Brooklyn

Article

Brooklyn is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 17 times across 17 issues between May 19, 2024 and January 27, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Bensonhurst, Brighton Beach, Little Russia in Brooklyn”; “taking the subway to Brooklyn for Beckett Rosset’s Tense”; “I take the B train to Brooklyn to visit the headquarters of a low-alcohol mindful-drinking brand”. It most often appears alongside KGB, New York, Chloe Pingeon.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 17
  • Issue count: 17
  • First seen: May 19, 2024
  • Last seen: January 27, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

May 19, 2024 · Original source
At the gym taking deep breaths to collect myself. Later, going to Bensonhurst, Brighton Beach, Little Russia in Brooklyn. Attractions are: St Petersburg's Gifts to buy good tee shirts, Cafe Euroasia to buy carrot salad and manti, and Outback Steakhouse because you can get a lobster AND ribeye for nineteen dollars. Outback Steakhouse is too full for mother’s day - we can’t get in. I like Little Russia but I hate Outback Steakhouse. Thrilled to leave. Disassociate so much on the train back. Go to Cowgirl in the West Village for dinner. It’s too late to go to Confessions after dinner but my friends say it’s fun. It’s not too late to open the window in the bathroom and sit on the floor and call my mom for so many minutes.
June 24, 2024 · Original source
Later, we’re taking the subway to Brooklyn for Beckett Rosset’s Tense. It’s the best New York City sunset I’ve ever seen over the Brooklyn Bridge, and then it’s even better over the platform when we arrive. Beckett’s Tense is one of my favorite events of the year, which is something I’d like to write more about somewhere else, but which in brevity, feels very sincere and very sharp and very much like a relic of something that doesn’t quite exist anymore.
July 5 to 14 from 10am to 6pm daily - Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research presents A Doll House, directed by John Gould Rubin, with a new translation by Royston Coppenger. The workshop will allow viewers to observe rehearsals, and engage in conversation with the director and cast.
Also Thursday, July 18 at 7pm - New York Review of Architecture celebrates the launch of issue #41 with a party at DSK Brooklyn
October 02, 2024 · Original source
Afternoon, I take the B train to Brooklyn to visit the headquarters of a low-alcohol mindful-drinking brand that has agreed to sponsor an event I’m promoting. The subway is late and hot and I am not being paid for this, which I wish I didn’t care about, but I do. I skinned my knees leaving my building this morning, slipped on a discarded bag of Doritos on the doorstep like it was a banana peel and I was a clown, and went reeling into the street, limbs bloodied, a kindly construction crew patched me up curbside and I was sent on my way. Now, on the subway, the bandages are peeling and I am suddenly aware of the pathetically childish nature of it all, the banged-up legs, my starry-eyed faith in Park Slopes Small Alcohol lowercase a’s ability to save bohemia, the ultimate futility of the task at hand, of my genuine excitement elicited by collaboration with brands and pop-ups and new types of drinks in colorful cans. When I arrive, my box of drinks is of course, too heavy to carry, and so I painstakingly push and drag it down the street, pausing at the subway steps unsure of my next move, waiting for perhaps help, although it’s a quiet area and my mission would not look particularly dire to any bystanders onlooking. I turn on my heels quickly. Call a cab home.
I’m ill on Friday, almost too ill to attend Beckett’s TENSE but I’m expected at The Locker Room bearing little tins of nicotine mints and a box of art and so I’m going back to Brooklyn again. It’s a smaller crowd than usual at first, people get there late, people on the street outside are talking about how there are no cool countries left: only Mexico, Ireland, maybe El Salvador. They are murmuring to each other in fervent agreement and I wish it wouldn’t be weird to ask them their criteria for evaluation.
From 8pm to late — Perennial Magazine is hosting a Harvest Swoon Celebration at Honey’s in anticipation of their debut issue. This will be a magical evening - books, zines, wine, tarot readings, love letters, etc. Submissions for Issue I are still open through October 15.
October 07, 2024 · Original source
I go to the gym and then I walk to the Lower East Side for a meeting at Parent Company. The gallery used to be located in a shipping container in Brooklyn and I loved it then, but I haven’t been to the new space yet. You enter through a hatch off East Broadway and I like the new space too, there’s a group exhibition on view from an additional alternative art space called P.A.D. which hosts single-day exhibitions on carpets rolled out in SoHo. They’ve hosted more than eighty exhibitions since 2017, I’m told. There’s a glazed ceramic vase on view by SiSi Chen which I adore. It's titled Venus Falls Until She Floats, I can’t stop looking at it. I've been writing a lot about alternative art spaces lately and this one feels special.
From 7pm at Sisters Brooklyn — Elizabeth Teets presents I Blame Television: A Pop Culture Reading Series. Readings by Lana Schwartz, Blythe Roberson, Edgar Gomez, Sophia June, MJ Corey, and Matt Starr.
October 21, 2024 · Original source
At 7:30pm and 10pm — Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research presents a screening double header of Éric Rohmer’s A Tale of Autumn, and Erik Løchen's THE CHASERS. As mentioned on Criterion Channel, these screenings are exceedingly rare!
From 10pm - 12:30am — Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research hosts their Fall Fundraiser Ball. (Following a performance of Messages earlier in the evening)
From 10pm - 2am — Sissies of Mercy is at Nowadays. I’ve been looking for reasons to get myself to venture to Brooklyn, so maybe this will do it.
October 28, 2024 · Original source
From 7:30pm — The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research is throwing a Halloween Party. Readings, tarots, cool girls, dancing, crafts, trick or treating, and more. Costumes are mandatory.
I never go to Basement but in the spirit of this week's substack, I’m considering attending the Brooklyn rendition of Japan's Rural Festival, which has carried on a 16 year tradition of psychedelic techno and camping in Central Japan.
November 05, 2024 · Original source
I go to a lecture in Brooklyn today with a vibe that freaks me out. After, to purge my soul, I get an uber home. Over the Brooklyn Bridge. Etc etc etc.
I read at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research tonight. Sophia throws a good party. It’s hard to throw a perfect Halloween party. It’s like throwing the perfect holiday party, but even more precise. An endeavor in pure pleasure. I’ve never been to a Halloween party from corporate hell, for example. The BCTR Halloween Party is very perfectly precise. Good costumes (although mine isn’t) a roof that is warm and clear but the breeze is cool and the breeze is bringing in some mist, the breeze is fogging the Manhattan skyline, people are handing out lollipops, someone is doing tarot readings, the costume contest is fun, the costumes are creative enough to merit critique.
I cut my finger on glass on my way to The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research. There were forces in the smog, I think. Earlier, my water bottle exploded untouched in a canvas tote bag and I stood unmoving while water and then tiny little glass splinters pooled around my feet. My understanding of inertia rendered me incapable of action. Things don’t just explode untouched, and so the explosion confused me. I didn’t move to stop it, I didn’t even move to pull the leaking bag away from my leather boots. There were people around me. They better understood that the laws of inertia can be faulty.
February 03, 2025 · Original source
From 7:30 - 9pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Quartet opens!- “friendship, lust and lies.”
Monday, January 27 Perhaps you theme your days. On Health, you say. L-theanine with my coffee. Not really, but I’ll plan for this down the line. Bar Oliver is all lit up in piercing morning sun. I walk outside early this morning. Chinatown fruit market coming alive so quickly. There was a cemetery outside the window where I slept last night. I kept on looking out and seeing icy branches overhead that framed the building like a second roof, the cemetery like a courtyard. It scared me once, I screamed once in my sleep, but I woke up other times too, and it wasn't too bad then. Mostly, the sky outside just looked all pale blue and clear, the same pale blue all night in my memory, although this doesn't make sense in a logical way, what with the night passing and the becoming dark and the me being asleep for it all. Dream Logic. A recollection of slippery silvery vines forming an outline of a roof over a gravestone. You wake up, and there is no roof, the trees were never shaped like that at all. Tahini chocolate cookie because Ruby told me sugar is actually ok. Whole milk cappuccino and I'm adding honey instead of Splenda. Enough is enough. I'm not going to crash out, but days are different now that my hours don't float on and on in pacing and typing that becomes like a trance. I felt like I was floating yesterday. Not today. That's probably ok. Tuesday, January 28 Tea with Madelyn Grace and then hot apple cider and Jameson whiskey at Cafe Reggio last night. David and his friends came by and acted abrasive. I was annoyed, but then I wasn’t. I walked the Williamsburg Bridge this morning - all the way from The West Village to Brooklyn. Delancey street was crazy at that hour, but everything after that was nice. I’d never done this before - walk the bridge, I mean - and it went on for so much longer than I expected. At first it was all windy and it made me scared, how once you got on the bridge you really couldn’t get off, how in the center the only exit was to finish the walk or perhaps to blow over, and I was the only one there, people were biking by so fast but no one else was walking, so then I started to run, and so then it got all warm, the water in the Hudson looked nice and wild and churning and distant from up here. The thing is, this winter was mostly a practice in what I’m recalling like a meditation now, with even the slight perspective - now that it’s late January, that is. Everything was present, so hyper present, and all I did was walk and think and walk and walk and walk and write down what I was thinking about and sometimes I yelled a lot, and I know it’s still the depth of winter, but this time starts to feel like it is passing. I freaked out last week, I thought about what if I couldn’t keep my days like that, but my days still hold all of this, only now, they hold more too. At the gym, I write about how it is ok to just do things like - go for a walk, go to work, lie by the window with David, go to the gym, write a story, and these days can be good and even better than the other ones, the ones that snap you into fierce exteriority. After the gym, Cassidy texts me. “Are you at KGB?,” and I’m not, but I think, well, I would go. Augustine says - “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” Etc etc etc. I feel better when almost all my time is spent with people, and I think my mind is better like this, too. At KGB, I am dressed all in Pilates and Going-For-A-Jog type clothing. At KGB, Matthew is telling a girl about how Blade Runner the movie is based on a very antisemitic book. I've heard him tell this story before, and the gist varies each time, but there are a few lines that consistently resurface. I zone out after I hear the first line that I am sure I have heard before. When I zone back in, he's talking about religion more generally. "Really?," the girl he's with is saying. "Yes, YES," Matthew is saying “I looked up the history of the Blade Runner movie, and it said it was made around World War II," the girl is saying. “No, not at all," Matthew says “Oh,” the girl says “How did you like the rape scene?" Matthew asks “What rape scene?" the girl says “Oh that's good," Matthew says. There is new art on the wall of KGB. A rendition of Vermeer’s Girl With Pearl Earring, except in this case, the girl is a dog. “Do you like the new art?,” David asks. “Yes,” I say. “I don’t,” David says. I am picking at the wax on the candle, because everyone is talking and because I don’t have much to say. “Stop playing with fire,” the bartender tells me. “Act like you are at your mothers house.” Except - I mishear her. I think she says you aren’t at your mothers house, because she is right, I am not, but if I was; I would play with the flames as much as I liked. Wednesday, January 29 I would like to put away this phone, I think. Warmer, today. They’ve left the windows open at the coffee shop. I told you it was starting to feel like spring. I told you it would be all spring-like in the depth of winter, soon. Sunlight filtering, filtering, filtering, through the roof at home. The roof and the windows. It’s all one and the same. It’s a new moon tonight. Lunar New Year tonight. You put your head under the covers and filter out the sun. You like it because it is warm but also - the blue light of your phone can absorb your entire vision at any hour, here, in this makeshift tent. I am not of the Escape The Internet train of thought. It’s designed to addict you but then, well, having some fucking discipline. On my phone, I see people saying things like - “there is no ‘on your phone’, just another layer of constant consciousness”. And in real life I think things like - you should separate it if you can, you should know real life if you can but, to leave it all behind - impossible, because it will always be right there, and you could still do things like walk down the street and understand the street as purely physical but then, look around you, look at the other people, look at the surroundings they are absorbing and none of them are real, none of them are there, and so you can’t just stand on this street and get it, understand it, all offline. I don’t really want to get it anymore. My mornings could be real, they could be with just a little discipline and a touch of joie de vivre. They aren’t real, really, because I’m making makeshift Blue Light tents to filter out the sunlight, but then, I’m working on this. Blue, blue, blue sky today. Doomers previews, tonight. Biohacker meetup tonight. Bryan Johnson in Interview Magazine tonight. I like to do things like drink six teas with six Splenda each, and then I like to act very harsh with myself and others regarding the principles of a life well lived. Year of the snake. What do you think about that...? All this talk about discipline, and my afternoon is all drop off a few Depop packages and refresh, refresh, refresh the stats on a piece that I didn’t even write. There’s a hazy little run in the afternoon. There’s some bad news, or, news that is more irritating, really. Ruby spreads the word: "do not take my advice about eating lots of honey," she says. Ok. Ok, it's all protein now, then. David takes me to a strange party tonight. An interloper arrives, and he is chased out at sword point. It is insane how quickly the tides turn. You said the things that you didn’t mean, again. It wasn't supposed to happen like this, but then, it never is. You wrote today, earlier, about how - things were good, better, but you didn't want to get too cocky because remember what you were capable of really not too long ago, it was only a few weeks back, but it felt so distant. And then, tonight, again... Thursday, January 30 And then it's ok. Well, it's not, but it can be. You’ve been taking for granted that it will be ok, if it has to be ok. That if you care about something so, so, so deeply then it cannot possibly be destroyed, but it could, you are capable of this. It feels foreign sometimes, this force, this capacity for destruction, like it can’t belong to you, but it does, it’s no one else’s. It becomes simple, then. You can’t just say I crossed my fingers, you can’t just say I take it back. And so, no more. I'm working the door at Tense tonight, which is my favorite - both TENSE, and working doors, that is. It’s a beautiful night, and this, after everything, is a relief. Christian Lorentzen reads emails with Gary Indiana. “I now believe you can tell if the writer is part of a writing program, by looking at their teeth,” Gary told Christian. "Why does everybody love Downton Abbey?" Gary asked Christian, in another email. "Well, what's not to love? The series construction is so glibly subscribed that you know what will happen before the writers do." In another, he lamented the logistical problems surrounding his writings on Cuba - the travel ban, his lover there, etc etc etc. It's a good format for a reading - the emails thing. Correspondences brought to life. Not quite a diary, but close, more intimate, often, because one isn't writing into the void of one's own neurosis in a correspondence. Madelyn writes me an email, after. I am working on my own correspondence back, still. Mania delays the process. It's good to have a long form conversation to return to. I hope this email finds you well. This email finds me almost incapacitated, but I won't be, soon. Beckett's reading is full of empathy and wit as always. He's lamenting the narcissism of our times in his introductory speech, and his own gut impulses and the stories that follow give him the proper wherewithal to do so. I see Sean Lynch and others outside. Sean writes something nice on the evening. I see Doomers the next day - the dream logic of my thoughts following this production requiring another letter altogether WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, February 4 From 7pm at Heaven Can't Wait — Cynosure presents the first of a two night fundraiser for Los Angeles, featuring Alex Arthur, Precious Human, Truman Flyer, and more.
From 7pm at Honey’s — Discount Guillotine celebrates their Issue #1 release show, featuring Annie Lou Martin, Yuyi Chen, Canon Mg Lake, Lillian Mottern, and Ebs Sanders.
March 07, 2025 · Original source
From 10:30pm - late — Bassiani night at BASEMENT - “highlighting the kinship between Bassiani in Tbilisi, and Basement in Brooklyn.”
April 10, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, April 3 "The good thing about having a boyfriend who's in a cult," I tell my mother on the phone, "is you can always just go anywhere in the world where there will always just be a strange house full of strange people and you can always just stay a while." "but he's not in a cult," my mother says. She sounds very sincere. "He just works in tech with a lot of digital nomads." "right," I say, which is exactly what someone who was being indoctrinated into a cult would say. I decided to leave again. I couldn’t quiet my mind here. That was a lot of it, at least. And yeah I mean, mostly the thing is I just want to walk and run and write and I think I should learn everything there is to learn about the disciplines that strike me the most. I want to really get into the syntax of it all. Get obsessive compulsive with it. There is the Big Thing I am working on, and I put it aside for a while to deal with triviality. A while being a week, really. The week where I performed at the party, took long walks then dinner then bar then I lent sheets to a friend who forgot to pick up her laundry and then I went to another party, the type of party that I usually would have been so resistant to attend but I went and I liked it this week. They read screenplays aloud the next day and I sat on the roof, I sat in the vintage market, I sat in the restaurant with negronis on tap which felt so foreign to me so Brooklyn instead of Manhattan and I felt pretty proud of myself for staying here all alone, actually. Then, I started dealing in triviality and my sense of pride was replaced with a sense of disgust. It wasn’t so bad. The issue was mostly, just - I couldn’t quiet my mind. But, it’s a sleepy rainy early morning nearing Newark Airport and as I leave, everything is becoming clear again. Like I’ve been so gluttonous - like with money and alcohol and my iPhone and the type of information I give away and the types of things I divulge, like sometimes I divulge a secret before I even know if I mean it, and sometimes I’m awfully quick to indulge myself, honestly, which is a pretty bad sin, one of the worst I think. Seeking: shock value, I guess. It’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between Drama and Confession but sometimes you sit in a taxi cab and you draw very clear lines in the sand. I want: bread and water. Very simple things. I want to sit in a quiet room and write a story I am sure is true and if something is only good when diluted by glamor, drinks, you know the sort of things then, well, then I’d like to give it a fucking rest. Friday, April 4 It's been such a haze since arriving in Costa Rica and at first I felt strange about it, like this isn't Good Behavior, treating a Big Trip kind of glibly, feeling a bit pouty and out of sorts and letting myself just be whisked away like it's nothing, when really it's never nothing, when really it's always touch and go and particularly something like this should make me feel ecstatic. Though, I kind of do feel ecstatic. I never really do become jaded. I quantify and calculate it all far too much to take anything for granted. You do kind of feel like you're floating, though. Cold beer to clutch between my knees on the sea plane that starts up all shaky and then scares me less even than a commercial plane because I can see into the cockpit and I can get the sense of how these pilots are navigating this thing. A cloud is just a cloud. I've been using too many words to inadequately explain myself. Send some bizarre texts upon landing that I hope will be encoded with… what, exactly? But, you’re in the jungle when you land. The sea plane slipped over the rainforest and then slipped out to sea, into the clouds. This part made me a bit nervous because there was nothing to spot except the horizon ahead. The scary part didn't last too long. Peninsula de Nicoya. Thick brambled forest by a single black tarmac. David sent me a video when he got here last week. The Jungle, he said, and now it’s like a hologram seeing it here myself. I really wasn’t going to come here. Two A.M. last night and the flights were so cheap that it felt like a glitch or something and then all I had to do was decide, ok, and then everything else was taken care of. There’s a driver at the gate for me. CHLOE, the sign says. That’s me, I say, and I point to the sign. I don’t know why I said it like that. It's a different vibe at the house here than in El Salvador. Surfer spiritualism over techno spiritualism. The aura here makes me feel significantly calmer. Because I am someone who accounts for danger at every turn (neurotic) I can remember being twelve or thirteen somewhere around here, handed a stick to ward off snakes at night, warned that don't you dare touch the frogs, the ants, they told me, fall screeching from the trees and it feels like a bullet wound when they bite you. But, “there is nothing actually scary here,” David’s friend tells me. “The main thing you have to worry about are these.” He shows me a picture of a scorpion. He tells me that the sting hurts a little, but after that the main thing is it makes your body feel all electric. “People sting themselves on purpose to get high,” David’s friends tell me. “They make you high???” I ask. One of the only things that scares me more than getting hurt is getting high. “No, not really,” David’s friend says. When I got here it felt kind of like I’d been teleported. David was there with an ATV where the car dropped me off, up a dirt road, by some stables and then he said - this might scare you but no backseat driving and then we roared up a mountain, nighttime already, I was left in a room in the hills in the jungle alone while the others offroad up and down and up and down until everyone was here for dinner. You can see the stars in a way that is so special here. I’d been told about this part, but it’s better to see for yourself. You couldn’t make out what parts were ocean and what parts were horizon but you could see that the darkness was placid and lovely and it stretched out quite some ways. You could see where there were villages, because lights close to the ground edged up against the stars in the sky but lacking any visual markers to ground them, these villages appeared to be hovering, unmoored. “You’ll be able to see the ocean in the morning,” David told me. So, in the morning, I thought, I will be able to distinguish which parts are ocean, and which parts are sky. Saturday, April 5 In the morning, there is a gecko on the ceiling and a dog outside my door. Chat GPT got way better overnight, I am told. It’s harder for me to suss out the vibe here. They are bullish on AI, but they are hesitant about some of the other stuff. We’re not really doing much of the hacker house stuff anyways, this time, though. Back down the mountain, and we’re in a hotel, and there’s surfer girls with pretty hair in pretty dresses dancing barefoot in all the nightclubs here. The heat makes a run in the morning unbearable. Even the walk to the shop is heavy and thick but I don't mind this. The only thing I do every single morning is walk for an hour and write while I walk, but the heat makes this hard. It's ok, because I can float instead. Yerba mate and corona extra and white claw and paloma in a can and redbull green and coconut water all stacked side by side in the shop, but I leave empty handed. Before, we got cold brew mixed with orange juice and a cashew avocado tart at a cafe run by the girlfriend of one of David’s friends. Since I tried it out and basically just became an alcoholic bartending my way around Eastern Europe at eighteen, I have kind of found the whole nomad thing to be spiritually ugly. Like it's something for mid thirties men that look older from the partying who stop you in back alleys in Croatia and tell you things like the key to it all is to never buy a couch. And they would say it like you were supposed to really get it. And you did get it, you got what they meant by it at least, but the thought was just a bit half baked and unconvincing. Ok, so, I wouldn't buy a couch but then what? Then what would I do? What should I do? I didn't want to stay listless and skimming the surface forever. New York is kind of empty too when you aren't living at least a little bit gently, and so these are the different pieces I am trying to parse out. I would stay here for a while with a project. David drops a chip on the beach lined with hermit crabs and he creates this huge commotion. Anarchy, really. All the little crabs begin to rip each other to shreds. "I hope the big one comes in and destroys them all," David says, regarding the hermit crab pile-on situation. There's not really any metaphor here, he’s just being vaguely sadistic. It does happen as you would expect. One big hermit crab sees its opportunity, identifies his leg up in this whole situation or perhaps, they aren't the brightest creatures, perhaps it just wants to try its lot at the prize like all the others and is surprised to find itself emerge victorious. He makes a clean break with the chip down the beach. The crabs kind of look like spiders from my vantage point. A mass of little tendrils for legs chasing after someone six times their size. They all have the death drive, because when they do catch up, it's not good news for any animal involved. An underdog swoops in and gets the chip. I don't know, I lose sight of it all. You have a target on your back when carrying the bounty though. If I was a hermit crab, I wouldn’t risk it. I put my head underwater in the ocean to get myself sorted. I walk back through a little bit of jungle and then past the fishermen in Malpaís while David turns around the ATV. Soles of my shoes are all sticky on the pavement. Herd of goats in the road. The heat makes all my thoughts become all slippery and smooth. If I spent a month here, I could learn how to become all tan and bendy and strong. Sometimes, I become slippery and smooth. I could spend the first part of my month learning how to notice when my mind becomes like this, and I could spend the second part learning how to make the feeling last. I would stay here for a while with a project… WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Thursday, April 10 From 6pm - 8pm at Blade Study — Clare Koury presents the opening of solo exhibition Scaling Laws For An Open EnTrainment Structure. With this installation, Clare Koury is addressing the part of the color spectrum that eyes don’t see.
April 21, 2025 · Original source
From 6pm at The Cactus Shop — Date Time returns to Brooklyn. Two rounds of speed dating. Fall in love. Leave the Internet behind.
July 23, 2025 · Original source
From 7:30pm - 10pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Amnescopia presents a screening of Eric Rohmer's A Tale of Summer. Rohmer summer is sweet, and hopefully not over yet <3
From 8:30pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Celebrate the launch of New Writing Volume III, ft Matt Gasda, Paul Franz, Ross Barkan, Emmalea, Russo, Ella Schmidt, and more.
WHAT I DID Friday, July 18 Civil twilight haze of the nicest kind outside and, I forgot to turn the lights off. Caffe Reggio is open until four am, so this will be a good place to start. There is always so much time, I noted. There is, actually, not that much time, I noted after that. So for example my sister really likes the opera and so we go to the opera a lot, my one other Reggio compatriate is telling his date. It’s good here because there is no music. It’s good here, because without music, and sober somewhere loud and public for once, you can really hear the chatter. Stain glass lanterns and big glass windows and relics of worship. I tell Amelia she can join me if she wants but she’s sleeping. I tell Amelia I haven’t been having bad dreams. So you feel at home in your house, my old man Reggio compatriate is telling his very pretty date. I do, the date is saying. I do. I am thinking - It’s good to be sure about why you are eavesdropping. It’s good to be sure about what everyone else can hear. It’s ok for now. I’m the only one who can hear at this hour, and it doesn’t seem like much of what my compatriots are saying is secret. Coffeeshop Gossip. I regret most of the times I have become particularly open. In my plans; I am mostly sober; I possess tremendous integrity and discretion. Sitting in Caffe Reggio with a glass of wine and a chicken caprese salad live blogging my early morning. The date next to me got up to leave and they passed off to me, two overflowing chalices of wine. Insane thing to do. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Thinking about who I can call right now. I don't think I have ever been lonely before. Insane and annoying thing to say, but I think it might be true. I make a few more notes. I'm not lonely. I'm at Caffe Reggio at civil twilight alone with two overflowing chalices of wine that I cannot drink lest I get drunk or vomit or god forbid, fall asleep. I sleep with the lights off, but it is already bright through the greenhouse windows. Saturday, July 19 The play last night was nice; one of my favorites - By Morning. Talk of watching geese while they fly overhead at dusk from the porch, tyrannical fathers, a family composed of equally near irredeemable brothers whom I found all to be strangely endearing, and nearly the whole family's mutual gf who is deemed manipulative but not that smart. It ended with a gunshot. I walked down the stairs of the strange theater. My friends were in Brooklyn. My friends were in Flatiron. I was asked to stop live blogging. I said; I never live blog, I write a Diary of Fiction. It all quieted down. You have a lot going for you, they said. I guess, I said. They cancelled my meeting and I would like to not be disappointed. I walked for a while at sunrise again and slept little. This is fine. So you admit you are neurotic, I was told. It started to rain again outside Caffe Reggio. Madelyn says she is not intentionally influenced by any artist but it is like, she grabs the color green! I would like to become very strong in England. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, July 23 From 10pm at Night Club 101 — Jasmine Johnson, Crush Sahara, and Ezra Marcus
September 09, 2025 · Original source
From 7:30pm - 9:00pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — It’s your last week to see ARDOR - a very special play following a group of nine artists and friends on an annual retreat to their aging patrons Vermont farmhouse. Nothing and everything has changed and will change. | Additional showtimes - Sep 11, Sep 12, Sep 13, Sep 14.
From 9pm - 2am at Baby's All Right — Label presents The Afters. Sets by Harmony Tividad and more. Hosted by Whitney Mallet, Carolina de Armas, Misc-En-Scene, Mia Manning, Ni Ouyang, Elizabeth Clayton, Rachel Weiswasser, and Kathryn Kearny. | Tickets: $15
September 17, 2025 · Original source
From 7 - 8:30pm (readings) and 8:30 - 12:30pm at Honey’s — Cake Zine celebrates the release of Volume 7: Forbidden Fruit. Readings by contributors Aamina Khan, Osama Shehzad, Grayson Samuels, and Ankit Sethi. Free dessert inspired by the issue from Taipei’s Fu Cakes. | tickets here
From 6:30pm at Baby’s All Right — The Thing Is… presents Live Music Session No.1. Hosted by Alex Arthur. Music by Lou Salome, Tiny Gun, T Truman, and special guest Disc Jockey and Alexa Dark.
From 4pm at 183 S Eighth St, Brooklyn — Jeanne Graff and Chris Kraus read to celebrate the book launch of Sylvère Lotringer’s Bloomsbury interviews … translated by Jeanne and published this year by Semiotexte.
October 06, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm at Powerhouse Arena Brooklyn — John Tottenham celebrates the NYC Launch of Service, ft Calvin Atwood, Ann Manov, and Chris Motnar.
November 12, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm - 8:30pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — This Time by Matthew Gasda returns - “a play about relationships with a metaphysical twist.” | Tickets here (plus another performance on Thursday)
From 7pm - 9pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Another performance of Little Murders - “Talks of dead son’s, fecal photography, Vogue, and the “Breather” are just a taste of what happens in this Norman Rockwell-painting-gone-awry.” | Additional showtime 11/15
From 2pm - 6pm at Cinnamon House (139 Woodbine St, Brooklyn, NY) — Sunday Salon returns with a cozy afternoon, ft music by Le Keep and Nikita Lev, readings by Katya, Matt Weinberger, Alex Kilgore, and more. RSVP here
January 27, 2026 · Original source
From 8:50pm - 11:59pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — It’s the Final Night of Huron Street Party. Pay what you wish tickets but you should definitely donate. End of an era. | RSVP here.
WHAT I DID Monday, January 12 I’m in my room and I’m feeling normal. Outside, the streets are winter-warm. Foggy and sweet. Different from El Salvador, which was humid-sweet. Tropics sweet. El Salvador was learning to understand things and also learning to let the wind blow in interesting directions and also learning to stand on my own two feet. On the flight home, I mapped out every day as a container. At JFK, I decided to treat the city like Vacation. Big Bar every Monday. Museums of Illusions. FDR themed social club. Procure activities on Partiful or Instagram or Yelp or through Word of Mouth. I call Amelia to announce my return and my vacation-forever plans. Is this vacation for the sake of transgression or fun? Amelia asks me. New York is over, Matthew was saying, in El Salvador. New York is over, and Los Angeles is it. I suppose we’ll see, I was saying in response. I suppose we’ll see but for now I’ll take all the energy-whirling-back. The flight home was quiet and late. I sat in the very back row of the plane with lots of water and ambient dread. I dreamt of a rocky landing where Avianca (Boeing 787) (Flight 267) touches ground and then immediately takes back off. I dreamt of being robbed. I dreamt of turning around. Dreamt of being scammed. Dreamt of busy days and busy nights in N.Y.C Back home, tonight, and it’s dinner at Lanterna di Vittoria with my friend whom I like because he offers me generosity kind of liminally. He presents a dangling sort of kindness that I did not have to accept or deny. I could accept his kindness later. I could pluck it from thin air, long after he has walked away. Maybe he is just generally cautious like that, or perhaps he intuits my inherent distaste towards drawing definitive conclusions. He is extremely helpful, but I never say thank you for the advice even though I am thankful. I never acknowledge I agree and I think it is better this way. I’m particularly grateful for the ease of it. He’s happy to know he’s right and also to feel useful without any of the misery that accompanies reliance. The grid is blinking in and out today, and so we are all feeling anxious about nuclear war. You too?? my friend says, when I bring up the topic of nuclear war at dinner. Everyone is becoming so much stupider. Small grid means big problems. I am feeling uneasy, sitting in my apartment tonight, knowing all the best minds in the world are coming up short. Later, cotton candy skies turning dark as we’re walking home. The city is freezing over, and hell along with it. Since I cleared my mind head-empty, I have become so much better at being perfect. Since I became religious, I have become so much faster at driving. Since I started telling all my friends that I want no-trouble, none-of-the-time, everything has started to really spiral out of control. I want to be good, I keep on telling Olivia. We go to the gym together every-other-day. She is the only girl with hair that is longer than mine. You are goodest, Olivia tells me. She says it with a smile, and she is very much not-devious so I believe that she believes this to be true. How many millions of dollars do you think were lost when the grid went down? I ask my friend, walking home in the icy city that I just can’t quit. Trillions, he tells me. What do you mean millions? Jesus Christ. Do you know how the GRID works? He gives me a book. Elephants and economy. Something like that. I already have it. I am smug when I tell him so. They already gave me this book in El Salvador. This book is already mine. The grid has already never-existed. Nothing ever happens. New silk eye mask arrived by mail which means: big sleep incoming. Big sleep in mummy mode. Clean room. Room of a girl who respects herself. Every day is something new. This part has always been obvious. Tuesday, January 13 The air is clear in my apartment, but somehow tinged a little bit blue this morning. Somehow kind of record-stretch hazy, which I suppose is what happens when I am tired and outside, it’s foggy. My friend texted while I slept: I am taking on your mannerisms. Texting back now: I don’t really have mannerisms. I could write a story this morning, but instead, I will write mantras in my mind. It’s good to be quiet It’s important to seize control over myself God gives the world to girls who don’t get in their own way. Black velvet hanger left off kilter. Last night, I purchased a blue dress that reminded me of dreams I already forgot. A blue dress to wear in a glass house in a place like Topanga. Bright blue dress to wear while making spring green soup. Purchased the dress with visions of next summer spinning through my mind. Visions of wearing a blue dress and standing barefoot on the wood floor of my parents’ house and making spring green soup. Sitting on the edge of my bed in dark green lulu lemon leggings and black tank top this morning. Cool minty Zyn in mouth, and Celsius in hand. The apartment is a mess, and it has been for a while. Trees are barren and kind of sweet outside my window. I hate this apartment. I want my old apartment back. I want to get everything I’ve ever wanted. I want to get sober and mean it. I want two hours of dedicated time-writing-fiction per day, and two hours of dedicated time walking outdoors writing notes. I want to let no more hours drift. I was not happy to come back to New York, but I do like the parts of the city that just are-what-they-are. Green turtle pond and freezing hands. Big buildings and tour groups. Windy streets. Bustling with people. When I’m at pilates I don’t feel like I need to move to LA, I tell Saorise, in the studio. The toned and old gay man that owns Pilates People runs warm. He cracked the window to let in the frigid winter fog. All the girls are upset about this. The light is silver and bright like a beam. It is a foggy day. We have LA at home, Saiorse says. We have life-like-California, but it’s real-life and it’s right-here. We can stay right here. We can invent different schools of movement. We can even go to Sugarfish Girls mass-exodus a friend group or even a whole entire life because of totally superficial reasons that are totally fake, Saoirse is saying, at Sugarfish. We acquire Saki. I pull my hair into a tight ponytail and I revel in my perfect day. I document my material reality meticulously. I have been training myself to become totally head empty. I have been training myself to gently accept gluttony, and also to be less subject to my whims. Sugar Fish has the sort of generic-upscale interior that reminds you of nothing, and thus reminds you of personal recollections of positive experiences in similar generic upscale interior restaurants. This is how they keep you coming back, I say. Girls couldn’t find a backbone if it hit them over the head, Saiorse says. Girls want to drown their enemies in buckets like kittens. Girls want to pray for you and ask to kiss you and pretend to be your friends. I am starting to feel some animosity, I tell Saorsie. Our meal is light but comes out in many courses. Saiorse is happy to hear about my budding proclivity for negativity. I’ve been telling you these things for years and knowing that it wasn’t yet time for you to listen, Sairse responds. You can pick something really good, or you can pick something that you really really want. Saiorse plays with her salmon sashimi and she doesn’t like soy sauce. Saoirse doesn’t ask me to tell her which one I pick: really good versus really wanted, that is. Do you remember Michael the explorer, Saoirse asks me. I have known Saoirse for a million billion years. We share a million billion strange friends. It’s nice to pour over these things. Internet friends. Federal agent friends. Friend who snuck over the Canadian border a few years ago and then washed up outside a fire pit in The Hamptons. Her explorer friend who we took to Round Swamp market for blueberry muffins after he got back from some place like Antarctica or maybe North Korea. He was not very risk-adverse. He was so worried about you, Saoirse says. Did you know that at the time? He said you seemed so nice. Walking home in the crisp and cold afternoon feeling so nice. Walking through the farmers market. Curling up in bed half asleep half dressed half under covers. Half lonely and half at peace because I love when my apartment is so cold. Cassandra texts that she is going to the museum. Why, I ask? It is our duty to seek out all the latent beauty in the world. Cassandra responds. At night, In Brooklyn, I can listen to Jeff Buckley Forget Her on repeat and think about what I actually want. Purification. Indulging my addictions. Freedom from vice. Sweet music and soft cover of winter fog and little green glass wind chimes hanging from the trees. I like wearing natural fibers and clothing I move easily in and having a uniform and following an obsession to its logical conclusion. I like knowing immediately and totally what it is that I could or could not love. Little dried leaves shivering across the pavement. They look like little rats except for the part where they are very beautiful. I run into one friend smoking on the street in a velvet black jacket when I arrive at the reading. I like your suit, I say. It’s my only suit, he responds. I don’t want to drink but I do want a cigarette and I only like cigarettes when I’m drinking. There’s a glowing strawberry on the wall, and there are a lot of people I have never seen before or at least do not see often. Like the cool theater kids’ basement in college, the girl next to me is saying. Soft snow flurries outside, which serves as a nice reminder that it is still winter. Reading out loud about Florida, Massachusetts and feeling reclusive. Wednesday, January 14 Sweet Wednesday morning, but I’m going to treat it like a Monday. Still listening to Jeff Bukley Forget Her, which makes me want to be somewhere else. Somewhere very cold or very foggy or even, very sunny. Perhaps I should stop hedging and just commit to something. Last night, a boy was ordering a drink and talking about how he was so glad no one was doing dry January this year. He asked his friend what he was drinking. Soda water and cranberry, the friend said. Oh, he said. You’re doing dry January? I’ve been dry for six months, his friend said. I felt so jealous of his friend. So, I know what has to give. Need to take pleasure in denying myself the things I want, etc etc etc. Listening to Forget Her over and over and over again, and turning my head all the way upside down so I can get a look at the snow behind me, but the snow has mostly stopped. Just silver skies all the way, now. Silver skies all the way up and all the way down. Jeff Buckley died at thirty-years-old. Someone who destroyed himself early but at least he had something to show for it. The desire to toss out everything I own becomes pervasive in the snow. The desire to get rid of all these things I wish were not mine. Gathering up all these clothes and throwing them in a big white trash bag. Thinking about the big smile on my face when my mother gave me a blue and shiny dress and then thinking about throwing it in a donation bin which pipelines to landfills, obviously. Hours can pass, percolating in guilt over what to do with this blue dress among other items. There are many more wasteful things than throwing out a dress. Buying and drinking alcohol for example. Buying and eating protein bars just to feel full by which I mean full of trash. Scrolling on my phone. Being cruel. The snow is both coming down and melting outside. Smells like ski racing. Nothing I am getting rid of is special. If the people whom I don’t want to see show up at a party, then I will leave. My friends are in the basement of the party when I arrive. Another friend’s new bar. The wood has been stained dark brown and the place is starting to look formal and nice. My friends are vacuuming and putting away books. We all look like little elves putting the books away, Quinn says. Many interesting books. Esoterics of Health and something about Aliens, for example. Thursday, January 15 Rinse and repeat. Blueish silver light in my apartment, where the sun barely penetrates, but at least nothing is artificial. Outside, everything is melting, melting, melting. White and chipped paint on the fire escape, and I can see the drops of water growing from the metal edges and then… drop! Leafless trees shimmering like they’re coated in gum drops. Each silver water droplet crystallized as its own little form, and then together, they are turning the whole tree silver. Since they turned down the central heating and then I turned off my air conditioner, a few days ago, everything has begun to feel quite quiet. Should we do a dress exchange? I ask Cassandra. Should I bring you your bible and a book called The Elephant in the Brain and also your blue cashmere sweater in exchange for my polyester Aritzia slip? Yes! says Cassandra. The West Village is wet and cold and the church is white and the doors are blue. The dining room of The Marlton Hotel is full of red velvet booths and gold lined mirrors and star shaped yellow lights. The mirrors and the lights make me feel a little bit like I am in a room full of sun, but I am not in a room full of sun. I am in a windowless hotel lobby full of mirrors. Cassandra takes out her Sunday Riley lipgloss. Girls at table over are taking out their Sunday Riley lipgloss. Girls everywhere are just the same. Olivia has her Rapunzel hair bundled up in her scarf like a baboushka. Cassandra is wearing a beautiful red scarf tied around her neck and wearing beautiful gold jewelry. The girls at the table over are talking about how we were created to have gentle souls. Why would anybody make it their mission in life to seek out… chaos? Cassandra interjects. To seek to degrade others, Olivia says. Cassandra teaches me a new word: Odoriferous. Cassandra tells me about her friend who lives in Northern California off the grid, farming salmon or maybe saving them, researching them, I can’t remember. A girl stumbles into the dining room to greet her friends at the table over. I can feel how cold you are, her friends say. I can’t wait to see the ocean again, Cassandra says. It feels really weird going so long without seeing the ocean. I guess I won’t see the ocean again for a while. Thinking about feeling manic. Thinking about every other timeline. Thinking about pouring big glass of water and black coffee with five splenda because I am still glutenous. Getting right to the cusp of something means that in at least a few other timelines, you probably figured it out. Nice to assume you’re capable of that, at least. Nice to know that in another timeline, my diaries are probably anonymous and I can be less vague. Nice to know that in another timeline I can probably lie. I can probably say what I actually mean. Spraying perfume over green sweater and imagining myself as someone who moves more slowly. Ordered a glass of wine because I love relapsing on an empty stomach. Telling Olivia about when my life was hot and cold and up and down and crazy all the time, because for the first time, I am realizing that she did not know me then. It’s hard to describe to someone who wasn’t there. Feeling a little bit nauseous and like I wish I hadn’t spoken. We could be living in the Midwest driving golf carts, Olivia says. Indiana is just corn and soy but not even produced for human production just animal feed or corn syrup, she says. I have a fondness for cornfields, Cassandra says. We could belong to country clubs, Olivia said. I wonder what that is like. Friday, January 16 In my dreams, I am surrounded by water on all sides, Somewhere in El Salvador. Somewhere in Costa Rica. Somewhere with all my friends-from-the-internet, and they do not like my new boyfriend. It’s ok, because I don’t like my new boyfriend too much either. I am scheming with my internet-friends. We are scheming ways to get rid of new boyfriend. Everyone is happy about my plots to get him gone, and no one seems to clock that I am the one who invited him in the first place. We are deep sea fishing. I am hanging by my arms from the edge of the boat and my feet are running through the water while a girl I know to be my best friend fires up the boat faster and faster and faster. I am a little scared. I am having so much fun. Salt water. Earth water. Angel water. I wake up. One light left on, back in New York. Yellow glowing floor lamp, so at least there’s nothing shining overhead. Last night, I was walking through the winter snow sliding on ice and filled with energy and adoration and also two illicit drinks. Listening to music and wind and stopping for gum and diet coke and then washing up in a restaurant that was bustling and warm and dimly lit. Telling my friends not to wait outside. For a while, I wanted to show others the places that had always been mine. It had never been like that before. It had always been more of a self protective sort of thing. Back to letting myself be dragged to kind of nice places to which I have no attachment, now. Talking about myself like I am playing SIMS at dinner. Ordering one diet coke and one piece of fish. Dinner passing kind of assembly line cool. Chill and smooth. In the snow and the ice, everything is seamless and then I’m in a car home so that I do not slip. Things could be quiet and end early but I still just can’t stay put. I become more full of energy, later on. I have become very sick of interiority. I went to a small Italian cafe to pass the later night because when I don’t, I always wish I did. It was a snowy and beautiful night. The cafe was made for families and locals and tour groups and dark and lovely. My new friends were talking about things like art-of-business, so it felt kind of far from myself but I could bear it for some hours. A beautiful life. Trying to be more tender and less neurotic. This does not have to mean everything. A person can just be cautious and nice-for-now. Walked home in the snow. Woke up warm. Still can’t stay away from places that have always been mine. Yellow light emanates from the yellow lamp. Nothing fluorescent. A million things to write over a million times. A million things to consider. A million topics on which the thing to do now is to wait and see. Waiting and seeing. Text about finding a DJ for a party in San Francisco. Email about a party at The Mount Washington Hotel. All these very random things that feel so close to being in reach. Kind of want to go. Kind of want to languish in old and beautiful rooms at the Mount Washington Hotel and in the majestic magic pool and imagine that money flows like water by which I mean spend money like it is water. Opening the window, now. Letting it be morning, now. Have to be clear, now. Sober minded and clear. Time passes like water, too, so that is something else to be wary of. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, January 27 From 8pm at The River — Theme Trivia returns with Medieval Trivia.