Category: Brooklyn

Please Kill Me (Review)

Pedro Paramo is the book I’ve most given away. It’s a thin, easy to read, very influential novel. It will haunt you. The second book I’ve most given away is Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Through a series of alternating interviews, PKM traces the history of punk. From New […]

How to Create 10,000 Jobs?

How do you create 10,000 jobs? Train 500 brewers. Originally, I was going to write: Train 10,000 teachers. Despite the overwhelming need for teachers [1], the profession currently is looked down upon in the United States and people don’t understand that if you don’t invest in education, you’re not investing in the future. (Cynically, I […]

30 Things I Did Before Turning 30

In anticipation of my 54th birthday, I answered this question on Quora: What are the 30 things you did before turning 30 in your life? Learned to skateboard ramps and pools. Memorized every ditch and was part of an informal word-of-mouth network that knew when a new ramp appeared in Ventura. Convinced my parents to drive […]