All sorts of thoughts can rush through your head during this type of situation. At one point we all were certain she was dead, and it really came down to that. She was either dead or alive, and the only thing keeping her from being dead was the kindness of the people, and we just hoped the right person was there for her.

We’d called all the hospitals, we were considering filing a missing persons’ report — but we figured the cops would have as good a chance as we did at finding her, or they wouldn’t give a damn where she was; just file that paper and go to the next call. One of my roommates and I got on our bicycles and scoured all of Williamsburg looking for her near her last known location. Thankfully she made it home soon after that — we got the call on our bikes near the Graham stop on the L, and we raced home. Thank god she made it back.

We’re all so small, and alone, and insignificant, when you really think about it. How can anyone be expected find a person in Brooklyn, really? It’s an impossible task. But it was really nice knowing that so many people came together to help try and find her.

I also want to bring your attention to the blog of another friend of mine, a current cancer fighter himself: Ezra of Fastboy Bicycles. A former dance instructor, resident of Harlem, maker of bicycles, and a really awesome guy. His writing is really inspiring, and well, it’s worth the read.

Teaching Cancer to Cry

Ezra

Courtesy of Acuweather

Tropical storm Hanna is estimated to hit New York tonight, meaning that it’s time to break out your heavy duty umbrella (i.e. not the $3 chinatown one) for this rare occasion that you’ll need it. Personally, I don’t intend to bike across the Williamsburg bridge, go swimming in the east river, or anything equally daring this evening, for fear of being washed away. Tonight might be a nice one to stay in, crack open a bottle of vodka, and cheers to the fact that you’ve got somewhere nice and cozy to dry off in — after we spend an estimated three hours searching Bushwick for tonic this afternoon, we certainly will enjoy the warmth and dryness.

ESTIMATED STORM PATH

SATELLITE OF STORM

Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Everett, I’m a twentysomething resident of Bushwick, Brooklyn. I’ve lived in the ’swick since December of 2006, and before that I was housing myself in a very tiny Williamsburg flat for a few years while I was wrapping up my service to higher education — and racking up semi-large amounts of student loan debt.

I enjoy coffee (especially Intelligentsia — hollah back Chicago), underground (like, in the basement loft) dance parties, vodka tonics at said parties, and more coffee. I bike to work every day, unless I’ve had too many vodka tonics the day before, or at least I will until it gets too cold in New York and my own snot starts to freeze to my face halfway over the Williamsburg bridge. At various points in my life I’ve been or wanted to be a contemporary dancer, journalist, photographer, photo-illustrator, and a photo editor. Right now I like writing short stories; these stories don’t make me money, nor does working at this blog. There’s something about working for free that’s just so much more fulfilling.

I also enjoy trees, nature, sitting in a kayak in the middle of a lake in upper Wisconsin with only the sound of frogs and a lone Loon circling overhead, sleeping on mountain tops upstate with friends, without tents, long hikes in, well, the wilderness with overcast skies and slightly damp earth, sitting on the edge of the ocean, alone or with a friend, and silently contemplating the grains of sand and their relationship with time and space, or the continuous pounding of waves across the shore. And I’m really incredibly upset that McCain’s vice-presidential choice Sarah Palin wants to kill the polar bears. Uh oh, I like things that aren’t concrete and more than twelve stories high! Ahhh!

All of this has lately brought me to this one sad conclusion over the last six or so months: Oh shit, what am I doing in this city? Aren’t I supposed to be rat-racing around with a pitchfork trying to make 60k a year in order to just pay my rent and eat at Moto once in awhile? Working 75 hours a week until my slave driver of choice turns a tidy profit? And breathing in epic amounts of carbon dioxide and other harmful chemicals? Conundrum.

So, I’m leaving this icky/filthy/smoggy city, as soon as I can. And thus I pitched Sean of Metblogs an idea. “Why don’t you let me be that blogger who is leaving?” I say — actually it wasn’t quite like that, but let’s pretend. “I have mad credibility!” I also said, in order to back up my pitch. And he said “that’s a great idea!” And now you have me here now. Theoretically I’ll be transferred the the Metblog in the city that I eventually move to.

Until I leave, I shall blog about the End of Times in New York City.

Cheerful!

Wikipedia

It’s 8pm in Brooklyn and the sun has already set, one of the many reminders that it isn’t summer anymore. Another sign is last weekend’s final show at Greenpoint’s McCarren pool, once again relegated to a desolate reminder of good times, at least unti 2011, when the pool will reopen as a real, live, wet, swimming pool! The New York Times chronicles the end of (good) times here. We know you’ll miss them (or you missed them).

Yah, we know you all didn’t brave the lines at Yo La Tengo, but we will miss the crouching, sitting, lying on our stomachs on piles of chipping lead paint during the Tuesday movie nights — oh how hard it is to sit in one place for two hours on concrete. This summer we did manage to go to the nostalgic edition of Wet Hot American Summer, and that one flick about glam rock that we couldn’t concentrate on because we overindulged in that bucket of free Starbucks energy drinks. But what we’ll miss most, and we know you do, will be the after-pool traipse over to Matchless across the street, and the valiant attempts to score [an innocent chess] game with the crowds of lingering directionless hipsters.

Thankfully, we’re going to have a public pool of epic proportions if all goes well with Bloomberg’s budget, construction, and all. Hopefully the VIP line won’t be as long as the one into MGMT on that one soggy day in early August. And, I suppose, we’re equally scared of the lines everywhere else next summer, when all of the label PR kids and their legions of tag-along writers are trying to get into, when there is no universal pool event to house them all. Glasslands: watch out, they’re coming for you.

Everyone, get out of the pool. [NYTIMES]