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Bar Belly

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Bar Belly

Article

Bar Belly is a recurring venue in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 19, 2025 and July 18, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Ruby and I go to Bar Belly for dinner”; “Rebecca and I sat at Bar Belly in the rain for a while last night”; “We light paper straws on fire at Bar Belly”. It most often appears alongside KGB, Amalia Ulman, Club Chess.

Metadata

  • Category: Venues
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: January 19, 2025
  • Last seen: July 18, 2025

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.

January continues
January 19, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, January 12 Ruby and I go to Bar Belly for dinner. Can we move to a table away from the bar, Ruby asks the waitress. Sitting at the bar is bad for your posture and alignment, she explains. This is another thing she's been learning at witch school. It seems that at witch school, you learn to sit and stand and then by proxy, to eat and sleep and breathe and think. Fruit and honey for breakfast, feet on the ground when you are seated with an unsupported spine. I am craving spiritual guidance, and so I soak this up like a sponge. I want to be taught how to be. This is how you wake up. This is how you shift your feet out of bed, this is how you land on the wood floor, toes first, the arches of your feet, then heels. The truth of it is my movements are products of my best but often misguided judgment. Guesses, really. For all I know, you should wake up in the morning upside down. Palms on the ground first. Heels then arches then toes. I want to learn how to be divine, but there are so many shamans and they all know best. God forbid I become sacrilegious. I certainly know myself to be fringing on this at times. Even the mention of shamans.... Ruby and I were going to go to El Salvador on Tuesday, but then I’m thinking about how I should read more before I continue my research on the ground. I visited El Salvador this summer. Later, halted my story about crypto-charter-state-red-light-therapy-benevolent-dictatorship etc etc etc. A result of overstimulation and laziness - I should deepen my roots before I return to them. Later, I'll go later. David sends me an X Post: “Wish we lived in 1970s media economy so esquire or playboy could fly me to El Salvador and publish my 10,000-word marginally-coherent slice-of-life coverage of the crypto convention that ends with a guy in a hot tub saying something accidentally zeitgeisty.” Ruby and I go to Forgetmenot. There’s a dog behind me, a big white husky, I hold out my hand to pet him and he gives me his paw. He does this a few times. He’s trained, I’m sure, to expect a reward in response but we’ve ordered a grill plate, there’s only halloumi left, I don’t want to poison the poor thing. Ruby posts a picture of me with the dog, but I’m in my big puffy jacket, and it mostly becomes just a picture of the dog. She tags my name on the screen. David sends me a screenshot of the picture. “DID YOU TURN INTO A DOG???” he asks. I order David ice cream from Figo when I get home. I ate half his bread and butter even though I've been so Ray Peat and even though after, I’ve been so Keto. I've been drinking again, hence the bread. Not a lot, but I was sober for a week, and the three drinks feel jarring. I've decided to stop causing problems. I've decided to get a job at a restaurant. I like the service industry, because the job is intensely exterior. There are many things so close to me of true significance, and I'm sick of ignoring them in favor of acting like a grasping freak. Monday, January 13 And so, you decide to redecorate again. Look at the layout of this place. There’s so much potential. There’s a big marble table and it’s cramping every corner. It’s cramping the light from the window. It’s cramping the yellow golden light that is framing our mirror. I go downstairs quickly, the light will be gone soon. I want to get a flight tomorrow, leave with my friends and find clarity in the hot humid heat, but it doesn’t feel like I'll be absorbing myself in something more - it feels like escape, and I haven’t earned this decadence. I’ve been deliberating all day. I’ve been clutching my evil eye in case I do decide to travel. All my friends wear evil eyes, too. It’s a strange coincidence - something most people I'm drawn to share, not intentional. I'm not religious, but this is different. Adele keeps a drawer in her apartment full of evil eyes, stocked to the brim in case one charm coincidently shatters. She'll never have to go unprepared. I take a test today. Sent, received, complete, returned. It’s so thrilling to do something I’m supposed to do. If we got rid of the marble table…. If we lined the walls with floor pillows below the windows, their tufted fabric landing well lower than the horizon line even when stacked…. I can imagine the furniture gone. Me, staring clearly across the room, one wall to another. I'm imagining all the clutter dissipated. I imagine it would erase some sense of static. I can imagine my hypothetical week in El Salvador, but I need to learn how to think about something outside of myself, even when I’m here. It would be better there. I can picture the airbnb in San Benito, the eight or so bedrooms, the open air layout that big homes in warm climates often share, arches bleeding into courtyards, steps built into hills, unclear where one room becomes another, wind and heat lightning swirling around you and raising your hair as your walking, even through the kitchen, even ostensibly inside. I want to swim in a big clear pool over a city that is now vaguely familiar but still, not really mine. I want to finish the story I started. New England Winter. I need to learn how to sort things through while staying put. David and I go to Estela for dinner. It’s our anniversary. He tells me not to say anything online about it. Private life should stay private, he says, but I’m writing it anyway. Estela is nice. It’s the sister restaurant of Altro Paradiso. My friend, Madelyn works there. Estela is smaller, cozier, you have to buzz to get into the building and then it’s up some steps, it feels like you’re in an apartment, it feels like you’re in Berlin. I’ve never been to Copenhagen, but I imagine it feels a bit like Copenhagen, too. “I like more old timey restaurants,” David says. “Me too,” I say. “But sometimes isn’t it nice to be in a restaurant that feels like Copenhagen? David agrees. He’s never been to Copenhagen either. Altro Paradiso is brightly lit, whereas Estela is dim. Stella - Latin for Star. Etc. The distinction feels a little obvious, but then, I’m being a little particular. Estela is small plates. Romantic. You can tell because you have to buzz the door to get in, and because the lighting is really dark. They put us in a little alcove by the shelves and shelves of wine. We order iberico ham, bread and butter, endive salad, crab with celery root (the best dish), squid ink fried rice with little bits of squid, steak with elderberry sauce. I order a Tito's martini, but I’m told they don’t serve Titos here. I’m told they have one martini with vodka that “tastes like smirnoff” ($22) and another with vodka that’s way better and far preferable (paraphrased) ($30). Our waitress is peppy. “We’ll take the Smirnoff,” David says. “She’s nice,” I say, later. “Domineering,” David says. Later, the waitress rolls her eyes a little when she asks me how my martini is. She smiles when I say good. I believe she is sincere in her hope that I’m happy as I guzzle up the fruits of my lowbrow taste. It really is a lovely meal. I don’t mean to be cynical. I tell David he should tell them it’s our anniversary so we can have something free, and he tells them “it’s our anniversary, can we have dessert on the house.” Then, I’m embarrassed, but they bring us dessert (with a price) and champagne (on the house). Tuesday, January 14 I’ve been working on maintaining constant motion. “An object in motion will stay in motion,” I’ve been telling anyone that will listen. I walk in place all day, and then I walk through Washington Square Park at night, freezing. I make sure to do an extra lap to circle under the arch, all sparkling and illuminated and icy. I’m thirty minutes late to the Post-Doomerism talk at Gonzo’s, and this feels like an important one to me because I used to base my entire framework of thought around mitigating dread through a surrender to the inevitability of fates worse than death. It’s a terrible way to view the world - juvenile if nothing else, but also aesthetically and morally barren, limiting, a nihilistic obsession with the present does lead to destruction (yourself and others), no matter how many delusions you harbor about enlightenment, and about time and therefore preservation as false constructs. You can’t be nihilistic if you believe in good and evil, and I do believe in good and evil, so it was never going to hold up. Post Doomerism The lecture is just starting when I exit the elevator. The talk is between Chris Small (founder of Amazon Labor Union), PradaHorseShoe (founder of Russian Cosmism Circle NYC), Joshua Citarella (Doomscroll Podcast), and Geo Yankey (Comedian) “Russian Cosmists think that Marx doesn't take it far enough,” Amana explains. “Marxism wants to abolish capitalism, religion, the family…. but what about abolishing the OG bummer - death.” The point of the talk seems to be to present a sort of leftist vision of tech accelerationism. Capitalist Realism, the parts of the industrial revolution deemed actually good, nuclear fusion (clean and limitless energy which imitates the sun) instead of nuclear fission, fossil fuels , etc etc etc. The audience, on the other hand, is mostly composed of people I recognize from other downtown events - this one taking on an uncharacteristic and somewhat academic sincerity. “Hypothetically, heat death could occur before we run out of fuel,” a girl sitting next to me murmurs at one point, evidently at least somewhat convinced by technology’s capacity for limitless good. I try to conjure a sense of what she’s imagining in my mind's eye - create enough clean energy, and you could be driving your car one day when the whole universe just implodes. This isn’t aspirational to me. Longevity even, has never been particularly aspirational to me, although increasingly moreso, I’m increasingly less cynical. I appreciate the sincerity of the lecture. I appreciate some of the ideas they put forward, too. It’s an irony-pilled audience and they're sitting in a deeply earnest room. I slip out during the Q&A - overwhelmed, honestly, and I’m late to another function. I’m handed a gin and tonic in the Lower East Side. I’m talking about the Russian Cosmism lecture. “Lenin tried that and 20 million people died,” I am told. “I don’t really know enough,” I say. I’m sent a documentary about The Tyranny of Scientism. I order some things like the books by Nick Zurnig and Mark Fisher. It’s good to be objective. The night slips onward. It’s rude to talk about accelerationism at a party. Wednesday, January 16 It's slightly warmer in New York today. It's still cold, but it's less frigid, I'm walking through Soho typing, I'm walking to Equinox, I'll finish writing this on the treadmill, I had such a fun night last night although I do feel terribly guilty about squandering my health and my beauty and my soul every time I get drunk. I was such a good drunk, though. I adore my friends so deeply. I adore my new friends. I think they are my best friends. I’m trying not to quantify everything. There are names of people I love spinning through my mind, now. Why order things. Some people exhaust me, and then there are other people who don’t. I’ve found new friends who live artfully while occupying a natural state that is absorbed with the physical world, recently. How lucky for me. I don’t want to use my volatility as a bludgeon with which to bend people to my whims. Good thing I don’t feel particularly volatile this week. It’s best to consider these while outside of them. Objective introspection: am I doing a good job? WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Gofundme + LA Fire Resources here. Sunday, January 19 From 6pm - midnight at EARTH — Jordan Castro and Cluny present SILENCE. An evening of silence. No speaking, no phones.
Inline links: X Post, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!C7a6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5b47129c-0bc4-49be-9951-68a8a3f58ac6_1179x1372.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RkCJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb4a64bf-f664-428e-854a-221b40a26109_1536x2048.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XxFb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F59a8c887-c1bc-4090-9568-92185cc4e0c1_1412x1420.png, Amazon Labor Union, PradaHorseShoe, Russian Cosmism Circle NYC, Doomscroll Podcast, Geo Yankey, Capitalist Realism, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kDE6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd7220533-39ee-4944-a185-b7983b1500e9_1600x1066.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!abSY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb12cd88-f058-4032-ba7f-a91514034d33_1600x1066.jpeg, here, EARTH, Jordan Castro, Cluny
Panopticon-ing Everyone
May 13, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, May 8 I've been panopticon-ing everyone here, and you have asked me to stop. Ok. I'm sorry I have already told about what happened on Wednesday. Not here. Imagine it's all fantasy. I mean it when I say that I am really not talking about myself. Being all confessional and then I feel kind of gross about it. Being kind of glib about the parts I thought were most sincere. I've been neglectful, most of all. Right now, I am most sorry about that. In the end, you'll be lying on a Japanese floor mattress and you'll be thinking about the parts that are still the same. Tonight, I went to the party that I usually avoid. I went home before the parts that come next. Another flight tomorrow, and I wish there wasn't more travel though, I am glad for where we are going. An old school hotel, Sue Wong beaded dress, borrowed shoes and sharing the different details of my life like oh it's been all grad school and true love and self surveillance - this part will be nice. My friend suggests at dinner - I don't have insomnia, I live in an environment of psychological torture sleep depravation. I could latch onto this. Psychological torture. My friend says - New York vs LA; you can find nuance in uglier things here and she cites me as the example of nuance as if I am something like resilient or tough. I have never been described as either of these things before, and I hope I haven't been plying myself in victimhood too heavily, because really - my circumstances are wonderful. It is a sweet description, though. I'm glad I'm not a fraud, at least. Lots of parties this week and those were nice while they lasted. You can't be indignant without clarity, which - I am working on having more of. I set up the summer so as to have the days stretching endlessly in front of me. This concerns me a bit. I will need to read for two hours every morning. There is a novel forming mostly beneath my writing here, and I will need to finish that. All at once it's like everyone has drawn the same conclusions about good and evil. Everyone was all like this is so good, and then everyone snapped at once and it was like: this is evil. I have briefly wondered where this change would map out cosmically, though, I have tried to be a mystic about it, and my basic impulses revolt. I was culling chapters from my Secret Diary a while back. Here, I was saying. Time stamp it in Google Docs and you know I meant this before I even knew I would need to show you it was true someday. None of it was really so long ago. So, I wonder, for example - what July will be like? I wonder about June. You could be a bartender or a DJ. Sounds like something someone who has lost their intuition would say. I'm talking in hypotheticals because I mean it when I say that I am not, really, talking about myself. Friday, May 9 Rebecca and I sat at Bar Belly in the rain for a while last night. Shannon made me cauliflower rice and avocado for lunch. I did circle around to my boyfriend's culty and evil type hang later in the night. There was chicken from the street, there. Rebecca will stay at our place while we're gone. She stayed at ours for a while last night. Everyone went to KGB, later, but I am being more regulated about it. Making pasta at nine am because I was up all night in spite of new efforts. Pouring rain and then we're driving towards Laguardia. In retrospect, I still do not think I was being dramatic about things, but it feels distant and small now. Short term memory maybe, or, the present is often quite extreme and so; wherever I am, it absorbs me. I like his brown leather bag, cufflinks, it's been to and fro this airport all spring which serves to dividend the chaos a bit. Anyways, everything is fine. I have a life in New York that I will still feel so lucky to return to. "You guys are in love!" a girl in micro-shorts told us at the party last night. "How long have you been in love for?" "Almost two years," he said. This is the pragmatic answer and also this is true. The girl beamed. "I've been in love for ten days," she said. I need to hold things closer to my chest. Not here - I am obfuscated enough about it here, so it's hard to do much damage. It's different in the real world. I say things that I know to be true, but I say them before I really understand what they mean. I am more protective of the things that are good, and I am quick to give away all that is bad. This is not how a person should be. Happy Mother's Day, the light and water show at the airport is saying. Elderly couple to my left devouring fried chicken. I feel incredibly ill, come to think of it, but some of this stays sweet. Darling darling darling, he keeps telling me. Are you ready to fly in a plane in the sky? Artificial Intelligence will come to destroy the earth and you will be like twenty-five years old and on your phone and talking badly about your friends behind their back and forgetting to call your family and drinking to disgust. Artificial Intelligence will come to destroy the world and you will call your sister, call your mom, lie under the open window with your boyfriend. You will be making up stories and praying over a glass of sparkling water. You will be listening to music and sound and language from real life. You will picture a relic of yourself still human, and you will be pleased. Saturday, May 10 I have decided to return to Photos. It is funny how these things work. I felt quite repulsed by images for a moment, but even just a few days of speaking out loud how much the equilibrium has been missing and how much now, it is time to get it back - I said this out loud along with other things, and now I can face the physical form again. And so much of the physical form is so pretty. I do like when things are ethereal and kind of between realms - it is why I have always liked to be very thin, although I’m pretty Normal in Body these days - and this is the most boring of boring things to discuss, anyways. My tendency is to archive and hoard. It is comically wrong to suggest that I seek to leave behind no trace. My point is, for a while now, I could not bear the traces. Something has shifted. There is a gold framed photo of a palm tree across from the bed in this hotel, and it’s the kind that is old school not tacky. Everything is art deco here. The ceilings at the bar are ten stories high, he told me, before dinner. There was salad and a cosmopolitan and such nice conversation and, I do always get whisked away when the time is right. I’m feeling pretty even keeled. If April happened again, it wouldn’t happen like this. The day has been so good so far. The hotel is old, classic, and art deco. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 13 Doors at 7pm, reading at 8pm at TJ Byrnes — Bronwen Lam & David Dufour present Patio, an evening of reading. This rendition features Martina Mendoza, Mark Iosifescu, Myles Zavelo, Stephanie Wambugu, Babak Lakghomi, and Steve Anwyll.
Inline links: TJ Byrnes, Bronwen Lam, David Dufour, Patio
Things I do like here
July 18, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, July 14 Dream Reflection - I was buying vintage workout wear and advancing down a very long corridor. Sweet summer heat. It is not too sticky or slow. There is a lot that begins all at once and so I: sleep til the afternoon and I decide that I'll still bear it. About to do something subversive could you call the police if you don’t hear from me in like four hours thanks, Amelia texts, an hour after Very Late Wake Up. Yes of course, I respond. I do follow up but it's the sort of thing where one probably shouldn't. An album a film a story a day and the letters are to my family now and clarity seems like the only thing that will probably become truly essential, though I do feel bored, going on in this way. The books at Sunlife Smoothie Shop do leave me feeling kind of repulsed - Think and Grow RICH and The Forrest Gump of Addiction Stories and, I would like to haul my blue and white and already kind of festering concoction to the street and up the stairs and home only, it's turning to sludge in even the flicker of daylight I've allowed it to meet. Lions main, spiralina, none of these words mean anything. I will remember how to write and read and confess my sins regarding flash floods and apocalyptic ideation, but for now, none of these words mean anything. Amelia comes over and we sit on the couch in mostly silence until it’s dark. Sorry for making you come over and sit in the dark, I tell Re. I used to have a lot of hobbies, Amelia tells me. Tuesday, July 15 Lie on the floor and dream about it. An illness came in the night and then faded by the afternoon. You should still reflect on it more, I was told. You should be less navel-gazing about it, I was told, later, a little bit after that. To recollect a life there is: red light therapy and lymphatic drainage, bone broth and dandelion tea in the morning. There are splotches of solitude in between, and now, I am trying not to fill it all up with slop. I pick up the laundry from the spot where the laundry man is always glowering or all smiles and never anything in between. I buy a water flosser, four gently used white linen dresses, a smoothie bowl that is too big and bright blue and I ponder how anyone could possibly consume the whole thing of something like that and then I finish it all in one go. What I Do In A Day In New York City. I vow to consume nothing ever again. Isabel sends over Life Studies by manic depressive poet Robert Lowell and some other writings by his wife that she thinks might correlate with My Situation. Saunter over to an awful summer show at a gallery that I feel bad to name and anyways my judgement is probably just a result of my messed up spirits. I shower at home now, not in the bright hallways of my weird-and-off-putting gym. I keep it dark inside for the sake of energy conservation and spiritual fortitude. Downtown, Bacaro is packed and the bald man at the table over is reluctant to tell his date his name. We light paper straws on fire at Bar Belly. SUBURBIA, the book above me is called. WAVES, says the next book over. The scene is dead, my friends are saying. Everyone is fat and happy. The subway is flooded. And you shouldn't have to self destruct in order to conjure up something interesting to say, but if you can successfully tow the line, well..... Everyone is smirking. The key of it though, is the towing of the line. So, I will go home and transcribe more platitudes. Your will to create beauty shapes your time. Wednesday, July 16 Air conditioner whirring at two in the morning and I have come to life again for the first time in my five-week-life. Thursday, July 17 They are perched inside the fountain in Washington Square Park painting blue hour landscapes on canvas behind the sheen of the fountain, and so of course the water is speckling the paint. I imagine the damage will settle in a nice sort of way. They are playing wind chimes and wearing micro shorts. Claudette is still closed for the season. They are stringing bungee cords across the street at West 10th. On the phone, I hold my breath. Did you go to the party, I am asked. No. Me neither. Iced mint tea in a hotel lobby that is kind of Scandinavian and cheerful in spirit. Back in the park; Where will I go, I could ask the tarot reader. Hopefully somewhere that is not here, the tarot reader could say. Staring down, embarrassing, out of it, but I still avoid walking into the incoming traffic. There are things I do like here: iced mint tea

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