Any time I peck out my primary password at this workplace I briefly flash back to the first extended-stay apartment I had in New York. The password is a gibberish-enhanced shoutout to 166 West 75th Street Room 317, that squalid pithole of a residence for which I sometimes get stupidly nostalgic. I researched if it was ever available on AirBNB, while that was still legal in the City. I would have taken any room at that address. But none were listed in the handful of times I checked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wonder how common it is for people to have fanciful or nostalgic flashbacks any time they type in a password? Most of mine are gibberish now, evoking no memory to speak of. But for the workplace I made the deliberate decision to evoke a memory of the Parc Lincoln, albeit a somewhat strangulated and gibberish-infested memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I actually co-ghost-wrote a monster article about password for the New York Times Magazine about 10 years ago. It was years in the making but in the end surprisingly satisfying. I didn’t think the lead author could pull it all together as well as he did, but of course he has an army of editors. This was a guy who relied heavily on volunteer-contributed content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I seem to have lost touch with another NYTimes connection. Where did he go? I have a story idea to pitch to that august publication, and I think my past appearances in their pages might lubricate the discussions.Or not. I don’t know if that place is the same revolving door of journalists and editors as every other news outlet I’ve had anything to do with. I don’t think I know anyone at Gothamist anymore but it’s always good to see a byline from someone I knew there who is now with the Associated Press. I was editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper, which won a pretty prestigious award the year I was in charge, but I never wanted to be a newsman. Still, being an editor never really left me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The high school paper I worked on won that bigass award in my senior year. After I graduated the paper went completely to hell, as told to me by none other than the staff moderator of the paper, who was also an English teacher. I revisited the school once and all he could say was how the paper had gone from first class to trash seemingly overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So i was somewhat bemused when, 20-something years later, I attended a regional school reunion of people in the tri-state area who went to my school in Tampa. I mentioned to one guy that I had been editor of the paper. He looked at me like I’d just told him I fart a lot. I had forgotten, in that moment, that the paper had gone to hell after I left and, from this dude’s reaction, it evidently stayed in hell. He looked at me in a way that siad bragging about working on that paper was a joke. I wasn’t bragging but that was my interpretation of reading his mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember winning the award. It was in Orlando, I think? Big convention with probably 300 attendees. They announced our paper and I stood up in that crowd of people and screamed like I’d just won the lottery. The scream far outshouted my genuine feeling of satisfaction at this award. But it was fun to stand in a crowd like that and scream like a rock star.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took some digging but I found the copy of the final issue I edited. I wrote a poem as the final editorial. It was a serious and, I think even now, pretty well-cone piece. But little did the paper’s moderator know that the first letters of part of the poem, read vertically, spelled FUCK YOU ALL TO HELL. I probably could have been expelled for this, but I really meant it. It turns out a couple of kids at another school pulled a similar stunt and they did, indeed, get expelled. Or so I was told by a reliable source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I started getting out a bit more in this neighborhood where I work. It’s pretty zany. Lots of hucksters and deliberate irritants trying to get your attention, trying to rope you in. I haven’t seen the one homeless woman with limited teeth lately. She used to call me “Candy,” as I’m sure she called all the boys. There is virtually always a cadre of them waiting around the John Street side of FUlton Center. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week I had to walk from City Hall, a distance of maybe a half mile, at 6:15 in the morning on a Sunday. Subways were a mess and I didn’t care to wait 12 minutes for a train when it would take less time to walk the distance between City Hall and Fulton Street. There were plenty of sketchy dudes out there, looking like they’d been balling or skulking around all fucking night. I probably should have waited for the train but whatever, I survived. My mistake was not staying on the main road, instead dipping into Theater Alley and narrow streets where people like to hide, or seek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Okay, it’s time to take a shit, as if that’s not exactly what this posting is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Any time I peck out my primary password at this workplace I briefly flash back to the first extended-stay apartment I had in New York. The password is a gibberish-enhanced shoutout to 166 West 75th Street Room 317, that squalid pithole of a residence for which I sometimes get stupidly nostalgic. I researched if it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-pastword","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47157,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47156\/revisions\/47157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}