Freddy the Formerly Stray Cat scared us the other night when she climbed over the back fence and into the church yard behind it. She wouldn't come back, bedding down in an old milk crate and staring at me critically when I tried to convince her to come back inside. I feared we'd have to start all over with her, slowly luring her back to the house, but the next day she ran into the kitchen like nothing had changed. But it had ...

On a previous night, she got into a growling match with a big male cat that had traipsed into the yard. Now it seems she and this cat were pals; they slept next to each other in the church yard and hung out together on the patio. Not only that, but her ambassadorship seems to be attracting others. The other night we were sitting in the living room when I noticed a cat sitting on the kitchen counter. This is not unusual, but it wasn't one of our cats. It was a Russian Blue, looking pretty much show-quality, if a little on the thin side. He had come through the open window that sits above the counter. And Freddy's original friend kept lookout on the window sill. It then occurred to me that I had left that window open the night before in case Freddy decided to return, so they'd probably already done a dry run for this infiltration.

I don't know if these cats are strays (gently used) or feral (Born Free), but they bolted when we inched over towards them. The Blue cat really was a lot better-looking than pretty much any of our cats, it makes me wonder if I can trade some of them in. But we haven't seen it since. Meanwhile, the parade of neighborhood cats continues unabated.

Out on the street there are tons of street cats that appear to go from stoop to stoop looking for handouts. We keep getting visited by a calico kitten who momentarily garnered my sympathies because I thought she was covered in her own blood. I carried her out to the back yard and stuffed her full of cat food. Then I noticed the 'blood' splashed on her side much more closely resembled Kool-aid. I guess that's 'street smarts.'

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Cats, Funny to Me, Pets, The Yard

Whoa. What's up with this:

Arts Space in Brooklyn to Get New Digs

Galapagos is moving to DUMBO ... ?

I don't whether to be surprised or say 'good riddance.'

Labels: Brooklyn, Music, Real Estate

Here's something to waste some time during your workday: Google Maps has added a 'Street View' feature that allows you to see a 360-degree panorama of your location. Granted, they haven't mapped out the most important areas of the city yet (namely, in front of my house), but I'm sure they're working on it. Oddly, they have actually mapped all of Bushwick Ave, which comes within a block of my house. This is odd because I would have thought they would have mapped out Broadway first, which runs parallel to Bushwick Ave. Then again, in my few driving experiences here, I noted with disdain how screwed up Broadway is. For such a seemingly vital thoroughfare, it's pothole-ridden and stoplight-laden. Anyhow, the photo above is a bodega I often frequent at the end of my block. My house is actually the other way down the street, but that view is particularly boring-looking under the eye of this map service. When they get down every street, though, you'll really have something. This should have some interesting ramifications. Now people can virtually walk down Atlantic Ave in Brownsville and East New York with impunity.

Meanwhile, it was a lovely weekend all around. One semi-disappointment was that the tree service guys never came back for all the remaining detritus. They had told me to keep a good portion of their fee as a deposit, which would be collected when they showed up to take all the vines and leafy parts. The logic involved was that this material needed to dry out to be easily handled (all the wood goes to a chipper and gets turned into mulch). Saturday came and went without a word, even after I tried to contact them. The forecast for Sunday was rain, so I got antsy, thinking if the whole reason they left this stuff was because it needed to dry out, getting rained on wasn't gonna help. So i got out the contractor bags and went to town on it. It wasn't actually that difficult, and soon I had almost all of it bagged. Now I just have to dole it out to the trash, and I've just saved a tidy sum on my tree/ladder issue. Still, it's not exactly good business practice to leave your customers hanging, especially since this guy was trying to sell me on many of his fence and deck-building expertise.

[via Curbed.com]

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, House, Maps, Renovation, The Yard, Weather

I was feeling gross yesterday but I was planning on going to work anyway until Jeannie talked me out of it. As lazy as I can be, I still have trouble making that decision to call in sick, mostly because I'm still not used to the notion of having sick days (of which I actually have a lot left to use).

Anyway, this worked out well since yesterday was The Day They Came to Remove the Tree. There was an old tree that had been devoured by termites and had fallen in the back yard, probably several years before we came to own the place. This would be a very easy thing for anybody with a chain saw to remove. However, there was a catch: a 40-foot clothesline tower.

For those of you who don't know, or who haven't been over to Abby's backyard, in the olden days, people dried their laundry on clotheslines. To facilitate this for upper-floor tenants, a ladder-like device was erected at the far end of the yard with pulleys attached for each floor. I'm not sure how people originally attached the lines (I guess some poor kid had to shimmy up the ladder with a rope in his teeth) and voila, you had a place to hang out your wet socks.

Since the advent of the commercial and/or residential laundry facilities, clothesline tower fell into disuse. Ours in particular suffered from obsolescence, the previous owners let it rust so bad its base supports rusted through. So at some point somebody moved it to the side, threading it through the phone lines and letting the top rest again the branches of the tree in the adjacent yard.

So not only was there a tree to remove, but it was partially leaning on this giant, rusty, steel tower thing which was precariously balanced between a couple of thin branches and the phone lines for half the neighborhood (all the more reason to go to cellular phones). I had no idea who to call to take care of this, but when the tree guy came over he said, "Eh, we do this all the time." It took them about 2 hours to do the bulk of the work.

The tree was gone before I even noticed. They also pruned back several other trees that were threatening other cables, as well as a bunch of vines. Work was momentarily stopped when they asked me to look up pictures of poison ivy and oak to make sure the vines weren't poisonous. I inwardly chuckled, I mean really, poison ivy here? Please. So I printed out some pictures of it to compare and they continued clearing it away.

The clothesline tower also came down without much trouble, they just slid it out from between the cables (I think they did break a couple of small branched in the tree). once they had it down they cut it into a couple of pieces and threw it on the truck, like it was nothing. It was especially helpful that our home abuts a church yard, so they were able to back their truck right up to the back fence of our yard.

They took most of the big stuff, leaving the green wood to dry out for a couple of days. They come back tomorrow to take the rest of it, plus all the leftover wood from my studio project. I'm trying to pick out some of the 2x4s or whatever I might want to keep. But it's a joy to ditch most of that stuff, as it has been taking up so much space in the cellar.

Before the tree guys showed up, I let the cats run around the yard. Despite the fact that there is no fence between our yard and the neighbors, there are tall fences around the perimeter of the two, so I haven't worried much about the cats escaping. Well, at some point I realized that Freddy was nowhere to be found. Indeed, long after the tree people had decamped, I peered over a fence and spied her sitting under an old Schwinn in the church's yard. I plied her with cat food to no avail. I feared she would return to her stray-cat, bird-killin' ways.

It was at this time I realized there in fact was a thatch of poison ivy growing out of the corner fence. Jesus Christ! I don't know how to get rid of it, should I just spray it with weed killer? I kind of want to get rid of it before the guys come back for the rest of the debris, cuz they said they don't wanna get near it, lest treeman Tony ruin his momentous birthday plans for the weekend.

At about 9:15, Freddy strolled back inside. She's still not any nicer to us, but she knows where she lives at least. Here's an album documenting some of the day's activities.

Addendum: Here's a pretty cool page about an archaeological dig in a Brooklyn back yard that has pretty much the only reference I could find about clothesline towers (their was half the size of ours and apparently not sitting between phone cables).

Labels: House, Neighbors, Pets, Renovation, The Yard

One of the more consistent requests I get through this site is information about the fence post spikes I used to erect a fence in my back yard. Well, it was the back yard at the last place I lived, in Clinton Hill. People write me every so often to ask where I procured the metal base posts to secure the wood posts that support the fence itself. Despite the momentousness of the project, I totally can't remember where I got them. I bought them online from a hardware store from the west coast, I think (I wanna say Washington). They were literally the only place I could find them online so I went ahead and got them. But that company seems to no longer have an online presence, if they have a presence at all anymore. So I always feel bad when I have to respond that I have no further info about it when people email.

But that has all changed, for the time being anyhow. A web researcher emailed me, not to ask where to get the spikes, but rather what my long-term opinion is of them. You see, this guy has located them, both online and at his local hardware store, and just wanted to know if they were worth it. He sent me the link, so I can now proudly post it here for anybody wanting to put up their own fence but not wanting to futz with pouring concrete. Near as I can figure these fence post spikes work pretty well. i don't know that I would trust them if you constantly have people scaling your walls, but to hold up your usual cedar plank fence it seems to work fine. Now all I have to do is put a link to this post on the original fence post post.

You may have noticed, since I moved to blogger for this blog, there is a serious disparity between old and new blog. The Archives page is hopelessly out of date (for recent archives, only the link on the right side of the home page will get you anywhere), and of course, the comments on the old posts still don't work. I just never have time to fix that stuff, and since it's been like this for many months now and the earth seems to continue to spin, I'm in no rush to fix it. I've got curtains to hang!

Labels: House, Renovation, The Yard

In 1990 I bought my first electric guitar with proceeds from my job at Pier One Imports. I'm not sure how I found out about the pawn shop, I think my friend lived near it and had clued me in. It was over the city line in Painseville, Ohio. The shop had a bunch of guitars, and most of them were new. I'm not sure where they got them, but they sure were cheap compared to the stuff they sold at Arrowhead Music in town.

I knew nothing about guitars, I had only recently begun to teach myself to play on my sister's abandoned acoustic guitar but I wanted to get an electric. I went to the pawn shop several times, messing with the guitars and trying to act like i knew how to judge the quality. I ended up buying the guitar in the picture, not so much because it was a good instrument, but more because it was paisley.

This is a Cort brand, a Korean knockoff company so addled by low esteem they feel the need to print the words "Electric Guitar" on the headstock. You know, in case you don't know what it it is. I believe its design, with red fabric printed with greenish paiselys, was meant to resemble a tele owned by Pete Townsend, but I sure didn't know that at the time. The price tag read $175, I offered $150 and it was mine, along with a cardboard box and one of those supercheap guitar cables.

Man, I was such a fruit in those days. Can you picture me with my poorly-realized half-assed Flock of Seagulls haircut and my shirts buttoned all the way up to the top. And this guitar. Which, mind you, I barely knew how to play. It would be another several months before I got a real amp, and another 17 years before I learned how to play it halfway well (jury's still out on that).

I never thought I would see this thing again. When I left Ohio for Brooklyn , I left a wake of music equipment, some amps and speaker cabs, and one neglected Cort guitar. Since its purchase I had moved onto other guitars, a Stewart-Macdonald tele, and a Les Paul Deluxe (which I came to find out is considered anything but 'deluxe' by guitar aficionados, but it is still deemed superior to the Cort).

Meanwhile, former bandmate Al had been busy. In advance of his current band's trip to New York, he fetched the Cort out from behind the furnace, dusted it off and replaced the hardware and electronics. Conveniently located in his town of Athens, Ohio, is the Stew-Mac company, manufacturer of custom guitar parts. So basically you can get everything from wood blanks to cut out your own single-piece guitar, to the little plastic caps that go on the end of pickup toggle switches. Thus armed with a new lease on life, Al presented the guitar to me right before he and the band headed back on the road.

I was fearful of trying to play it again. Let's face it, it was built to be a cheap guitar for kids like me who didn't know better. With some trepidation I plugged her in and went on a sonic journey. At first it sounded a little off, but I fiddled with the EQ on my amp a little and got this really singe-y, high-tension wire sound. It was this point I realized that I never played this guitar without some kind of distortion on it, so the guitar sounding this good was a major feat.

So the guitar still rocks after all these years. I don't normally play single coil pickups anymore so this is a real departure. But the weird thing is I really like that (Shellac) sound, so now it seems odd I haven't played on them in so long. The Cort may just earn a place in my on-stage guitar collection. The only problem is, it's still paisley. Thanks Al!!! Here's some more photos.

Oh and here are some Flickr photos of other paisley guitars, apparently the original is from 1968.

Labels: Bands, Friends, Motico, Music

Tonight it looks like I'm going to see Babe the Blue Ox at Magnetic Field. I can't tell if it's gonna be crowded or what. Does anybody remember them? They haven't played a show in over 3 years, and I haven't seen them in 6. But they used to play my college town in the early 90's; Planet of Pants played with them at some point as well. I can't say I'm still into their sound nowadays, but they always put on a good show, and considering they were the first band I ever knew from Brooklyn, they had something to do with tempering my notion of what New York bands were like.

Anyhow, the 3 members of the band now have separate music groups they work within, all 3 of which are also playing tonight. Then BBOX is going on after, at maybe 10:30 or so (show's supposed to start at 8). First I'm going to Matchless to see Knife Crazy (I always picture the name with lots of unnecessary exclamation points, !!KNIFE!!!!CRAZY!!!!! ) from Buffalo. Where the hell is a full band gonna play at Matchless? The basement? I hope so.

Labels: Bands, Bars, Brooklyn, Music

Ever-attuned to all things related to soundproofing, I read with interest the NYTimes article about people dealing with noise issues in their homes. I'm mostly glad they actually devoted a (small) section of the article to the DIYer, though the brunt of the article was clearly aimed at people who will pay through the nose for quiet. It still astounds me not only that people are willing to pay so much ($3-4K PER ROOM!) for stuff like this, but that plenty of folks in this town are willing to do this for property they don't even own.

Like that episode of Seinfeld when Jerry has Conrad/Con/Conny redo his kitchen cabinets, it always sticks in my craw that he was just renting. But apparently it's not the unheard-of for renters to upgrade their apartments. I guess they assume they'll be there long enough to make the lost expense when they move worth their while. Maybe I'm more old-fashioned that I thought (don't worry kids, I'm still wicked cool), less existential than I thought I was (don't worry kids, I'm still wicked goth). Maybe it doesn't matter in the long run if you own something, as long as you have landlords who will let you install $10,000 soundproof windows and $250 per panel Quietrock drywall.

Meanwhile, the cops have been outfitted with Segways. If there is a god in heaven, please let them start patrolling my neighborhood. Oh sweet jesus I would love to see what the neighborhood would have to say about that. I hope they're teaching the cops to juggle spaldeens as well. That's money well spent!

And congratulations to Jenblossom, whose stray cat just moved a little of kittens into her yard. Ah, what fun awaits them! At least those kittens look a little better than the ones I got (pictured). But they're hanging in there, as is their mom.

Labels: Bushwick, Cats, Friends, Renting, Soundproofing, The City

Thursday I did a Froogle search for moving blankets. I found a site that sold a variety of types of them, from basic to super-fancy (for moving blankets, anyway) "Producer's Blankets," which are meant for film use. Some blankets were even marketed towards musicians needing acoustic treatment, going so far as to offer the addition of grommets to aid in hanging them. Who knew there was such a rich culture around the existence of moving blankets? I wouldn't have even thought of using them but for the fact our movers left one behind.

So I picked the "deluxe" model and ordered enough to cover the whole room. At 9:30 AM the next day, I got a call from FedEx, saying they were at my door and was anyone home. Now, I expected delivery to be problematic since nobody's home during the day, but I surely didn't expect it to ship so fast. The FedEx guy and I made tentative plans to meet between 5 and 6 that afternoon. I slipped out of work a little early and was on the J train, a couple stops from home when the phone rang again.

The FedEx guy had beaten me home, but he said he'd wait til I got there. And indeed, as I rounded the corner several minutes later, he was still there. I don't often get deliveries form FedEx, is this normal behavior? Usually the regular package delivery guy barely rings the bell before running down the block, forcing us to venture to the scary East New York post office to pick it up later (for some reason the ENY zip code 11207 snakes up above the cemetery and engulfs several blocks on this end of the neighborhood).

So I began the weekend with very favorable notions about both FedEx and MoversSupplies.com, the latter of which is based in Brooklyn (which partially explains the incredibly fast shipping) over on Bond Street in Gowanus. I put in my own grommets (at $1 per grommet, that seemed a bit steep) and hung four of the blankets. It really makes a big difference, Buzz and I both noted the overall audio improvement from the old basement. The old basement had a higher ceiling, though. However, it also had several large ducts which stuck way out, so my head-hitting average is still down from then.

I'm gonna try my very best to find other things to write about from now on, I know this stuff must be of limited interest to anybody else. With the completion of the studio I can turn my attention to other things, like removing the big dead tree in the backyard. Tree removal: that sounds fascinating!

Labels: Bands, Renovation, Soundproofing

Despite still having some loose ends (more wall work to do, no latch on the door), we hooked up the rig and went to town, musically, last night. The verdict: not bad! Sound isolation is better than I anticipated. Well, actually, when we began this project I envisioned a completely soundproof space, wherein a man could cut sheet metal with a rusty circular saw at 2 in the morning and have no fear of annoying a soul. But as the work progressed I realized that the reality of things would be a bit less dramatic. But I started thinking all this work wasn't gonna amount to anything except a rather cramped and stuffy practice space, with bass frequencies reverberating through the house and into angry neighbors' domiciles.

Here's my sonic breakdown of the varying levels:

• In the living room you can hear things, but all but the loudest bass notes are fairly well-muffled. In fact, most sound leakage seems to be coming from the stairwell, which is exactly the same issue we experienced at the old place. If we put a door at the bottom of the stairs, that should really help contain things.
  
• On the second floor you can't hear much at all, just a couple of taps here and there. I assume the top floors are blissfully ignorant of that band room altogether.
• I went outside and couldn't hear anything at all. It's weird to realize how much 'ambient noise' there is here, but you notice it when you concentrate on it. There's like a constant, low-level woosh all around, the confluence of passing cars, people talking, trains running, a million roach wings flapping in unison.
  

Later that same night I wondered aloud why I was so concerned about our noise. From the time practice ended, we heard countless elevated trains rumbling by, several vocal arguments on the streets, and a bunch of gunshots. However, I feel if my neighbors complain about the music and bring up the potential of gun violence, this may be misconstrued.

I gotta get more of those moving blankets! They're heavy and have several layers to them, this might really solve my cheapskate acoustic issues! I still need bass traps to suck of the boominess, but we're off to a good start? Who can remember our setlist? Because we sure can't.

Oh, and confidential to Al: You will notice the light fixtures and bx cable are now safely (more or less) tucked away amongst the radiator pipes. Thank you for your angry concern.

Labels: Motico, Music, Neighbors, Renovation, Soundproofing

I'm tired of posting pictures of that damn band room. Anyway, it's nearly done. We still need rugs or something to dampen the sound in the room, but after that it's party time, more or less.

So here's a photo of the neighbors' houses. If you crop out the dirt-floor 'parking lot' on the right, and the enormous consturction site on the left, this little part of the block looks pretty nice. I mean, when people aren't shooting each other, kids aren't fighting, or the ice cream truck isn't parked right in front of the house playing "Turkey in the Straw" for a half hour at a time. What's the rate of psychosis in ice cream truck drivers?

Labels: Bushwick, House, Neighbors

So the band room has gone through several permutations since we moved in: Paneling with drywall ceiling, which was torn out to fill up with insulation and be covered with decoupled dywall layers separated by QuietGlue on the ceiling, and plywood and drywall walls. As with each step of this project, it didn't occur to me until last week that we would need paint the finished product. After a minute of discussing the color possibilities, I caved and just used the leftover white paint we had lying around (plus some supercheap white paint from the nearby hardware store). We're probably covering up most of the visible wall space with rugs or other flame-encouraging material, so room color won't really matter.

Now I gotta clean up this grody floor and yes, re-mount the lighting fixtures! After several attempts at dealing with this element of the renovation process, I finally figured out how to correctly wire the lights so they work off the switch (most of this was fixing stuff I had screwed up previously). I was hoping to move the cables a bit so they would mount in the least-obtrusive way, but this has proved to be impossible. Maybe down the road I'll really do something about it, but for the time being we'll have to be careful we don't bash our heads into the light bulbs (which I've already done several times, thank you).

Within the week I expect to be rocking out in my windowless, ventless box, if I can still remember how to play the guitar.

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

One thing Bushwick has lots of is cats. I have seen actual packs of cats roaming the streets en masse, cats caterwauling on our stoop, cats sleeping inside our gate door. My neighbor complained of cat odor recently and had the chutzpah to suggest it was the fault of my own personal cats. There are literally hundreds of cats out on the streets marking territory or otherwise making their presence known, and MY (currently indoor) cats are stinking up the neighborhood?? See if I invite you to my backyard BBQ now!

We'll see if this little fella amongst the trashcans returns to woo Decatur. This guy, like many of the local felines, seems pretty tame. I wonder if it would do any good to get them into a trap-neuter-release program. If nothing else, I bet it would be a good way to get them to avoid hanging out near my house.

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Cats, Pets

We've feared gas bills more than any other utility when we moved into this place, nigh onto six months ago. Gas usage seems to vary wildly in this town, with some reporting bimonthly gas bills in the neighborhood of $5000 or more. Never having paid for our own gas before (aside from nominal cooking gas fees), it seemed like a real crap shoot.

We're all pretty frugal in our household, we kept the thermostat at reasonable levels, didn't linger in the shower, kept laundry to a minimum. This seemed to pay off, as our bills have been modest in comparison to the horror stories we had heard. Then last month our gas bill was $24.

The flat "gas delivery charge" fee is $23; we had used no 'therms' of gas between February and March. It wasn't an estimated reading or anything, our meter just recorded no usage for those two months. Now, those of you who were in the city during this time may recall that it was not exactly pleasant for much of this time, so obviously we were using a lot of gas during that time. We received a letter from Keyspan a few days later, voicing their doubts about the meter's efficacy. Somebody would have to inspect the meter.

So last night, some guys came over and replaced the meter outright. The odd thing was that the meter appeared to be working when they arrived. They swapped it anyway, just to be safe. The guys seemed incredulous, asking if we were out of town for those months, or renovating or something. One of the guys advised us to say "You know, we just moved in here, the place needed a lot of renovation, so that's what we were doing." When he said this, I realized finally that Keyspan might continue to ask probing questions about the meter and why they're not getting paid, even the problem is now 'fixed.'

I hope they don't press us on the issue; after all, we did schedule to have the guys come and fix the problem, really we could have had them over a barrel (think of the Seinfeld episode when Kramer keeps making the cable guy wait). And they had better not charge us to have that meter replaced! But that does sound like just the sort of thing they might pull. If so, I hope that meter has been bilking them from the get-go!

Labels: House

I don't know what's going on around here, but nearly every day in this office, somebody apparently is having fish for lunch and it's driving me crazy. I don't even think it's somebody in my office, as the smell is so pervasive it could be coming from anywhere. It's even in the elevator. It'll take like another few hours before things get back to normal. I have nothing against pescetarians, but at least tofu is not nearly as pungent. Frankly, I thought this would have ended after Easter, but perhaps I made a leap in logic that the reality cannot sustain.

Labels: Food, Office