I think I might have a superior URL for this site, and for all my sites going forward. Everything could be dumped on to Flaneur.NYC. The word itself better reflects who I am, and .NYC as a TLD makes more sense than Sorabji dot anything. I actually came to really despise the .NYC TLD. But when the eureka moment came I changed my mind, realizing that it actually makes sense to move on from sorabji as an Internet handle or nickname. I don’t think I would ever fully do that but FlaneurNYC has a less sodden ring to it than the name of an eternally (and deservedly) obscure composer. I don’t really like the word Flaneur, or any word with a nubby sounding n at its core. “Menu” is another disliked word. “Venue.” I have not looked it up but I assume I am pronouncing “flaneur” correctly. Someone suggested it might be pronounced to rhyme with manure. I say it as if there is a tilda over the ñ.

Part of what pepped me up about this was the surprising discovery that I actually like one of the themes I bought from Elegant Themes. I mean I actually like it a lot, and I even seem to have designed a credible looking text logo that does not look like the work of a third grader. I have, in fact, found that I like more of the Elegant Themes than I expected any time I actually fill one with my own content. Somehow the “lorem ipsilum” content at elegentthemes.com’s demo fails to do them justice. Some I still think are lame but others have been surprising. I purchased a lifetime license to all their themes and had mixed feelings about it ever since. Much of the code for those themes is bloated as hell, and the CSS is littered with “et_” hooks that would be virtually impossible to excise should one want to disguise the fact that they are using a (gasp) purchased theme. Buying off the shelf themes used to be kind of a stigma, like reselling web services. But I think that stigma has faded. I never felt altogether good about it, but I do not have the money pay a quality designer what they deserve for such work. And it’s not as if I am not supporting web designers by purchasing their themes. Quite the opposite. I’m just not supporting them with thousands of my dollars, only a few hundred. Now that I think it through it might even be a better, saner business model for a graphic designer to design and develop themes versus hand-crafting unique designs for every site you can.

I think that with Flaneur.NYC I can take search-engine exclusion of Sorabji.MOBI to the next level. I want to make the site altogether invisible to searchies. Even with robots.txt exclusions the searchies still harvest your web site URL, and index its name. I don’t even want the name of the site indexed. I guess I should look into how this dark web shit works, as far as invisibility techniques are deployed. I have zero interest in the substance of that murky world but I’ve always wondered how effective their anonymizing really is, and how people stay invisible on the public Internet.

I was out watchclock station hunting again, and decided to give my first and so far only such discovery another visit. If anyone else has noticed the thing and opened it then they did not take my calling card or the coins I left there. I guess it has not really been that long since I found it. And the weather has been all over the butt. So this location, which by any reasonable estimate is pretty damn remote considering it is in the 5 boroughs of New York, probably gets limited passage from curiosity seekers.

I managed to give absolutely ace directions from 2nd Calvary to Old Calvary today. It does not surprise me how often people at New Calvary ask me where the hell they are hiding Section 1, or any of the sections at Old Calvary. GPS apps and such all direct travelers to the street address of Calvary, which is physically located at 2nd Calvary. Depending where you are in New Calvary Old Calvary could be as far as a mile away, and I have not found any official sources that make this little point abundantly clear. Fourth Calvary is completely separated from New Calvary by a tangle of cranes and urban blight known as West Maspeth, while the most direct path from Old Calvary to Third is probably via Greenpoint Avenue and Queens Boulevard.

Two women in a car asked if I knew where Section 1 was. We were at 2nd Calvary. I told them I might give bad directions because I don’t drive around here, but that if she drove straight ahead and took a left at Queens Boulevard you would connect to Greenpoint Avenue. From there you can’t miss Old Calvary on the left about a mile down the road. It’s just over the L.I.E. I made them laugh when I repeated the directions, adding “Drive straight ahead until you run out of cemetery.” The driver at least thought “run out of cemetery” was funny.

I also aced directions last week for a couple of confused looking dudes with attaché cases on 37th Street near 36th Avenue in AsLIC. They were looking for 38th Avenue, but thought they were on 37th Avenue. I said “This is 37th street.” They seemed a little over the top in their earnest paying-of-attention to my words, but I am certain I sent them in the right direction: turn around and go to 37th Avenue, take a right, and I think you go left at 35th Street. I actually was not sure where 38th Avenue began but they got where they needed to go based on my AMAZING directions, which are far superior to any GPS navigator gadget.

For as many times as I have lamented screwing up giving proper directions to perfectly nice strangers I take special satisfaction in actually getting it right. With those two guys on 37th Street it was easier because they were not driving. It can be confusing for me as a pedestrian to give someone driving directions. But I slam-dunked that shit today at New Calvary. It made me think it could be an appendage to my story I started a while ago: “Old Calvary Is Better!” That story starts from the time someone in a car saw me with my camera at New Calvary and shouted out those words. I concurred, although as usual it took me a little too long to process the random shoutout of a passing stranger.

Another such opportunity for slam-dunk wit passed me by when I was in the alley behind Third Calvary… kind of a sketchy slip of road, so if I have any excuse for my unease at someone talking to me it might have been that this was kind of a Nowheresville. A cab driver slowed down and asked “Are you looking for zombies?” He laughed. I laughed. It was a nice, random moment. But only after he drove off did I have the wit to think “No, I think everyone here is pretty well dead.” Not the punchline zinger of a lifetime but better than whatever nonsense I did mumble.

I don’t usually think much of the hazards of being in Nowheresvilles. I am a man, after all. I am more free than a woman to wander into deserted alleyways and sausagefest dive bars with little fear of not being allowed to mind my own fucking business. But once in a while I think about the possible dangers. I actually, for just a split second today, thought I heard a dog rushing up behind me. This was in West Maspeth, where the outdoors is populated by virtually zero human beings on weekends and holidays.

There was no dog. I think it was the sound of some chains or hanging metal objects bumping into a metal wall. But it made just the right sound for me to mistake it as the sound of a dog’s chains rattling as it galloped over to DEVOUR ME.

I had, an hour or so earlier, seen someone with 4 or 5 dogs in tow. The handler looked like he knew what he was doing. From what I gathered the dogs were with the Fire Department, trained to enter burning buildings and such. But man, if that handler had let one or two of those leashes slip from his hand the dogs looked like they would have been ready to chase after me and chew my legs down to a bloody pair of nubs.

NUBS!

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