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Brooklyn, You Should Vote in Thursday's Local Primary

The Down-Ballot Races That Shape Your Borough

Brooklyn, You Should Vote in Thursday's Local Primary

tl;dr version at the bottom.

Thursday, 9/13 is the state and local primary here in New York. A lot of people I’ve seen or talked to, especially in post-OWS New York, think voting and elections (national elections, nevermind the local primary that no one ever votes in) are essentially meaningless, but I wanted to give you a few reasons why that’s not true, and why its important to go out and vote this Thursday.

Democratic politics work differently here in New York City. Election efforts revolve around the primaries, around picking among Democratic candidates, since competitive races with Republicans are rare. This also means that once you’re in office, it’s easy to get comfortable. That’s because many “elected” Democrats are essentially chosen by their predecessor in that office (their uncle, dad, or other person connected to their family). They only need to wait to get elected by the large voting blocs that have promised support to their family for decades and decades. Just look at the list of names of elected officials in your area of Brooklyn, and look at who held those positions before. It starts to look like a family reunion more than a political process.

You can imagine what kind of freedom that gives to an elected official here in Brooklyn. It’s the freedom to do nothing at all, or worse, as in the case of the party’s current boss, Vito Lopez, the freedom to screw up badly. Lopez has used government grant money to solidify his position in Brooklyn as far back as 1993. And this year he’s facing charges that he sexually harassed his staff members (and then paid them). Even so, he’ll probably get re-elected, or someone that Lopez hand-picked for the job will take over the Brooklyn machine.

Anyway, that’s the depressing stuff about local politics. Have I made you want to vote even less? Sorry about that. Here’s the good stuff: A couple years ago I met Lincoln Restler and the New Kings Democrats. He and this political group formed out of frustration with their own party — the corruption, the cronyism, their dismissive attitude towards anyone under 40. Two years ago Lincoln ran for and won state committee for the 50th Assembly district — that’s North Brooklyn. It’s an unpaid position he took on in addition to his full-time job. It doesn’t sound like much, but he’s advocated and organized some things I like here: Extended G train service. More greenspaces in Brooklyn. A new farmer’s market in McGolrick Park and a supermarket in another, underserved part of Brooklyn.

Okay, so now a personal I’ll-vouch-for-this-dude story. On Saturday the New Kings Democrats asked me to accompany Lincoln to a mural dedication at PS 84. I thought I was going to be dropping off absentee ballots for people who wanted them, so I had arrived in jeans and with unwashed hair and it had been raining, so when I heard about this change I was pretty pissed and really wanted to watch the Intervention marathon.

Then Lincoln ran in from the rain (he had been at the McCarren Farmers Market talking to people), and immediately started doing voter calls, politely explaining who he was and why people should vote. Then we both jumped in a cab toward the event. The cab ride took forever on the BQE and I, for the first time since I met him two years ago, got some time to talk to Lincoln. My main question was: Who does something like this? And why? He talked about everything from their vote local campaign, to trying to register voters who have just finished parole and have been mistakenly told that they can’t ever vote again to navigating neighborhoods with different goals and needs (think about it, Brooklyn’s got Hassidic communities, Puerto Rican families, Polish families, and gentrifiers all within blocks of each other), to green spaces, parks, bike safety and new lanes.

I only went to the mural unveiling with him (which was awesome to see and learn about). Lincoln stuck around to talk to voters (sometimes in Spanish) and then he dropped me off before he went on the rest of his Saturday: Two block parties, maybe another market, more phone calls and door knocking. I asked him about this, too. But he said he just likes talking to people. That is insane to me. I mean, have you tried talking to people in New York? Even though this guy is clearly exhausted, he was interested in what I said, and in what other people said to him.

Okay so finally, why should you vote if you are in Brooklyn and hate politics and are wary of the kind of person who drives to multiple farmers markets in one day to shake hands, etc. 1. It’s time to clean up local politics, for good. Lopez needs to leave. Think of the example it sets, when bastion of liberalism Brooklyn has leaders who are putting their hands all over ladies’ thighs without their permission. 2. Lincoln is a good guy. He walks around the neighborhood, listens, and then advocates on behalf of those people. Is it that easy? Uh, yeah, it is. Some day he will probably run for some other job and will vote on laws and it will get much more complex, but right now he listens and understands the mess that is north Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Democratic party. 3. You don’t vote? You don’t get represented. Don’t give me that crap about how like, voting would be illegal if it changed anything, because people are constantly trying to take away your right to vote. Here, there, everywhere. 4. Let’s face it: You and I are not going to do this. We care about our neighborhood and community and complain on Facebook and Twitter but you and I don’t have the time, energy, or weird genetic mutation that compels us to put in the time and work. Vote for someone who does.

This turned into a really long thing. I didn’t mean for it to, but this is complicated and I’m just kind of learning. If you have questions or problems, don’t ask me. Go ask Lincoln. He’s always at train stations or farmers markets and he likes talking to people.

Anyway, here’s the tl;dr:

Brooklynites vote in your local primary this Thursday 9/13 to get Vito Lopez (a probable lady-groper and definite weird old-school party boss) out (or to send the message that he and his buddies are no longer welcome), and to keep Lincoln Restler (a smart Brooklyn advocate) in. Check your registration. Put it on your calendar. There’s no more new episodes of Louie and Hoarders moved to Mondays, so you and I are good.

—
Quick story: I was collecting signatures one night and was exhausted and talking to a Brooklyn guy who asked about Lincoln Restler and I said “You can’t miss him at the G train, he looks like a young Al Sharpton.” I meant Al Franken. Or did I?

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I was in a band once, we opened for the Gossip

What you see above is the only remaining evidence that I ever played music in public. I found an old unlabeled VHS tape in a box but I put off digitizing until this year. (I took the tape to Digitas, by the way, a great and friendly digital shop in

What you see above is the only remaining evidence that I ever played music in public. I found an old unlabeled VHS tape in a box but I put off digitizing until this year. (I took the tape to Digitas, by the way, a great and friendly digital shop in Greenpoint. Recommended!)

Anyway, this tape contains three or so performances I had with Obsession in Pink, a band started by two friends in Tucson. One of them, Brett, I can’t find at all. He was from Omaha and may be back there. The other guy in the band is Michael Coomers, who I met when I saw his band Coomers Explosion, and who eventually started the band Harlem. Brett and Michael invited me to join their months-old band to play synth — Obsession in Pink was all keyboards and a drum machine. Oh, and an organ that belonged to another Tucson musician, Seth Bogart, who eventually did Gravy Train and Hunx and His Punx. (We all tried to practice for a band exactly once, but he and Coomers got into a fight and Coomers kicked both me and Seth out of his house.)

For first shows, they were pretty great. My first time playing with a band in public was opening for the Gossip. Others we opened for: Tracy and the Plastics, the Rapture, the Fucking Champs. The video above is us playing our first song at the Gossip show. Even now I think our gimmick was solid — we played rough synthy minor chord stuff and wore suits (well, I wore skirts and dresses) to the shows. But our eighties was, in a word (and my bright idea), rich. We drank wine and champagne on stage, we had condescending stage banter. For this show, Brett and Coomers snuck into a graveyard and stole roses, which, if you can’t see, cover the stage. The Gossip loved us; they not only came out and danced for our set (and yelled ”sluts” at us the whole time, but when they returned a year later they asked the audience where we had gone.

I just encoded a second video of us playing a laundromat illegally, in our underwear. I’ll save that for another post.

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If you care about something you should measure it

Over the last couple years I’ve become a huge believer in self-quantifying.  It started with Your Flowing Data, a website that let me take measurements of whatever useless bits of biographical information I wanted to keep track of: The number of times I ate lentils that year, what movies

Over the last couple years I’ve become a huge believer in self-quantifying.  It started with Your Flowing Data, a website that let me take measurements of whatever useless bits of biographical information I wanted to keep track of: The number of times I ate lentils that year, what movies I watched, how stressed I was, for example. But I started to notice that the simple act of tracking and having to record my choices influenced the choices I made. I began using my iPhone to track almost anything involving behavior I wanted to change or improve. I’ve gone through a lot of tools, but here are the ones I keep going back to.

Track Your Happiness

Track Your Happiness is a survey project that is part of Harvard PH.d student Matt Killingsworth’s doctoral research. The website sends you a short survey twice a day via email or text. It asks you questions about where you are, what you’re doing, how many people you’re with, and how happy you feel. They each take about two minutes to complete. After a couple months of steady data, the website begins sending you correlations between things like your mood and how much sleep, exercise, work, and social activity you’ve reported.

This can tell you a lot. For instance, I am happier indoors that out (that probably has a lot to due with winter, though I began the survey in the fall. ) So. okay, I’m not outdoorsy. You maybe guessed that by the subject of this blog post. But I didn’t know that I was also happier the less people I had around me, down to about three. Three is where I’m happiest before my happiness just drops. Guess that makes me kind of an introvert. One other surprising thing, at least for me: I am happiest when I want to do something that I have to do. I wasn’t happiest doing whatever I wanted. I need to enjoy something I have to do (work, chores, etc). I like work. That’s something to keep in mind if I ever win the lottery or want to retire.

Fitbit

The Fitbit is a wearable device that can track your steps, calories, stairs climbed, and sleep. I bought this thing on a self-improvement whim fully believing it would be in a drawer by the end of the month. It’s not. Except for a few days where I forgot it at home (but thankfully, it’s had no trips through the washer), this thing has always been on my person since I bought it back in November 2011.

There’s so much to like about it, but the two biggest things are that it’s always tracking, and it uploads automatically. Like the Happiness Survey, it tracks all the time, not just when I feel like keeping track. And the automatic Wifi sync works amazing well and consistently. I haven’t changed the amount of walking or stairs-climbing or sleeping I do, really. But somehow, the act of tracking has improved those numbers anyway. Here’s how it works:the Fitbit is your standard pedometer that also tracks stairs you’ve climbed, estimated calories you’ve burned and your total distance traveled. It also has a little flower graphic that grows and shrinks depending on how much you’ve moved in the past hour.

 

The two applications below are self-quantifying tools, but they’re also commitment devices.

Beeminder

Beeminder is both a self-tracker and a commitment device. It can track and graph anything you can measure, from runtimes to blog posts to pounds to lose. You can set goals or limits, and Beeminder will warn you, then charge you money if you stray too far off your goal. The biggest benefits here are the fact that it’s incremental — your final goal is broken down week by week, so it’s more important to stay on track than to think of your goal as some big, huge (or low, tiny) number that is 12 months away.

I just began using Beeminder at the beginning of the year, when Stickk and other commitment devices seemed too narrow for my purposes. So far it’s worked great. I resolved to start learning Spanish and to read more fiction this year. I’m still doing both. And since the goal is to stay on one side of the line, I am working at a slow but steady reading/studying pace. But it’s a pace I’ve stuck with, and it’s April — beyond prime resolution quitting time (which I think is February? Or even mid-January?

That graph at the top of this post is my ‘words posted to blog’ graph. I did this post to avoid losing today. Try to wrap your head around that.

Gympact

Gympact is another commitment device with financial consequences. You set a goal for the number of times you want to go to the gym each week, then you check in via iPhone app every time you go to the gym (and stay for at least 30 minutes). Fail to reach your determined number of visits each week, and the app will charge you an amount you’ve set (like $5-$50. $50 if you’re some sort of masochist rich person). But if you’ve made your commitment, then Gympact will pay you a small amount out of the pot of losers’ cash.

In the six months before I started using Gympact I went to the gym maybe five times. I haven’t missed a gym trip (2-3 workouts a week since beginning of January) since I signed up, except for the weekend after a birthday dinner and bar trip where I spent the next day laying on my couch under a blanket and eating Tums/watching Locked Up: Raw. My biceps are the sickest they ever have been, and I’ve only torn my rotator cuff once (really).

If you’re curious about self-tracking check out the Quantified Self website. It has links to over 400 self-quantifying tools.

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I was hacked and it sucked

A couple weeks ago I was doing a little lite self-Googling when I found a new link on my website: Viagra UK. I clicked on it — I mean, how could you not? And it brought me to a Canadian-based online pharmacy. I had been hacked with the Pharma hack. This

A couple weeks ago I was doing a little lite self-Googling when I found a new link on my website: Viagra UK. I clicked on it — I mean, how could you not? And it brought me to a Canadian-based online pharmacy. I had been hacked with the Pharma hack. This hack is particularly vicious because it only works when you click on a link from Google, and it only works on certain links. I think it had been coming. I hadn’t updated my blog in a while, hadn’t updated the WordPress installation. My plug-in folder was a mess.

Normally I’m very good about solving WordPress problems myself. My first attempt at installing WordPress took 18 hours. It sucked, but I stuck with it. I couldn’t solve this one on my own, though. This hack it affects your template, your database, vulnerable plug-ins. So I hired someone via the Internet — I think he’s in the UK — to fix the persistent hack for an ammount of money I will miss for awhile. His name is Neil, and I recommend him. He cleaned it all up and then resubmitted my website to Google. I am, as of this week, Viagra-free.

Anyway, this is all to say I am going to start posting in this blog again. I’ve got to make the whole hack-to-not-hack thing worth it.

And please let me know if I turn into a Viagra sales-lady again.

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Changing the song

About six months ago someone asked a question on Metafilter that made me feel 200% closer to a normal person. The question was basically of the “So, does this happen to anyone else?” variety, but it was so random and so precise that it got tons of responses: When I

Changing the song

About six months ago someone asked a question on Metafilter that made me feel 200% closer to a normal person. The question was basically of the “So, does this happen to anyone else?” variety, but it was so random and so precise that it got tons of responses:

When I think of / remember something embarrassing from my life, I compulsively make some kind of noise. It seems to happen unconsciously, before my censor can catch it and stop myself (it even happens when I am in a quiet or inappropriate place).

It’s not especially loud, in fact it’s often under my breath. The sound is usually just a quiet grunt, or a word/syllable or two. If I remember an embarrassing conversation, I tend to blurt out a random word of the conversation (as in, I’m replaying the dialogue in my head but then all the sudden one of the words pops out of my mouth). If it happens while I’m reading, I tend to blurt out one or two of the words that happen to be under my eyes at the moment.

It usually only happens when I’m remembering something palpably embarrassing or humiliating from my life — not for mild everyday kind of stuff. (Again, I had a fairly happy childhood and have nothing particularly traumatic in my past — I don’t think my embarrassing memories are any worse than the average joe’s)

I’m one of those people who does this and thought they were the only one. My usual utterance takes the form of a short, pointed laugh—literally a ‘ha!’ or a noise close to ‘ack!’ Basically, when I remember something embarrassing I turn into a comic strip.

But someone else revealed another habit that I happen to share (and thought no one else did):

If an embarrassing memory comes up (along with some sort of “oofy” noise or clutching my body like I’ve just been covered in slime) if I’m in the car I have to change the radio station or the track playing on my iPod. I don’t know what that has to do with it but the song must go, right now…
posted by Brainy at 12:25 PM on July 23, 2008

This is something I do even more than the embarrassment utterance. If I start to think of a bad memory, I have to change the song I’m listening to right away. It doesn’t matter what the song is or what’s up next. I just need something, a new thought really, to distract me, even if it’s “This Pink Mountaintops songs is terrible.”

But sometimes it’s the song itself that triggers a bad memory that I have to change. Like, when I’m unhappy with how the Pinkerton thing’s going, I cannot listen to Pinkerton, which makes writing a book about it much harder.1

I thought about that again when Nick wrote about Merriweather Post Pavilion and mentioned the hard-to-describe feeling certain music can give you:

There is this cold and dizzy feeling that overtakes me sometimes, when a song or a passage of a song happens to gun it to my heart.

I know that feeling. But what happens when the song triggers the wrong cold and dizzy, like the feeling/memory of the worst thing you did or said, the declaration you should have kept to yourself, the third drink past the one you should have left the bar on? I can name songs I can’t listen to anymore because of this. And they’re not “THIS WAS OUR SONG”-type jams that I’ve shared with a boyfriend. Nor does it have much to do with the lyrical content. They’re usually songs I was listening to when I did something regrettable. The songs have nothing to do with me, they don’t remind me of myself or hold any memories on their own, but they act like containers. They’re like looking at bad photographs of myself. And just to be clear–these aren’t songs that remind me of bad memories, just embarrassing situations that I had control over.

One of the worst songs for me is the New Pornographers’ “Testament to Youth In Verse.” I’m not going to tell you why. But, if you do this (either the noise or the song-changing thing), please come forward. You’re in okay company. I’d love to hear what your trigger / utterance / song is.

  1. I’ve gotten over this.↩

 

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Input vs. Output

I'm [https://jessicasuarez.com/dropcap] a couple months into my column, talking to bands about recording for Stereogum. I enjoy hearing about their process, and what it takes them to physically start producing stuff. I want to know because it’s something that I struggle with a lot.

Input vs. Output

I'm [/dropcap] a couple months into my column, talking to bands about recording for Stereogum. I enjoy hearing about their process, and what it takes them to physically start producing stuff.

I want to know because it’s something that I struggle with a lot. I think I’m fairly productive–I set a goal of completing and submitting one piece a day, and I track the number of pitches and ideas I sent to editors every week, too. But for things without a deadline or a vague deadline, I’m lost sometimes. I have a book due, I have a list of essays and longer pieces I want to research even before I pitch them, and a list of blog post ideas, but I keep putting them off. They fall off in the face of daily goals deadlines.

So how do bands do it? Their problem is somewhat similar: touring is their daily deadline–they must be somewhere, doing something, by a certain time. Their next album? That’s their book / essay that needs to be out there at some point. Now there’s one big difference: I could probably go a long time just doing my assignments, but I won’t improve my own work unless I start tackling the bigger pieces. Bands can’t just tour on one album forever, unless they’re Peter Frampton.

What I hear from bands is that touring can’t be combined with writing; they take two different types of energies. Touring is like muscle memory at some point, you’re going through the motions (those motions might be awesome), but it’s not, as John Vanderslice said, “making new shit.”

Writing reviews/features is “making new shit,” but in a lot of ways it’s making the same shit. I know how I write reviews, and I approach each the same basic way: the background/foreground listens, the same note-taking, the same way I pull in what I want to say and then push around words and edits. It’s fun and challenging, but it’s not always as creative as I want it to be (I already hear the response there, and thanks). It’s closer to touring than making a new record.

Now being on the internet, that’s also primarily a triggered activity, a gathering activity, I think. I read twitters and respond; I find links and re-post; I tag photos and videos and songs I’m listening to. This shouldn’t be mistaken for blogging or creating. Most people know this (and have Tumblrs for it), but I think there’s a danger in doing nothing but collecting without then trying to do some output. There’s also a danger in combining them. Dhould this long post be on the same page as a bunch of Flickr and Youtube favorites and what I finished on Goodreads? Probably not. But I’ve been doing that long enough to pretend I am “making things” when I have been just “gathering things,” often without any time set aside for processing.

I want to split that stuff up, and not pretend one is the other (though I do find both to be valid and useful activities). That’s why I moved my blog to /blog, and will use my front page on www.jessicasuarez.com for all that aggregated/gathered stuff. Part of my inspiration is Emily Gould’s blog, www.emilymagazine.com. For all the making fun she gets–probably mostly unfair–her long posts are consistently entertaining and smart. Her posts are also completely bare and on a default WordPress template. I’m sure it’s all deliberate, I think she’s someone who thinks all the time about what things on the internet mean. When you have good writing you don’t need the clutter.

That said, I probably will spend too much time formatting / re-templating my blog and front page.

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Is Magnolia Bakery a landmark?

Look closely at this Google Map. Why is Magnolia Bakery on here like this? I wasn’t searching for it. Has it been given landmark status? If so, I would guess that it commemorates New York’s domestic immigrants, small town girls who come to New York seeking a better

Is Magnolia Bakery a landmark?

Look closely at this Google Map. Why is Magnolia Bakery on here like this? I wasn’t searching for it. Has it been given landmark status? If so, I would guess that it commemorates New York’s domestic immigrants, small town girls who come to New York seeking a better life through H&M, Gawker, no-wage internships, and vanilla on vanilla cupcakes. I used to eat that crap for dinner when I worked for CMJ Magazine ($15,000/yr+Metrocard discount).

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I am testing that dream.

Seeing Weezer for me is probably like seeing My Bloody Valentine for a lot of other people–or maybe not. Maybe it’s really like seeing Liz Phair, where you know there’s something great there that got sorta misplaced or deferred or scared out of the person, or maybe

I am testing that dream.

Seeing Weezer for me is probably like seeing My Bloody Valentine for a lot of other people–or maybe not. Maybe it’s really like seeing Liz Phair, where you know there’s something great there that got sorta misplaced or deferred or scared out of the person, or maybe that something great was the flash so there’s nothing really to return to because that was the detour. I talked about the Weezer show last night here, but one other thing I wanted to mention about “El Scorcho” was that Rivers Cuomo did sing the first few lines, but with his hands over his face, half covered, half shielding his eyes so he could gaze at the audience. I don’t know what this means.

Meanwhile, I’m working on some other freelance stuff, thanks to this:

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But it is not free of any cost or obligation.

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In the liner notes

A couple weeks ago I logged into 43Things, a goal-tracking website, for the first time in a year or so. I was happy to see I had achieved some of the goals I wrote down then, happy to see others (try the world’s hottest hot sauce? I’ve tried

In the liner notes

A couple weeks ago I logged into 43Things, a goal-tracking website, for the first time in a year or so. I was happy to see I had achieved some of the goals I wrote down then, happy to see others (try the world’s hottest hot sauce? I’ve tried the 7th hottest, thanks Arizona), and surprised to see this one: “get a credit or thank you on an album’s liner notes.”

I am not sure why this goal was so important to me two years ago. I think then I was still in fan mode, excited to talk to bands, eager to have them acknowledge me. When I wrote for the college paper in Tucson, people I interviewed would invite me to ‘say hello’ at the show, and I would. I used to love doing this. The intervening two years have really driven this out of me, because it’s a job now, etc. etc., and having to interview a few people a week really drives the excitement out of it.

Anyway I did ‘achieve’ this ‘goal’ this year, Man Man thanked me (and 100+ other people) on their CD. I’ve talked, at too much length, about how much I like them. And I like their new CD actually better than the last now, so that helps as well.

Next up is world’s hottest hot sauce, which is probably around 6,000,000 Scovilles. That’s the same heat as eating pepper spray. I once convinced a kid to touch a tiny chili from our home garden, then touch his eye when I was in elementary school. His eye turned bright red and he cried. So I’ll probably deserve whatever pain 6,000,000 Scolville units causes.

[audio:https://jessicasuarez.com/audio/man_man-top_drawer.mp3|titles=Top Drawer|artists=Man Man]

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The Rip Off

Yes, but not this rocker. I am returning ten overdue library books today and realizing I haven’t read a new book in a month. I feel like I’ve been busy, writing (tba) little things for Paper, Paste, and Spin this month, still working on Paper Thin Walls, and

The Rip Off

picture-1.png

Yes, but not this rocker. I am returning ten overdue library books today and realizing I haven’t read a new book in a month. I feel like I’ve been busy, writing (tba) little things for Paper, Paste, and Spin this month, still working on Paper Thin Walls, and still slowing catching up with lingering and new Pitchfork reviews. I’ve been reading a lot, but blogs, magazines and online articles, which, like popcorn, make you feel full but not satisfied full.

The biggest thing I’ve been doing, and something that I’m okay with for now, is going to the gym almost daily. I go to the Greenpoint Y because it’s cheap, and I guess I see some of these guys, but I’m most intrigued by the 12-year-old kid who is there every day I am and probably more, and who always walks over to the magazine rack and picks out an issue of the New Yorker and keeps it closed while jogging on a treadmill. Sometimes I also see Craig Finn.

Just to keep things related, I found an iTunes script that lets you put intervals into songs. So, one minute of “Crystal Cat,” then beep, then two minutes of “Paper Planes,” etc. Intervals are for cardio interval training, because, I think, slow cardio is for jerks: if you can read while doing cardio, then you aren’t working hard enough. And I work hard enough, so I stopped reading. On the other hand, Man Man is for free weights, which I do as well, like bench exercises too, guys. I don’t see many women doing this, I mostly see them gripping two pound weights in front of the cardio room mirror, lazily raising them above their heads. Can you exercise ironically? That’s what they look like they’re doing. Maybe they just think they’ll get huge muscles if they lift anything heavier, but they can’t, they don’t have the testosterone. That’s what Man Man is for.