A Postcard from San Francisco
by Mat Honan

I joined the line at Blue Bottle in Mint Plaza in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood at 8:40 a.m., on the dot. Despite the early hour, the temperature was already in the eighties. The light and sky were big and empty in the way that the light and sky are only in the West. When I moved here, in the nineties, everyone used to debate whether or not “SOMA” was a real thing. Once largely empty warehouses and live-work lofts, it’s now full of excellent restaurants and soaring apartments and there’s even a Whole Foods on 4th street, and so, we’ve all arrived at the conclusion that it does in fact exist in some sort of definite spatial sense.
Soon enough, my visitor from Los Angeles arrived. He wore a suit jacket and a densely woven shirt with french cuffs. Cufflinks. He didn’t wear a belt on his black jeans, and I assumed that it was intentional; it was a good look. Mint Plaza used to be a desperate little shit-squat of an alley. But it’s nice now. It has a long line of chairs that no one uses, and it’s literally in the shadow of Jack Dorsey’s old flat. Just across Mission Street, nearly within eyesight, is the Chronicle building, where the paper was published before it presumably went out of business a few years ago.
We ordered two iced coffees and two orders of poached eggs over toast. I paid. With tax and tip, it came to slightly more than $26. Blue Bottle has a few tables outside — perhaps only when the weather is nice since I’ve certainly never noticed them before — and so we sat in the sun. My visitor was staying at the W, where, he said, the cocksuckers were charging him some $640 a night for a bed and a flatscreen. Can you imagine? Have you been to the W? Sure, it’s okay, but it’s basically the Marriott with better shampoo. If you come to San Francisco, skip the flowers in your hair and definitely bypass the W.
As we sat in the intense California sun, I watched a teardrop of sweat swell on my visitor’s forehead. I could feel my own brow beading up. (Oh my God. You can’t believe what the weather is like here right now. Even now, 12 hours later, as I sit on the steps of my Ocean Beach apartment writing this letter and drinking a beer in the moonlight, it’s still blowjob temperature. Normally, you can’t go outside in San Francisco at night, or even during the day, because it is consistently chilly. But not today. Not tonight.)
We talked about Los Angeles, and we talked about San Francisco.
Los Angeles is rising again. It is the most American of cities, and maybe our last great city, given the spoil of New York and San Francisco, and Chicago’s mean winter. Everyone worth a goddamn is moving there. Only the hangers-on, too slow to realize what has already passed them by, are sticking around elsewhere. You can still find a comparatively reasonably-priced home — an entire home — even in hotspots like Los Feliz or Silverlake. And then there are always the hills and canyons. But if enough refugees flee there, who knows, maybe it will end up in a miserable state too.
San Francisco, on the other hand; San Francisco is all train jumpers.
Is it really happening, he wanted to know, is the city really emptying itself of the middle class? Will it really let itself become a city of the very rich and the very poor?
I wish I could repeat his exact words, but I can’t, because there was a front-end loader next to us tearing up the street — but first, it had to change out its dump bucket. This took about ten minutes, and it was exceptionally loud, making it hard to hear. Yet also impressive, given the complexity of the task.
The thing about San Francisco is that nobody will tell you when you have a bad idea.
I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant to say.
The thing about San Francisco is that someone or something is always vying for your attention. The guy handing you a flyer for something you don’t want. The cyclist ringing her bell at you as she blows through the stop sign. The rattle of Muni. The homeless, everywhere the homeless, San Francisco’s great intractable shame. And something is always under construction — I mean, other than houses.
It can be very hard to focus on any one thing here. I had to cup my hand to my ear to hear what my visitor had to say. We sat there in the sun, creatures of warmth and youth. And it was good.
(Well, mostly good. Our breakfast was repeatedly interrupted by the homeless, who kept asking us for money. Or at least two of them did. The third person to interrupt us wasn’t clearly homeless — he was both clean-shaven and wore clean clothes. He had light colored Levi’s on, in fact. Dad jeans, I’d say, and a nice, if casual, shirt. He pointed at my visitor’s plate as he walked past us, and asked if we were finished eating, which of course we were at this point. We were just sort of lounging before going back to work. When my visitor said yes he was, this stranger, who looked like me and my father and your father and everyone’s father picked up the half-eaten toast with the half eaten egg on top and thanked us and walked off down the street sating his appetite and we were both a bit taken aback by it all. Shocked, even. Can you imagine eating another man’s eggs? I am a father myself.)
It’s a funny time here. Half-eaten plates of charcuterie left on the table. Last week, my family and I were evicted from the apartment we have lived in for nearly four years, and now we have fewer than sixty days to find a new place to live. My landlord wants to sell. Who can blame him? Times are fat. If you own property or vestments, it’s a great time to be here. And I just can’t stress enough how nice the weather is here these days. Which is what I told my visitor, too. He’d picked a good time to come up.
Mat Honan is a senior writer for WIRED. He lives in San Francisco and would like that to remain the case. Photo by npzo
"The Reasons for the Switch Were Not Immediately Clear"
Jill Abramson, the first female, and most tattooed, executive editor in New York Times history, is “unexpectedly leaving the position” after taking over in 2011. She is being replaced by a Dean Baquet, a guy who punched a wall.
Jill Abramson, abruptly stepping down as NYT editor in favor of managing editor Dean Baquet? Gotta be a back story there
— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) May 14, 2014
Update: An alternate viable headline, courtesy of the reporting of Ken Auletta at The New Yorker Dot Com, could be “’Pushy’ Woman Pushed Out”:
Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor, were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect.
This Month's Omen Forecast from the American Realtor's Association
by Chris Braiotta

Hello, realtor! The spring real estate season is here and that means one thing: hustle! But there’s more to it than that. Maybe “sell in the spring” was all the market timing they needed in caveman days. We all know it’s not that easy anymore. In today’s competitive scene, the winning agent is the one who can read the signs everyone else missed and anticipate where the market’s going on a day-by-day basis. Good Selling and Happy Spring!!!
On The Seventh Day
A man holds a ruffled potato chip. He looks to the sky. A bird explodes. The explosion is shaped like another bird. On that block look for a do-it-yourselfer with great potential and off street parking that will go for 20% below market because owner has to relocate. New washer/dryer!
On The Ninth Day
A baby with disturbing elegance is born in Texas. To a woman. Name of: Joanice. Split level ranch with updated kitchen in this up and coming neighborhood is a must see.
Thursday of Yellows
In a city of horses, horses of leisure, twelve sparrows alight on a building’s roof. Beneath that roof, a woman discovers a birthmark on her husband. It is shaped as a calf’s mouth, braying in mute terror. When she touches it she smells ozone and hay. She kisses her husband. The kiss is unremarkable. Exactly one week later, there will be a short sale by owner in this doorman building with pool and terrace access! Parquet floors and low HOA fees!
The Ides
A woman wakes at midnight. Her bed is soaked in blood, but her body seems sound. The blood drips upwards. 1920’s Craftsman with attached sunroom next door has powderpost beetles.
On The Day of Shroves
A dog shrieks. He is mistaken for the singing of: Cyndi Lauper. He stands in the rain next to a fountain that runs with ash. A frog swims upside down in a puddle. Within twenty miles, lofts with good access to transit will see all-cash offers of $60k above asking!
Juliette Lewis’s Birthday
Lightning strikes an oak tree on a bald hill. An owl lands on the tree and vomits a still-living mouse. The mouse does not run. It has a diamond stud earring. Clip-on or pierced? It is unclear. The owner of the charming farmhouse loaded with period detail in the adjoining lot is lying about screening for lead. Not good for families with children under 30.
The Third Week
A goat is found wandering next to a creek. The creek is in a desert of leaf litter. The goat has double slitted eyes and an extra tail that hangs like ripened fruit. This is the day interest rates hit five week low. Great time to buy!
Wildcard
A cat is in heat, his calls sound like he is saying “condo.” Bad day to get cancer.
Chris Braiotta is an opinionated pedant who lives near Boston, MA. His writing has appeared here and there, and he helps run Boston’s Tardy Eagle, which is sort of a funny thing, kind of. Recently, he co-starred in and co-scored the short film “Fecund Blessings” which you should book a screening of.
Photo by Malevda on Flickr.
Ask Polly: I Thought My Mother-in-Law Was Going to Kill Me at My Wedding

Dear Polly,
How can I put away the fact that when I got married ~1.5 years ago, my now-estranged mother-in-law’s unchecked borderline personality disorder detracted from the whole event?
I’m not a wedding person. I never was. My partner, The Boy, and I got married for health insurance after I successfully defended my thesis in 2011. Sounds cold, but we’d been living together for several years at that point and were completely happy continuing our relationship that way. We were both fried from my grad school experience, during which everything up to but not including actual physical assault occurred. I had to play an absolutely horrifying game of being the bait, allowing bad things to happen to me so I could report them. (I’ve been working with a kickass therapist for a few months, and we’ve made massive leaps in slaying those grad school dragons.) After that, I was incapable of planning anything, let alone a wedding, and I was jobless — hence the importance of health insurance.
Eventually, my rather traditional father was all, “Your grandmother won’t be around forever.” They wanted a Wedding, and ain’t no guilt like Jewish guilt. Also, my grandma is the most amazing person ever, and my family has its weirdness, but at the end of the day, they party hard, and everyone wants everyone else to be happy. So The Boy and I got weddinged. ~1.5 years later, people are still raving (in a positive way!) about the party.
The Boy’s therapist suggested a book on growing up in a family with a borderline mother, and it is one long checklist of his whole family’s behavior. The Boy is the fucking champion of the world for handling them all, with whom we maintained a relationship for the sake of interfamilial peace during the wedding prep. It took a very long time for my family to truly believe what The Boy’s family did; I suspect some still don’t entirely grasp how destructive they are. I won’t share the full compilation of The Boy’s family’s horror stories, but they range from simply not showing up at the rehearsal dinner they demanded to trying turn my mom against me, emailing The Boy that I was a manipulative bitch and a horrible person, being ridiculously late for pictures, walking out of our ceremony, and the list goes on. I got good at turning the other cheek, but there’s a part of me that deeply regrets never just starting a brawl and beating the shit out of them. (No, I will never ever actually do that.)
This is a good place to note that I am not by nature a passive person. As a fencer, coaches described me as a consummate fighter (I wasn’t technically pretty to watch, but even when I lost, I would always give my opponent, no matter good they were, a very hard run for their money). After I got out of grad school and epically failed at finding a normal job, I started a company. I’m good at the kind of shit that makes running a tiny tech startup feel perfect: improvising, solving problems, and turning bad stuff into good productive things are my jam.
So, I wasn’t prepared to feel regretful about our wedding. I worked like hell to stay focused on the good bits. We were good at compromise while not giving up on the very meaningful things. For instance, we found an officiant with a joyously pro-love liberal philosophy that gave us warm fuzzies who also happened to be a rabbi, which gave my mom warm fuzzies. They were just problems to solve. The thing that keeps popping up is that throughout, I was afraid that The Boy’s mom was going to take his father’s gun (yes, the man carries a piece on him at all times everywhere they go even if it’s illegal) and shoot me at some point during the ceremony or reception in the name of rescuing her son and being a good mother. I didn’t say anything to anyone at the time. The Boy was managing his own feelings about interacting with them, and I felt like a needy wretched asshole complaining about what I was feeling. My parents would’ve brushed it off, told me I was being silly, and that I needed to get a hold of myself. My friends — well, I just felt like a lunatic, like The Boy’s mom’s crazy was somehow rubbing off on me, so I didn’t talk about it. My solution was to have my dress be something that would be easy for paramedics to cut off and to do my hair in such a way that if I had to run or fight, it would stay out of my face.
The most I can figure out is that I had to compromise on how I presented myself out of fear, and I can’t square that away. Finding a dress was not fun. I just went quietly, by myself, had a dress made (it was lovely and professional and fit perfectly), and I think the incredibly nice talented ladies who made it thought I was a total fucking weirdo because I wasn’t super into it. Now, though, I find myself looking at wedding dresses, and for the first time thinking, “that would look amazing on me,” sans fear, then I feel sad because I already got weddinged (which I didn’t even really want), then I hate that I’m being a soppy moron, since I never looked at wedding dresses with anything other than complete ambivalence (because fuck the patriarchy, yet at the same time, feminism means choice). So why do I suddenly care, and WHY THE FUCK didn’t I say anything at the time? Because my friends who I tell now are all, “Oh, wow… yeah. Yeah, I could totally see her shooting you,” and according to that book The Boy is reading, borderlines do have complete lapses of morality and kill people, including their own children. I’ve been bargaining with myself, like, “Hey, I get to wear whatever I want for the rest of my life, so fuck that bullshit. Also, I’m alive!” And when The Boy and I have talked about it, he says he thinks about it in terms of having to go through all that wedding-related horror so he could get to a place where he could cut them off, and we get to have a peaceful balanced life together. He’s right, it’s completely true, and so I feel like a selfish whiner because while I’m sitting there thinking, “What about my experience?” he had to actually grow up with these intensely toxic parents.
So, yeah. Is there a good way to think about all of this so I feel less bad? Do I just need a slap in the face?
I Might Just Need A Slap In The Face
Dear IMJNASITF,
Weddings are made to be ruined. If your borderline mother-in-law doesn’t ruin your wedding then someone or something else will. Why do brides even wear white, when none of them are actually virgins? Because that way something red or purple or green can get spilled all over their fucking $5000 dresses and ruin the whole day.
I was determined to be low-maintenance about my own wedding. I was 35 years old, not some blushing baby. I got engaged in December, went off the pill immediately (because I figured it would take months for me to get pregnant), and got pregnant immediately. I was glad to be pregnant, but I felt like a severely queasy, perpetually exhausted wreck while I was planning the wedding. I couldn’t plan the menu because everything sounded disgusting. Fish and sauces and meats, and all of it so pointlessly expensive! My brother and I, who live in LA, decided to have our weddings a week apart so our family could fly out once instead of twice in the same year. This meant everyone was a little strung out by my wedding, and many aunts and uncles left town after my brother’s, and missed mine.
But there were countless little missteps and mishaps along the way. I decided at the last minute that I looked like a fat kid in a nightgown in my formerly-elegant-looking empire-waisted gown, so I ran out and bought a pretty terrible gigantic white wedding dress the day before the wedding. It was like some kind of viral infection: out of nowhere, I wanted to look LIKE A BRIDE. A cliché, rotund, queasy bride. My husband’s family gasped when they saw me at the hotel. My husband had somehow forgotten to mention to any of them that I was pregnant, so I had all of these “My god, it’s a shotgun wedding!” looks to navigate for hours. (Yes, my husband is not all rainbows and moonbeams, trust me. He is one spaced out motherfucker with absolutely no sense a lot of the time.)
It was 105 degrees in Palm Desert the day of the wedding. I was wearing a dress the shape and weight of a comforter. The lower half of my body was swimming in a hot tub of sweat. I was in the dysentery phase of my pregnancy. My hairstyle was fucking atrocious, and the three friends I’d enlisted to guard me against atrocious hairstyles left to eat lunch because the stylist was taking too long. So I started crying big, salty tears all over my shitty, caked-on, professional make-up, and my friend’s photographer husband, the one person who’d stuck around, started shooting photos of me crying, probably because he sees himself as a true artist, god bless him and also, fuck him.
The last thing I told my husband before the wedding was, “Make sure the microphone is set up. Don’t try to do this thing without a microphone.” But it was 115 degrees in the sunshine, so they moved the chairs to the shade and the mic cord wouldn’t stretch. About 15 people could hear the ceremony. I looked out at the crowd when I was saying my vows, and the first two rows were crying. The next 7 rows were looking at me like, “Huh?”
At dinner, my mom stood up and said, “Well, my son’s wedding was last week, so we’re all a little tired of weddings.” I laughed out loud, among nervous titters. My husband’s family looked stricken. It was like a scene from The Office. I appreciated the honest dread my mom was feeling, which just goes to show how deeply warped I am or how warped my family is or maybe how warped weddings are in general.
On your wedding day, everything is amazing and also completely fucked. Everyone is incredibly generous and good to you and except for that one person who is so fucking selfish and bad. You are so in love and also so full of fear and dread over the years and years you’ll spend with that dude right there, who is so handsome and special and also one spaced out motherfucker with absolutely no sense.
It’s strange that I’m writing about this right now, because it’s my eighth anniversary TODAY. I seriously just remembered that a few minutes ago for the first time all week. I had to stop and call my husband and remind him, because my brother agreed to babysit the kids last week, and we’re supposed to go out to dinner in about two hours. I have to say, I’m not really in the mood to go out, either. See how it is?
SO: Your wedding sucked in many ways, possibly because you suspected that your mother-in-law might kill you. I would imagine that having even the faintest sensation that someone might kill you could really wreck any old day, let alone a wedding day, and give you severe PTSD to boot. You sound like a very tough sort of a person, so maybe this is what PTSD sounds like, coming from you. Maybe what you’re trying to tell me is, “I am suffering now because I went into survival mode and brushed this off then.” I totally understand that.
I don’t think you need a slap in the face. I think you are someone who needs to be careful not to put things in black and white terms. You need to be careful to be gentle with yourself. I’m even going to tell you that you should try to present yourself in a softer way, so that people realize that you’re pretty sensitive, actually, and not the rough and tumble soldier of fortune that you present to the world, with your swashbuckling and your jousting and your threats of beating people up. Some part of you wants to be treated with more care.
The details of the wedding, through the lens of PTSD or some kind of lesser traumatic reverberation, make perfect sense to me. But when you say stuff like “I wasn’t super into my dress” and “I would’ve done this differently” and “Why didn’t I handle that differently?” and “I wish I could have that day back, and do it all over a different way!”? Well, those things are the things that every single human alive says about their wedding. I think we have to try to separate the trauma from your standard wedding ambivalence, which is universal.
OK, fine. Some people have magical, perfect weddings. They say things like “OH MY GOD, THE WHOLE DAY WAS AMAZING FROM START TO FINISH, I WOULDN’T CHANGE A SINGLE THING!” But those people also say shit like “It’s all good” and “No worries” and “Life’s a beach” and “They grow up so fast, don’t they?” and “I love the Dave Matthews Band soooo much I get chills whenever I hear one of their songs playing.” The rest of us, though, have mixed feelings when we think of our weddings. By my wedding night, I was so relieved and so thankful and so in love with everyone, my husband, the whole world. But as I was getting ready to walk down the aisle? I was thinking, “I cannot fucking believe I had the bad taste to engage in THIS FUCKING HETERONORMATIVE THREE-RING CIRCUS. WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING? WHY? WHY DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF?” When friends wandered in to help me fix my terrible fucking hair and say “Ooo so exciting!” I just grimaced. I was sweating and cramping and I looked like Tracy Turnblad in “Hairspray,” except with panic and queasiness where the bubbly vivacious personality should go. I was hating everything and it was such an EXPENSIVE and PUBLIC way to feel shitty.
And of course we all think we should’ve worn something else! Oh god, anything else. ANYTHING. Of course we should’ve handled every single thing differently. I’ll bet I was awful and embarrassing. I usually am when the stakes get very high.
So let’s try very hard to take that part of things, the built-in ambivalence and the built-in dread and fear and horror, and the catastrophic nature of weddings in general, and let’s separate that from the truly dreadful particulars. Can we do that? Let’s admit that everyone has a semi-disastrous wedding, it’s just a matter of where on the Richter Scale yours happens to fall. OK? There’s something inherently fucked about a wedding, that’s all. Big white dress, write your own stupid vows, be overly jokey or overly earnest or overly typical or overly eclectic or all of the above, serve lukewarm chicken breast stuffed with some shit that is way worse than a bad restaurant would serve but costs $30 a plate? Uch. Terrible mix CDs, terrible DJs, terrible bands, bad weather, accidents, wine stains, shitty hairstyles, ugly bridesmaid dresses that everyone’s really fucking pissed about wearing, selfish friends who do crazy acting-out shit because they’re not the center of everything for one fucking minute of their narcissistic lives? These things are de rigueur. They define the modern nuptial experience.
Murderous mother-in-laws are different. Whether that threat is real or imagined, you felt it. And clearly that experience was influenced strongly by your grad school experience, in which you had to be the bait and basically invite physical assault to prove that it had occurred already. The way you sped over that, glossed right past it, made it tough to understand. I’m sure you have your practical reasons not to want to go into it. But clearly there’s trauma there, and confusion and a desperate need to get some distance, to put it in the past, to make it blurry, to appear tough and beyond the pull of those events. Your experience in grad school and your experience on your wedding day are clearly linked and each one is exacerbating the other.
You need to talk to your therapist about that. This wedding day thing isn’t just coming up JUST because it’s a good story (although you do love a good story). It’s coming up because you sincerely, genuinely want to cry a river over the fear of physical injury there. You don’t think that YOU, a tough woman, a bad ass, should feel so fragile about these things. But you do. Some part of you wants permission to feel fragile and afraid. You want to cry, and be weak. It’s ok to do that, in general AND with a therapist AND with your husband.
So do that. But when it comes to fixating on the WEDDING part of this, the fact that it wasn’t quite right, it wasn’t comfortable, it wasn’t a celebration, it was just nerve racking and terrible? Well, you CAN have another wedding if you want to. But Christ, who wants that? I would encourage you to dig deep into the threat of physical violence and its ill effects on your worldview and your nerves, but leave the wedding-specific regrets aside. The wedding regrets maybe break your heart in retrospect. But you CAN get over our collective heteronormative viral infection, can’t you? Because weddings are totally great and awesome and also totally terrible and horrid at the same time. Anyone with a working brain and the capacity to have mixed feelings agrees.
You’re very good at compartmentalizing, which is usually not a great, healthy thing. Use it to your advantage now, though. Put the wedding stuff, the dress and the not-quite-rightness of it all, and stuff it in a suitcase and throw it off a tall cliff. Weddings, whatever. What can you do? Life’s a fucking beach. They grow up so fast, don’t they? I love the Dave Matthews Band so much I want to staple live crickets to my face right now.
You love The Boy. You married him. Your life is good. Go to your therapist and talk about fear and pain and vulnerability. Learn to cry about this without feeling shame over it. Talk about toughness and bluster and sometimes putting that anger away and just admitting that some things are sad. Some things are just disappointing. Sometimes you don’t want to give your opponents a run for their money. Sometimes you just want to lay down on the ground and look up at the sky and feel sorry for all of it. Some things are just very, very sad.
And some things are fucking exquisite. Some things are miraculous and crazy and meant to be. Eight years ago today, on my wedding day, I married the greatest, most lovable, most patient, most resilient, most spaced out motherfucker with absolutely no sense I’ve ever met. Here’s to imperfect weddings and imperfect spouses and imperfect lives. Here’s to all of our glorious misfirings and messes. What luck, to be here! What incredible, improbable luck.
Polly
Do you want to know precisely whom to marry? Write to Polly and get that settled today.
Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl’s existential advice columnist. She’s also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.
Photo by Ben Husmann
Fucking Steak And How To Cook It

Awww, the New York Times thinks it has “a rock-solid new system” for cooking steak at home. That’s so cute! Adorable! I am both tickled and amused by this delightful attempt at disrupting the cooking-steak-at-home space. It’s just so sweet! Also LISTEN UP NEW YORK TIMES DINING READERS, NEW YORK TIMES DINING WRITERS AND ANYONE ELSE WITHIN THE SOUND OF MY VOICE: This is how you cook a fucking steak. There is no other way, and there will be no further discussion or appeals on the matter. Do not make me address this issue again. I will not be anywhere near as pleasant next time.
East Village Radio, 2003-2014
East Village Radio, 2003–2014

Another neighborhood institution marked for death:
The station ends live programming after Friday, May 23. The stable of eclectic DJs, with shows covering nearly every genre of music, will have the chance to broadcast a farewell show in the days ahead…
Popularity hasn’t been an issue with East Village Radio, who counted more than 1 million listeners worldwide a month (this after starting as a short-lived 10-watt FM radio station in April 2003). However, under the Congressional Digital Music Copyright Act of 1998, Internet broadcasters must pay a digital performance royalty for every listener.
What went wrong? A lot of things, probably, but it didn’t help that the small independent radio station operating out of a standing-room glass storefront on First Avenue had to pay some of the highest royalty rates in the industry, despite its interests aligning exactly, almost charitably, with the companies it was paying. Even with a million listeners and minimal overhead, breaking even became impossible. So I suppose what really went wrong is this: There no longer existed a way for things to go right.
From a short 2003 writeup in the Times, which was EVR’s first:
Business owners who make it big often give back to their communities with scholarships, park benches, even parks. Not Frank Prisinzano. The downtown restaurateur best known for his mini-empire of Italian eateries has just given the East Village its own radio station…
It’s no coincidence that this neighborhood is the location of three of Mr. Prisinzano’s restaurants — Frank, L’il Frankie’s and Supper — all of which occasionally broadcast EVR. “The East Village has been extremely supportive of us,’’ said Mr. Prisinzano, who was a club D.J. in college and who opened his first restaurant, Frank, five years ago. “We wanted to return the favor to the neighborhood.”
Frank is still open and delicious! EVR hosts, already, are delivering wobbly-voiced farewells. Listen here.
(Photo via.)
Memorial to Recent National Tragedy Opens
“Was it going to be primarily a historical document, a monument to the dead or a theme-park-style tourist attraction? How many historical museums are built around an active repository of human remains, still being added to? How many cemeteries have a $24 entrance fee and sell souvenir T-shirts? How many theme parks bring you, repeatedly, to tears?” The September 11 Memorial Museum opens next Wednesday, but the Times has Snowfalled it today.
The Glorious End Of Cereal
The Glorious End Of Cereal

Did you have any idea that cereal is considered threatened? That analysts and consultants wake up every morning, put on their suits, and dream up ways to reverse this new business narrative?
Cereal makers have been losing the battle for the breakfast table to other offerings, notably yogurt. So Kellogg Co. has struck a deal with Dannon Co. to bring its cereal across enemy lines–to the yogurt aisle.
Dannon’s YoCrunch brand is known for mix-ins on top of its yogurt cups, which include granola, Oreos and M&M;’s. The deal with Kellogg to do the same with Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops in YoCrunch Cereal Bowls that are hitting shelves this spring is the first for breakfast cereal, executives said, and a sign of the times for the morning meal.
There is something odd about these cups that we, after decades of conditioning, might strain to see: They are not breakfast items. They are desserts, or at best guilty snacks. Adding cereal to yogurt makes it less, not more, like something you should eat at the beginning of your day. The reason for this is obvious and yet sounds radical: Cereal is not a breakfast food.
That is not to say that cereal cannot serve as a breakfast food, or that it is never appropriate to eat in the early hours of the day. The best thing about cereal, and a reason it is so often confused with a real breakfast food, is that it is quick and versatile. But set aside your expectations and prejudices and traditions and consider what a bowl of Corn Flakes or Cheerios or Raisin Bran is really suitable for. In order:
1. Lunch
2. Simple hunger (snack, emergency dinner)
3. Dessert
4. Digestive aid
5. Garnish (on yogurt, liquid or frozen)
6. Breakfast (as a compromise, for children or large numbers of people)
Cereal is filler; it satisfies hunger and provides pleasure. It is a utilitarian semi-meal — Soylent, basically, for the psychologically sound. It is exactly what you need in the middle of the day, when hot food would put you to sleep and leafy food would instill a craving for something much worse. Lunch is for cereal and cereal is for lunch.
What cereal is not is the long-lasting, protein-rich foundation on which to build an entire waking day. Cereal as breakfast is a historical aberration — a series of questionable marketing efforts writ large:
There was a problem during the Industrial Revolution: people were still eating a farmer’s diet, but they were shifting to a more sedentary lifestyle, which caused indigestion. People who were interested in health started looking into that and started coming up with solutions. Sylvester Graham, the reformer who became a preacher of health ideology, advocated for vegetarian food, and whole wheat as kind of a panacea for health problems, which becomes the answer to the question of breakfast. Then, people who ran sanitariums, including John Harvey Kellogg, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, really took that idea and flew with it and invented new ways to eat farinaceous foods.
Entrepreneurs — some of whom worked in the sanitariums, like Charles C. Post–really build on these ideas and make them a healthy requirement. He creates all sorts of crazy testimonies that serve as advertisements for Grape-Nuts, where people’s lives are saved from chronic illness and they’re able to walk again.
Then, there’s also the history of orange juice and milk, with the discovery of vitamins in the 1910s…
And on and on, you can imagine where this goes.
Anyway: Cereal makers and cereal consumers, embrace the change. The decline of cereal is a correction and a blessing, and if the world is just, it will not be stopped.
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Annoyance and Alarm
Good morning, it is now legal in New York to communicate with someone “in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm.”
The Black Keys' New Album: A Track-by-Track Review

Everyone, or at least every critic with a serious emotional investment in statements like this, agrees: The Black Keys are the last true rock band left. Though derided by some as Sports Blues and by others as The Band From The TV Commercial For The Taco Bell Late-Night Menu, With The One Girl Who’s Like ‘Now THAT’S spicy,’ the Keys continue to fill arenas and pump out hits with a consistency no other outfit can match. All of which means that the arrival of a new Black Keys record is big news for everyone who cares about the future — and present — of rock and roll music. Here’s a track-by-track look at what’s good and what’s even better on the Black Keys’ new record, Fast Casual.
1. “Free To Choose (Appetizer Meal Deal)” — This song is either about the end of a tumultuous relationship or the new selection of shareable [quesa]’Dilla-style appetizers at Applebee’s, the restaurant chain that’s credited as a co-producer (with Danger Mouse) on four of Fast Casual’s songs.
2. “Some Restrictions Apply” — A brooding number that exemplifies the Black Keys’ recent knack for incorporating brands and advertising-ready slogans into songs about untrustworthy but attractive women, this would’ve fit perfectly on such Black Keys records as We Are Farmers (2010) or Toyotathon Man (2012).
3. “Sunglass Collection” — This slow-burn ballad finds Auerbach in a ruminative mood, as he sings about his highly regarded private collection of vintage and limited-edition sunglasses.
4. “Party Bee” — When this song was first heard in an ad for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Fructose Whiskey Coolers, the insipid lyrics — “Oh woman, I’m a party bee/Fly around with sweetened whiskey/Party bee will sting a boob/Party bee delightfully sweetens your favorite cocktails” — drew a chorus of criticism online. The single entered Billboard’s rock charts at number four, though, and became one of the group’s bigger hits.
5. “Male 18-to-35” — Auerbach and Carney are clearly feeling it on this one, and deliver a brash anthem for the nation’s most sought-after demographic. “You’re going to get me what I want, and when,” Auerbach growls, “and I’m still going to make a big deal about it.”
6. “Forget It” — This strutting, blues-y song stands out for being notably less polished in terms of production than other recent efforts — indeed, it would be at home on either of the band’s first two records — Auerbach’s winding guitar figures, and for ending abruptly with a heavy, audible sigh.
7. “Literally Applebee’s” — Hard to say what this stomping number is about.
8. “Ram Tough” — “Making an offer that makes me want to say yes/Hard to say no to those eyes and that dress/Never been a better time to drive one off the lot/Eco-Boost engine humming, woman, these deals are hot.”
9. “See You Tomorrow” — Auerbach rides over Carney’s muscular drumming and Danger Mouse’s whirling keys in this ode to good times with good friends, and the Applebee’s new line of sizzling steak and shrimp entrees. Though it’s been a favorite as part of the Keys’ live set for years, this is its first time appearing on a record.
10. “Akron” (Feat. Akon) — A bit of a stylistic departure for the band, this collaboration with Miami-area producer DJ Khaled and Senegalese-born super-alto Akon sounds like an uptempo club anthem. But listen closer: it’s about the band’s Ohio hometown. The lyrics detail the group’s stubborn affection for a place that’s oddly timeless in ways both good and bad, and still struggling — struggling with the need to grow, to become something other than what it’s been if it’s to survive. In the end, the song is about the dignity of lives lived modestly, if sometimes desperately, and with a sort of weary honor. Also Akon sings something about Monster Energy Drinks in the chorus.
David Roth is a staff writer for SBNation and a co-founder and editor of The Classical. Image by Jessica S.