Good morning. Hello. How are you? #851
St Nick is coming to Durham, pain doctor funtimes, LGA transit whitewash, fake gin update, lets talk about all the mortgages at the banks. Okay maybe lets not. Jane's fake livestreaming. New U2.
Good morning! Hello there, friend. All well? Happy Friday. It is 6:39. I got up early. Grammy didn’t take Jane last night, she had to move it to tonight, and it is causing ripple effects in my life. I scheduled my doctor’s appointment for 8:30 AM this morning, thinking Jane would be at Grammy’s and I could go without disturbing anyone, but that did not work out. So now Emma has to wake up early and do breakfast while I’m at the doctor. It’s a whole thing.
Nick Cave is coming to Durham. This is very exciting. I have managed to only miss one Nick tour in the eight years we’ve lived down here. But I almost certainly was going to miss this one if it did not come here. I know I have my quibbles with his politics these days, but I still love the man and I am very excited to see him one more time, assuming I procure tickets in the presale. It’s a good consolation for not being able to go to Cruel World, probably skipping Taylor and Depeche Mode. I’ll get to see the Cure and Nick this summer, that will work. Plus High Vis, which is gonna rule. And hrm actually I think I have tickets for a few more Cat’s Cradle shows lemme look. Oh yeah! Nation of Language, Samia and the Mountain Goats. Well that’s not too bad.
Went to the pain doctor yesterday. They stuck lots of pins filled with drugs into my shoulder. It’s kind of fun, I point and they stick a needle there and it stings. And then in, like, two days, supposedly it hurts less. It’s called a “trigger point injection.” Today it is tender and sore. Some people, it seems, get almost instant relief. Not me. And some people, my doctor seemed to imply, get almost 100% relief. Not me, lord no, I got maybe 20%. But I am still very into the procedure.
My doctor had a blue plaid lab smock that was kind of amazing. It had her name embroidered into it. I mean, I guess if you’re gonna be wearing the thing all the time why not get a nice one. I told her it looked like the old Jet Blue design, back when they had good design, back before they descended into normiedom and mediocrity. I do not think she liked this analogy, and I regretted it as soon as I made it, but we both muddled through chipper and polite. The male nurse asked me about my shirt, which said LOW DOUBLE NEGATIVE on it and I told them they were a band that had been around for 30 years now and were very slow and noisy. He did not seem to continue his curiousity. The doctor told me she loved John Cougar Mellancamp and we had a long talk about his slow transition in names from Johnny Cougar to Mellancamp, which is something I admire about that guy.
They made the appointment at 11 but then they call you like six times reminding you about the appointment, and telling you that you need to get there at 10:30. And it’s not just the usual thing doctors do where they insist that you get there 15 minutes early. They legit need you to get there a half hour early and by 11 I had already had all my vitals taken, a bunch of questions, had my shirt off and was on the procedure table about to get my first needle. It is unclear to my why they don’t just tell you your appointment is at 10:30. It seems really weird that the whole thing is geared to the doctor, not the patient. She swooped in in her Jet Blue smock at exactly 11. I keep forgetting this one clinic does this and I make my appointments at the time I actually want to be there, and then suddenly it’s a half hour early and then I gotta explain to my wife why she needs to cover for a half hour of my child care time due to my poor planning. Poor woman. Three days in a row now I’ve had to have her cover for a half hour (or more!) of my childcare time. Round of applause for Emma.
Read (okay skimmed) the Hochul-commissioned recent LGA transit options study.It was a bunch of engineering firms plus a blue ribbon panel. The headline out of PANYNJ, and the headline that I saw in the news a few weeks ago when it was released was “EXPERT PANEL RECOMMENDS THAT THE PORT AUTHORITY MOVE FORWARD WITH SUBSTANTIAL BUS IMPROVEMENTS – INCLUDING A NEW NON-STOP EXPRESS SHUTTLE – TO ENHANCE MASS TRANSIT ACCESS TO LAGUARDIA AIRPORT.” Sorry about the all caps. I’m too lazy to re-type the copy/paste. Anyway, let me now just quote for you a passage from the letter from the experts accompanying the study:
We are unanimous in our opinion that a one-seat ride via subway from the west is the optimal way to achieve the best mass transportation connection to LaGuardia Airport [Emphasis added]. In our professional experience, a one-seat ride has been the most successful in encouraging a shift to public transit from other transportation modes.
If you go on to read the study you will see that the subway option will draw perhaps twice as many riders, is not any more exensive that the bus options (and in many cases is cheaper) and can get completed in a similar amount of time.
So what’s the problem.
Well, it seems that: a) the portion of the Grand Central Parkway just to the west of LGA is inside the FAA’s zone for it being illegal to build anything above ground height. The GCP, being fifty years old, is grandfathered in, but you can’t even put anything on the GCP, like a rail line or, it seems, even a new streetlight. The study took this FAA rule as gospel, literal, and devoid of wiggle room. This, to me, seems to be a critical flaw with the whole thing because I’m fairly sure the combination of a charismatic governor, public pressure, Chuck Schumer, AOC and, like, the combined editorial might of New York Newspapers could get this waived or, at least, bent. But the study takes it as hard and fast gospel.
And b) there is a 15 foot wide, 90 year-old sewer tube underneath the GCP that serves a couple hundred thousand people. It is sitting on very long wooden piles that go through the clay in which the pipe is buried to get to the bedrock far below. This means that tunnelling is phenomenally expensive. The report kept saying they couldn’t even estimate the cost, because it would require a ton of on-site inspections which was apparently beyond the remit of the report. They kept saying it would be hella expensive and complicated and, though they never came out outright and said it, they basically just pretended it was impossible. And you can’t go under the thing because you’d have to tunnel 200 feet down into the bedrock below its wooden supports, and then the grades to get back up in time are too steep, which means you’d have to do an underground station at LGA.
So basically the thing needs to be moved. The subway project, without moving that thing, is $6-7 bil. There were bus projects up to $11 bil. And again, most of the bus projects also such because you can’t put anything new with an height on it on the GCP, so it’s a lot of “we’ll use the breakdown lane” and you know exactly how well that is gonna go. So the right thing to do — and the expert panel all but agreed — is to suck it up and move the sewer tube. Which is probabluy a $5-10 billion project that’ll take like 5 years. But it’s what people want in the end. Do your bus thing, but in the end just freakin get started on the subway. You could have it done in a decade if you started now. I could live to see it.
There’s also a whole part about the Hell’s Gate truss which is another insane complication where you can’t go over it — it would be by far the highest subway track in the system — and you can’t go under it so you gotta go through it, literally, like take out a bunch of trusses so a train can pass through, and then rebuild that portion of the bridge, while Amtrak’s still running the Northeast Corridor trains over it. No problem.
They completely ignored my preferred approach, which is to take the N-W line, extend it past Astoria Ditmars, and run the subway along the edge of Bowery Bay over to LGA. I legit don’t know what’s wrong with that route but no one ever suggests it.
Anyway, whole panel was whitewashed it’s actually pro-subway don’t give up the fight.
Found the best fake Gin. Ish is great but this Monday fake gin is very solid. I mean, if you’re going for a Bombay Sapphire replacement. Smells like Sapphire, has a very solid throat kick. Doesn’t taste quite right. But it’s damn solid I am very into it. Strong recommend. I am enjoying a nice fake Negroni and fake bud every night and here we are 20-some days into this experiment and it’s still going just great I am still getting 90% or more of the benefit of a nice after-work, evening cocktail. And no hangovers. Its just amazing. I don’t know if I’m ever going back. When I decided to take March off from drinking I put an exception in place for when we had people over or other social events out of the house but now I am kinda dreading them. I’m dreading ever drinking again. It’s all very confusing but I guess I’ll keep running with it for now. I’m sad both of the non-alcoholic Fernets are almost impossible to get right now. I have about 2/3 of a bottle of one of them but I don’t want to run out, so I am using it very sparingly.
Another funny thing is that I stocked the Athletic NA IPA right next to the seltzer water in the fridge, and they both had blue cans, and I accidentally grabbed an Athletic IPA in the middle of the day instead of a seltzer water and it was so shocking and horrifying. I had wondered if you could just extend this whole thing and drink fake beer all day but no, I don’t think that’s a good idea. The ilusion would be lessened, and keeping the illusion is vital, but also this little incident made me realize that not only would it not work, I absolutely do not want to do this. I am a puritan, drinking is only for the evenings. Never was much of a day drinker save for SXSW and who knows if I’ll ever go to that again.
So I don’t want to be the one to say this, and I am not happy about it, but I feel like the whole world is ignoring it and it is driving me crazy. But the “irresponsibility” that people are accusing Silicon Valley Bank of is that those dopes did not see interest rates rising so they made a bunch of ultra safe, but long term investments that were locked in at low interest rates, so that when there was a run on their bank, they had to start selling these “hold to maturity” assets at a loss, which means that they had to mark all their “hold to maturity” assets at their new market value, instead of pretending they were worth what they said on their face. Sucks for them, they were stupid, they should have managed their risk better and planned for the eventuality that interest rates might rise. Because back in March of 2020 when the world was falling apart, unemployment was the highest ever recorded, and 40% of Americans dropped out of the workforce entirely, all of us were super smart and totally knew that within three years the world would not, in fact, have fallen apart but rather the economy would be super heated and we’d have a masochistic lunatic helming the Fed who decided to raise interest rates relentlessly and tell us over and over that he couldn’t wait to see unemployment go up. This was their crime. Okay fine. They were a bank they should have planned for the possibility I guess.
But you know what else banks have on their books, that they’re supposed to have on their books, the one thing besides holding our savings that we actually expect banks to do? Hold a shit-ton of mortgages. And every bank in America has a shit-ton of low interest rate, long-term mortgages. Or mortgage bonds. Or some equivalent. And all of these right now are “hold to market” which means that they can keep pretending that they’re not a problem for them, just like SVB could pretend that their HTM government bonds were not a problem for them, until there was a bank run. This is everywhere. We are just pretending it’s not.
We are literally just pretending they don’t exist.
Which, actually, is probably 100% the right thing! Because if we all realize every bank might be as exposed as SVB, well, yeah, not super good.
So.. I guess.. never mind!
Jane has watched enough kids Youtube now that she is “livestreaming” where she holds her phone in front of her, turns on the selfie camera, hits record, and starts vlogging. It really is something. They’re so freakin adorable. I want to show you so badly but of course I am not going to let my daughter actually start vlogging at the age of five. She did one yesterday at the end where she said something like “I will be back tomorrow if you want to see more of these videos… well I will be making one tomorrow but you can’t see it.” Which was great. She also said “like and subscribe” at one point. I swear to god we do not give her too much screen time. Except for DuoLingo DuoLingo is excepted. And texting grammy. And the neighbors. That’s excepted too. And looking things up in the Spanish dictionary. That’s exemped. But aside from all that, I swear. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Anyway if you ever come visit I will show you one of them in person and man they really are amazing. I gotta get access to her iCloud somehow. I am confused the device is all set up as a child’s device and I am the parent but it has its own iCloud instead of using mine? That is weird and confusing.
Listened to the new U2 yesterday, because its an album of them reworking their old songs and I was mildly interested because I liked old U2 at one point before they sold out with “The Fly.” And my god it is the most bonkers thing ever. They’re like compeltely different, and usually totally weird, almost unrecognizeable versions of their songs. I was sort of Flabbergasted. I just capitalized “Flabbergasted” that’s how flabbergasted I was. And it made me profoundly wish I could discuss this absolutely insane creative outing with dedicated student-of-Bono, Andy Shea. Andy would hate that I called him that, but his dislike of U2 was active, and well-researched. It was not a causal opinion. It was one that kept up with recent developments, and this U2 album os so weird it really does need to be discussed.
Miss you, Andy.
Moody and quiet mix today, all new except an oldie by St Nick. In honor of his coming to Durham. New Everything but the Girl. Very into this band called Miserable because I mean come on, props to the directness of the name. Call it like it is.
Have a lovely weekend. I will return Monday regaling you with tales of chores dilligently completed.
i bought the Monday gin during fry february and thought it was really convincing. i haven’t made a NA negroni yet. sounds like such a treat!