JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

A New Yorker who stood up against bullies.

The people of New York standing up against bullies. The Post-It Project.

Overheard in the 14th St station: “You wanna stop and write your feelings? Hey !@#$%^ tell the world how you feel!”

On the platform a woman was singing “Hallelujah” in a way that honored Leonard Cohen while wiping the floor with his version. (In the immediate aftermath of the US presidential election Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell, and Sharon Jones have died.)

We were too early for lunch so we had a coffee at Peter Pan Donuts first. Naturally I had a doughnut appetizer.

Peter Pan is a Brooklyn institution. Tina Fey has declared that so great is her passion for Peter Pan doughnuts, if she had a penis she would violate them.

Greenpoint Fish and Lobster sells excellent fish tacos and sandwiches.

Greenpoint is the sort of neighborhood where everyone knows everyone. Polish is widely spoken. The HBO show Girls is shot here.

Next door to the fish restaurant is another doughnut place, Mo’s. The owner used to work at Peter Pan. There was a big kerfuffle.

A coffee shop offers advice on how to deal with living in a Chinese curse.

The Chelsea Hotel is still under renovation.

When David Byrne wrote Here Lies Love, the disco musical about Imelda Marcos, the strongman’s widow was a figure of the recent past haunting the present. And now they’re baaaaack and may very well be the future. New songs will be written, but what can be done about willful amnesia and delusional nostalgia?

(Yes that is David Byrne. Please couch envious comments in song lyrics. You start a conversation, you can’t even finish it. You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything.)

Every time I visit I have to go to the duck pond at Central Park, to acknowledge a debt to this book.

“Okay,” I said. Then I thought of something, all of a sudden. “Hey, listen,” I said. “You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?” I realized it was only one chance in a million.

He turned around and looked at me like I was a madman. “What’re ya tryna do, bud?” he said. “Kid me?”

“No—I was just interested, that’s all.”

He didn’t say anything more, so I didn’t either. Until we came out of the park at Ninetieth Street. Then he said, “All right, buddy. Where to?”

It gets dark at 4pm.

On the way to Columbus Circle I ran into a protest rally. If the Sixties are back, will rock be back, too?

Humor as a survival mechanism.

Matches the current mood: somber, melancholy, the heightened sense that all this beauty will pass.

On the way to the park.

This is what is meant by fall colors.

We need more open green spaces at home.

For every concrete monstrosity, make the mall developers build parks. But who will alienate the money?

Parks are “non-revenue areas” and we are warned that vagrants, junkies, criminals will take them over. So only the rich can afford parks. Instead of breathing and walking among the trees, we go shopping for things we don’t really need, incur debts, drown ourselves in stuff.

A Richard Meier building

What it looks like when Kim Jong-Un crushes sarcasm

Behold the Glorious Leader pointing at things, with the Ghost of the Glorious Leader’s Father behind him.

Action figures by Contra Bandidos.