 20060227 Our Space
 Jakob posted the first picture of us inside our new space. While Paul and I built the staircase for Noah last month, we learned that there was another unit available in the same old parking garage. Noah recommended us to the landlord and just a few of weeks later, we arranged a lease. We had been looking for a place to in Brooklyn or Queens to setup a small studio to practice working with tools. Nothing ever panned out until this spot fell into our lap. It's bigger than we originally planned, so we decided to broaden the scope of its use. We asked Jakob to join the partnership, and with his help we can convert the space into something meaningful for even more people. Now, we're thinking that it could be a public space that our friends could use for dinner parties, film screenings, art exhibitions, band practice -- you know, anything -- as well as a studio space for our painter and pottery friends to work side by side with us. I am going to think of this place, still unnamed, as my laboratory. The current tennent moved out yesterday, a few days before our March 1st move-in date, so the three of us took the chance to get a headstart on painting the walls. The ultimate purpose of this space is to bring people together in spontaneous and creative activity. So, if you have any desire to help in any way, please let me know. We'd love the company. Lake Tahoe
 Lake Tahoe by Albert Bierstadt Before I left for Lake Tahoe, I read that Mark Twain once wrote To obtain the air angels breathe, you must go to Tahoe. Until the first moment I set eyes on the Lake myself, I thought that maybe Twain spent part of his career supplementing his income with freelance gigs writing copy for tourism brochures. Who knew America's most famous humorist was also a romantic? The short of it is that Twain couldn't have been more precise. He said it perfectly when he continued on and described Tahoe as the fairest picture the whole earth affords. Kunal and I arrived in Sacramento a few hours late after our flight made an unexpected stop in Salt Lake City because strong headwinds forced the plane to burn more fuel than usual. At 2am we begain our drive from Sacramento, a place as flat as Indiana, quickly upwards through the Sierra mountains. Every 10 miles, a new sign would crop up letting us know that we had climbed another 1,000 feet. Kunal dozed in and out as I weaved back and forth on roads snaking towards Nevada. I called my friend Paul, who, with another friend named Mirza, would be joining us the next day. Paul was in New York, where it was 7am, shaving and about to leave for his banking job downtown. I told him two things. One, that I had been stunned when I curved sharply around a bend to come face to face with the tallest, whitest mountain that I have ever seen in person, reflecting the fullest, biggest moon. And, that, two, I had forgotten what the sky looked like -- with its constellations, deep purple gradients, and all. I think he knew what I meant because he's lived in the City just as long as me. We pulled into South Lake Tahoe, a tourist town straddling the California and Nevada border, which, despite its few high-rise casinos, manages to feel quaint. Much too early to check into our motel, I parked behind Harrah's and crawled into the back of our rental SUV. Kunal woke me up just before 9. We got sorted, took bites of granola and beef jerky, and walked to Heavenly's gondola. This would be my first time snowboarding on a West coast mountain. It felt huge, and wild, and intimidating! But, at the top, all of my apprehension churned into adrenaline. The sight of the lake below an expanse of poplar trees, perfect in their palette of rich brown bark, green pine, and snow-covered branches, was just overwhelming. Unlike any place I have ever been in the East, the entire park was open, meaning you didn't have to stick to the trails. On our first run, Kunal and I took the 'Sky Trail' which was a slightly sloping path along the top edge of the mountain. Once, a few skiers ahead turned sharply left and just went overboard! Over the edge, down the sharp slope into the ungroomed forest. I didn't know you could just do that! "Holy Shit! This is great," I shouted to Kunal, drunk with thoughts of independence, like an excited 15-year-old who just earned his driver's permit and is sitting behind the wheel of his mom's minivan. We spent the next three days ignoring trails, obsessed instead with the glades and backcountry, spending hours overworking our then hot and elastic bodies, carving through piles and piles of untouched powder laid out for us. We also fell quite a bit, too. Paul and Mirza missed a day because both of their flights had been delayed or cancelled for the same heavy-wind issue that slowed our plane. They drove in with Paul's friend Patrick, a grad student at UC Davis near Sacramento, who also went to Wake Forest and is an excellent snowboarder. I was eager for them to arrive because the chemistry of the five us let loose amongst the snow and casinos and beer and girls would be a feat of friendship! Or just simply sinful to our delight. But, besides a few nights of Texas Hold 'Em and a case of Keystone Ice, we were tame, too tired and aching from the mountain -- and for Paul and me, because he got to town a day late, we only had one night left to take the challenge we posed ourselves: To sleep up on the mountain in a shelter we build ourselves. Many weeks before the weekend, Paul and I planned to reserve a cheap room and use the money saved to buy equipment for serious winter camping. Most importantly, we both invested in an ultra-light, ultra-warm sleeping bag that would allow us to sleep outside without much other shelter. On Paul's final full day, we stuffed our packs light, with only our sleeping bags, a canister of fuel, a burner, cookset, shovel, change of socks, handwarmers, headlamp, dry soup and oatmeal. We took the gondola up from the village (Elev: 6,000ft) to the base at (Elev: ~10,000ft), stashed our packs in lockers, and rode our snowboards for a full day with Kunal, Mirza, and Patrick. At 3pm, after 6 hours of riding, we walked back to the gondola, grabbed our packs, and explained the plan to our buddies. We would hike into the forest, out-of-bounds, to spend the night. They would return the next morning at 9am, at the top of the gondola, to meet us. If we weren't there, they should assume something went wrong and get help. They told us we were crazy, and made sure we knew just how much better a burrito and warm motel bed would be instead. The gondola is the only reasonable way to get up and down the mountain. At 4:30pm, it shuts down, and the mountain is then not only dark and empty, but also filled with so much quiet, its deafening. It felt like my ears were so unaccustomed to the nothingness that they just rang out out of boredom, or fear that they were being replaced by a far more useful sense. With no clear exit plan in case of an emergency, Paul and I determined that our only options would be to hike down the mountainside, or break into the gondola office and call for help. I am still unsure whether it was justified confidence or just foolishness, but were we comfortable with the conditions and decided to continue. With less than two hours of daylight, we reached a small clearing with a fallen tree where we would build our shelter. Because the snow was over 10ft deep, we had decided to dig a pit next to the fallen tree, which we would lean our snowboards against to form braces for a roof of branches and chunks of snow. With only one shovel between the two of us, Paul begain to dig. I first set out to boil some snow to make tea, and in the meantime collect branches for the roof. After an hour, and a few design modifications, our pit had become a cave. With only 90 minutes of fuel remaining and night fast approaching, we moved all of our gear into the shelter and began to prepare dinner. As the sun fell and the cold came, our movements became slower and constricted as we added more layers. We needed something easy to make. We settled on the split pea soup. As we waited for the snow to melt, to make for our broth, we draped our gloves over the pot lid in a vain attempt to dry them. Over the course of the long day of snowboarding, and then digging in the snow, our pants became damp and our gloves wet, if not already frozen solid. We sat, huddled, in the dark now, staring at the pot, waiting for it to bubble, keeping warm only by the steam that rushed out from underneath the lid and surrounded us for a few moments before it escaped outside. The soup hit the spot. Rich and creamy and filled with tender cubed carrots. We dipped little bowls into the simmering pot, and sipped scoop by scoop. It was now only 7pm, so I turned off the burner to save fuel in case we needed it for warmth later in the night. Soon after, we realized that we made too much soup because it got colder faster than we could drink it down. Drips of soup that had boiled over the side were now ever paler green and frozen. After we finished, I gathered all traces of food, which I placed in the pot to bury in the snow 30 or 40 yards away. This way, I thought, we would be safe from unknown animals that might be attacted to the frosty little peas stuck to the bottom of our bowls. (Once when I went hiking in New Mexico, a guide warned me that even a granola bar wrapper in my pocket would be a enough to entice a bear to maul me in my sleep). I climbed out of the cave, gripping a light between my teeth, and stood up to march off to hide the cookset. And that's all it took -- a few seconds exposed to open air and I was shaking, even with all my layers, socks, and jackets. I scurried to bury the pot, maybe getting 10 yards, not 40, before I was too cold and had to doubleback to the shelter. There, Paul had already unrolled the sleeping bags, and was taking off his boots. I stood, shaking near seizure pace, waiting for Paul to get into his bag so that I could jump down and do the same. It was only a few minutes before I realized how miserable of a situation we had put ourselves in. Despite being protected from the wind, Paul and I were freezing in our shelter. What's worse was that we had nearly 14 hours left before the gondola would start back up and we could return to the village below. All was not hopeless, though. Our bags were sturdy, but still a challenge to make warm inside despite wet clothes. I tossed my icey gloves aside and covered my hands with an extra pair of wool socks. We zipped ourselves entirely within our bags in hope trap our warm breath inside to create an oven that would hopefully dry us out. We gained a lot of experience through this process. For instance, we learned that no clothes are better than wet clothes. I removed my slighty damp socks, and afterwards my feet felt warm bare in the bag. Paul was forced to take off most but his long-johns before he could get warm. Most excruciating was that time wouldn't seem to pass. We had nothing to do but lay in the dark and shiver. We continuously dipped above and below tolerable temperatures. I forcefully calmed my breathing and reached a point where I thought I could go to sleep and not fear hypothermia -- and Paul agreed it would be best if we just tried to sleep. It was 8pm. We spent the next hour shifting positions, feeling our bags, sensing for wet spots, ensuring that we were in the driest position possible. At some point, I began to lose feeling in my feet, which I later realized was not because of cold, but because my double layer of pants was constricting blood flow below my knees, as I bent them to be in the warmest, fetal position. I would have to reach down and massage my feet ever so often through the night. I don't remember when, but I fell asleep. It was very light -- the kind of sleep you have when you are in the backseat of a car, and your eyes are open just long enough to know you are still moving, but not long enough to know where you are or how far you've gone. A sleep that leaves you more tired with every moment. I woke up wide-eyed to Paul repeating my name over and over. He was panicking. He was cold and wet, not getting any warmer, and still 12 hours off from any sure warmth or safety. I hadn't been scared until this point, until my friend -- a marathon-runner, whose endurance I admire -- whispered from inside his bag, "I'm getting nervous." At this moment, the options flooded through my delirious head ... Can we get cellphone reception? Could we build a fire? Would rescuers be able to locate us? Would they come with snowmobiles? Can we do this? "Paul, what's wrong?" I had never heard Paul like this before -- I know him as well-spoken, collected, strong, and employed on Wall Street. Now, he was confused, and mumbling while trying to describe the factors of his coldness. After one by one, we realized that most importantly he had to pee. Coldness and full bladders don't mix. Heat drains your body works to keep your urine warm. In hindsight, our dialogue seems funny -- but in the context of the situation, it was desperate. A grown man couldn't piece together how to go to the bathroom by himself. Paul had it in his head that he would have to get out of his sleeping bag and go outside. But, that would be disastrous because he would lose all the heat he saved up since he first got into his bag. I had to tell him to unzip his bag just enough to pee out the side onto the wall of the shelter. Fear is crippling. The night became calm, Paul became quiet and, now with an empty bladder, warm. For both of us, the stress finally seduced us to fall asleeep and stay asleep until morning. Of course, I stirred frequently to massage my feet and move out of a wet spot, but there was never conscious moment until 8am when Paul laughed with relief, "It's Morning!" I asked him to unzip my bag because I couldn't get my hands free from the tight shape of the bag. Paul did it with speed. He was new. He was as though he had just come out safely at the far end of an hallucinogenic drug trip -- humbled, thankful, and inspired. I recognized him again. Once Paul had unzipped my bag just enough, I pushed my head through, followed by my hands stroking forward to crawl out. I wiped the frost from my eyes --- and it was! It was morning. The sky was blue. So blue. So great. And the trees stood so tall and white, high above and all around the gaping hole that led down into our subterranean shelter. It was 8:30, and I was in a hurry to break camp and hike back to the gondola. I didn't want to be late because I thought it would scare our friends into thinking something was wrong. It took a considerable amount of time to work my feet back into my snowboarding boots, which were now frozen stiff. But right after, we rolled things up quickly, retrieved our buried pots, knocked down the shelter, and removed our traces. Our hike back led to an anticlimactic ending. Our friends weren't there. So we waited. After 30 minutes, unable to reach them by any phone, we descended down the mountain in the gondola. Halfway down, we got a hold of them with Paul's cellphone. They told us they had been waiting for us to call. When we reminded them that they were supposed to meet up on top, in case something went wrong, they said plainly that they didn't remember that part of the plan. They hadn't remembered anything beyond the part about burritos. At the motel, we found Patrick studying, Kunal booting up for skiing, and Mirza watching The Price is Right and aching with the dull pain of having lost $2500 in one hand after an all-night no-limit poker binge. We left Tahoe after breakfast at a taqueria. I had three chicken tacos, and Paul a burrito and a beer. The Mexican man at the counter recognized Mirza from the poker room the night before. He told us that Mirza played well. Mirza told us the man left the room before he lost all his money. *** Paul posted a couple of pictures: Our shelter in the morning. Me the night before. During the 17 hours, I made a few video clips which I later put together in chronological order. Unfortunately, it was not possible, or at least I wasn't thinking, to record ourselves during the hellish moments. Still, the before and after moments are interesting. Watch it on Vimeo.  In Tahoe.
I made this playlist today. I feel good about it.
This vimeo video is dark, but brillant! via Andrew.
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LaPorte, Indiana by Jason Bitner
Here's a headsup that my friend Jason Bitner, who co-created Found Magazine, is publishing a book called LaPorte, Indiana. He's not from Indiana, but once while passing through he stopped at a diner, and in the back he found boxes of studio portraits of local townspeople. 18,000 in all, taken by one man over 30 years. He sorted through them and pulled out his favorites to make this book. The pictures are fascinating.I think it comes out in March, but it is available for pre-sale on Amazon. In the meantime, you can see a few sample pages.
So, there have been a million Narnia remixes, but Lazy Muncie deserves a link because it specifically mentions Fort Wayne. And Bob Evans.
The scene with Garfield creator Jim Davis is hilarious. Happy Valentines
 My friend Jen made this lovely valentine for me. See all the others she made for her friends. Yay for blizzards!
 Snowball fight: Sunday, 2pm, Prospect Park. Hot cocoa, etc at Chris' place afterwards. Update: We have 27 inches as of right now. My recent bet
Just about a month ago, I agreed to a bet with my friend and co-worker Kunal Shah. We challenged each other to go without television, movies, and video games of any kind. We only included games just to round it out, but neither of us play video or computer games so it wasn't an issue anyway.The first one to crack, we agreed, would cook the other breakfast for a week, and the menu would be determined by the winner. At first, it was startling how much of a conscious effort was needed to avoid these things. For example, the bus I take upstate to go snowboarding shows movies on 6 different TV's spread throughout the cabin. (It ended up not being so hard because, as it turns out, it's easy to sleep before and after a long day of riding.) As two and three weeks passed, the prospect of this bet lasting for years seemed most likely. Kunal and I are uniquely stubborn and competitive, and it quickly became obvious that neither of us feared a week of making omelets, but we were driven to simply not lose. The pride for having gone the longest in isolation from the most entertaining and popular media would be supreme! In sacrifice, Kunal and I were suddenly removed from the possibility of enjoying the most common social situations. Personally, I couldn't watch The OC or Lost with my usual group, and I couldn't watch ACC basketball with the rest of the guys at Brother Jimmys (For this reason alone, I am thankful that Wake has a losing record because I'm not missing out on much). And, what made everyone we knew call us crazy was that we weren't going to a Superbowl Party, a celebration of the year's most watched television event. Instead, we spent the entire Sunday at the Village Chess Shop on Thompson Street. Just try to imagine the kind of people who aren't in a can't-watch-tv bet who skip the Superbowl to play chess ... Conspiracy theorists! Clincally crazy people! And, there we were, Kunal and I, completely happy to be with them -- strangely alone with them, segmented from the remaining population addicted to television. We played match after match for 8 hours, and over the course of the night, we related to each other how much this bet was changing our lives, especially for the better. With so many extra hours per week, we were surprised to learn that both of us were using our newfound free-time for earnest attempts at self-improvement. Besides polishing his chess game, Kunal frequently took bike rides, including to and from work (Park Slope to Manhattan). Besides sitting helplessly while Kunal put my king in check, I built a staircase with my friend Paul, and I picked up a pair of snowshoes on sale, determined to go snowshoeing around the city. Unfortunately, it still hasn't snowed yet. It's arguable whether we would do these things anyway, but I am certain it's not so for me. There have just been so many moments when, like a junkie, I start getting manic for a fix -- for basic downtime, when I could sit and be passively entertained by a DVD I netflixed. In these moments, I forced myself to sit still and collect my thoughts. I would brainstorm on the spot and think about how I could use my time constructively. This backfired last Sunday morning when I thought it would be brilliant to spraypaint my cellphone with metallic gold paint. The phone is nearly ruined. But, beyond that, most often, I end up reading a book or calling a friend to say hello. With every day without TV, etc, the bet seemed like it would go on for infinity plus one more. In the meantime, Kunal and I started to obsess over chess, now playing not only in those extra idle notches of time, but also during our lunch breaks. I even bought one of those two-button clocks that the Russians at the chess shop have, so that we could time our matches, too. While I waited for him to make a move, I would often, rudely, interrupt him to suggest that we make the bet more difficult by banning meat from our diets, and he in turn would recommend that we not allow music -- which made me shudder at the thought. This became a joke between us, constantly proposing new regulations that would make the bet unbearable and force us out further in outcast from society. More often, we would talk about what would happen if the bet suddenly ended. Would we watch TV again? "I would just watch DVD's, but no TV," I swore. Kunal said he wouldn't place restrictions on himself, he would just be mindful of the experience he'd had throughout the bet. Good thing, too, because sometime last week, Kunal slipped up. Once, as we walked from the office to get lunch, he said offhandedly, "I played chess against the computer last night. It was a challenge." "You mean, you played a computer game?" I replied in half disbelief and half sadness, as we both realized in that moment that Kunal had lost the bet that neither of us wanted to end, that neither of us thought could be ended. We even delayed a few hours before calling the bet over. He played measly game of chess on his computer, I thought. There's no harm in that! But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this bet could only end because of a technicality. I asked everyone in the office for their advice and they all agreed: there was no way one of us was going to simply cave. And, so that's that. It was over. *** I have no motive for writing this post other than to just let everyone know what's up -- there's no moral -- I never stopped thinking Discovery HD and HBO were incredible. Since the bet ended, I've watched three parts of Band of Brothers because I now have a sudden obsession with knowing more about World War 2 after my buddy Pete explained the D-Day timeline to me at a bar. I am going to make an effort to not idly watch anything, but I admit I am thankful that the bet ended just a few days before the Winter Olympics started. I'm pretty excited to watch the hockey games. Aside, if you were ever into chess before, consider playing again. I've found that with a little bit more age, it has become even more complex. Before these past four weeks, I hadn't played since I was a little kid, learning with my grandma's pewter set. I'm not very apt and am troubled by a lack of patience, but otherwise I find the game dynamic and thrilling. If you haven't been to any of the three shops right next to each other on Thompson, you should swing by sometime. The people there are very kind and eccentric, and always arguing over whether or not we landed on the moon, etc. Even if you don't sit down to play a game, they're fun to be around. In fact, I am going to make it a Sunday-after-brunch tradition because, really, there's nothing better on TV.
Zillow.com. Free, instant valuation for 60,000,000+ homes. Fascinating to search ... talk about a coup for open information! via Ben.
Whoa, this is the future: Multi-Touch Interaction. Be sure to watch the video. via Andrew.
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Check out this E-Ink cellphone concept.
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I *love* Etsy.
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I just used a laptop on my windowsill to lookup the current air temperature. The air, by the way, is 6 inches behind the computer screen, seperated only by a thin, moveable pane of glass.
What have I become?! I am going for a walk. PS. Weather.com said 47 degrees. |
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 Hi, I'm Zach. I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana and graduated from Wake Forest. After college, I moved to Manhattan to get serious about a company I ran with friends. We sold it to Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp in 2006. I just wrapped up with a project I co-founded called Vimeo and left CV to focus on being a twenty-five year old. I have another blog called Copy and Taste, where I post about learning to cook. I live in Brooklyn now.  Del.icio.us My Flickr Me on Flickr Last.fm Linked in MySpace Netflix History Vimeo  Amir Blumenfeld Chris Bodenner Mareen Fischinger Fort Wayne Observed Nick Gray Hype Machine Jake and Amir Jakob Lodwick Oh My Rockness Jonathan Marcus Youngna Park Megan Scheminske Eliot Shepard Shorpy Signal vs. Noise Alex Soth Stereogum Ricky Van Veen Khoi Vinh Eugene Wyatt  June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007  Postal Skype SMS (via AIM) |
