One summer, the artist Honor Titus invited me to a loft party in Soho. When my friend Sophia and I showed up, everyone decided they were moving the party to a boat. Sophia was adamant about not getting on the boat, so we stayed back. Smoking a cigarette outside, two guys approached us. “Hi, I’m Beck,” one said. “Donnie,” introduced another. It was the Beck and his tour manager. The four of us went to The Bowery Hotel and got dinner, which felt like it was seven hours long. Beck had just turned 50, and I remember thinking he looked quite good for his age. We talked about his mother, the performance artist Bibbe Hansen who was friends with Andy Warhol, and whose parents were part of the Fluxus movement. We talked about their recent dinner at Yoko Ono’s house with David Hockney. Running on fumes, I eventually stopped talking (something I do pretty often). Beck asked if I was okay. We hung out a few more times afterward, and it was one of those moments that teenage me could only have dreamed about. But looking back, it felt like any other night out where I was just eager to go home and climb into bed.
Everyone in New York has their story. Mine started in 2015. When I almost turned down a job in the city because I couldn’t afford to make the move, a friend who was a pastor in Virginia wired me $1,000, and asked me to pay it forward someday. I spent the first week staying on a friend’s couch, and then another until I found a decent sublet in Crown Heights. Three months after I was hired and feeling settled, the New York office shut down and everyone was laid off. My manager at that company, who was also laid off, later became the founder of the now-popular spice importer, Burlap & Barrel. For months I was looking for work. I remember walking into a Crown Fried Chicken & Pizza with less than a dollar on me and the young cashier took pity, letting me have my chicken sandwich for free. I took up part-time jobs working at restaurants and a clothing store in Greenpoint called In God We Trust. There, I met a customer who offered me a pro bono gig as an Art Editor for Greenpointers. One of the first people I interviewed for them was Greg, the lead singer of Cigarettes After Sex. I didn’t end up filing the story (which I recently confessed in this story for Byline) but Greg and I did start dating, which was convenient since we were both living in Crown Heights. We got along well and the sex was fine until I drank a few glasses of whiskey one night and got mad about something I can’t remember. I walked out on him at a bar in the East Village. Then his band became world-famous.
My relationships with alcohol and sex were a lot different then. With music, it’s always been the same. Sometimes I’ll say that music is what led me here. For People In Their Homes, the first people I interviewed were Khaela and Melissa of The Blow, who had a hit song titled True Affection. I followed blogs like Yours Truly, and Yuki Ruchinko’s Tumblr, who was known for taking photos of Mac DeMarco. One of my first friends in Greenpoint, Andi Wilson, was a publicist for the label Cascine, who introduced me to Josh Kolenik from Small Black. Later, I dated someone who ran a DIY venue called [redacted] in Greenpoint that Andrew VanWyngarden, the singer of MGMT, took a liking to and regularly booked parties at. One night I was hired as a door girl at [redacted] for the afterparty of an anniversary show where MGMT, Animal Collective, Connan Mockasin, TV on the Radio, Sky Ferreira, and John Cale of the Velvet Underground played. When a small blonde woman rolled her eyes and refused to pay $10 for entry, I turned her away, only to learn that the blonde was Sky Ferreira lol. It was 2016, and it still felt like the golden age of “indie”. Greenpoint was especially a hot spot for musicians at that time. An acquaintance was dating Brad Oberhofer, who shared a studio with Le Tigre, who knew my neighbor, Julie, who was tour managing The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, The Kills...
Every writer has a story about venues from their era that no longer exist. For me, those defunct venues are Kinfolk, Elvis Guesthouse, The Dreamhouse, [redacted], and Output. Around that time, I hooked up with a girl in the bathroom of one of them at a Phillip Lim Fashion Week party. She introduced me to her friend, Kai Avent-deLeon, who hired me as an intern for her concept store, Sincerely, Tommy. Through the shop, I met Blake Abbie, who took me to classical concerts in the park and introduced me to other editors. I organized book clubs and fashion talks, which was how I met Sydney Gore, who helped me publish my first glamour-girl story for NYLON. I wrote about my friend, Andrea Estella, the singer of the band Mr. Twin Sister, a band I listened to on repeat in my bedroom all through college. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, I organized a fundraiser with Andrea, Andrew, my ex, some friends from San Damiano Mission Church, the Lot Radio, and Caroline Polachek who headlined. We raised nearly $10k in a night. I was so young (only 25!) and had no idea what I was doing, but it dawned on me that I suddenly had a community, and that community was pulling through for something meaningful. I was making a small mark in a big city.
I moved out of Greenpoint and somehow was catapulted into South Korea, managing the nightclub Cakeshop in Seoul right before the pandemic hit. I moved back to the city for an agency job, subletting yet again until I found myself on a Tinder date with an ER doctor who took me to his apartment in Chinatown. After that night, I made it my mission to live downtown. A month or two later, I found a one-bedroom apartment for $1,250 a month and signed my first lease. It was a dream come true. I didn’t own any furniture, so I found anything I could to make the place feel like mine. Most things were thrifted or gifted. An ugly grey velvet loveseat, a burnt orange checkered rug, a midcentury tessellated stone coffee table, a black dresser, beaded curtains, an oak side table, and two tatami mats that my ex dropped off. I never installed a bookshelf and hammered my curtains onto the walls. The first piece of art I owned was a painting I bought from my friend Michael McGregor for $600 that Adrien framed. In the kitchen were taped posters of Oh My Goddess! flyers and drawings that Andrea gifted me. None of it really went together, but I didn’t care.
I felt so comfortable in Chinatown. I welcomed the similitude, which was fortified during the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes across the country, which I mention often because the attacks were too close to home. Fear kept me in my apartment for days, until I heard a knock. It was Juliana Huxtable, wearing a bright blue mini dress. She had just moved next door and accidentally locked herself out of her unit. I let her in, and she climbed through my window to get to her fire escape, before sweetly inviting me over for dinner. I had known of Juliana through attending her dance parties in the past, and I had also known that she played at Cakeshop in Seoul a few years prior to me meeting her. Juliana pulled out a CD cover, with a picture that she drew of herself when she was younger, as a popstar, and a song list on the back. “This was my dream, and it came true!” she said. Everyone at the dinner was either gay or trans, and it was the safest I’d felt in a long time. I didn’t have to explain to anyone why.
Proximity was everything then. One afternoon, at Williamsburg Pizza on Broome Street, I walked up to a woman and told her she looked like Daria Werbowy. “I’m so old now,” she smiled, introducing me to her son. We talked about the Prada ad that she worked on with Ridley Scott and his daughter. It is one of my favorite perfume ads. Mainly for its jazzy music score and the Gnostic poem that Daria recited over it, Thunder Perfect Mind by Mary Magdalene, a subject of personal interest and heavy research throughout my youth. A few days later, I saw Daria again, near my apartment, crossing the street with her dog. I waved hello, hoping she didn’t think I was stalking her. I lived close to Public Hotel, so when Adrien invited me to Nelson Mandela’s grandson’s birthday party, I accepted, thinking it was open bar. At the hotel, I ended up buying myself and Adrien two moscow mules before learning that Russia just invaded Ukraine. One of Kweku’s girlfriends told me that her friend was thankfully helicoptered out of Ukraine and made it out safely just in time. My mouth dropped. Eventually, word got around that I was in a favorable spot. Gallerists I know occasionally asked me to host their artists who were coming to town. I was suddenly hosting everyone from Hamishi Farah to Minh-Lan Tran and the lyricist of Black Pink. Once, an artist couple from Europe came to get eloped in New York and stayed at my apartment for a few days. I didn’t register the “getting married” part until I got home, opened the fridge, and was greeted by a perfectly large, perfectly butter cream, half eaten wedding cake. It felt like poetry. I was living in a poem. Or the music video to a song I’d been listening to my whole life.