lost in space - april - june 2000. summer in the city!!! yay, it finally got warm for good i think, all the kids in my neighborhood have their super-soakers out, and i'm hooked on coney island ice cream cones (yesterday i went to the freaky-ass coney island mermaid parade, which was totally low-rent, but san francisco-ness of it all made me feel right at home, all the drag queens and sailor boys, and more tattoos and rockabilly kids than i've seen the whole time i've been here!). even more san francisco style, there's been talk of drunken croquet matches in the park in greenpoint, like my friend leslie used to have in dolores park in the mission (if you've ever been to dolores park, you know how seriously low budget glamour this is, aside from being totally hilly, the park is absolutely full of dogs and passed out drunks, but it was the best way to spend a sunday afternoon ever, i swear!!). and, i just got the styliest ride ever for my summer travels, this candy flake red 70s bike, the kind with the big puffy seat and the drag brake - if you know me, you know that i'm obsessed with these bikes (drag bikes or spider bikes or muscle bikes or whatever people call them), i've always got a bunch of crap-ass half built projects lying around and always end up leaving them behind when i move (r.i.p. the sears spyder 500 that i got in california, left in kentucky, sent my roommate to get and bring back to austin, shipped back to california, hauled all the way to kansas, and then left on the porch - future residents of 721 illinois, check the porch on the left side of the house, it might still be there! ). my new one has the big tall sissy bar too, i'm gonna put a banner with my name on it like richie white in 'over the edge'! anyway, all the other news of the last couple of months, i sent out in a big email to everybody i should've been writing to, so i'll just tack that on here too, as a huge p.s. to this entry!
o.k. - i hate to do this whole group letter / mass email thing, just like grandma used to make, but i've fallen super, super way too-far bahind on my email - like i seriously haven't answered about 200 letters - yikes!! so yeah, this is my group apology and catch-up to everybody that i really should've been writing to all along! so i moved to new york - yay!! but you probably already heard that part - i stole my roommates from kansas and we moved from a hotel to another hotel to the smallest loft ever, with crazy mob landlords, and then into the biggest warehouse space in the world, with pink and orange floors and big enough for art shows, dance parties, and all-night delinquent cinema sleepovers (just you wait!), and i got a super-cool job designing panties (the one that was secret until i got it, but then i forgot to let everybody know when i did - oops), so after i pay off all the money i owe at least 3 different people (oh yeah, hi! i'm working on it!), i'm totally on my way to my all time favorite half-price jetset lifestyle (all about wine and brie from the grocery outlet = oakland style and knockoff gucci handbags with new wave buttons = new york style, i swear it's the new punk - classic detournement). the last few months i've been totally obsessed with brunch (there are places in manhattan with free mimosas, but mostly i love sunday brunch in my neighborhood, vanilla orange french toast in an old dining car where the waitstaff dress like cowboys, talk about devo, make fun of how much coffee you're drinking, and pretend to throw up on your table as entertainment.) and i'm obsessed with hugely geographically impractical shopping lists, like up to 49th street for japanese magazines, back down to canal street to see if they knocked off the prada bowling bag yet, then up to 2nd ave. to buy the huge x-mas lights i saw in a window after indian food, but i'm not sure where, then to that shoestore downtown to try on sneakers i can't even afford cause i'm a walking financial disaster (that's what somebody at work called me after overhearing me call banks and creditors and phone companies to try and sort things out when i got my first paycheck). and i'm obsessed with getting out more, but then i spend so much time making lists of places to go that i never make it to any of them, plus i don't know anybody who wants to go see the giant jeff koons puppy sculpture or go out to the rockaway beach boardwalk or skulk around dorky mod clubs. i've got so many projects backed up (like um, answering some mail) that i'm too paralyzed to get started on any of them, failing miserably at getting motivated with t-rex records and homemade cherry coke. last weekend it finally got super sunny, like 90 something degrees, and my friend liz was in town - yay, we discovered the chelsea flea market where you can get brigitte bardot sunglasses and the best mango ices, and we saw my new favorite guy ever who was walking around in a total village people style construction workers uniform, like with the hat and toolbelt, but with super short-shorts and a skintight paul frank tee! and even better, on the way out of the flea market, he picked up a 2x4 off the sidewalk to complete his look! so high concept! maybe next week he'll be a sailor! and of, course, we hit canal street for fake rolexes, and lighters that look like guns, and tried to find gold caps for our teeth with anchors and hearts and $ signs, but they were all out! in case you were missing all those emails from before that looked more like top-ten lists, this was last week: modular shelving, waffles with ice cream, blythe, the gary numan boxset, center for the dull, home depot paint swatches, knee socks and knee length skirts, coney island, no sense of direction, cotton candy and cake batter perfume, belle and sebastian, but not really the new record, stereototal at the knitting factory, and sneaking into movies - yeah, that's what i've been up to! xoxoxoxo - fawn
oh yeah, and if i don't see any kids bust open a fire hydrant soon, just like in the movies, i swear i'm gonna do it myself! the other day though, on my way home from the subway, i saw my new favorite new york kids game, where you empty a trash can out in the street and roll your friends around in it ... alternately you can pick up armfuls of the aforementioned trash, throw it at another kid, and yell "HA HA! you're playing with trash!!!"


update mid-march 2000: brooklyn, yo!
o.k. so yeah, my new job lasted one day total - it was so, so bad that i called in the next morning and went to the mall in queens instead!! i'm in love with woodhaven, queens - the malls and the parks, old people and ice cream shoppes, dentists and cemetaries and big old houses - and with how the malls smell like waffle cones and hazelnut coffee and cotton candy, which cheered me right up and even made me forget about my pending financial disaster for a few hours! i signed the lease last week on the coolest, biggest, cheapest warehouse in all of brooklyn though, so things are really looking up - we've got a subway stop and a 99 cent store right around the corner, and great upstairs neighbors who are friend of friends of friends from a million different towns, which is always amazing, and always seems to happen, y'know, the whole small world thing... plus it's in only mildly sketchy walking distance of my favorite 24 hour diner! hooray!! if my roommates would just stop fighting about the paint colors, we'd be moved in by now!! and, and, i just applied for the coolest job ever, but it's top secret until i find out if i've got it or not!! until then i'm selling rare books and hardcore records on ebay (go see under: pixiestix66) and painting up a storm for an art show in april at reading frenzy in portland, OR. (if you're in the neighborhood, check it out! i'm gonna try to be there, but that plan may end in disaster, too..) and one in may at juice design in san francisco - yay! i'll get more frequent updates up here soon, i swear, and more emails to friends and family who are only hearing the news of my life through this website lately, which is so, so wrong and makes me feel like a jackass (like how my mom didn't even know i moved to new york until someone from her work read it on my site and told her - yikes)!!


update march 2000: nueva york!!
i never did learn how to make my own indian food, but i did pack up and move to new york city (well, to brooklyn anyway!)...yeah!! i live in the smallest apartment ever with like 3 other people, but it's beautiful (for a tiny 'loft-style' brooklyn apt.) and it's around the corner from the subway station and an amazing 24 hour diner and some of the best 99 cent stores i've ever seen for beach totes and clear neon pink plastic flip-flops, refrigerator magnets and pencil boxes shaped like cellphones, and leftover cake decorations and party favors from the 70s (o.k. it's scary, but i have a collection of this stuff). the markets in this neigborhood have the most amazing selection of sweets - chocolate covered bars of halvah and merangue (i really, really don't know how to spell that) and candied mango and ginger, chai smoothies and baklava - plus i was on a weird cake baking kick, so i ate so much sugar in my first 2 weeks in new york that my kidneys got all fucked up and i almost spent my last $200 to call an ambulance. now i'm not supposed to eat sugar for like a month so i'm going crazy and i'm all unstable cause that's seriously all i eat, but i'm o.k. again and back on track, eating hippie desserts like dates and cream cheese and spending the last of my money on knockoff miu-miu and prada shoes instead, and on video games and tiger-striped earmuffs in times square!! this town is perfect for my zero sense of direction, perfect for wandering aimlessly for hours on end in the middle of the night, and i can't wait for the summer (yeah, 100 degrees - bring it on!) to trek out to all the beach boardwalks and most of all to coney island, to race go karts and have barbeques in the alleys! and atlantic city!! drop me an email if you wanna go gamble in atlantic city (or if you know of any arcades with a lot of pinball - i heard that a lot of the porn theatres have walls of pinball in the back, but i haven't really ventured into any to check, for perfectly good reasons i'd say!). and (this is for my mom, cause i bet she's worried!) i just got a job, so i'm not even heading for financial ruin anymore - even though secretly i didn't want to get a job yet at all and went to the interview all grubby after being up all night drinking midori sours and falling in a mud puddle and ruining my shoes. i made jokes about punching customers in the face and having a paper fetish, i tripped over a chair and talked about new wave the whole time, and they hired me on the spot!! at least they know what they're in for! so in two weeks time or so i should be financially solvent again, so to those new york kids i haven't got in touch with yet - lets go out on the town!!


circa december 1999: lawrence, kansas
so, i just up and moved to lawrence, kansas. well, first i slept on couches for a couple of months to save up money, then went to san diego and portland for the summer to get the travel bug out of my system at least for a little while, and then up and moved to lawrence. the first few months spent exploring the town were great. i got a rickety old pink cruiser bike from the bookstore down the street, found the railroad tracks, and a path down to the river that was nearly overgrown with berry bushes. spent sunny days at the parks, one with a real train in the middle, and one with a rocketship. found all the all-you-can-eat buffets, my favorite staple of this sort of town. watched all the leaves change colors and fall, and hundreds of birds at a time filling the sky on their way south. the fall leaves were amazing, they were up to my knees on the ground and i couldn't help jumping in piles of them in other peoples yards and getting in trouble. i got a stack of 60s teen magazines from the junk shop down the street and mailed everybody pinups of their favorite teen idols, actually most of the pinups were of donny osmond...now all of a sudden though, its freezing, the cats are freaking out, if i go outside without gloves or a hat on, i get what i can only imagine is frostbite and i have to run my hands (and once, my ears) under warm water till i can feel them again. did i mention the best mocha in town is out of one of those machines at the quickie-mart? i hate to think that i'm already tired of this town, that i've already seen all there is to see, but i think it might be true. it always seems like a good idea at the time to move to these little towns, cheap rent and front porches, time to relax and all that, but then things like seeing an indie film when it comes out, art shows, chai, indian food, and japanese fashion magazines and candy, or the lack thereof, start to creep up on me and seem really, really important. 2 months is a new personal record though...compared to the 5 months it took me to get sick of louisville, kentucky. i don't know when the sun comes out again, i think that might help, but in the meantime i'm starting to save my money again, selling prada shoes and hardcore records on ebay, and stopped unpacking halfway through. if i can't learn how to make my own indian food by the end of next month, i'm moving to new york city!

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