It’s easy to see the future. Challenge is not overcompensating for it now.
Once you’re a regular anywhere you can portend the goodbye note on its Instagram account and then countdown note on its door. Every party has its hangover, some sales are final, and everyone you love is gonna die. Saturn’s rings will eventually dissolve, and John Boswell’s video of it happening is what inspired that lyric: pre-grieving is good practice for recalibrating your now; the only trick is not to get stuck in what’s not yet.
Crest Hardware has five days left in its 22,646 day run¹. Most of you haven’t been there, but if you have, you know. It’s our big little hardware store in Williamsburg run by Joe and Liza with the staff who will tell you what spray paint is best for graffitting the subway and what houseplant won’t kill you cat, and ask you next time how it went. It was home to Franklin the backyard pig and an African grey parrot named Finlay who probably heard and said more about metals than Apollo could ever hope.
Friday is the last day of business, though there’s not much business left: the entire floor was cleared by Friday to become our farewell dance floor while the staff lounge become a tattoo parlor, and the greenhouse was portapotties and bar.
Every couple months when we meet up for ginger ales or non-euclidean theater, Yannick and I revisit our in-development shared theory of a proper good bye: how a clear, defined, and unambiguous end to something imbues itself in so much more respect, honor, self-determination, and (ironically) longevity than a painful, long and longing whimper.
So we danced farewell, and meant it. No less sad, probably more, but at least we knew what we were doing.
¶. 5-8pm: Crest Relic Sale
Crest Hardware, Williamsburg, NYC, free (relics from $5)
The more I work with museums and artifacts, the more I find estate sales and collection auctions as a form of that needed intentional, institutional, even property-law-proper farewell, especially as they often result from the lack of one within the family.
This isn’t that, it’s a good one, but it is the final event at Crest, and I’ll be there as long as I reasonably can² before I have to set up for…
¶. 7–10pm: Open VCR Night
Crest Hardware, Williamsburg, NYC, free
It’s a last Monday of an even month. You know the rules. Because some have been surprised to discover: the VCR opens at 7:00pm sharp and closes at 10:00pm sharp. There is no intro. There is no host. There is no emcee³. There is no signup sheet. Twitch chat is powerless.
Today I’ll be bringing 2 tapes I found on the Free shelf at the bar at the edge of the universe (Brooklyn), my parents’ wedding rehearsal tap, some tape called “MARZiMiX2020” with a big seizure warning, and a Japanese Jan Švankmajer anthology that probably won’t even play because I’m pretty sure it’s PAL.
¶. Wednesday 5pm: The Surviving Jump Stars Opening
1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA, free
(exhibition continues through October)
I’ve just learned about this project, but I do know George Ferrini, and she says:
Some of you know this story. A slight wobble in the planet’s rotation known as Axial Precession causes the alignment of the stars above our polar axis to change slowly over time. The 26,000-year cycle traced by the polar axis is referred to in a terrific understatement as The Great Year. Over the course of The Great Year, eleven celestial bodies will serve as Earth’s North Star. Each of these past and future Pole Stars is brought to life with the ceremonial sculptures of the Jump!Star initiative.
The culminating performance of these sculptures, with the communities that helped build them, was to premiere on June 15, 2019, in conjunction with an annual music festival in the Flint Hills of Kansas. A few hours before the performance, a tornado ripped through the site, destroying most structures and canceling the event. Miraculously, the Jump!Star tent and all the delicate paper sculptures survived.
¶. Saturday 10am–3pm: Mennonite History in NYC
Souderton → Franconia → Manhattan → Brooklyn → Philly
The Mennonite Heritage Center (in my hometown, PA) is brining a busload to NYC and I’ll be crashing (minus the bus parts). Call Regina at 215-256-3020 ext. 112 and tell her you want the Jacob Ford Package if you want to join in NYC, sans bus ride to/from PA.
∞. Two newsletters I designed continue to mail news
∞. (& comics, essays, rants, and cultural ethnographies of Homestar Runner).
Flaming Hydra still burns brightly. Get blasted by the firehose.
Last month Library Futures debuted CATS, a monthly-ish list of happenings in the world of copyright. I am very proud of my “de/reconstructed” cat logos.
First 5 people to ask get 3 months comped of your choice. (Maria & Jennie: don’t read this.)
¹ Naive estimation, assuming 16 leapdays. Tried to ID the day it opened but I’m in a rush so just got as far as this article in the Times Machine about a blue fetus behind the wrenches. Which, yes, I will be asking Joe tonight if a) it still exists and b) can I have it.
² If anyone can be my buying agent for any auction pieces after I leave, hmu: (848) COM-MENT.
³ Okay, Matt “FORT90” Hawkins (guy on the laptop up at the front) moderates the Twitch chat and likes to ID out what’s playing, but he is also powerless; ⏏ freely. I roam around the bar and hide in the projection booth to prove the event is self-governing dead media anarchism.
Corrections welcome: please fax yours to (848) 800-2666.