In Memoriam: Sebastian Quezada

Sebastian Quezada, one of my best and dearest friends. Thank you for your friendship, I learned so much from you, see you on the other side, hermano. Cuídate.


The stories of the times that Sebastian and I have had together since our first meeting in 1992 could fill a book, although likely one of the transgressive literature variety. Even when we had gone without seeing one another or speaking on the phone for months, I always counted Sebastian as one of my best friends, the kind of person with whom, when you meet up again, you pick up as if no time at all had passed, the kind of person who would open their door, their wallet and their heart to friends in need without a moment's hesitation and without having to be asked twice. If it wasn't for Sebastian, I would never have been able to even begin living in New York for the seven years I was there, as he was the one who opened up his door to me until I found a job and a place to live just after we had both graduated from college. Given how long that took, most people would have been standing by the door drumming their fingers and waiting for me to leave, but with Sebastian one always felt like a welcomed guest.

But, perhaps ironically, two of the most vivid memories of I have of Sebastian are also among the most wholesome.

One dates back to our days at Bard College. I believe it was the autumn of 1995. Sebastian and I had for some reason ventured down to a set of dorms known as the Ravines, built, as the name would suggest, between a deep ravine and a field that would become a soggy lake at the slightest hint of rain. The weather was overcast and moody, the kind of fall-bleeding-into-winter weather that one so often encounters in the Catskills around that time of the year. We were standing by my car, which was a green 1976 Plymouth Valiant at the time, just enjoying the pensive atmosphere, the wind on our faces, the hint of precipitation in the air. At once the sky was full of several, then dozens, then what looked like hundreds of migrating birds, flooding the grey sky in search of a path to warmer climes.

I don't recall Sebastian and I saying much to one another at that moment - perhaps just an "Oh wow" or something like that - but I think it was a sight that affected us both powerfully. Here we were both nearing graduation and entry into another facet of life and the sight of those birds flying loose and free into the unknown somehow evoked the journey that we both were about to commence on, away from an environment that had become familiar for four years - if only as a point of reference - and into the as-yet-unwritten future of our new lives, with no telling where they would take us. As I write these words that was 16 years ago.

My second vivid memory is from the spring of 2003 when I was living in a nice-and-too-expensive loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn just south of the bridge. You could stand at the window during the cold months and watch the boats go up and down the river, carefully navigating their way past chunks of floating ice. As the weather got warmer, it was decided that a house-warming party was in order and when there was a party to be had, there was no better person to ask cook for it than Sebastian.

We decided to make feijoada, that delicious Brazilian beef and pork stew (Sebastian is probably more responsible than any other single person for my first trip to Brasil in 1999, a country I have since been back to several times and count as one of my favorites). We then went out to buy a suitable pot, which is looking down upon me from my mantle here in New Orleans right now as I write these words. Our system was that I would do the chopping and dicing and Sebastian would do the cooking. We bought the white rice, the black beans, the farofa and Sebastian - who I never tire of telling people was the single best cook that I have ever met - blended it all together perfectly. There was more than enough when we were done to feed the 20 or so people in attendance and suffice to say that I was eating feijoada for many days afterwards.

This memory is for me one that evokes a lot of elements of Sebastian, someone who was as excessive in his generosity as he was in anything else, someone who always wanted to make sure that everyone was fed, everyone was happy, everyone was included. That desire for community is one of the nicest traits anyone can have and on that day my friend Sebastian displayed, as always, that he possessed it in multitudes.

The sound of his laugh - booming, boisterous, all-encompassing - was one of the great things to experience in this life. I still hear it in my ears and with it comes the memory of my strange, generous, extraordinary friend.

Cuídate, Sebastian. Wherever you are, I hope that you are cooking a big pot of feijoada and listening to Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66 in the sun right now.

Autumn in New York City During Dark Times

In the dark autumn of two years later we saw New York again. We passed through curiously polite customs agents, and then with bowed head and hat in hand I walked reverently through the echoing tomb. Among the ruins a few childish wraiths still played to keep up the pretence that they were alive, betraying by their feverish voices and hectic cheeks the thinness of the masquerade. Cocktail parties, a last hollow survival from the days of carnival, echoed to the plaints of the wounded: 'Shoot me, for the love of God, someone shoot me!', and the groans and wails of the dying: 'Did you see that United States Steel is down three more points?' My barber was back at work in his shop; again the head waiters bowed people to their tables, if there were people to be bowed. From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building and, just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as eyes could reach, so now I went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers. Then I understood — everything was explained: I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits - from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground. That was the rash gift of Alfred W. Smith to the citizens of New York.

- From F. Scott Fitzgerald's "My Lost City"

A few thoughts on the killing of Osama Bin Laden

Human emotions are complicated things. As someone who was in Manhattan on 9/11, I didn't exactly rejoice at Osama Bin Laden's death - thinking of all those lost on that day and since - but I didn't exactly feel bad, either. More like felt as if a murderous, deluded rich kid - which was all that Bin Laden ever was - got what he deserved. I'll definitely direct my compassion to more deserving recipients. From Tamaulipas, MD.

This is our moment

Grand Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, September 2008. (Photo by Benjamin Deibert)

Portrait

My friend Eve Sibley painted a portrait of me when I was still living in New York which I just happened upon online. Not a bad likeness, all things told.

New York City Serenade

When I first arrived in New York City in the spring of 1997, being a relatively impoverished recent college graduate, I roomed with my friend Sebastian Quezada at his modest apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The neighborhood at that time, as I have noted on this blog before, had a distinctly Latin flavor, largely of the Puerto Rican and Dominican variety, with a smattering of Mexican influence, as well as a large and still-remaining population of Yiddish-speaking Satmar Hassidim Jews in rather far-out traditional costumes living along the southside. Beyond the main strip of Bedford Avenue, warehouses, many rusting and disused, still stretched on for blocks at a time before halting at the churning expanse of the East River, the Lower East Side of Manhattan visible in the distance. The Domino Sugar refinery, which had been part of Brooklyn's waterfront since the 19th century, was still the neighborhood’s most regular employer. At that time, Williamsburg was a place where, at a local joint called simply “Pizza Restaurant,” one could get a $5 plate of carne guisada con arroz y habichuelas, and young folks who were actually struggling financially could afford to live.

It has been quite a pivotal decade both for myself and New York City since then. On the personal side, I’ve gotten to know all of the neighborhoods I’ve lived in - Williamsburg, Fort Greene, Park Slope and now Astoria - quite well, never having the funds to live on the other side of the East River in Manhattan and being perfectly fine with that, as Brooklyn and Queens offer a dizzying diversity that much of Manhattan (not named “Millionaire’s Island” for nothing) decidedly lacks. I’ve traveled to quite a few countries, writing probably hundreds of articles at this point, having written and published a book, watched my friends and I edge into out thirties (losing some on the way and gaining new ones) and had about as many amity and romance-based interactions as one could ever ask for in that amount of time. I’ve acquired so many books that any apartment I have is now essentially a library where I sleep, witnessed some great concerts lots of concerts (Cheb Mami in Prospect Park and the Tindersticks and Seu Jorge in Central Park come to mind) and seen how truly glorious and alive New York becomes as the city edges into its lustrous summer, as it’s doing now.

For New York’s part, we witnessed the 1997 campaign and re-election of mayor Rudolph Giuliani (now running for president) as mayor, the 1999 slaying of unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo by four New York Police Department plain-clothed officers (who were subsequently acquitted in a criminal trial), the terrible attacks of September, 11, 2001 (which I witnessed first-hand and during which I walked home to Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge with tens of thousands of other New Yorkers) and the subsequent election (and re-election) of billionaire tycoon Michael Bloomberg as the city’s mayor. The city that was robust and vibrant when I arrived in 1997 picked itself up and dusted itself off after the events of 2001 and now is every bit as vital as it ever has been.

It really has been quite a time.

But now I start a new chapter, and, tomorrow, I say goodbye to the city I have called home for the last ten years. I do so without regret, but perhaps a twinge of melancholy that we all feel when parting from a familiar companion, one so we’ve become so used to that we often take for granted how deeply it has immersed itself into our daily lives, out habits, our personalities. No matter where I go in the world, a large part of me will always be a New Yorker, and that is a sobriquet that I am very proud to carry.

Many things have changed with the city’s economic and political fortunes over the years. The Old Dutch Mustard factory on Metropolitan Avenue is now gone, torn down last year. The Domino Sugar refinery largely ceased business in 2003. The great Norfolk Street music venue Tonic shut down this spring. But, mercifully, as I found out this week, Pizza Restaurant still exists, with the same ebullient boriqua women behind the counter, dishing out Caribbean food, a place to sit and chat and a measure of my past, $5 at a time.

As Walt Whitman wrote in his 1860 poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,”

We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us;
We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also;
You furnish your parts toward eternity;
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

Adios, New York, and cuídate, may you always shine so lovely, reflecting the firmament to those of us here on earth.

A Greener New York City?

On Sunday, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled a broad tapestry of 127 measures designed to create what he called “the first environmentally sustainable 21st-century city.” With admirable chutzpah while speaking at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, Mayor Bloomberg stated that the city would attempt to plant more than 1 million trees in the next 10 years, create a dual city-state fund of some $200 million to create a financing authority to oversee the completion of major mass-transit projects such as the Second Avenue subway, increasing the number of bike paths and cultivating mussels to cut down on pollution out of the rivers. More controversially, though, Mr. Bloomberg also proposed a three-year test of congestion pricing, which would represent a charge for $8 for cars and $21 for commercial trucks that enter Manhattan below 86th Street from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays (with any tolls paid deducted from the fee). Modeled on similar systems affected congested areas of London and Singapore, Mr. Bloomberg contends that congestion would be reduced and air quality improved.

"Moving to New York has always been an act of optimism," read the proposal, dubbed PlaNYC, in its unusually eloquent introduction. "To come here you must have faith in a better future, and courage to seek it out; you must trust the city to give you a chance, and know that you’ll take advantage when it does. You must believe in investing in your future with hard work and ingenuity. You must, in short, believe in accepting a challenge."

Though some parts of the plan strike me as easier to implement and more realistic than others, and though supporters of the process will have to convince the powers-that-be in Albany and Washington to sign on for sizable financial commitments (and add hundreds of millions of dollars to the proposed $57 billion budget New York City has for the next fiscal year,) Mr. Bloomberg's statement that “our economy is humming, our fiscal house is in order and our near-term horizon looks bright, if we don’t act now, when?” is a refreshing bit of reality injected into a political milieu that often seems to be awash in short-sighted politics-of-the-moment political ends. An American friend of mine in Rome writes to me that "city centers are renewing themselves without the bulldozer ( as in the 1960's) but this time with a paint brush, creativity and investment." On a glorious spring day here in New York, with the mercury set to climb into the mid 80s, who could not support the desire for a greener, healthier, more environmentally responsible New York City? With the city expected to gain about 1 million residents by 2030, now is indeed the time to look ahead to ensure its enduring viability is sustained for future generations.

NYC to Wal-Mart: fuhgeddaboudit

Saying "thanks, but no thanks" but to union-hostile, low-wage jobs with employer-provided healthcare often worse than the meager public health benefits available to its employees, upon my arrival from Europe, New York City succeeded in doing me proud once more by prompting Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. to exclaim “I don’t think it’s worth the effort.” Scott was referring to the efforts of Wal-Mart, one of most visible manifestations of corporate banality, to come to the five boroughs.

In a city of such dizzying variety of choice, the New York Times opined yesterday that, in addition to union-led opposition to a New York invasion by the chain, “Wal-Mart, a cost-minded retailer known for its dowdy merchandise, and New York, a city of excesses known for cutting-edge style, have long had an uneasy relationship.”

Damn straight, and hopefully this beautiful city will resist the malling of America for many years more.

In Zimbabwean, meanwhile, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was detained by police for several hours in an apparent attempt to keep him from addressing reporters on the spiraling violence by the government of Robert Mugabe against the citizens there. Tsvangirai was eventually released, but this situation requires vigilance.

An interview with me, conducted in Spanish, was published on the Haitian media outlet AlterPresse, after originally appearing in the New York Spanish-language publication La Voz. It can be read here.