Ghosts

A rapper, a pack of mutineers, and a perambulator walk into a bar...

I’m sitting on a bench in the area of New Haven called Broadway, one of the city’s shopping districts. 

Aside from taking a break during a long, sweaty walk, I’m mostly people-watching. 

Locals are popping into the Apple Store to buy new laptops and iPhones. Teenagers participating in a Yale summer program are browsing at Urban Outfitters. Out-of-town families are strolling past Lululemon, gawking at the majestic Gothic towers in the distance. 

They’re all oblivious to the ways this strip of land has changed over the years.

From my vantage point, I mostly see ghosts.

I see Cutler’s, the iconic record store that once occupied Broadway for more than 60 years, where I bought the music that shaped me as a teenager.

I see York Square Cinemas, the ramshackle old movie theater that exposed me to international films, art house releases, and classic revivals before closing in 2005.

I see the Educated Burgher, the bygone diner where I ate lunch just about every day while working summer internships down the street. It served its final burger on my birthday in 2014.

Time marches on.

Over the past 25 years or so, Yale has sought to clean up the area and make it feel safer for visitors and students. The school has lured national chain stores that stay open late, with big, bright, windowed storefronts.

Yes, the Cobden family (including an old baseball teammate of mine) still operates Campus Customs. Blue Jay Cleaners and Broadway Hair continue on. But that’s about it. 

Part of me wants to walk over to the high school kids sitting near me to give them an unsolicited history of the area: the familiarity of the locally-owned mom and pop stores; the sense of menace I felt walking out of a screening of Taxi Driver; how we came to know the eccentrics who roamed the streets like the Shakespeare Lady.

But no. I keep quiet.

I do wonder, though, if one of these kids will sit where I am 30 years from now, looking upon this view while wistfully thinking, “Remember when Broadway had Urban Outfitters and Lululemon and Apple? Those were the days…”

---

The Best…

…Series I Watched This Week

Dave (2020-23) — Created by Dave Burd & Jeff Schaffer
Streaming on Hulu

I recently got hooked on the FX show Dave.

I’ve been vaguely aware of it for a while, unsure of what exactly it was, but knowing from its marketing that it looked a little silly.

After some prodding from reader Hirsh S., I decided to give it a go.

The show’s main character is an aspiring rapper named Dave. He goes by the moniker Lil Dicky, which is the first of many, many, many dick jokes.

Dave (played by Dave Burd, who is also the rapper Lil Dicky in real life) is a nerdy 28-year-old Jewish guy from the suburbs of Philadelphia. His identity presents all kinds of conflicts for him: Is he a cultural appropriator? Is he a comedian or a “real” rapper? Can someone who grew up in comfort have anything to say as an artist in his chosen genre?

He and everyone around him feel — and sometimes articulate — these questions, but Dave is adamant that he’s one of the best rappers in the world. He just has to prove it.

More complexity tumbles out as the series unfolds, centering on creativity, friendship, romantic intimacy, navigating the modern music industry, and how single-minded striving for success can threaten one’s sense of self and relationships.

The show is based on Burd’s experience of becoming a YouTube sensation and then (to borrow the title of his debut album) a Professional Rapper.

On the show, Dave is endearing yet repellant, absurd yet relatable, confident yet full of self-loathing.

Sometimes you want to cheer him. Sometimes you want to smack him. Sometimes you want to hug him. In other words, he feels authentic.

Strong supporting performances provide a richness to the storytelling, particularly from the rapper GaTa, who plays a version of himself as Lil Dicky’s hype man.

Yes, there’s a silliness to the proceedings, but the show’s mixture of honesty, depth, and plenty of dick jokes kept me entertained for all three seasons.

---

…Audiobook I Listened to This Week

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (Doubleday, 2023) — By David Grann, Read by Dion Graham

I don’t mind going out on a boat every now and then, but the idea of taking a cruise has never really appealed to me. I know the rooms are nice, the food is plentiful, and there are plenty of activities on board. It’s just not for me.

So the idea of getting on a ship in the year 1740, sailing for months alongside hundreds of other dudes, amidst unsanitary accommodations, lousy food, and nothing to do but try not to die… well, European naval propaganda must have been excellent at the time, because braving the high seas seems to have been a reasonably popular vocation in the 18th century.

The thought — why would anyone do this? — kept going through my mind as I read David Grann’s latest nonfiction adventure story, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

Of course, none of the men on the English ship The Wager intended to be shipwrecked or to commit mutiny or murder (or to be murdered) when they set sail from England, bound for the Pacific Ocean in pursuit of a Spanish galleon. But as the subtitle indicates, the trip went very, very wrong when the ship hit some rocks off the coast of Patagonia.

As the story develops, one gets the sense that the men themselves asked the same question — why would anyone do this?

But Grann explores deeper questions than that, about power, “the truth,” and human behavior in the face of disaster and isolation.

Though the story had largely been forgotten in recent years, its conflicting accounts and sensational court martial trials were notorious at the time and influenced some of the leading European writers and thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Today, you can draw a straight line from the tale of The Wager to Moby Dick, Lord of the Flies, and the TV show Lost.

Grann has the rare skill of being able to take primary sources — in particular, journals of a few men who were on The Wager — and turn them into an engaging, cinematic narrative that also reckons with imperialism, race, and class. (I listened to the audiobook, performed with vigor by actor Dion Graham.)

Among the sources he relied on was the diary of teenage midshipman John Byron, who would later become the grandfather of the English poet Lord Byron.

Hollywood producers have paid handsomely for Grann’s stories, including Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z, both of which were made into major motion pictures. The Wager is next in line; Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio bought the film rights last year.

As for me, sure, I’d be willing to take a trip up I-95 to see the old whaling ships at Mystic Seaport. But beyond that, I’ll continue to be a landlubber, thanks very much.

---

…Magazine Piece On Walking I Read This Week

“Why Walking Helps Us Think” — By Ferris Jabr, The New Yorker, September 3, 2014

Photo: Alex Majoli/Magnum

I’ve written before about the pleasure I get from my (mostly) daily walks. These days, I practice this ritual in the woods of New Haven’s East Rock Park, not far from my home.

But my life felt very different when I first started keeping track of my daily step count. I was living in New York City, the pandemic was at peak terror in the late-winter/early-spring of 2020, and nobody was really going outside much.

With all the stress and anxiousness of those days, I needed to get my physical and emotional energy out somehow. So I would just walk… in my apartment. Front door to back window. Kitchen to bathroom. Bedroom to front door.

I walked with purpose, and I mixed up the routes as much as I could, but however I did it, I was still just a guy pacing around his apartment. 10,000 steps. 15,000 steps. 20,000 steps.

I used to wonder if my neighbors across the way watched me, wondering what was the matter with me.

I started reading books while walking. When I had remote work meetings and didn’t have to appear on video, I would turn off the camera and walk. And of course, for regular phone calls, I would stand up, put in my ear buds, and pace my indoor walking “trails.”

I covered a lot of miles while, in fact, going nowhere.

When I first moved to New Haven in the summer of 2020, I remember taking that caged animal mentality with me on my walks in East Rock Park. I would shoot down the trail like a torpedo, trying to outpace work stress, pandemic stress, moving stress, and whatever other stress my mind could conjure.

But as time went on, how I approached this ritual changed, as did what I got out of it. Now my trips through the park are more leisurely, more about breathing and thinking and appreciating nature.

All of this came to mind this week, when I came across a short piece from 2014 called, “Why Walking Helps Us Think.” The story delves into how our body chemistry reacts to walking, and how those changes can lead to more creative thinking. I recommend checking it out, especially if you’re a walker.