Friends

And the cube goes to…

aprilswopegreene 1 Comment

Last week, I had the super-pleasure of attending the Urban Green Council‘s fourth annual EBie Awards (pronounced EE-bee!). These “Oscars of Existing Buildings” recognize improved environmental performance: measures that reduce energy consumption, efficiently use storm water runoff, improve indoor environmental quality to promote better human health, etc.

Please proceed to GOOD TIMES

I was there as a guest of the terrific designer (and my good friend) Claire Hansen and her equally inimitable husband Russell Unger, executive director of Urban Green, so the conversation over dinner was guaranteed to be good. But, to my delight, the merriment didn’t stop there.

The evening combined all the great things about classic awards shows—Broadway numbers, presenters ribbing presenters, and an open bar—with not-so-common actual importance: these people were being celebrated for saving millions of kilowatts of electricity, saving even more millions of gallons of water, and educating building owners, tenants, and visitors about their life-saving best practices. I’ll raise a Super Sap cube to that!

I covered the EBies for Urban Green’s blog, and I’m happy to report their communications crew was just as nice and fun to work with as I’d imagined. They organize and host great events all the time; I hope to hang out at and write about many more of them!

Going off the menu: Our EatWith Sunday in the city

aprilswopegreene

Thanks to my friend Naama Shefi, Director of Communications at EatWith, my man and I enjoyed a lovely Sunday brunch today at the Lower East Side’s historic Essex Market.

“Eat dinner with fellow food lovers at the home of a chef in your city or when you travel,” says EatWith’s website. Friendly, hungry people can browse shared dining experiences going on in over 150 cities, or book an EatWith chef for a private event.

I’m a huge fan of all the sharing enterprises that have rushed the market, tsunami-like, in the past few years. Pioneers like Craigslist, and now sites like Airbnb and NeighborGoods, have removed the middleman from the equation and allow people to share and sell their own stuff directly with other individuals. In these affairs, the personal reputation you earn makes or breaks your interactions, which seems like a pretty fair way to go about business to me.

IMG_1239IMG_1244IMG_1247IMG_1243

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A somewhat less Libertarian-y reason I enjoy these kinds of doings is that they’re a great way to meet fun people who also like to get out into the world. This morning, we sat near a Caribbean pediatrician, a young investment banker, and a native Texan who now writes movie reviews for The Hollywood Reporter. Not a bad haul!

Oh yes, and the food was also wonderful. Emily and Anais made tiny beer mustard deviled eggs, an asparagus bruschetta on olive bread, and a grilled pineapple sandwich on a sticky cinnamon roll, as well as other treats—all as good as they sound. The cucumber gin basil fizzy totally sealed the deal.

So get thee to EatWith, I say! It’s a fun and fresh method for getting one of your three squares in while brushing up on your conversation skills, and maybe even acquainting yourself with a new culinary idea or two. For example, I will now be making all my sandwiches on sticky cinnamon rolls.

How writing conference organizers embarrass themselves

aprilswopegreene 1 Comment

By asking me to speak!

Oh, I joke. I’m really hoping to not embarrass my friend and fellow writer Tracy Sayre at her next awesome Writers Work conference, coming up on Saturday, June 27 in Manhattan.

Her excellent conferences provide newb and experienced writers alike with opportunities to network, hear useful advice from interesting speakers, and sometimes even take a few minutes to write on the fly and share what happens.

I’m super touched that Tracy asked me to hold court on the topic “How to Pay the Rent with Your Writing”—something I suppose I have been managing to do for a while! Now, I just have to think of what to say…

There are still a handful of tickets left as I type this. Git yer hands on ’em now and I’ll see you there!

AFG

Writers Work

“If he were alive today, he’d probably subvert social media…”

aprilswopegreene 1 Comment

“…in the same way he helped to reinvent western culture in his own time.”

Right on!

Thus spake my friend Lily Wen: DJ, Lindy Hop champion, and now record label entrepreneur, regarding the late great Alan Watts.

Alan Watts. Image via Ingienous Designs.

The old codger himself (image via Ingienous Designs)

I feel like I’ve always been vaguely aware of this British philosopher-hippie who helped bring Eastern provocations to the West, but I felt a spike of connection with his work last week, at the pre-release party for the vinyl EP Face the Facts, out today on Lily’s Figure & Ground label.

The record takes the occasion of what would have been Watts’ 100th birthday to present four “spoken word” tracks taken from hundreds of hours of his seminar recordings, set to music by New York woodwind musician Jas Walton.

Figure & Ground’s website describes the original material as “psychedelic Californian ruminations, intriguing incantations, and compelling thoughts on existence.” When I heard some of them at the party (held at the wonderful and cozy Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books in the West Village), I did feel as though I were sitting in Watts’ houseboat living room, awash in mind-stretching inducements to alternate ways of viewing the world.

It was very cool.

Lily’s gotten some great press for her efforts, including write-ups in the San Francisco Chronicle, Wax Poetics, and Elephant (which I suggested she pitch to—yay!).

The record goes on sale in stores worldwide starting today, via Fat Beats distribution. If you’d prefer to stay in the living room, you can order a copy in digital or vinyl format from the Figure & Ground website instead.

Cheers, Lily! And cheers, Mr. Watts.

Crunk & White’s Elements of Smile

aprilswopegreene

HT to my witty boyfriend for coming up with the perfect editorial in-joke to accompany this Facebook post commemorating a super-fun bloggers reunion I just attended in Portland, Oregon:

Editors Extraordinaire

Celeste, Becky, and I met a couple years ago writing for the blog Idealists in Action (here are some of my clips).

Today, Celeste is a mom to two beautiful girls and still manages to write her face off (and spearhead the occasional amazebees cash mob for a beloved neighbor that turns into viral video). Becky is a writer and marketing diva at Portland Community College, and I think she’s taking a woodworking class. And I, well, you know what I do.

The three of us had a ball writing, editing, and generally klatching together, and I’m so glad I got to see them for approximately 2.5 more seconds while briefly visiting the west coast.

Onward and upward, ladies! With any luck, life will see us crunk and smiling again before too long.

Sines in the ‘hood

aprilswopegreene

I’m super myopic, and I only moved to Williamsburg a couple of months ago, so I might have just been missing this awesome Frank Ape by the artist Sines on Lorimer and Meserole Streets… until today.

IMG_1153

Yeah, Frank!

I’m a fan, both of Brandon Sines and of what I take to be Frank’s life philosophy, so I was cheered to see it.

It also reminded me that I accompanied my Polaroid-snapping friend Crazy Nick to an art battle in Dumbo last year and we tried to get an article published about the experience. I don’t think anyone bit, so I’m happy to publish it here, six months after the fact, for whoever might still get a thrill:

Dumbo Arts Festival Art Battle Intense, Danceable
x
Funny that one of the stipulations of the Secret Walls art battle at Dynomighty Design last Saturday [September 27, 2014] was that the competing illustrators use only black ink on white canvasses, because the color in the room was off the chart. At least 50 many-splendored folks showed up to watch Abe Lincoln Jr. and Brandon Sines square off with markers and paint for 90 minutes.
x
As I wandered the gallery floor, the rainbow unfurled: a curly-haired baby with gold earrings bopped between big Keith Haring-esque paintings, strapped to a mom in a black sleeveless pantsuit with a red bra visible underneath. A tall black dude in a bright yellow “No Money, No Honey” t-shirt danced to the DJ’s Paula Abdul and Toto tracks. The emcee grew a waxed mustache, the ladies wore red lipstick, and the ratio of tie-dye shirts to spiderweb elbow tattoos throughout the crowd was probably one to one.
x 
Meanwhile, Sanford King Sizes flew like inky stick insects and wet paintbrushes cried grayscale across the canvasses as the artists sweated ’til the timer dinged: the judging hour. A pale bald guy and a guy in hot pink glasses (both art world hot shots) were called upon to deliver their critiques and rulings, and the crowd listened before getting their own votes measured by a decibel meter. As is often the case, minds were split: the critics went for Abe Lincoln, and the people sided with Sines.
x
Sadly, there can be only one. But the guys took it like pros, and everyone still danced afterward, before tripping back out into the afternoon sun.

Find a job you love and…

aprilswopegreene

Back in November, I interviewed my friend Eilon Paz about his photography book Dust & Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting for Medium.

Dust and Grooves shout out

I’m reminded of it every few weeks, when Medium (thanks, guys!) sends me an email letting me know that more people have read and shared it.

The article was a ton of fun to “research” (on a bench in Red Hook on a sunny autumn day, with bags of candy), and to write, and it’s become probably the most-read thing I’ve ever published.

Maybe there’s a lesson in that?

The Good Life

aprilswopegreene

Today just got a lot… gooder!

The Everybody’s Invited Guide to the Good Life is here.

My excellent friend Hannah Kane (both of the aforementioned creative party planning troupe and of the genius Scrum Your Wedding) asked me if I would edit this very practical yet properly whimsical how-to for living more luscious, thrilling, and satisfying days and nights. Only a miserable grump would have taken a pass.

Here’s an excerpt:

If your reaction to the words ‘mindfulness’ and ‘meditation’ is a gigantic eyeroll, try to bury your skepticism for a minute. Meditation can help reduce pain, depression, and anxiety, for realsies. And it doesn’t require that you be on a spiritual journey (though it’s fine if you are)—it works because meditation is simply mastering the art of paying attention, and there’s nothing woo-woo about that.

The guide is packed tip to tail with real-talk suggestions, “Dropping Science” proofs in the sidebars, and interesting activities with names like “It’s your funeral” and “Anticipation Horizon.”

Halloween 2014

Living the good life: Not just for Halloween anymore (photo courtesy Natalya Bagrova)

Also, the guide appears to have debuted on the Internets as a free download, which would be just like those altruistic Oregonians.

I must urge anyone who could use even a dash more play, surprise, and adventure in their existence to grab a copy.

And let me know how you like it!

The opposite of “Movin’ Out”

aprilswopegreene Leave a comment

Though I can’t claim to be a dyed-in-the-wool Billy Joel fan like Celeste Hamilton Dennis (and I actualIy just moved in with my boyfriend), I couldn’t help but be reminded of that famous tune about cohabitation as I schlepped box after box around my old apartment, then out of it, then into a new one last weekend.

Boy am I tired of looking at boxes (though not at my man, so that’s good).

But at this point there are just a few more coats to hang on hooks and a few more books to line up on shelves and then we’ll have a wonderful, livable new nest.

And then I can get back to typing…

Getting there

Almost there