Tag Archives: Brooklyn

As discussed since the earliest days of Brooklyn Elvis, he doesn’t leave the homestead all that much. He and Emma Lee have habituated themselves to a lifestyle that starts early, with a big cup of coffee to shake off the last minutes of sleep a more hale person might get. True, waking up to a kitchen timer is a heterdox alarm, but it is effective as all hell… No time for sleeping, there are books to write! With any hap, Elvis will have a good writing day. It is harder to perform in the summer, with August’s halcyon days shining outside. Oh, the sun harangues him so! In this way, Elvis cannot wait for the hibernal days of November. Then, the bluesky will not harry him for eight hours a day. The gray of November and December encourages hermetic behavior, when it is cold outside he can stay in until he becomes hoary with age, honing his prose for endless hours. Emma Lee minds his husbandry—making coffee at home, so as to save two dollars a day—a bit hegemonic, but then again, she knows Elvis’s isolation is in some large part hypocritical. After a day of hewing his prose in the kitchen, his hackles are up. And just like that, he’ll be back at it, running around Brooklyn with a song and smile.

Another installation of GRE vocab, this one coming on the heels of Emma Lee’s weekly hostessing gig at the Bear Bar and Grill.

The gadfly count was low today—just one table of guache dudes drinking gimlets. Seems as though all the kids were out gamboling today—there were way more of the four-feet-and-under set than usual, and the restaurant’s bloody mary sales suffered accordingly. The place draws more hamburglars than gourmands, but it’s a satisfying gustatory experience, more often than not. For her staff meal, Emma Lee had eggs benedict and honeydew.

What’s it like in the Bear’s Lair? The germane details of the job are mundane at best. There is an implicit gerontocracy in place—old people get tables first— followed by ladies with babies in their bellies, with babies at their side meritting a close third. (If questioned, this hierarchy would be gainsayed, of course.) Good looking hipsters—the more grandiloquent, the better—get seats near windows and doors, while the bar is full of men who alternate between garrulous and genuflect (over a beer, not a pew). The waitresses possess a certain amount of guile, and run the gamut from gamely to glib.

Another installation of GRE vocab from Brooklyn Elvis.

“B” is for Brooklyn.

This afternoon, Elvis and Emma Lee met up with a young’un for a nice cup of coffee with some badinage with the blithe youth from Providence, RI. They discussed the young’uns bivouac (a corner of Sunset Park dressed up as South Park Slope, a title that belies the true neighborhood). Emma Lee dispatched advice about New York’s more baneful characteristics, and how to avoid becoming bilious on the city’s more bellicose days. Emma Lee is no barrister, but she knows a thing or two about Brooklyn and the job market for the under-25 set. She explained that while there was no secret course to a chest of bullion, with a little brooking, a boon or two, a few beneficent friends, and a benison for good measure, New York could be a pretty beatific place.

Their discussion turned bluff, by the end of the convo they bandied about literary mags. Occasionally things turned bawdy, but Emma Lee held her tongue to keep from calling any certain literary editors blowhards or to besmirch them in any major way. Screw their privileged social networks, vast vocabularies and total recall of Wiggenstein. The dudes are bugaboos with nice haircuts.

That was this afternoon. Now it’s 6, and the sky looks baleful. Elvis shrugs. The clouds do not bode well for bike rides on The Great White Hope (Emma Lee’s new vintage Peugot ten-speed), but Elvis does a good rendition of “Singing in the Rain,” whether bedraggled or not. Elvis, and his bedizen self, look good in the rain.