonetheless offers a startling rejoinder.

When the air temperature is about 95 degrees and the humidity is around 60 percent, a sunny park is dangerous for healthy older adults, according to an international team of heat experts.

The essay concludes with an anecdote about finding shade under a gigantic building.

In the long run, the public needs to get over its fear of more permanent shadows. ….

In fact, that exact dynamic is playing out right now near Lands End II, the building complex that created the oasis for my son and me — in the form of four new skyscrapers, ranging from 62 to 80 stories tall, that would loom over the older towers. It’s not hard to imagine how those glassy, mostly market-rate developments could spur higher costs that could displace long-term residents. Some have already sued, many times, to stop them. But on a sweltering summer afternoon, as I pass by empty basketball and handball courts and abandoned playground slides, I can also imagine how their sweeping shadows could be an improvement.

3) Beta Blocker Dust

These light green pills have made my list before [I’m All Lost In #36, June 21, 2024]. God bless beta blockers.

The scientific concept at play in these anti-anxiety meds (or the magic) is this: As opposed to the more common mood regulating SSRI medications that literally meddle with your brain chemistry, beta blockers (Propranolol is the brand I use) reverse the physical symptoms of anxiety such as a racing heart. By slowing down your pulmonary system, beta blockers trick your brain into thinking you’re not anxious. And Shazam, you’re not.

Thanks to a generous scrip, I’ve been popping Propranolol sporadically over the past two years whenever I feel an anxiety attack coming on. To my joy, it works every time: The basketball in my throat and the weight in my chest simply vanish. I wish I’d learned about this medication when I was younger; I’d always thought I was just stuck with the high-pitched feeling roiling my chest.

Propranolol is now making it’s second official appearance on my obsessions list because “sporadic” is no longer the word I’d use to describe my self-care regime; it’s been a week.

In addition to my daily attempt at crisis containment these days, my dosage has inadvertently increased for another reason as well: Ever since my friendly doctor first prescribed me beta blockers back in late 2023, I’ve been carrying a bottle in my backpack wherever I go. My supply has since been jostled around to the point that most of the cache has been reduced to green powder. Using teaspoons and liberal guesswork, I’ve ended up binging on the stuff like it’s cocaine, licking the dusty extra debris off my finger tips.

I’m All Lost In, #91: Zheng Xiaoqiong, “Migrant Worker Poet;” April Wheeler, nebulous force; Aryna Sabalenka,“She now finds herself in a curious position.”

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#91

1) Zheng Xiaoqiong

“Zheng Xiaoqiong’s poetry is about global capitalism and income disparity, geopolitics, feminism, wage discrimination, and workers’ rights.” —from translator Eleanor Goodman’s intro to Xiaoqiong’s collection In the Roar of the Machine.

As a weepy white liberal, I’m politically sympathetic to Zheng Xiaoqiong’s proletarian poetry. But I do want her to write more fanciful lines like these: “That hungry machine, every day eating iron, blueprints/stars, dew, salty sweat, it picks its teeth/and spits out profit, bank notes, nightclubs…it sees/” —from Zheng Xiaoqiong’s 2006 poem “Machine” …

and humanist metaphors like this:

“My body contains a vast open plain, a train/is travelling across it, but autumn is in its deep/suffering twilight, and I follow the train’s/meandering path, planting a thousand hawthorn trees in the/wilderness/ … sparse unconvincing shadows/move with the train, one tree, two trees… it stops on the/grey indistinct plain/I say to the trees, this is my friend, my dear one” —from Zheng Xiaoqiong’s 2006 poem “Train”

These are standout verses from the otherwise (a bit too) straightforward and literal protest poetry of Xiaoqiong; she’s a contemporary Chinese poet who’s been dubbed “the migrant worker poet” and who writes immersively about sweating factory floor laborers, global capitalism, her employee badge number, and industrial machinery.

Slumping through the shelves at Elliott Bay Books on Thursday after work—an evening of whiskeys that eventually flowed into my midnight decision to call in sick on Friday—I was about to leave the store without a new book in hand. Fortuitously, I gravitated back to the poetry section one last time. Xiaoqiong’s 2022 survey collection In the Roar of the Machine (published by the elderly and precocious New York Review of Books) stopped me in my tracks. The title itself and a glance at the opening poem, “Life” (“What you don’t know is that my name has been hidden by/ an employee ID/my hands become part of the assembly line, my body/signed over/to a contract, my black hair is turning white, …”) melded with my epiphany for a much needed, self-imposed three-day weekend.

Xiaoqiong’s unencumbered candor about workstations, underarm odor, toil, assembly lines, and “these fragile hearts” didn’t only seem germane to my myopic bad mood, but it also resounded with the week’s bigger picture: Trump’s recent legislative attack on Medicare and crass sop to corporatists.

I’ve since read the entire first sequence in Xiaoqiong’s In the Roar of the Machine , “Huangling” (named after an ancient Chinese village turned “Industrial Zone” for the “floating workforce”), and I’m eagerly onto the subsequent sequences: “Poems Scattered on Machines,” “Woman Worker,” “Rose Courtyard,” and “Finale.”

God bless finales. I can’t wait.

2) Richard Yates’ 1961 Novel, Revolutionary Road (and the 2008 movie version.)

Kate Winslet as April Wheeler in the faithful film adaptation of Yates’ excellent American novel.

More Sylvia Plath than John Cheever (that is, more psychological than theatrical, more drama than drawing room, and more candid than clipped), this mid-20th century domestic tour de force hits all those pull-the-curtain-back-on-white suburbia delights: abortion, infidelity, mental illness, muddling alcoholism, meddling neighbors, and commuter capitalism.

Yates’ knack for conjuring symbolism from the picayune details of marriage, his ear for mastering the desperate internal monologues of flawed strivers, and his skill at crafting fraught backstories that are on a collision course with the future all give Revolutionary Road the weight of “the great American novel.'“ Yates is also a wicked good storyteller, which leavens the hefty themes with a page-turning fever.

Most important, though, Yates has given us a character for the ages: April Wheeler, a nascent feminist and nebulous force whose imprecise daydreams snare those around her in their own delusions. And ultimately, in a collective tragedy.

April Wheeler is perfectly rendered by Kate Winslet in Sam Mendes’ 2008 movie version; after devouring the novel at the top of the week, I had to watch the movie on Friday night. In this faithful film adaptation, Winslet distills what’s ubiquitous in the pages of Yates’ 1961 novel, but isn’t at the fore until we see Winslet’s eerie countenance: whether she’s doing dishes, having cocktails, or inducing an abortion, her demeanor is one of constant disassociation.

One thing that distinguishes Yates’ reflection on the emptiness of monoculture circa mid-20th century America from similar literature such as Cheever’s short stories is that April Wheeler and her clever but merely along-for-the-ride husband Frank aren’t in the process of awakening to the confines of their oppression. They’re onto the American ruse from page one. This is a novel of neither sudden desperation nor liberation, but of dispirited yearning for what’s next.

After easily seducing Shep Campbell, the salt-of-the-earth husband half of the neighborhood couple who serve as the Wheeler’s default besties, April dismisses him in her ongoing state of remove, foreshadowing her inexorable fate.

There was just enough light to show him where her face was, not enough for him to see its expression or even to tell whether it had any expression at all.

“It’s not that. Honestly. It’s just that I don’t know who you are.”

There was a silence. “Don’t talk riddles,” he whispered.

“I’m not. I really don’t know who you are.”

If he couldn’t see her face, at least he could touch it. He did so with a blind man’s delicacy, drawing his fingertips from her temple down into the hollow of her cheek.

“And even if I did,” she said, “I’m afraid it wouldn’t help, because you see I don’t know who I am, either.”

This scene takes place in a parking lot in the back of Shep’s car after the two couples spend an evening drinking and dancing at Vito’s Log Cabin on Route 12, a cheesy jazz club for the masses located off a lonely exurban highway exit. Yates’ literary powers are on full display inside Vito’s, particularly in the chapter’s seemingly desultory opening paragraphs where Yates puts the reader in the mind of another downcast dreamer, a long thwarted and frustrated middle-aged bandleader, the perfectly named Steve Kovick. Kovick’s stumbling career (he peaked 20 years earlier with a Gene Krupa-induced high school performance) seems a concise abstract of the novel’s obsessions with personal disappointment. “He would never play that well again.” There’s also a bittersweet resonance when Kovick’s out-of-date love for swing-era Benny Goodman jazz stirs April’s memories of her lonely teenage years. This moment, which prompts April to ask Shep to dance and then impulsively seduce him, was one of the few joyous moments in the novel.

Mendes gives this scene its due screen time with a dance scene where Winslet’s April Wheeler is more present in life than at any other moment in the film.

3) Sabalenka at Wimbledon (and Swiatek)

“She now finds herself in a curious position. Her consistency at majors—11 semifinal-or-better finishes at her past 12—is remarkable. But her record when things get tight in those late stages is unspooling. She is now 3-9 in deciding sets of semifinals and finals at the Grand Slams.”

So wrote NYT/Athletic tennis beat reporter Matthew Futterman after my tennis hero Aryna Sabalenka went down on Thursday morning 4-6, 6-4, 4-6 in a two-and-half hour Wimbledon semifinal thriller against ascendant American Amanda Anisimova (ranked No. 13).

Nothing curious about it if you ask me. Sabalenka’s Charlie Brown clouds have been apparent from the first time I watched her on television (the 2023 U.S. Open).

To be fair, the folding-under-pressure rap isn’t quite accurate. Sabalenka has won her last 14 tiebreakers in a row. And she did overcome the “dark arts” of trickster Laura Siegmund (No. 102) in a wild Wimbledon quarterfinal match; I woke up at 6 am on Tuesday morning before work to tune in. But her predictable flame outs at Grand Slams are adding up. Despite a stellar year to date (securely World No. 1 by 3,700 points, and the first player on tour to already lock a spot at the elite year-end WTA finals), Aryna Sabalenka has flopped on the big stage again. Here’s her post-match press conference where she jokes “Are you guys waiting for something? You’re not going to see a ‘Roland-Garros press conference’” —a reference to last month’s meltdown at the microphone.

Maybe it was a good thing Sabalenka didn’t make the final. Poland’s Iga Swiatek, the previous World No. 1, who has mysteriously plummeted during her own lackluster year, returned to her phenomenal early-2024 form just in time for this Wimbledon fortnight. She barrelled through the tournament without dropping a set on her way to an emphatic 6-0, 6-0 final win over Anisimova on Saturday.

Iga also won over hearts this week in her on-court interview after a third-round 6-2, 6-3 win against Danielle Collins (yay, can’t stand Collins) when she revealed that her favorite dish was pasta with strawberries and yogurt.

Iga Swiatek talks about pasta and strawberries at Wimbledon, 7/5/25

I’m All Lost In, #90: A speakeasy on Olive Way; repurposing obstruction into construction; a secret ice cream shop.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#90

Of course, I’m obsessing over the fact that the president of the United States blithely used a cancerous anti-Jewish slur at his Des Moines, Iowa rally this week as he celebrated his depraved signature legislation; the bill kicks 11 million people off Medicaid while adding billions of dollars to Trump’s deportation crusade. Channeling his KKK worldview, Trump told the MAGA faithful that they wouldn’t have to worry about “Shylocks” anymore. In addition to spouting such incendiary hate spittle, Trump is being duplicitous. It’s sociopathic and obnoxious to portray pro-oligarchy legislation (that will cost the poorest Americans $1,600 a year, save the wealthiest Americans $12,000 a year, hand out tax breaks to big business, and attack social programs such as SNAP aid for food) as if it’s a populist affront against those supposedly evil Jews. Sigh, the convoluted rhetoric fronting Trump’s classic Republican agenda (anti-poor, pro-big business, and hyper militarized) made this a July 4 of despair.

I toasted the limping holiday at one of my favorite hangouts on the Drag where I talked to a Korean fellow who said he regretted his decision to swap his Korean citizenship for U.S. citizenship; he no longer felt safe or welcome in America, he told me as we cheers-ed over vodka sodas and lime.

Earlier in the day, I indulged another personal “of course.” I watched Aryna Sabalenka’s third-round Wimbledon match against surging London hope Emma Raducanu. It was a thriller; Saby eventually won the two-hour match 7-6(8-6), 6-4 after being behind 2-4 in the first set and 1-4 (!) in the second as she defied Week 1’s big story line: Upstarts ousting top seeds. Saby is the only Top-5 seed left as we head into Wimbledon Week 2, affirming my contention (and the data) that she’s the most consistent player on the 2025 tour.

Onto this week official items, including two recommendations:

1) A Speakeasy on Olive Way
They had me at warm hand towels.

I’ve walked past this place a million times: the nondescript, storefront on Olive Way’s otherwise electric commercial strip at the western edge of Capitol Hill. I’d assumed from the anonymous facade and drawn curtains that it was a defunct business.

The Doctor’s Office, 7/3/25

It’s actually a popular local speakeasy called the Doctor’s Office, a refined yet unpretentious slip of a room (“Maximum Occupancy 17”) that serves lovingly prepared cocktails such as their crisp Suntory whisky Toki highball poured over a rectangular obelisk of ice.

Hard wood flooring and latticed panels frame this cozy room with its slight set of corner tables and cushioned bench seating nestled tightly up against a handful of spots at the bar, which runs along the entire facing wall.

The Doctor’s Office prescribes a Valium setting, an oasis of romance and peace percolating right under the nose of the cavorting throngs outside. The close quarters prompt a pacific intimacy where each tipsy pair can laugh and flirt, exchange life stories, and make pinky swear oaths unbeknownst to the smattering of other pairs doing the same as they sit mere feet away.

This past Thursday night, on the cusp of a three-day weekend, the male/female duo running the place was friendly and attentive while understanding the assignment: Bartending with gentle and unobtrusive aplomb.

They started things off by presenting the aforementioned warmed hand towels with complimentary glasses of champagne.

In contrast to the clandestine, Saigon ‘63 Graham Greene aesthetic of the cocktail lounge, the magically capacious bathroom is bright and playful. I note the loo, which features a bidet, because it distills the common denominator at play here: It’s as if a thoughtful Airbnb host attends to this charmed Seattle nightspot.

The Doctor’s Office is open to walk-ins, but I’d recommend making reservations.

2) A Hack for Housing

Single family zone protectionists are so put upon by any smidgen of additional housing in their neighborhoods, especially rental housing, that they’ll even fight mild density like mother-in-law apartments; I’ve been reporting on this parochial resistance for decades.

So, I wish Erica and I had gotten this latest installment in which housing naysayers get their comeuppance; three cheers to Seattle’s NYT stringer for following the issue so closely.

And more so, three cheers to Seattle developers for devising an elegant hack to a monkey-wrenching amendment that had undermined some 2019 pro-housing legislation. The original yes-in-my backyard city council bill dared to increase the number of mother-in-law units allowed in traditional single family zones from one to two. Conservative neighborhood groups pushed for a change requiring that one of the two units had to be attached to the main house, a ploy to limit the opportunity for more development. Housing advocates, however, turned the rule into an architectural prompt for creating new “three-pack” housing compounds where multifamily developments are strung together by skybridges.

The NYT reports on how ingenious developers repurposed the NIMBY obstruction into housing construction:

In that political environment, allowing for two detached A.D.U.s would have been a step too far, said Nicolas Welch, a senior planner at the City Office of Planning and Community Development. Enter the skybridge. Some housing experts call them umbilical cords.

Under the building code, any enclosed structure wider than five feet can qualify as an attachment — “leaving room for interpretation,” Mr. Welch said.

“You write something down and it gets used in some creative ways that weren’t anticipated,” he added.

The 3-pack is a product of that flexibility. Developers have formed these A.D.U. compounds as three-unit condo associations, charging a nominal homeowner association fee (often $10 or less) to cover the filings.

3) An Ice Cream Secret
”July 4 is the ice cream holiday.”

This bit of summer wisdom relayed to me in the checkout line at the convenience store persuaded me to seek out an ice cream shoppe ice cream cone.

To avoid the long summer lines at the popular ice cream places in my neighborhood such as Molly Moon’s, Salt & Straw, or Frankie & Jo’s, there’s a small wonder tucked away in the urbanist cluster at 11th Avenue’s Chophouse Row: Sweet Alchemy.

Partnering with local organic farms to champion eco-conscious treat making, the shop comes with laudable spiels about “producing small batch, organic, and locally sourced ice cream… [to] craft our Sweet Cream base daily from organic ingredients…”

That’s cool. But more relevant is that on two recent visits to this small, casual specialty shop—which feels more like a farmer’s market stall than an actual storefront—I’ve scored some malty delicious vegan flavors scooped into sugary, non-vegan waffle cones.

On my July 4 visit, I got a delightful scoop of mocha.

I’m All Lost In, #89: Yiddish Techno in Wallingford; Mary Tyler Moore in 1980; “Eastern” dyads in the Key of C.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#89

1) Yiddish Techno

Manhattan-based Yiddish revivalist Chaia, an ambient musician (and low-key EDM aspirant) who infuses her hypnotic beats, loops, and chanteuse-like prayers with the plaintive sounds of the shtetl, brought her “Kleztronic Yiddish Techno” to the Good Shepherd Center’s experimental Wayward Music Series on Thursday night. Thanks to XDX for the find. And as if this wasn’t already the perfect night of Josh Feit catnip, there was a pro-transit pop tune included in the evening’s mix as well.

Curated as a night that “re-imagines the Yiddish song tradition,” Chaia’s program also featured an improvisational closing set from legendary local avant-garde cellist, Lori Goldston, and an earnest opening set by Seattle-based Levoneh, a gentle folk pop group—bright electric guitar, stand-up bass, trumpet, clarinet, piano, and sad harmonies. They kind of reminded me of my own yearning, Galaxie 500-as-chamber-group rock band from my lost mid 20s, the Diary of Anne Frank String Quartet (true.)

Chaia started things off by giving a captivating talk on Eastern Europe’s pre-Holocaust Jewish ghetto culture with its Yiddish vernacular of dance, dress, humor, argot, and resistance. This brief history lesson concluded with her near-poetic manifesto about how she wanted to honor her ancestors’ diaspora folklore by remixing it, “scattering it and then walking forward into it.” As she said this, I imagined Chaia tossing rice and confetti into the air at a Polish Jewish wedding and then ambling into the gentle diaspora of debris as it rained down upon her.

Her showstopping set itself flowed from the melancholy Klezmer accordion melodies she played live over pre-programmed electronic signals before ascending into her layered sound design of haftara crooning, psilocybin sine waves, samples of mourning bubbes, and four-on-the-floor dance club rhythms, all as she conducted from the mixing board.

I could have done without Levoneh’s requisite “stolen land” number (political lecture), but their “Free Bus Fare” Robert Zimmerman as Woody Guthrie-style rambler was a delight. As was their closing love song to the moon. And Goldston’s buzzing, free-form performance, particularly when she started rough housing the cello as if she were Parliament-Funkadelic bassist Bootsy Collins circa 1975, was yet another one of her at-ease, improvised masterpieces.

Chaia, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, 6/26/25

Lori Goldston, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, 6/26/25

Levoneh, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, 2/26/25

Chaia, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, 6/26/25

Since we were at Wallingford’s Good Shepherd Center—the hippie nonprofit haven is tucked away on a leafy neighborhood side street off the main drag—XDX and I had dinner before the show at Pam’s Kitchen, Seattle’s longtime Trinidadian comfort food spot. Apparently, Thursday night is karaoke night at Pam’s. So in addition to the sweet and thick pumpkin purée, stewed potatoes, coconut fry bread, and basketful of soft beach blanket-sized roti, we were treated to a goofy hit parade of live performances (John Sebastian’s Welcome Back Kotter theme song and Grace Slick’s “White Rabbit” included) as the dedicated regulars cued up at the mic.

2) Ordinary People

When Valium Tom walked into the apartment, he found me with my headphones on, tearing up on the couch. I was watching the 1981 Best Picture Academy Award winner, Ordinary People (1980). I did not see this movie in junior high school when it first came out, but I was well aware of it back then: Mary Tyler Moore in a serious role.

Tom was on hand because he was guest starring in the 5th episode of a podcast I do with ECB, a monthly show dedicated exclusively to our favorite movie, Shattered Glass. Tom was with ECB and me back in 2003 when we first saw Shattered Glass in the theater. And this was enough of a hook to have him on the show so we could tap his brain power as a means of getting another episode recorded.

Tom warned us in advance that he had an “Ordinary People theory” about Shattered Glass, so, I was prepping with some research. Excellent. Not only can Tom and I go on about Hollywood’s arty, gritty, 1970s heyday—of which Ordinary People fits dramatically into the fleeting last moments alongside Kramer vs. Kramer and 9 to 5. But Billy Ray, the Shattered Glass writer-director that ECB and I interviewed for last month’s installment, cited Ordinary People as one of his favorite movies.

Valium Tom’s theory had to do with the wealthy Chicago suburb Highland Park where Shattered Glass’ tortured main character Stephen Glass hails from and where Ordinary People (or perhaps, Ordinary White People) takes place. All good. But damn if the only thing I could think about for the next several days was Ordinary People.

Oh so many feelings about this late 1970s gloom, which is based on the reportedly grim 1976 Judith Guest novel.

Sure, MTM’s lead character leans hard into sexist tropes about icy, brittle women as the root of all psychological trauma in the world. But the super villain Moore created with her poisonous cadence and scary monologues is so powerful—sorry, Mom—we’ve got a universal tragic character study here of Shakespearean proportions. Also. Timothy Hutton. At 20. Wow. Best Supporting Actor Oscar. 100% deserved.

I think mostly it’s the dizzying layers of personal nostalgia that had me riveted (and teary on the couch). First, there was remembering the stir that this candid movie created 45 years ago in my suburban school hallways. On top of that, there was watching 45-years-ago high school hallways depicted in a 45-year-old film itself. Experiencing an after-the-fact meta narrative like this left me stumbling through my own hall of mirrors.

Oh, and a bizarre footnote: The IRL actor who played Buck, the Timothy Hutton character’s dead brother, was actually my roommate for a few minutes in 1990 during what seems to be a theme in this post—my lost mid-20s. Scot and I weren’t friends; just random co-losers in a crummy apartment we shared with another stranger in freezing cold Minneapolis. I’ll never forget the time Scot barged into my room one night at 3 am to yell at me in a drunken rage.

That coincidental drama is secondary, even tertiary, to the matter at hand: I’m a total sap and sucker for dreary melodramas when they were filmed in this fraught era of brittle America on the cusp of Reagan.

The specter of Reaganism, i.e., a total disengagement from reality, is something worth noting here. Ordinary People stands apart from the sweaty epoch of minimalist, character-driven 1970s filmmaking in that it’s a wholly apolitical movie. MIA in this hermetically sealed white suburb are both: A) any coincidental, adjacent, or background references to the politics of the day, like say sullen Jimmy Carter appearing on a TV screen or on the cover of Time as he does in 1980’s the Shining) or B) any explicit political narratives or extended allegory to the social issues of the day. Even a horror movie like 1973’s The Exorcist was grappling with the tumultuous times. (See “That Thing Upstairs Isn’t My Daughter,” Ch. 10 of Rick Perlstein’s The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan.)

Ordinary People director Robert Redford was clearly aware of 1980’s sudden jump cut away from the daily hyper politics of the 1970s. There’s a telling flashback in his movie when we see Mary Tyler Moore presumably just a few years earlier as a slightly younger mom. In this sepia-toned shot, she’s shown with groovy long hair and a hippie frock. In the rest of the movie, MTM is cast with a stiff short coiffe and prim 1980s blouses, a uniform that’s metaphor for how tightly wound she is.

Redford saw it: Even as early as 1980, the mid 1970s already stood as a stark and meaningful contrast to the looming absentee Reagan era.

Mary Tyler Moore in 1980’s Ordinary People. Yikes.

3) Learning Pictures of Matchstick Men on Piano

The Status Quo on 1968’s Top of the Pops. Far Out.

Just like two weeks ago when my renewed running regime prompted an obsession with my sparkling bathtub [I’m All Lost In, #87], this week, my return to running has me voraciously printing out sheet music so I can learn new songs on piano.

The connection is straightforward: I go jogging to a playlist of my favorite classic rock, new wave, and punk songs from junior high, high school, and college. A lot of these songs are perfect for learning on piano. Accordingly, when the Status Quo’s 1968 psych pop-rock sludge groove ”Pictures of Matchstick Men” came on while I was running this week, I quickly bookmarked it as a song to figure out. Now I’m obsessed.

You’d think a garage rock ditty like this—in the all-white Key of C, no less—would be a bore when it comes to breaking it down for piano. Not a chance. As I messaged my music savant friend Eliza (and my boss at the transit agency): Learning a cool ‘60s psych garage rock song on piano, btw. Despite that it's in C, there are some weird dyads in there. The kids were into “Eastern” music at this point.

I’m All Lost In, #88: Where to eat after midnight; why I can’t listen to my favorite podcast anymore; and where’s my tax refund? Also: Crossing the Rubicon in 2025.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#88

1) Late Night Falafel at Al Bacha

Let’s discard Dick’s, I said; this sage wisdom uttered as we landed at Denny & Broadway at 11:50 pm en route initially to Seattle’s beacon of late night burgers and fries after a rollicking weeknight music show.

Just one block south of Dick’s Drive-In (why a drive-in across the street from a light rail station, anyway?) there’s now a new haven for mavens of after hours plates: Al Bacha, a neon-lit Middle Eastern gyro and falafel corner storefront with bright white menu boards—veggie sandwiches, meat sandwiches, lunch & dinner, and salads & soups—hovering over the open kitchen, a carefree smattering of tables, and a wall-to-wall line of soda coolers.

With eight items on the veggie menu (which includes French fries and Greek fries as option #4 and #6 respectively, by the way) they’ve got what vegans or vegetarians need at midnight regardless. Try the Falafel Sandwich, or for a dollar more the Arabic Veggie Sandwich; the former comes in a pita and the later is wrapped as a gyro and served with hummus and cauliflower along with the falafel. Both perfect late night snacks are packed with veggies and graced by Levant touches including parsley and tahini.

They’re happy to give you extra sauce too (for the fries in my case) which they handed off liberally in an ad hoc, oversized paper bowl.

Al Bacha stays open until midnight on weeknights and until 2:30 am on Friday and Saturday nights.

2) I Can’t Bring Myself to Listen to My Favorite Podcast

Anyone reading this knows I’m an Aryna Sabalenka fan boy. It all started when I randomly happened upon her 2023 U.S. Open semifinal match; it was playing on TV at a local restaurant as I strolled by. After that three-set thriller, where I instinctively found myself rooting for Saby from my solo cheering section at the bar, I was subsequently drawn to her discombobulated interview M.O. and to the Peter Parker storm clouds that seemed to hover consistently over her head. A jinxed compatriot.

Her tennis trials and tribulations quickly led me to the rankings race for No. 1 and to everything WTA, including my now daily check ins at the action-packed WTA website. It also led me back to the tennis court. But most of all, my tennis convert zealotry led me to The Tennis Podcast: Snarky Catherine Whitaker, straight-guy David Ward, and boy-genius Matt Roberts

So, consider this week’s entry the opposite of an obsession.

I’m not obsessing about World No. 1 Saby right now. Her funny one liner about “Mykonos, gummies and alcohol” aside, Saby’s boorish meltdown after losing to World No. 2 Coco Guaff at Roland Garros (a sore loser tantrum at best or a pique of convoluted racism at worst) pained me to the point that I’ve been anxiously skipping my daily WTA website fix for the past two weeks. And I’m downright avoiding Catherine, David, and Matt for fear that their rowdy analysis, sardonic wit, and caustic honesty will no longer cast Saby as a flawed Charlie Brown character, but as an execrable villain. This is the longest I’ve stayed away from tennis and the WTA in a year and a half.

As opposed to everyone’s favorite player Coco Gauff, Sabalenka is not a natural celebrity; and like a tilted misfit, she’s been awkwardly forcing the issue all year with a cringe PR campaign. Now, with last week’s Coco fiasco, which she tried to retract, Sabalenka has most likely sabotaged her already-iffy hopes at viral stardom.

As to her tennis form: I feared Coco’s big win at Roland Garros served notice that Saby was about to swirl into a downward spiral. Her garish loss (70 unforced errors) already seemed to nullify her outstanding 2025 form just as the all-important Wimbledon/U.S. Open summer stretch was getting underway. Those fears were momentarily allayed this week: Sabalenka bounced back with a couple of wins at the Berlin Open—including a quarterfinal thriller over 2022 Wimbledon champion and current World No. 11,  the admittedly troubled Elena Rybakina. (Coco, for her part, lost in the second round.) But then Saby quickly lost in the semis to World No. 165 (albeit 2023’s Wimbledon champion) Markéta Vondroušová.

I will say, tipsy on Friday night (before the news of Sabalenka’s semifinal loss), I was singing Vondroušová’s catchy name to myself as I walked home after happy hour.

Vondroušová is now up against another surprising (and exciting) finalist: Xinyu Wang. Wang, World No. 49, had an eye-popping run in Berlin this week. She beat No. 16 Daria Kasatkina (another Josh Feit favorite), toppled Coco, beat No. 10 Paula Badosa, and beat No. 20 Liudmila Samsonova in the semis.

Admittedly, I can’t wait to listen to this week’s The Tennis Podcast after either Vondroušová or Wang stuns tennis fans by hoisting one of the season’s first grass court trophies in the run up to Wimbledon.

3) Where’s My Tax Refund?

I used the Juneteenth work holiday this week to set aside the 10,000 hours I anticipated I needed for a phone call with the IRS.

Earlier in the week, wondering where my return was two months on now, I checked the “Where’s My Refund?” page on the IRS website. After entering all my info, including the a-okayed refund amount indicated on my completed tax returns, they said my return had been directly deposited into my checking account on May 30.

It had?

So, I checked my bank records. I did find a direct deposit from the Feds that day. But it was for a partial, much smaller amount than the amount I’d been expecting.

Unfortunately, all I could do on the phone “with” the IRS was talk to an automated voice that requested the same info the website had requested—and it ended up giving me the same half-right answer.

The android voice claimed it could answer any follow-up questions. But it couldn’t. I tried that option in vain and it simply sent me into a loop where I was prompted to repeat my initial inquiry. After saying “No” and pounding the pound key enough times, it gave me another phone number. But that simply led me to the exact same loop. As did a third and altogether different number I found when I googled “How do you talk an actual person at the IRS?”

I’m low-key wondering if I should even bother haggling with the IRS these days. When I think of the shoddy state of affairs in D.C. under Trump right now, I’m reminded of the joke about the old Soviet Union where the workers pretend to work and the government pretends to pay them. Under Trump, it feels like the kakistocracy he’s installed is only play acting at governance as we taxpayers are only phoning in citizenship.

…

Let me close this week’s installment with The Word of the Week.

It’s not tilted, a word you may have noticed above to describe Sabalenka’s conniptions. That’s a slang word I learned a few weeks ago; it refers to the free-fall cycle of making a mistake, getting frustrated with yourself, and as a result, making several more mistakes ad nauseam until you’re a puddle.

Fun word, but the word I’ve actually been noticing all week is Rubicon. Rubicon is showing up regularly these days in the context of the Trump administration’s authoritarian mindset (sending the marines to L.A., defying court orders) and their gestapo tactics (body tackling and arresting Democratic officials, siccing anonymous goons on immigrants), thuggish transgressions that are stressing America’s constitutional norms and traditions.

Rubicon is, of course, part of the phrase “crossing the Rubicon,” which means reaching the point of no return. It comes from an historical anecdote that describes the day in 49 B.C. when Julius Ceasar led his army across Italy’s Rubicon River sparking his successful civil war against the Roman Republic and the ascent of his dictatorhsip and the Roman Empire.

A typical sentence from this week in 2025: “Well, it looks like the Rubicon has officially been crossed,” my friend NF wrote on social media accompanying a video clip of unmarked security guys (and eventually FBI troopers) bullying, tackling, and cuffing U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) for trying to ask a question at Dept. of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem’s press conference. She was praising Trump’s assault on lawful, anti-deportation protests.

It’s no wonder the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” is on people’s minds this week. With a convicted felon in the White House; unbridled racism on the lips of every MAGA politician; widely reported, but apparently not-shocking-enough quid pro quo corruption posing as public policy (i.e., selling off public lands to top corporate donors or accepting gifts from obsequious foreign governments); and right wing U.S. senators promoting false flag conspiracy theories to shift blame away from overt right wing violence, America has sadly lost the plot. Our breached Republic is giving way alongside other alarming collapses, such as zero-to-sixty climate change and insane AI creep.

While I was typing all this: Trump bombed Iran.

I’m All Lost In, #87: Los Angeles; Paju; and a clean bathtub

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#87

1) Los Angeles (in the 1960s)

Years from now, when we look back at America’s fall into authoritarianism under Donald Trump, I’m hoping we identify this week in June as the moment when popular resistance to his brutish, undemocratic agenda took hold. The L.A. protests against ICE’s thuggish roundups of immigrants—including immigrants in the middle of the legal process— seems, in this season of dismay about fraying civil rights, a small but undeniable sign of hope: The American spirit may still be alive.

It’s a risky scenario, of course. Bodies in the streets could easily trip into the Reichstag Fire moment that Trump and his creepy attaché Stephen Miller have been scheming for.

With the promise of L.A. action on my mind this week, I returned to an instructive book I started reading, but didn’t get very far into, a few years ago: Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties (2020) by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener. This sweeping near-700-page epic about L.A.’s largely teen driven—and overwhelmingly Chicano and Black teen driven—civil rights, anti-war, and anti-colonialist movements is an inspirational and cautionary template for today as it documents the organizational, tactical, and street specifics of mass political protests that gathered form, crescendoed, and crested from the early 1960s onward through the incendiary early 1970s.

Inspiring history from L.A.

I was originally drawn to this book, which unfortunately prioritizes reams of data and statistics over stories (I want stories!) because of Part V. The Great High School Rebellion, Ch. 21. Riot Nights on the Sunset Strip (1966-1968). This specific section of the book explains the Sunset Strip Curfew Riots, an unsung uprising of L.A. teenagers versus the L.A.P.D. that coupled two seemingly disparate and even oppositional 1960s story lines that had been separately upending American culture during the 1960s in their own right: rock music and woke youth.

The famous 1960s protest anthem, Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth, i.e., “There’s something happening here/what it is ‘aint exactly clear,” is about the Sunset Strip Curfew Riots. (I have a poem about these historic protests in my first book.) Most people likely think the signature sixties song is about Chicago ‘68 or Kent State or some other combustible anti-war protest, but guitarist Stephen Stills wrote the song in December 1966 in the immediate aftermath of the curfew riots after several of his friends in the burgeoning youth counterculture, including Peter Fonda, were beaten and cuffed by the cops as they picketed against a new city-imposed curfew on club going teenagers.

It turned out the standoff with the police was about bigger things. As are today’s L.A. protests.

*I went to the anti-Trump “No Kings” march (good marketing from the left, for once) on Saturday, June 14. Two-and-a-half hours after we reached the final congregating spot near Seattle Center, we got word that the last waves of marchers were just leaving Cal Anderson Park where we’d all started out. I’m gonna say 100,000+.

2) Paju, Fine Korean Dining

Surprise: I love grilled octopus, Paju, 6/12/25

In addition to revisiting that germane book this week, I also returned to Paju, an excellent upscale Korean restaurant that I originally checked out back in 2023. An unassuming sliver of place located in Seattle’s Lower Queen Ann neighborhood when I first visited, Paju is now—on the same #8 bus line—a large, chic South Lake Union spot with a glowing purple front door, a rock-encased wood-fire hearth, and a chef’s table anchoring a sweeping room of high windows and intimate tables.

The Seattle Times review, otherwise a rave, says the service here leaves something to be desired. But the service was charming and cheeky this past Thursday night. It starred a chatty young server who brought each plate—Hama Hama Oysters; a pistachio cream, parmesan, crispy green salad; buttered and smoked octopus; white kimchi, truffle aioli mushrooms; browned veggie pancakes topped with paper-thin slices of dancing fish flakes; and squid ink fried rice—with a knowing playfulness. She seemed to be savoring each dish along with us. And, with each dish dressed in creamy sauces (unusual for Korean cuisine), simmered in spicy seasonings, prepped to perfection, and often topped with piles of finely grated parm, these were all plates worth savoring, particularly the meaty octopus and buttery mushrooms.

Mushrooms, Paju, 6/12/25

Veggie pancake, Paju, 6/12/25

3) My Clean Tub

Something else I returned to this week: running. Once a basic and comforting part of my daily routine circa 2018—2024, I hadn’t suited up, slipped on my New Balance running shoes, nor put on my earbuds for a meditative 5.5-miler for seven months (November 10, 2024, according to Strava).

I was back at it this week. I wasn’t doing 5.5, though; more like 2.7 on average over my five runs through the neighborhood, again according to Strava. I’m writing about this mostly as a way to note this week’s final obsession: my newly sparkly clean shower.

Plagued by: an Alien: Resurrection drain clog that barfed up staph infection standing water; a slimy shower curtain and bath mat, each looking as if they were homes to biohazard disasters; and seemingly indelible streaks of grit in the tub, my bachelor pad tub was a ruin.

No longer. Hours of charwoman labor this week transformed the tub into a gleaming operating-room-ready safe space where I’ve been happily retreating for a spacey shower after my daily run.

I’ve even been popping into the bathroom to slide back the shower curtain every so often just to take a peek at the tub for kicks so I can admire my apartment’s spotless new holy place. The vibrant blue bath mat and white acrylic tub are now radiant.

I’m All Lost In, #86: Leichacha tea; NIMBY city council member resigns; the Pavement movie.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#86

In last week’s report about the renaissance afoot in Pioneer Square, I was delinquent for failing to mention my go-to Pioneer Square lunch spot: Saigon Drip, where I regularly place an order for their Vegan Vortex, a tofu bánh mì with the pickled veggie works and vegan mayo.

Saigon Drip’s delish vegan tofu bánh mì

In addition to featuring this tasty sandwich—a soft and crispy baguette, quality tofu, dripping sauce, fresh carrots, daikon, and cucumbers—the mod and brightly lit Saigon Drip is located at the epicenter of the action off Occidental Square and S. Washington St. This is the Pioneer Square strip that also includes my favorite new music club, Baba Yaga [I’m All Lost In, #69, 2/8/25], a vintage clothing shop, a burger and fries diner and dive, an art gallery, and just around the corner, a sexy bar.

Before I get to this week’s list proper, here are a few more follow-ups:

First, the New York Times obviously reads my weekly dispatches. They ran a piece this week titled “Denouncing Antisemitism, Trump Also Fans Its Flames.” Yes, please. You may remember back in late April [I’m All Lost In, #79, 4/20/25], I wrote an item titled: “Trump’s antisemitic fight against antisemitism.”

Second, I was psyched to see that one of my favorite new Capitol Hill coffee shops, Seasmith [I’m All Lost In, #49, 9/21/24]—isn’t only expanding its hours (open until 9pm now), but they’ve also added a couple of sleek shared tables to the seating mix; a necessary move given that it’s been hard to find a spot to post up at Seasmith lately.

Seasmith adds new seating, 6/5/25

The crowded coffee shops and on-point new seating are also emblematic of how busy Seattle is right now. From heading down the stairs to see a punk show in a crowded basement club on a Sunday night, to jamming into a booth at a busy Mexican restaurant on a Thursday night, to cheering last second shots with a roomful of default NBA fans at a neighborhood dive bar on a random weeknight, Seattle is lit.

My young friend Rob’s punk band Fell Off sets up shop downstairs at the Cha Cha Lounge for a Sunday night show, 6/1/25.

Poquitos on Capitol Hill, Thursday night, 9/5/25

Finally, as I noted last week during Week 1 of Roland-Garros, I’ve been glued to the screen, 2 am and 4 am matches included and welcome.

Watching Daffy Saby beat her thorny rival, World No. 8 Qinwen Zheng, 7-6(7-3), 6-3 early Tuesday morning in the quarterfinal, and then watching her officially dethrone Iga Swiatek 7-6 (7-1), 4-6, 6-0 (!) in the semifinal on Thursday morning further defined Sabalenka’s 2025 runaway year as World No. 1. With a tour-best 34 match wins now and 3 tournaments titles after making 6 finals, Sabalenka leads the rest of the pack by 4,000 points this season. Meanwhile, there was the wild Lois Boisson story, the out-of-nowhere wildcard French player who blazed through to the semifinals. Tearing her way through the tournament, Boisson ascended from No. 361 to No. 61 with a yesteryear game of lobs and looping slices that bewildered opponents such as World No. 3 Jessica Pegula and World No. 6 Mirra Andreeva who Boisson dispatched in the later rounds this week. It was as if Boisson had stepped out of a time machine from 1970 giving contemporary fans the illusion of watching today’s stars face off against Margaret Court. Additionally, Boisson’s flat, grim demeanor, triathlete physique, and 7th grade gym class fit (a sleeveless tank top and running shorts) all added to her disarming aura.

Posting episodes daily from Roland-Garros, The Tennis Podcast crew was bewildered by Boisson

Boisson’s Cinderella run finally ended on Thursday morning with a 1-6, 2-6. semifinal loss to World No. 2 Coco Gauff. Cue up Sabablenka v Coco for Saturday’s final.

*Ah. Coco won in three sets.

A final note on Roland-Garros: The sexist scheduling, including tournament execs refusing to give Boisson’s big match versus Gauff a prime time slot, led to an outcry in the righteous tradition of Billie Jean King. As the NYT reported, there have only been "4 women’s matches in 55 night sessions since their introduction [at Roland-Garros] in 2021."

Okay on to this week’s official obsessions:

1) Green Tea Leicha
Known as “pounded tea” for all its smashed up beans (soy, mung, adzuki, pinto, jack) and crushed seeds (black sesame, pumpkin) plus a grocery store aisle worth of other finely ground ingredients such as rice, barley, sorghum, millet, green peas, black eyed peas, chickpeas, buckwheat, oats, corn, yam, ginko, and green tea leaves, Leicha is a powdered Hakka Chinese tea billed as a “centuries” old “health brew” according to the Leichacha brand homepage.

The green concoction—it looks like matcha— does appear to be a magic potion. The long list of benefits touted on the website include lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, repairing muscles, aiding hormone production, supporting the immune system, protecting against chronic diseases, promoting a healthy gut, and “ensuring regular bowel movements.”

The magic part to me, though? Leichacha brand leicha tastes like nutty malted milk, right down to the sweet goopy silt that settles at the bottom of the my morninf cup. Maybe it’s the soymilk powder and cane sugar that’s in their mix as well.

Leichacha is a Hakka family business, and their tasty concoction is available at Mixed Pantry, Belltown’s Asian imported goods store.

2) North Seattle City Council Member Cathy Moore Resigns

Erica does a thorough job at PubliCola reporting on first-term Seattle Council Member Cathy Moore’s sudden resignation this week. Mainly, Erica documents Moore’s stuck-in-the-1990s agenda with its “neighborhood character” appeal to slow growth. This includes Moore’s recent support for slowing down Sound Transit expansion (which the Urbanist’s Ryan Packer reported on as well) along with Moore’s ongoing efforts to keep upzones out of neighborhoods that have historically been zoned exclusively for detached single family homes but are now required by state law to allow density. (I’ve editorialized on PubliCola about Moore’s intransigence as well.)

Erica goes with my bitchy headline for her PubliCola editorial

Moore’s resignation is a great moment for Seattle. Or at least I’m savoring it. While Moore dismisses the opposition to her slow-growth POV as an uncivil mob that won’t respectfully give her the mic, what she’s really identifying is this: The public has soured on longstanding city policy that keeps 75% of Seattle off limits from multi-family housing development and, in turn, has driven up rents. Logically, the public has also soured on listening to council members like Moore who speak from the same old NIMBY script that seconds these persistent policies. Thirty years on, a vocal movement that has paid the price for exclusionary zoning and the resulting affordability crisis is now seeking a new approach.

Moore’s resignation confirms that the public doesn’t believe in the old policies Moore is stumping for. Her opponents are simply articulating a critical response to legislative proposals like hers that maintain the housing status quo.

3. The Pavement Documentary Mockumentary

Actor Joe Keery, upside down top right, plays himself playing Stephen Malkmus, right side up bottom right.

Class clown ‘90s indie rockers Pavement are one of the very few alt rock era bands I actually like. But I was hesitant to see independent filmmaker Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, the new documentary about the band because as I told my pal Annie (who invited me to see the movie last Friday at SIFF Uptown), I’m not sure I want to listen to Stephen Malkmus talk for two hours; Pavement front man Malkmus is the sardonic floppy haired singer/electric guitarist/free verse songwriter whose bratty slacker sarcasm and general boredom with everything is generally unbearable. His blasé wit and stream of consciousness brain are best confined to rock albums where they’re paired with the band’s raucous and dissonant DIY guitars, herky jerky rhythms, and catchy melodies. In that context he’s a delight. Think of Pavement as drunk Nirvana, but without Nirvana’s macho riffage. Pavement’s electric guitars are certainly badass, but they are less sludgy, heavy homages to 1970s rock than they are off-kilter and totally kidding.

Anyway, I’m glad I decided to go to Pavements; the film’s title is a reference to the time the band was misidentified (as in, the internets) by Stephen Colbert on live TV.

The plural also refers to the clever conceit of the movie which transcends the rock doc format by blurring real life Pavement with several imaginary story lines. The actual documentary here— contemporary footage of the band rehearsing for a 2022 reunion tour interspersed with archival film and video of old interviews and performances—is frenetically mixed and matched on split screen with a series of mockumentaries. Mockumentary #1 is a faux behind-the-scenes doc about the making an imaginary Pavement Broadway musical. Mockumentary #2 is about an imaginary Pavement MoMA exhibition (Malkmus’ notebooks behind glass). And best of all, and nearing comedic brilliance thanks to Stranger Things actor Joe Keery playing himself playing Malkmus, Mockumentary #3 pretends to tell the story of a make believe Pavement biopic. The connecting, comedic premise behind all four threads, including the real one about Pavement themselves, is that Pavement was supposedly a supergroup that achieved massive commercial success. (One thing I actually learned from this movie: Pavement was never as big as I thought they were at the time.)

Not only does Pavements’ hyper meta narrative mirror Pavement’s own evasive Gen X sensibility, but the movie strikes sarcastic topical gold with the biopic story line by (accidentally?) spoofing Timothée Chalamet’s earnest turn as Bob Dylan. Keery (playing Keery as an overwrought method actor playing Malkmus) hilariously mocks Chalamet’s Dylan just as, circa 1994, Malkmus and Pavement hilariously mocked Smashing Pumpkins.

I’m All Lost In, #85: Trump’s fascist playbook; Pioneer Square’s renaissance; Seattle’s best veggie burger.

My mind is racing. There are a lot of things going on.

First: A follow-up to an obsession from two weeks ago: Colin Marshall’s newsletter about city-themed books. This week, Marshall reviewed a book I’ve been picking up and putting down in frustration ever since I first bought it 15 years ago (and which I’ve never finished), David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries.

Zooming in on the chapter about Manila, Marshall articulates exactly why I’ve found Byrne’s book—nominally about bike infrastructure around the world—so disappointing:

“Not a whole lot of Bicycle Diaries' Manila chapter is about cycling, and even the nature of the city itself remains a relatively minor theme,'“ he writes.

Marshall’s rejoinder was compelling, though:

But it does get him meditating on a variety of broader subjects, from colonialism to markets and malls to class mobility…

This might sound like a criticism to a reader with narrow expectations of this book's content: that it will be mainly about bikes, or cities .... In fact, as he writes in the acknowledgments, the project was conceived by his literary agent as using "the thread of my bike explorations of various cities as a linking device. His reference was W. G. Sebald, specifically his book The Rings of Saturn, which uses a rambling walk in the English countryside as a means of connecting a lot of thoughts, musings, and anecdotes."

… The appeal of cities as a subject, I often say, is that it in practice allows you to write about practically anything you feel like.

Prompted by Marshall’s engaged review, I perused my bookshelves and was surprised to find I actually still owned this book. Despite the fact that Byrne is a much better musician than he is a writer, I now feel compelled to give his searching treatise one more try.

Another follow-up: I’m still learning Blondie’s 1979 meta pop number, “Slow Motion.” God bless the key of C. I’m taken with Blondie’s uncanny knack for scrolling out discrete catchy melody after discrete catchy melody all using the same five white notes; they would have called them motifs in the 18th century. This week I’m working on the dramatic “Still/she knows/she’ll never lose a thing” pre-chorus section. The way Blondie fashions such warm beauty from B, E, A, G by simply dropping low on the E and then lower on the G is masterful. This latest Blondie discovery comes courtesy of their keyboardist and songwriter in this instance, Jimmy Destri.

Loving Jimmy Destri’s New Wave tie.

And one more sub-obsession:

The year’s second Grand Slam, Roland Garros, is underway in Paris right now. In addition to monitoring the bracket during Week 1 as it proceeded to the Final 16, I stayed up until 2am on Thursday night/Friday morning to watch Zheng Qinwen’s round three match (6-3, 6-4 over 18-year-old surprise American/Canadian/Congolese upstart Victoria Mkobo) followed at 3am by still-in-stellar-form Daffy Saby’s round three match (6-2, 6-3 over Serbia’s Olga Danilovic, No. 33.)

All that aside, I’m officially all lost in these three things right now:

1) The Courts versus Trump’s Fascist Agenda

A federal judge temporarily halted Trump’s assault on NYC’s successful congestion pricing program this week. It was the latest court ruling to flip the bird at Trumpism.

In fact, with two other new court rulings this week alone—one stalling Trump’s isolationist tariffs and another undercutting his nativist effort to prevent Harvard from admitting international students, the court’s pile of decisions have now become, to quote The New York Times, the main defense for fighting Trump’s petty despotism:

While Congress has mostly fallen in line behind Trump, the judiciary has emerged as the primary check on the president’s power. Over the first 130 days of Trump’s second term, courts have ruled against at least 180 of his actions.

The Trump administration’s reaction to this legal reality check on their punitive policies—telling judges to run for elected office themselves and condemning the judiciary as  “tyrannical”—mimics a traditional tenet of fascist movements: Attack the rule of law by trying to de-legitimize the courts. It’s a dangerous escalation of the “activist judges” talking point that was popular with Republicans during the Reagan-through-Gingrich era. This is why I was never comfortable with a recent leftist cause celebre (after Roe was overturned) to blame the Supreme Court for our problems.

Trump’s populist demagoguery about the judicial system goes hand in hand with his obsession over international students. In addition to attacking the courts, another basic of the fascist script is creating and targeting bogeyman among us. This is nothing new for MAGA. The anti-trans, anti-immigrant, and anti-China messaging has been central to Trump’s narrative from the start. His heated urgency right now about “international” students, and Chinese students in particular, simply reflects how far Trump is tacking in the fascist direction.

Speaking of the Supreme Court, I was a bit sad that my beloved free speech Supreme Court decision, the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines School District ruling that imprinted on my high school brain during journalism class circa 1983, was actually used as the rationale for a (not unreasonable) conservative dissent in another high court ruling this week. The anti-Tinker majority signed off on a Massachusetts school’s rule prohibiting a student from wearing a T-shirt that said “There are Only Two Genders.”

I 100% disagree with the T-shirt’s prejudiced, toxic attack message. I’m a firm believer in another T-shirt slogan: “Gender is a Drag.” But given Justice Abe Fortas’ liberating and resounding statement in Tinker that students “[don’t] shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” I’m not sure I agree with the majority decision to uphold the school’s T-shirt ban. Certainly, Tinker was refined over the years to allow school administrations to proscribe disruptive speech, which obviously includes noxious anti-trans hate speech. But it’s worth asking if liberals are exercising the infamous “Hecklers’ Veto.”

2) Renaissance in Pioneer Square

A new rooftop bar in Pioneer Square, 5/25/25

Rave kids on the 1 Line after midnight, 5/24/25 into 5/25/25

This week, I kept landing in the brick maze and 19th century architecture of Pioneer Square, Seattle’s historic downtown neighborhood immediately east of Elliott Bay. On Saturday night I went to a new rooftop bar called Firn atop a boutique hotel on 1st and King. This was after first killing time at a new waterfront promenade ice cream shop and watching the sunset at nearby “habitat beach” before Firn’s maître d' texted that seats were now available.

I was back in Pioneer Square again on Tuesday night a few blocks away at the WaMu theater for a packed concert—and then some late-night, after party drinks at trusty Baba Yaga, the newish upstairs bar and downstairs stage where I’ve already seen some young rock bands this year.

This is all fodder for an urban pastoral: The chatter of dressed-up patrons sipping cocktails on a garden rooftop deck seated under the nimbus of the downtown skyline; last call overruled by a rush of late night customers extending their giddy wedding party into the early morning; a concierge posted on the fourth-floor elevator, touting gauche in-house art shows, the gym, and in-house DJs; lit tourists gawking and strolling the brick crosswalks as if they’re perusing NoLita in Lower Manhattan; throngs of glittered-up rave kids heading to the nearby light rail stop after an electronica show; a crowded train, including the decked out rave kids, after midnight.

More city verse: Alighting the train into winding string light alleys with other concert goers toward the hawkers and bustling auditorium gate where ticket takers scanned you in; Phrygian mode world music featuring flatted-2nd electric guitar phrases backed by casual drums and “Genius of Love”-style bass played over the looping found footage screening behind the band; neighborly hits on a spliff from a dude on a date putting his arm around my date; strolling through the gantlet of hot dog food trucks before settling in a few blocks away at an elegant dive bar with high ceilings and hanging plants all dimly lit from above by red orange globe lamps. (This would be the aforementioned Baba Yaga.)

Khruangbin at WaMu Theater, Tuesday, 5/27/25

My Pioneer Square supercut is meant as a revelatory Before-and-After. The Before is 2021 when the neighborhood was flogged by the reactionary “Seattle is Dying” faction as Exhibit A in their narrative that supposedly permissive social justice priorities led to the decline of our city’s original nightlife warren: The art galleries, bars, restaurants, oddity shops, underground tours, artist housing, and quaint bookstores had evidently given way to the apocalypse. My sense is that Pioneer Square was battered by the confluence of the pandemic, the homelessness crisis, and the fentanyl crisis that left businesses shuttered. But this was a citywide phenomenon—and one that had less to do with defunding the police (which didn’t happen) and more to do with the desperate stakes of the larger, national affordability crisis and how that compounded with the three grim COVID-era currents noted above.

Sorry, but Pioneer Square—where I work, by the way—hasn’t actually been relevant as a vibrant go-to destination since the early 1990s, when it was then displaced as a cultural mecca by Capitol Hill, Seattle’s youth culture epicenter.

My Pioneer Square supercut is also meant to demonstrate this: Far from a decimated shell of a neighborhood, there’s a renaissance afoot there.

3) Linda Tavern’s Holy (Not a) Cow Burger
This is long overdue.

Ever since February when I started heading back to classic 1990s grunge-era-Capitol Hill hangout, Linda’s Tavern—the default happy hour and burger spot while I was Stranger news editor back in the 2000s—I’ve wanted to praise their new (to me) veggie burger.

If memory serves, the just-fine veggie burger option when I was a Linda’s regular circa 2002 was a grainy flattened bean patty conveniently loaded with lettuce, onion, tomato, and all the sauces to hide the bland substitute.

I was expecting the same passable patty when I ordered the veggie burger on my first visit back earlier this year after a decade and a half away. After all, the menu simply said: “Housemade patty with black beans & veggies served with lettuce, tomato, burger sauce, pickle & onion.”

Best veggie burger in Seattle on the menu at Linda’s.

But wow, do they lean into the black beans. Linda’s upgraded veggie burger is a serious whopper. Hearty and oozing with spiced bean flavor.

When I told the waiter compliments to the kitchen for serving the best veggie burger in Seattle, she said: I know, right? She then proceeded to tell her tale, a veggie burger odyssey through years of cardboard flavored sad patties to the today’s highly processed “plant-based” iterations. Vegetarians know this comical history well, and my version—as opposed to this young woman’s relatively recent timeline— goes back to the freezer-burned rice and veggie late-’80s era.

And zeitgeist footnote. Her veggie burger habit was not about being a vegetarian, it was, she told us proudly, about keeping kosher. It was comforting to encounter a young, out-and-proud Jew in the heart of left-wing Seattle, though also disheartening that her pride would be so noteworthy.

I’m All Lost In, #84: Falafel food truck; Midnight Safeway; 1975 drummer wanted ad.

I’m All Lost In…

the three things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#84

1) Falafel Salam Food Truck

On Tuesday evening, by happenstance, XDX and I discovered the best falafel in Seattle. After making the mile-and-a-half jaunt to 13th and Jefferson to hang out at Peloton Cafe (XDX had never been) we were met with a “closed” sign; it said Power Outage Closed Until Further Notice : (.

So we started the mile-long shamble to our old favorite standby, Kanom Sai Cafe on 23rd and Spring for some taro pastries. We eventually made it there, but not before following my impulse pivot to Chuck’s Hop Shop at 20th and Union. I had a craving for their veggie dog (like the one I had there on New Year’s Eve). They’ve since taken that off the menu, so I got in line at the falafel truck parked out front by the plastic tables under the tented lot. Falafel Salam’s long white truck seemed as if it was reclining there on its own BarcaLounger, beckoning.

Falafel Salam sets up outside Chuck’s Hop Shop at 20th and Union, 5/20/25

Their prominently displayed vegan option—it’s listed first on the menu— was stuffed with onions, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce, and cilantro induced, green-on-the-inside falafel balls that were nearly as fluffy as the thick pita bread; I had to hold the messy dinner like I was eating a McDonald’s Big Mac. Falafel Salam’s special sauce? An unwieldy helping of mouth watering creamy tahini and, the key, hot turmeric.

(Unbeknownst to me, Falafel Salam has been around since 2009. You can find them at Chuck’s in the Central District on Tuesdays, in South Lake Union by Amazon on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and at the Ballard Farmer’s Market on Sundays. They’ve also got a brick and mortar spot in West Seattle.)

We rounded out our urban hike three blocks over at Kanom Sai, where we got the Shakespearean update from the solo kitchen staffer/baker/counter worker (she’s also the owner) before stopping at the 22nd and Madison Safeway where XDX, arrested by a window display, made an impulse buy of her own: two 12-packs of Waterloo Seltzer, which we attempted to stuff in her orange backpack.

2) Tipsy at the Safeway

Speaking of jumping into Safeway: The descent into my own sylvan green neighborhood from Capitol Hill’s properly lit nightlife district is marked by a Safeway at the corner of 15th and John. Fortuitously, it’s open late (until 12 am). Fortuitous because I often find myself ambling back from The Drag late in the evening longing for a Dagwood Sandwich.

My version of this comforting cartoonish sandwich: A colorful assortment of veggies dressed with herbs, spices, chili oil, and a dash of mustard or vinegar, packed into a refrigerated soft spinach tortilla or lovingly set on two tears of sourdough baguette with garlic hummus or pine nut and spinach pesto spread on each slice.

Swaying through Safeway’s quiet produce section while the sprinklers cycle on and off and the dégagé night staff unpack boxes, I dreamily track down my chosen salad sandwich ingredients like a post-apocalyptic traveler happening upon an army surplus store.

On the list (for fine dicing and, in the case of carrots, shredding): purple cabbage, red peppers, hot peppers, onions, tomatoes, black olives, baby spinach, banana peppers, capers, broccoli, and those bright carrots.

I won’t lie, there are a few other things on my spur-of-the-moment list for these heady late-night Safeway excursions: a tub of hummus; maybe some super processed Tofurky slices or vegan cheese; and definitely a box of Cheez-Its.

Drunk at Safeway, 5/21/25

I ran into another late night Safeway shopper on Wednesday night; she too was cavorting in the cookies and cracker aisle at this strange hour. And she too hailed from D.C. We reminisced about Dupont Circle’s legendary “Soviet Safeway” before she disappeared cradling her box of Oreos on the way toward the sole check out lane that was still open.

I surveyed my Cheez-Its options—Italian four cheese, buffalo wing, cheddar jack, smoked gouda—went with original and floated off to the self-check out where other post-apocalyptic revelers were swiping and bagging.

Late night snack courtesy of the late night Safeway with Cheez-Its on the side, 5/21 into 22/25

3) “Freak Energy”

I have never felt so seen.

On Saturday morning, as we sat down at the coffee shop for an overdue hangout, Valium Tom slid a freshly folded black T-shirt across the table: I got you a present.

Last month, in the wake of Blondie drummer Clem Burke’s recent death (RIP), former Blondie guitarist Chris Stein went searching for and successfully unearthed a treasure from the band’s pretend-we’re-already-superstars origin story. What he found may be the perfect expression of the droll post-hippie (but kinda still hippie), indigent glamour that characterized the wily, bohemian aesthetic of Lower Manhattan’s mid-1970s emergent punk and new wave music scenes.

Stein posted his historic find on Instagram: It was the drummer wanted ad that he and Debbie Harry and the rest of the yearning band put in the Village Voice in March 1975.

This number is not in service anymore.

I’d seen Stein’s post; I’m a devout Blondie fan and had started following him around the time I read his flailing memoir, which, thanks to his inept storytelling, failed to divine staglfation New York’s countercultural heyday. (I lovingly panned his book here.) He’s made up for it with this eloquent artifact, though.

Valium Tom saw Stein’s post too, and he put the slovenly elegant ad on a T for me.

With my new Blondie T-shirt, 5/17/25

I’m All Lost In, #83: Colin Marshall’s list of books about cities; cirrus clouds radio; and my neighborhood tree canopy

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#83

1) Colin Marshall's List of Books about Cities

Valium Tom and I call it the City Canon, our ongoing project to come up with a list of great city books. The list includes: novels where the city setting is a character itself; nonfiction treatises on important precepts of city planning; histories that are tied to the life of a particular city; or even histories and biographies where the subject reflects a discrete tenet of cityism, such as fashion revolutionary Mary Quant’s swinging London memoir.

Colin MacInnes’ 1950s novel about London’s emerging youth culture Absolute Beginners tops of my city lit list. Over the years, other personal city literature mainstays include: Edith Wharton’s New York Stories; David Owen’s Green Metropolis; Hanif Kureishi’s the Black Album, Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy; William Gibson’s Neuromancer; Jane Jacobs’s classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities; Stephen Crane’s Maggie a Girl of the Streets; Jonathan Rechy’s City of Night; Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep; and Robert Louis Stevenson’s London-centric Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Back in 2023 and 2024, I got serious about the City Canon and, starting with architect Jorge Almazán’s city planning textbook Emergent Tokyo, I proactively set out on my own city studies seminar, writing mini-essays on each book

My city seminar list of books:

Emergent Tokyo by Jorge Almazán (Tokyo)

Palace of Desire by Naguib Mahfouz (Cairo)

Dubliners by James Joyce (Dublin)

Quant by Quant the Autobiography of Mary Quant (London)

The City-State in Five Cultures by Robert Griffeth and Carol G. Thomas (Mesopotamia)

Billie Holiday the Musician and the Myth by John Szwed (Manhattan)

Open City by Teju Cole (Manhattan, Lagos)

Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention by Ben Wilson

Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole (Lagos)

Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey (London)

Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing by Max Holleran

Ask the Dust by John Fante (Los Angeles)

Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by M. Nolan Gray

Tomorrow Will Be Better by Betty Smith (Brooklyn)

Hard Times by Charles Dickens (Manchester)

Lot by Bryan Washington (Houston)

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell (Manchester)

All the Men in Lagos are Mad by Damilare Kuku (Lagos)

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Lagos)

Scenes of Bohemian Life by Henri Burger (Paris)

And I left off in 1920s Manhattan with Ursula Parrott’s Ex-Wife last fall.

I may have reignited my city reading binge this week, though, by picking up Henry Grabar’s Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World; I’ve only read the chatty intro and a bit of the first chapter, so we’ll see.

But I am currently hooked on the website that tipped me off on Grabar’s parking policy book: Colin Marhshall’s Books on Cities.

Marshall is a Seoul-based writer and the former host of public radio’s The Marketplace of Ideas and his follow-up Notebook on Cities and Culture.

Overlapping with my list—Ben Wilson’s Metropolis, M. Nolan Gray’s Arbitray Lines, Jorge Almazán’s Emergent Tokyo, plus an apparent shared interest in Lagos (and Nigerian writer Teju Cole)—Marshall has been reviewing and keeping a list of city books too.

Note: Marshall’s list doesn’t include any fiction. It’s all urban planning (Jeff Speck’s Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time); urban context (Lewis Mumford’s The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects); city histories (Malcolm Harris’ Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World); essays (Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City); or nonfiction city closeups (Tom Scocca’s Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future).

It’s not that Marshall’s city syllabus has added to my must-read list as much as after reading a couple of his lengthy, substantive book reviews—which seem more like prompts for his own city reveries— I’m now prioritizing his gems of urban reflection themselves.

2) Cirrus Clouds Radio

Finding great space-out music isn’t as easy a To Do as it sounds. Playlists dubbed “Classical Music for Relaxation,” for example, often obliviously fail to consider that classical music is about dynamics. Better not get too drawn into that soothing cello section because here comes the angry piano.

Or: Have you ever been getting a massage when, suddenly, you just can’t avoid perseverating on the plucking harp or plinking piano instead of decompresssing to the lulling chords swelling beneath?

On the other hand, excising dynamics can leave you with a set of New Age music that’s just too banal and cheesy. This is a particular risk when Ambient is your go-to genre. But when you try to nudge the algorithm away from becoming an anodyne strain of spa friendly greatest hits, Ambient suddenly runs the risk of coming on too ominous with unnerving minor key drones.

In summary: settling on relaxing music can be unsettling.

This week, I’ve been obsessed with navigating this musical dilemma, trying to curate the perfect set of opium jams. I’ve been starting with a tune called “Cirrus Clouds,” basically a layered configuration of warm tones, and then—as a way to alert the smart play—skipping any subsequent tracks that are cluttered with overeager melodies or insistent chords on the down beat.

My quietude quest is a work in progress, but as my apartment fills up with the three-dimensional currents of The Riddle of Dreams or the flexible Hzs of Runic Inscriptions on Parapets, I’m suddenly thinking about adding achieve enlightenment to my To Do list.

3) My Neighborhood’s Beautiful Tree Canopy

Seattle NIMBYs have weaponized the soft and pleasant idea of tree canopy as a metaphor: When they talk about trees they’re not so subtly disparaging housing development.

As I’ve pointed out on PubliCola, the hypocrisy of their position is frustrating: Do they think their single family lots represent the natural state of things? To the contrary, according to HistoryLink, homeowner neighborhoods like Wedgwood used to be sylvan wonderlands of “dense forest.” But with today’s clearcut geography giving them theirs, Baby Boom patron saint Joni Mitchell evidently forbids us from cutting down any more trees to accommodate housing for others.

The compounding irony: building dense, multi-family housing, ie, skinnier and taller than than roomy single family properties, takes up much less space, and logically, takes out fewer trees. You’ve got it backwards, NIMBYs.

This week, as I do every May when my dense neighborhood’s rich tree canopy turns into Exhibit A for Seattle’s status as America’s Emerald City, I fell in love with my street’s mixed-use zoning once again.

My street is part of Seattle District 3. With urban Capitol Hill at its core, D3 has formidable 32 percent tree canopy cover; the current citywide stretch goal is 30%.

——————
I’ve got two notes from this week that don’t rate as obsessions, but deserve attention.

First, I’ve been watching the NBA playoffs (mostly, at Madison Pub still), and I’ve been keeping a list of now-defining pro-basketball accoutrements that did not exist when I was a kid. More importantly, they seem like cultural affronts to our MAGA era.

My NBA list:

Everyone is Dr. J (a ballerina) now;

female court correspondents and broadcasters;

Saudi Arabian advertising stitched into the uniforms;

the ubiquity of tattoos;

European stars.

And my favorite new addition: pink and other metrosexual, pastel colored basketball shoes.

Second, and file this under someplace where you can actually eat out past 9 pm: I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the interchangeable looking restaurants on worn out Broadway is actually a charismatic standout: Broadway Wok.

The generic “Chinese and Thai Cuisine” tag certainly plays into the ho-hum vibe on this spent 1990s stretch between John St. and Roy. But the reality inside this warm restaurant—overflowing bowls of tasty tofu, fresh veggies, and savory green curry, along with charming down-to-earth service—defies Broadway’s lackluster trend.

I’m All Lost In, #82: Finding a new hoodie; digging the new Capitol Hill; and working in Sharepoint, aka Shitpoint.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#82

Back in the 2010s, whenever I’d write (what turned out to be) a prescient item in PubliCola’s persnickety “Morning Fizz” column, or whenever we broke news there, I’d hype it on social media by crowing: Learn to Trust the Fizz.

Well, Learn to Trust I’m All Lost In…

Back in October, when I read poet Marie Howe for the first time (her New and Selected Poems, 2024), I was floored and tagged her as one of my obsessions that week raving about her “masterful” poetry.

This past week, Howe’s New and Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

A snippet from my October post: “Howe’s talent lies in describing discrete POVs and then putting them back together again in a new way that seems to connote God.”

Another I’m All Lost In favorite, Blondie, also came up big this week; at least in my own private narrative. First, on Saturday night, the drummer for a band on the bill at Baba Yaga (the Sasha Bell Band from Montana) sounded exactly like Blondie’s big beat, crash and boom drummer Clem Burke. (RIP last month, sadly.) It was glorious, and we were awestruck, marvelling at the doppelganger sound. But this guy looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s, so who knows how he managed to channel so precisely Mr. Burke’s garage beat BPMs.

In other perseverating-on-Blondie news: I started learning a Blondie tune on piano this week. It’s another one of Blondie’s Catherine Deneuve-as-early 1960s-Parisian-teen-who-now-takes-the-stage-at-a-punk-club songs: “Slow Motion.”

The boy in the back on his second attack/
Wants his baby back (wants his baby back)/
What's all that commotion that you hear?

That’s it for this week’s goods of the order. Onto this week’s obsessions.

1) Why Can’t I Find a Good Hoodie?

My Palm Springs hoodie is not on brand: I’m neither an elderly golfer, nor a California property owner, nor a Burning Man techie. But the insistent “Authentic/Palm Springs, CA/USA/Desert Oasis” logo aside, this easy hoodie has been my comfortable and casually flattering go-to fit ever since XDX bought it for me two years ago; we were at the Palm Springs airport where I was shivering as we waited for our flight back to Seattle from Joshua Tree.

My ongoing chagrin with the gross yuppie messaging has finally prompted me to get a different hoodie. But after visiting several neighborhood shops—Crossroads Trading, Magpie Thrift, Creature Consignment; as well as Bon Voyage Vintage near work—I’m still stuck with this odd sartorial staple. All the hoodies I found this week were either baggy and awkward fits, besmirched with overly complicated aesthetics, or came with off-key logos themselves. The plain, sturdy front zipper and casual hoodie ideal, neither misleadingly youthful nor senior center friendly, seems to be more of a shopping Holy Grail than I’d realized.

Do I need to abandon my dream of scoring one secondhand?; people likely hang on to the excellent hoodies rather than casting them off. Do I need to embrace adulthood and pony up at J Crew online rather than sticking with my idealistic plan to hit Goodwill this weekend?

Cal Anderson skate park off Pine St. commandeered by death metal, 5/3/25

2) No, Capitol Hill Was Not Cooler “Back in the Day.”

Call it St. Mark’s Place Syndrome, which writer Ada Calhoun nailed in her great 2015 book St. Mark’s is Dead, an in-depth history of the storied Greenwich Village bohemian drag which also spoofed every generation’s perennial sense of horror that the city’s heyday enclave is not as cool as it was back in their day.

I wrote about Seattle’s version of this Gen X delusion, call it Capitol Hill Syndrome (or Grunge Delusion) back in 2021, arguing by the numbers that Capitol Hill is more diverse today, busier, and just as youth-centric as ever. There may be fewer artists living on Capitol Hill today (though I haven’t seen anyone prove this pervasive theory), but I’d argue there are certainly more venues here for artists to actually show work or gig. Yes, Capitol Hill is more expensive than it used to be, but so is the entire city.

It’s also more green and sustainable than it used to be. Not only does Capitol Hill now have a separate bike lane and a light rail station, which it didn’t “back in the day,” but the Capitol Hill Station is the second busiest station in the system with 9,100 daily riders during the week.

I’ve lived on Capitol Hill for more than 25 years, and I can tell you it was so white and predictable in the 1990s and early 2000s that if a white Capitol Hill hipster saw a group of POC kids on The Drag, they’d start to wonder if there was a hip hop show going on. I should qualify that: if anything was going on in the first place. For the record, weeknights on Capitol Hill were a bust 20 years ago. And the weekends weren’t reliable either. (An anecdote: I distinctly remember strolling through the sparsely attended Capitol Hill Block Party circa 2002 when it looked as lonely as closing time at a farmer’s market.)

As spring begins in earnest this year, I’m struck by Capitol Hill’s diversity and electricity and reminded once again how things have changed for the better and cooler. Strolling among the crowd during May’s 8:45pm gloaming this past Saturday, it was impossible not to take note of all the POC faces crisscrossing the groovy corridor. Groups of cavorting 20-somethings were cruising from the jam-packed 20,000 square foot bookstore (which didn’t used to exist on the Hill) to the unwieldy food truck lines (tacos, hot dogs, shawarma); or shambling from the noisy dive bars and clubs to the glittering string-lit restaurants and epic, de facto party scenes at the slices or Hot Chicken place (open until 4 am). I for one followed the crowds to watch the death metal band that, fronted by a Latino singer and an Asian guitarist, had set up in the skate park.

I memorialized the action with a tipsy post on Bluesky directed at the figurehead of my generation’s calcified gatekeeping:

A few nights later, after Wendy’s Stealing Clothes and I caught a crowded Wednesday night show at Neumos, we landed at Bimbo’s, a boozy, Mexican-comfort-food Capitol Hill institution (still very much there) that used to be more Edward Hopper Nighthawks than today’s Hieronymus Bosch orgy. Again, hard not to notice and love: As white middle-agers we were in the minority.

If, as my curmudgeonly indie rock generation has it, Capitol Hill is dead, I say: Long live Capitol Hill.

3) Sharepoint Ate My Homework

In a follow-up to last year’s 2 Line debut, Sound Transit, the regional transit agency where I work, is opening two new light rail stations on the Eastside suburbs this weekend. This means I’ve been busy writing remarks all week for Sound Transit leaders who will be speaking at the Downtown Redmond ribbon cutting.

Growing the 2 Line on the Eastside to 10 stations and 10 miles today with a 3.4-mile addition that represents a 50% expansion will give folks living both to the east and west direct, fast, easy access to Microsoft. …  

…quick access to Downtown Redmond’s vibrant and visionary downtown.  

…reliable access to concerts and recreation at Marymoor Park. 

….and seamless access to our great trails: EastRail, the East Lake Sammamish Trail, or the Bear Creek Trail.

It also means I’ve been relying on Sharepoint, Microsoft’s Word doc management platform.

Predictably, fiasco struck on Thursday morning. Trying to do rewrites while tiptoeing around Sharepoint’s manic track changes pop-up windows, ornery formatting protocols, and Exorcist III-possessed cursor, induced my own solo clusterfuck. With my colleagues similarly paralyzed in their own Sharepoint hell, important changes were lost and errant versions were en route to the Exec Team.

“Everyone, pens down,” my wise boss said reining in our increasingly haywire Teams chat. Her Zen temperament is the only antidote to the inevitable bedlam of Sharepoint, or Shitpoint as I’ve referred to the frustrating program for years now.

As I wrote speeches about ferrying thousands of new riders to the Microsoft campus, I fantasized about directing all of them straight to the Sharepoint department.

I’m All Lost In, #81: New shoes; new poetry; and the best place to watch the NBA playoffs is a gay dive bar on Capitol Hill.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#81

Before I get to this week’s three preoccupations, I’ve got a recipe of the week

Two recipes, actually—one for mushroom paste and one for mushroom dip. The backstory is that I recently went to Yalla, the Lebanese food window over on the Drag Beyond the Drag and ordered the same mushroom gyro that I got back in January. Unfortunately, the former standout vegan menu item left me longing this time; the mushroom filling was flat and flavorless.

So, I decided to take mushroom matters into my own hands. I googled a few recipes, but I couldn’t decide which one to go with: a shallot-based one (identified as duxelles) and a heavy-on-the-parsley-and-walnuts one. Frying pan and mini-food processor going all at once, I whipped up both and slathered the meaty results on facing pieces of toasted jalapeño bread with romaine lettuce, dressed red cabbage, homemade bread crumbs, sliced tomato, and (secret ingredient) yellow mustard.

I didn’t snap a picture until I had an open-faced version for seconds (pictured below). It was delicious, but I’d recommend the traditional sandwich version.

Mushroom paste and mushroom dip combo sandwich, Monday, 4/28/25

1) New Shoes

I’ve always been hard on shoes. Holes. Soles coming unglued and falling off. This was particularly hard to admit with the two most recent pairs of shoes I’d been wrecking as I rotated between them all year. One was the slim pair of shiny black dress shoes I bought at Ross Dress for Less for Dad’s funeral back home in Maryland in March 2024, and the other was an old-fashioned tasseled pair of soft black slip-ons I pilfered from Erica’s grandad’s closet to wear at his funeral in Mississippi in September 2024. Despite my enchanted hope, the sentimental value was not enough to fortify these standard issue men’s shoes from decomposition.

Wearing my also-fairly-ratty gray New Balance track shoes, I walked downtown on Saturday as my Seattle shopping compass directed me to Nordstrom Rack at 5th and Pine. After working the crowded aisle of size 9-1/2s for an uncharacteristically patient half hour of perusing and trying on, I ended up going with the two pairs I had picked from the start: some stretchy navy blue mesh Cole Haan sneakers with a cushioned white sole and brown leather accents, and a shiny pair of classic black leather oxfords with brown and white trim.

Tuesday afternoon, 4/29/25

I was paranoid that the tight spots around the insteps (that I’d pretended not to notice) would actually become aggravated in the real world beyond the store mirror. But after a week of walking around town, the leather has softened, the mesh has eased, and with last year’s set of funeral shoes safely ensconced for sentimental keeping in my closet, it’s time for these solid, cozy, and even elegant new kicks.

2) Andrea Cohen’s The Sorrow Apartments

During my 2018 heyday—aka, my obsessive, initial excursion into poetry—I had several autodidactic strategies to make up for lost time and discover as many poets as I could. Among these strategies—which included reading all the classics I’d skipped in high school and college; finding more by poets who were showing up in literary magazines; and getting recommendations from my old bookworm friend, high school English teacher, Dallas—there was also this: spending tipsy Friday nights in the poetry aisle at Elliott Bay Books where I’d literally judge a book by its cover. This impulsive ploy actually led me to the great Louise Glück; her definitive 1962-2012 collection has a sci-fi picture of Saturn on the cover.

In a bit of a poetry reading drought these days, I returned to my Friday night game of chance this week. Based on the excellent Impressionist cover mockup of what looks like contemporary Brooklyn on a muggy summer night of flickering apartment building windows, I bought The Sorrow Apartments (excellent title, too) a collection of taut yet chatty verse by a poet I’d never heard of, Andrea Cohen. In a mysterious postscript to this wild Friday night shopping spree, Dallas claims to have sent a few of her poems my way earlier this year.

Written in clipped short lines of two or maybe three words, and often using slant rhymes (mantle/nail, bottle/still, boa/holds) to propel the reader along, Cohen drafts near-epic short stories about lost moments with former lovers or distilled snippets from long lost childhood summers.

These expansive minimalist dispatches from her melancholy memory banks had me deciding again and again that I’d just read the perfect poem; I dogeared about 15 of the 80 or so in the collection, including this one:

Mantle

I have——/on my mantle——/

a jam jar filled/with nails. Every-/

thing I love has/burned down,

but I still have/my mantle/

and my nail/aquarium. I/

still have/my fire.

3) The Madison Pub

The best place to watch the NBA playoffs is a gay dive bar.

I’d never been to the Madison Pub before, a neighborhood oasis of tap beers, busy pool tables, pinball machines (Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, Ghostbusters), and a well-lit, mazey expanse of four-top seating.

Madison Pub, May 2015

Dappled with neon beer signs and big screen TVs hovering around this spacious dive, I’ve been settling in at the long bar to watch Denver’s Jamal Murray go for 40, the unimaginative Lakers forget there’s a key, the Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards smirk and score at will, Houston and their coach idle in anger, and GSW have fun, while I nosh on Cheez-Its; they don’t have a kitchen. But not to worry. The warm staff lets you bring in food from nearby businesses like Dave’s Hot Chicken.

Quip-making cast of bartenders included, there’s lots of playful kinship at the bar (one fellow in town on tour with a Broadway musical put us on the guest list for a Saturday matinee at the Fifth Avenue Theater). The bar also has magically cold beer served in frosted mugs that, if you luck out, comes with a layer of slushed ice below the foam. And their comprehensive jukebox keeps the old rock (“Spill the Wine”) and new pop (The Weeknd) in steady rotation, along with a weird downtempo cover of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” that seems oddly popular.

I’m happy to report that this week’s Quote of the week—”This is like the Zapruder film”—came during an NBA watch session at Madison Pub. This pithy bon mot was uttered in response to the TNT announcers as they endlessly reviewed a technical foul sequence during GSW’s game 4 win on Tuesday night.

…

The other Quote of the Week comes from my favorite British-accented trio from The Tennis Podcast who were posting installments during the Madrid Open where, by the way, my parasocial goddess, Daffy Saby affirmed her 2025 status as World No. 1 and beat Coco Gauff in the final 6-3, 7-6 (7-3). The quote, however, was about cryptic World No. 2 Iga Swiatek, who I think of as J.D. Salinger’s catatonic Franny Glass. “Of course Iga Swiatek loved the blackout. Of course she did,” host Katherine Whitaker observed with delight after the tournament was temporarily suspended during the curious Spain/Portugal power outage and broody Swiatek savored the chill time.

Lastly this week, a follow-up on the Scrabble obsession I wrote about back in I’m All Lost In, #70: “Randiest,” the week’s most impressive Scrabble play, earned a 50-point bonus for using all seven letters and included “Triple Word Scores” on both the “R” and the “T,” and a “Double Letter Score” on the “I,’ for a grand total of 116 points.