I was required to report to the Kings County Supreme Civil courthouse at 8:30am. When I arrived (after losing my way and being screamed at for no reason by a very rude cop), I was herded into a huge jury selection room with a long podium at the front, and a couple of TVs to either side. The TVs were playing a video about jury duty. The volume was too low to hear all of it, but I did catch the voiceover explaining, “Trials in America used to be like this,” over a scene of a screaming mob at a witch burning, and then there was a shot of a contemporary (well, 1970s-era) man on the street saying, “Jury duty? It’s a pain in the *bleeped*.”

A little after 9, a man settled himself behind the podium and instructed us on what to expect, how to behave, and how to correctly fill out our summonses.

“Before we get started,” he said. “I want all of you to check that the front of your Summons says “April 11th.” If any of you have a Summons that does not say “April 11th,” you should not be here and you need to come see me.”

About a dozen people ran up to the podium and he pointed to where each of their Summons said April 11th.

“Next,” he continued. “If any of you feel you do not have a basic understanding of the English language – now, you don’t need to be able to read or write in English and you do not need to be familiar with legal terms, but if you do not have a basic understanding of English, please proceed through the door to my right, where you will be tested and it will be determined whether or not you are able to serve.”

About forty people rushed the door.

“You people are all coming right back here!” he shouted at them. “You are not going home, you are coming right back here!” (And sure enough, over the next few minutes, they all filtered back in and took seats, looking sheepish.)

“Next,” he continued. “If any of you do not work, are solely responsible for the care of minor children and have the birth certificate on you – and you must be all three of these things – then please see me to be excused.” He spent a few minutes telling a great many women that, since they work, they did not in fact fit all three criteria.

Next, he moved on to explaining the rules of conduct for the day.

“You will remove your hats in the courthouse,” he said. He made eye contact with a young guy slouching in cap and earbuds. “Sir!” he said, vigorously miming removing a cap. The kid took his hat off, rolled his eyes and slouched down in his seat.

“Cell phones are not to be used at any time in this room,” he continued. He then made eye contact with a businessman who was muttering into his phone. “Sir!” he said, and the man put his phone away, rolling his eyes and huffing audibly.

“You may all go outside for 10 minutes at a time to have a cigarette break, and that is all! Ten minutes. Now, those of you who do not smoke are wondering why you cannot take a 10-minute break. I will explain that to you. If we were to allow everyone to take a break, some of you would go out front, get a coffee from the coffee cart and come right back. Others of you would go down the street to the bagel store, get a bagel sandwich and come right back. Others of you would go to the diner near your house, have a three-course breakfast, go upstairs, watch some Maury Povitch and show up back here at 3:00 asking me if your name has been called. Ten minutes for a cigarette. That is all, jurors.”

I should mention, this guy was a lot funnier than I’m making him sound. He was like a world-weary municipal vaudeville performer, and I really appreciated the levity he brought to the proceedings.

He then reassured us that, no matter what, all of us would be staying until 5:00pm, and we should reconcile ourselves to that fact. He then said that some of us would be called for the next day, and that if you had a particular reason why you could not come back tomorrow, that you should come up to the podium and explain it.

At least a hundred people stormed the podium.

“There are way too many of you up here!” the man said. “If your excuse is that you have to be at work tomorrow, that is not a valid excuse! We all have to be at work tomorrow.”

Rather than cut down on the number of people waiting to speak to him, however, the line gradually increased, as the people still seated had time to look at all of those people getting to have a special word, and thinking that maybe there was something they’d like to say, as well. After every single person in the jury pool had had the chance to have their special excuse heard and rejected, we finally passed in our Summonses and some wizards off behind the curtain somewhere started announcing lists of names over the loudspeaker, directing people to various empanelling rooms to be questioned.

I sat in between a very angry-looking woman, and a chubby Asian kid who had tried to be excused for language difficulties. This kid was clearly incredibly confused by everything, and he kept studying his Summons receipt intently every time names were called, as if he might forget who he was if he didn’t focus.

Before very long, my name was called with about 30 others to go into the next room, where we assembled and stood in a clump while a guy called roll. I looked around at the group – it was sort of like the Speed bus in that there seemed to be at least one representative of every imaginable race, ethnic group, social class, sex and age group, but there were significantly more of some people than others – more black people than white, more men than women, more middle-aged than young people, more shitty dressers than not. There was only one attractive person – a young South Asian man with model-thick hair wearing a shiny blue pin-striped suit. Incidentally, I later realized that he was the only juror in our group other than me to have a Kindle on him, and I will attribute his extreme reluctance to make any eye contact with me to his involvement in his reading material.

Our roll-caller told us we were all going over to the criminal court on Jay Street, and he then led us in a long line outside into the beautiful, sunny, 70-degree weather, and then into another courthouse, up an escalator and into another giant jury pool room, where we all sat down for a minute before having our names called again and filing into a small room where a bailiff called roll again, directing each of us to take the elevator up to the 17th floor (“Do NOT take the elevator bank to Family Court!” he said, several times. “If you take the Family Court elevators, you will become lost!”) and wait for him by the windows.

We waited by the windows for 15 or 20 minutes. The windows provided a sweeping, panoramic view of downtown Brooklyn, the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and the city spread out past the river. I sat next to an old lady who was reading a supermarket circular and talking to herself constantly: “Splenda. I need to buy some Splennnnnda. $4.99 for a box of Splenda packets.”

Eventually, the bailiff came up and collected us, and led us into a courtroom where we filed into the spectator pews. The judge, court reporter, attorneys and defendant were all in place at the front of the room. The defendant’s attorney was an old man in glasses and a tweed coat with long, ratty hair that whimpered Legal Aid, whereas the prosecutor from the DA’s office was a young, clear-skinned peroxide blond woman who stood to introduce herself in a clear, ringing voice.

The Judge explained a little bit about the case and gave us the trial period (which was too long for me). She explained that we would each take the stand and be questioned, but that first, if there was anyone in the Courtroom who could answer yes to one of a series of questions (knew someone involved with the case, lived or worked near the area in question, had particular personal trauma associated with some aspect of the case, was moving out of NY in the next two weeks, etc. etc.), they should come and see her and the attorneys in her office.

At this point, everyone in the courtroom other than the jurors went in the back, and then there was a 15-minute pause, and then the bailiff asked that anyone in the first pew who needed to speak to the judge privately should stand up.

Everyone stood up.

So, we all spent the next hour and a half sitting there while everyone went in one at a time and explained why they couldn’t be a juror, and then we took a two hour lunch break, and then were back at it. I was amazed at how many of my fellow jurors – several of them young – passed the hours upon hours by just staring at their knees. What are all these articles on about, saying the digital generation is increasingly unable to switch off from external stimulation for even a mere minute? The jury pool is made up of Zen masters, apparently.

I was one of the last people to see the Judge and be dismissed. I don’t really know why everyone was so hot to get out of sitting on the trial. Presumably, all of us under consideration had indicated on our forms that our employers paid us for jury duty. If I had been able to serve for the trial period, I would have liked to be a juror. I think it would be an interesting experience – more interesting, at any rate, than going to work as usual during those two weeks. But I guess most people would prefer not to be jurors if they can come up with an excuse not to.

By the time I was sent back down to the main juror holding pen, it was 3:00pm, so I read my Kindle for an hour, and then they called us all up to collect our diplomas and go home.

So, I would have liked to juror-ed a trial, but I didn’t get to. And that’s fine, too.

If this narrative seems kind of beige and square and not as interesting as it had the potential to be, well, it’s inspired by the courthouse environment. Courthouses are generally square and neutral-colored – square wood boxes and wood pulpits and wood benches and wood doorframes, gray laminate square tiles on the floor. And trials are probably more often than not less interesting than they have the potential to be.

Because crime is fascinating. Crime is one of our favorite stories. But unfortunately, if the legal system had a spirit animal, it would be the box. No one really ever wants to go hang out in a courthouse, and jury duty mostly entails a lot of sitting around, so in terms of civic obligation, jury duty is more along the lines of driver’s license renewal than voting. It should be more exciting than it is, as should this concluding paragraph.

Well, hey there, stranger.  Back from Morocco, had an amazing time, and I will blog about it, but I’ve been buried in work all week and then I had this really fun stomach bug that knocked me out for two days, blah, blah.

Anyway, I just want to quickly note that it’s amazing how much New York can take something as cool and seemingly simple as underground fight clubs and turn them into some scene-y precious bullshit that makes you want to go to sleep.

At 6-foot-3, with a chiseled face and some amazing tattoo work, the 20-year-old is as unique a New York character as they come. He’s a pretty boy boxer. His day job is working with 2-year-olds in a nursery school. He rolls with a tight-knit crew called the Big Gunz that has been together since freshman year of high school — all good looking, all boxers. . . . he has been getting into modeling and may sign with an agency. Asked about the obvious tension between boxing and making money off your face, Charlie doesn’t engage. “I like a good lifestyle,’’ he says, “and teaching nursery school and boxing don’t pay well.” . . . He’s undefeated in his weight, and a title would propel him toward the Olympics and then a pro career.

Really?  That’s “as unique a New York character as they come?”  If this kid’s bound for the Olympics, I’m on track for a six-figure book deal.

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Photo via.

And Halloween is really a one-two punch of fun fascism because, in addition to being told that you must have fun, you are also told how you must dress for it.  This whole idea of needing a day in which everyone agrees to look crazy so that you can feel comfortable dressing up is beyond me.  Isn’t the whole point of costuming yourself to stand out and be noticed?  Why demand that a unified front screen you?  Grow some balls, people.  Someone recently was saying that Halloween as a concept is pointless for anyone who’s a performer/ex-performer – remind me if that was you, or you know who was saying it, because you/they phrased it really well, and now I can’t remember.    

Anyway, I really enjoyed this Sloane Crosley article about how Halloween in NY is the new New Year’s:

Beyond dressing-up, it’s that creeping pressure to do something insanely fun for Halloween. This is a trickle-back attitude from New Year’s. What a smack in the face of fun. Other holidays don’t have this problem. The words “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” invoke turkey, familial dysfunction and airport security. It’s a sincere question, not a fishing expedition. Never has someone said “I’m going to my aunt Hilda’s house in Wooster” and been met with a “That sounds great. When are we leaving?”

I don’t know why I’m bitching, really, because I have some awesome plans for Halloween this year (although no costume, unfortunately – I’m thinking I will wear a few slips, black my eyes, rat up my hair and go as Helena Bonham Carter in something).  On Sunday, I am going to see THE DRESDEN DOLLS, and I am SO EXCITED! 

Also, despite all my protests above, last year I participated in a group costume that was probably the greatest Halloween costume ever.  Someone else thought it up and someone else put it together – all I had to do was put it on.  If that were the case every year, I’d have no problem dressing up.  Anyway, we were sexxy Dharma initiative and we were amazing.  Regard:

Related Articles

• Bobbing for a Lost Apple (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)

Mayor Michael ‘No Fatties’ Bloomberg would like to remove soft drinks from the list of items that can be purchased with food stamps.

In general, I’ve been a fan of Bloomberg’s waistline-reducing initiatives, but I think this one is pretty ugly, however unintentionally. Obviously, there’s a stigma around using food stamps, and people who use them say it can be humiliating to grocery shop with them. Cashiers and other shoppers can be nasty and intrusive; people don’t think you should buy junk food at all, but they don’t think you should be able to buy pricey, healthy food, either.

Here, the health commissioners defend the measure in the Times:

This proposal to adjust the food stamp program is just one of many steps New York City is taking to reduce obesity. The city also has programs to increase the availability of fresh produce in poor neighborhoods; has set nutrition requirements for meals served in schools, after-school and day care programs and centers for the elderly; and has begun advertising campaigns to educate the public about obesity and nutrition. Taken together, these efforts will bring us closer to stemming the wave of obesity and diabetes in New York.

They, and other proponents of the ban, argue that soda isn’t food, and that there are many restrictions on the use of food stamps and this is one that should have been there all along.  But the thing is, it hasn’t been a restriction up until now, and this would be scoring a point about a mere symptom of a much larger problem at the expense of people who need additional social censure even less than they need a 2-liter of Coke. People on food stamps probably have other concerns currently taking precedence over kicking their soda habit, like, oh, say, getting off food stamps. Institutes that study such things say one of the big obstacles to digging yourself out of poverty is feeling like you have no control over your situation or your decisions, so further restricting people’s personal choices doesn’t seem very productive.

This very interesting blog post explains in detail how food stamps work in New York, and why this measure would be unlikely to produce the desired effect.

And here’s Sadhbhe Walshe in The Guardian:

On a recent shopping expedition (in my local C-town not some fancy organic joint), I paid $7 for a bag of apples, $5 for four oranges and $2 for one red pepper. Just those few items would eat up almost half one person’s weekly food stamp allotment. It’s no wonder, then, that people would opt for cheaper, high-calorie processed foods when money is tight.

The really frustrating part is that the reason that junk food and soda are so inexpensive (and therefore widely consumed) is that these products are subsidised by the federal government. All these foods contain high-fructose corn syrup, made from corn, which is a subsidised crop. So, while the poor are being frowned upon for their bad food choices, they are simultaneously being incentivised by misguided policy to make these choices. The hand that wants to take away is also the hand that giveth.

How much more sense would it make to subsidise the production of fruit and vegetables in low-income neighbourhoods, instead of Big Macs and 20-ounce Cokes and the like? That way, instead of imposing virtue on the poor, we could offer them a choice – and then try to move past the assumption that they might make a bad one.

Frankly, people need to stop talking about produce as if it were food in itself.  It has hardly any calories in it, so, while we should all ideally be eating a bushel of it with every portion of carbs and fat, the produce itself is extraneous to assuaging hunger. It’s more like a really elaborate, time-consuming vitamin. For example, last night after karate, I had a big bowl of brown rice, eggs, beans and cheese, and I also had a giant handful of spinach, a tomato and two carrots.  If I didn’t have any money, the first thing to go from that sentence would be the karate and the next would be the spinach, tomato and carrots, because, while they might be the most important part of that meal for my health, they’re the least helpful in my not going to bed hungry. Soda costs next to nothing, however, which is probably why it’s usually free where most people work.

Related Articles

• Let them drink Coke | Sadhbh Walshe (guardian.co.uk)
• Bloomberg: No Food Stamps for Sodas (theroot.com)

Before visiting, I feared I’d want to move to LA immediately, because I love sunshine and warmth and hate winter and darkness (feared, because moving to LA would mean getting a car and driving for the first time in a decade).  But it turns out, I’m not as much as a sun person as I’d thought.  My skin doesn’t lie, apparently.  I kind of thought that everyone in LA would be as sun-phobic as NYers are – I mean, LA is the land of eternal-youth obsession after all.  My friends in NY would sooner attack their delicate facial skin with razor blades than sit in direct sunlight without a high SPF.  We are shade seekers.  But in LA, it’s all, ‘Let’s have brunch on the patio – no need for an umbrella!  Aren’t you hot in that sweatshirt and wide-brimmed hat?  Don’t you feel insane in that veil and poncho?’  And then there was all the driving – hours and hours of driving with direct sunlight just plowing through the windshield.  I felt like an ant under a magnifying lens.  I could hear myself sizzling and feel melanomas and sun spots springing up from deep in my dermal layers.  I could feel the thin skin around my eyes and lips shriveling into dry, crone-like crepe.

So, there was that.  But LA is really beautiful.  Just postcard pretty, everywhere you go.  And all the people are really beautiful, too, which is annoying.  It doesn’t feel urban, though – more suburban.  I always think I hate crowds here in NY, but being in such semi-deserted big spaces while clearly still in a city made me uneasy, like maybe someone had sounded an alarm and I hadn’t heard it.

Socially, LA is more outgoing than NY – I’m pretty sure I can say that definitively, even based on my limited experience.  I mean, twice while I was reading in public, a total stranger came up to ask what I was reading and introduce themselves.  And they weren’t even creeps, or crazy people!  Never before in my life has that happened, and actually, I liked it.  I wish I could always make friends without having to take my nose out of my book and initiate eye contact.  Otherwise, people do ask you what you do in LA and expect you to have an answer, which I hate, but they do that in NY, too.

Money-wise, rent isn’t that much less in LA, but you get a lot more for it.  My friends out there mostly live in gorgeous, sunny spaces with washer/dryers.  I thought food and alcohol was considerably pricier, but maybe that’s just because I’ve lived in NY long enough to know where and where not to go.  Thrift stores are much, much cheaper, and apparently, they don’t have bedbugs out there yet.

Overall, I think that unless you have a career-related reason to be in LA (which I’m sure most people do), it’d be better to live in Southern California, somewhere more remote.  There are definite advantages to being right in NYC, rather than outside NYC, but I don’t think LA itself is that much of a draw – it’s more the general atmosphere of the region.  NYC is a cooler city, but LA is more livable and a prettier place.  There, that’s my (terribly original) sweeping pronouncement on the subject.

Here are some pictures, and I’ll probably post more, too, at some point:

Thursday evening:

1. Pierogis and goulash at Karczma, to admire the dirndls and wood paneling.
2. Walk along the water front.
3. Drinks at The Diamond.
4. Drinks and free pizzas at Lulu’s.
5. Drinks at The Blackout, where we met a beer-drinking English bulldog named Soybean.

Friday:

1. In the morning (well, late afternoon), I went to work and my friends walked down along the waterfront, over the Williamsburg Bridge, around Chinatown and lower Manhattan, and then waited in a long Tkts line.
2. Lots and lots of soup dumplings, noodles and chicken in Chinatown.
3. My friends went to see Promises, Promises, and I went home to try to take a nap.
4. Drinks on the roof at Berry Park.
5. Drinks and free pizzas at Lulu’s.

Saturday:

1. Brunch at Brooklyn Label.
2. Down to Battery Park.  Ferry to Liberty Island and Ellis Island.  Much exploring.
3. Dinner (and magnum of wine) in Little Italy.
4. Viewing the city skyline and the bamboo climbing playground atop the Met.
5. An hour-and-a-half of crazy karaoke dance partying in a Koreatown room, complete with disco lights, tambourine and BYO beer.
6. Drinks in the East Village.

Sunday:

1. Bagel sandwiches at Peter Pan Bakery (we got up late and missed all the donuts).
2. Up to the Bronx, for one of our party to watch the last three innings of a Yankee game, while we drank in a nearby bar.
3. Over to 190th & Broadway to hang out with friends, drool with envy over their giant studio, play with their two puggles, and walk around Fort Tryon Park and look at the Cloisters.
4. Dinner at an Indonesian restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen.
5. Night walk through Times Square and Rockefeller Center.

Monday:

1. Take-out donuts, quiet time, staring at each other slack-jawed.

I mean, that’s a lot of stuff, right?  I had never been to the Statue of Liberty, or Ellis Island, or the Bronx, or the Fort Tryon area, and I feel like I really took advantage of my city.  Thanks to my partners in crime for your unflagging energy and delightful company!

Now, I’m off to Tennessee to loll around a cabin for a couple days, hike in the woods, visit my old dentist, and just basically do the opposite of what I did last weekend.  What a fun end-of-summer I’m having!

Usually, my Brooklyn neighborhood is pretty sunny and wholesome, but last night, I walked home from a friend’s apartment, where I had just watched Brick, and I don’ t know if it was the movie’s influence, but all down the dark, deserted stretch of Manhattan Avenue, it seemed I was in the gritty, Hopper-esque NY of yore. Piles of garbage and busted furniture lined the curbs. The stores were all shuttered behind their graffiti-covered security gates. The usual drunks were passed out in the usual doorways. Outside the Associated Grocery, an emaciated shirtless man combed through a bag of bottles. A tattooed strung-out couple helped each other try to jimmy into the money slot of the exterior Chase ATM, and glared at me as I passed. In the darkened rear of a nearby bagel store, a security alarm blared. An older lady sniffled on the steps under the Polski church’s towering Gothic spire. In front of me, a woman glided down the sidewalk iin an ankle-length dress; as she passed the OTB, a gust of stale wind blew a stream of paper plates and takeout bags into a halo around her head, and a man’s profile emerged from a shadowed doorway as he turned to watch her, a pipe hanging from his lower lip. The moon was nearly full above the upper floors, where, behind open curtains, tatty furnishings were strobed by blue TV light. Down the empty street, a bus rattled, its few sullen passengers staring into their laps, lit bright against the night. The very air smelled of despair and oregano. As I rounded the corner onto Norman, a clown stood in the center of the empty street, holding a slowly rotating pinwheel and weeping, his tears making tracks through his white makeup. In the gutter outside my apartment, an infant kicked and whined; moments later, a sewer rat dragged it away by the ankle. In the hallway outside my door, a group of refugees huddled around an oil-can fire. They begged me for something to eat, and I gave them half a box of Tic-Tacs. Inside my apartment, my beloved was asleep beneath a pile of newspapers. His tuberculous cough rent the night sky and my heart as the Cimices watered themselves at his shriveled veins, and a buzzard kept patient vigil from the mantelpiece. Rent was due – I stood beneath a bare bulb and forged a check for $2500, as a pipe burst and drywall rained down around me like manna. Ah, New York. New York, New York.

Last night, I visited the new Trader Joe’s in Chelsea, and it is sweet. The aisles are so big! The ceiling is so high! The space is so ample and bright! I am a long-time fan of Trader Joe’s, and I have been braving the throngs at the 14th Street location for a while now, even though it sucks there. Here’s a tip should you be so inclined to shop there: go at 9:45pm. The employees at Trader Joe’s work up to a certain hour past close anyway, so they don’t rush you to get out. You can shop freely at fifteen to close, and it’s nowhere near as crowded as it is every other time of day. Anyway, it’s not the lines that are a problem at TJ’s. Even though the lines wrap around the store, they move pretty quickly. What really sucks about the Union Square TJs is that you can’t get to any of the merchandise without shoving through the ever-present line, and this is not a problem at the Chelsea location.

Fortune has a long, interesting article about TJ’s, but it’s funny that they spend the first couple pages talking about why the stores are so popular without focusing on the main reason people go to TJ’s: low cost. They kind of cover this later, but they open with selection, and the friendly, small-town vibe. That’s great and all, but TJ’s is so popular in its demographic (students and young, urban, single broke people) because it puts paid to the whole “cheap, healthy or fast: pick two” conundrum. At TJ’s, you can get healthy, fully- or semi-prepared foods for low cost, which makes it the perfect store, even if you have to wait in line.

Also, TJ’s doesn’t have coupons or discount cards – the price is the price. Which, side-note, the whole discount card thing blows my mind, in that every single American consumer despises the discount (club) card system — nobody wants to give a store all their marketing information in exchange for sale prices, and then carry around a card all the time — but even though the entire spending population hates it, somehow every single store has adopted this system. I mean, what the hell? Why doesn’t the consumer have a vote here? It’s like we’re all serving the stores we shop at, rather than the other way around. I wish there were some way to coordinate everyone in the country to just refuse to use those damn cards, so the chains would all have to give up on that stupid system.

Ahem. Anyway, Trader Joe’s!

The friendliness of the employees wouldn’t be enough to get me to shop there if the prices weren’t low, but it is a nice benefit. I’m shy and don’t generally like to have to interact too much with the employees where I shop, but even I feel that it is more pleasant to shop at TJ’s then anywhere else. Turns out, the shocking reason why the employees are helpful and approachable is that they are really, really well-paid!

Store managers, “captains” in Trader Joe’s parlance — the nautical titles are a holdover from Coulombe (newly promoted captains are commanders; assistant store managers are first mates) — can make in the low six figures, and full-time crew members can start in the $40,000 to $60,000 range. But on top of the pay, Trader Joe’s annually contributes 15.4% of employees’ gross income to tax-deferred retirement accounts.

Apparently, the way to motivate employees to act as if they care whether they keep their job or not is to pay them decently. Who’d have thought?

When I first moved to NYC, I applied for a job at TJ’s, and I had to take this “simple” math test that included long division (I can’t even add or subtract, so I used my phone when no one was looking). So, presumably the employees at TJ’s must be fairly decent at the maths, even if they are occasionally so stoned, you have to count up your Clif Bars for them at the register (it’s charming, really). Also, the employees do all the jobs in rotation – they don’t have stockers and cashiers, and early-morning truck unloaders; rather, everyone does everything, which seems to work pretty well.

Anyway, it’s an interesting article. I didn’t know the company was so secretive, or that the owners also own Aldi. Also, the article cites studies showing that people enjoy a shopping experience more if there is a smaller selection, which doesn’t surprise me at all. And then there’s this:

Make no mistake: A typical family couldn’t do all its shopping at the store. There’s no baby food, toothpicks, or other necessities.

Really? Toothpicks – that’s what you’re going with there? Reporter Beth Kowitt must have recently quit smoking.