Tag Bannack

Entries 46 Total

The Fort Builders Handbook

Sep 14, ’11 7:11 AM

My roommate Bannack and I have been throwing a sheet over his little table and chairs to make forts in the early morning. He likes being inside the tiny space we make and I like that I get to lay down for a few minutes more, even if it’s on the floor.  So I was delighted to read my friend Marissa’s fort-centric how-to post on her new blog.

Critical Thinking for Amateur Fort Builders

…Finally, you will want to photograph your fort when complete. If you’re feeling real-estatey, create a walk-thru video of your own, OR hire a third party production company that can create a  360 virtual tour of your fort. This is all good to share using social media. Your friends and family will enjoy seeing something you built, but scaled to fit a small person. You will get comments like, “ummm, that’s amazing and beautiful/luxurious!” and “Nice moat!.” These are all great things to hear, but you know that once you’ve finished this fort, it must be destroyed and replaced by a better one.

The subject immediately reminded me of the delightful architectural criticism parody: Couch Cushion Architecture; A Critical Analysis Part One and Part Two

At first glance the composition appears unintentional and the construction shoddy. But further investigation reveals a clear delineation between indoor/outdoor space with a design focus on protection through the use of barrier. Planes are shifted off the orthogonal to accommodate function; as a side effect it relieves inhabitants from a harsh Euclidian geometry. Grade B

If you’d like to know more, here is a very expensive book: Ottoman Forts

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Unreasonably Good Donuts

Sep 11, ’11 9:01 AM

Sara guided us to the waterfront yesterday afternoon to visit Williamsburg’s weekly flea market-style food fair Smorgasburg. There were lots of tempting food stands, each one filling a very specific gourmet niche.  Out of all there was to offer we sampled mole tempeh tamales and smooth Basque gazpacho from Txikito, but the best in show were the killer donuts from DOUGH, a donut only bakery on Fanklin Avenue.

We ordered one cafe au lait, one toasted coconut, and one candied blood orange for us grown ups and Bannack got a dollar’s worth of cinnamon sugar donut holes. I’m going back because we still have to try lemon glazed poppy seed, hibiscus, or passion fruit with chocolate nibs.

The cupcake revolution is over, long live the donut.

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Imagination Playground

Sep 8, ’11 8:39 PM

Sara, Bannack and I made it to Imagination Playgound today. It’s a very well designed little stop on the South Street Seaport, not terribly far from the Cooper where Chris is attending school. The park is split into three sections, a sand box, a set of massive blocks and a little water park. Bannack played until he was drenched and literally couldn’t lift himself off the ground.

In spite of his best efforts He only played with about 30% of what was available to him in the half acre or so of playground. I guess that means we’ll just have to play here again.

More photos here.

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Champagne Tennis

Sep 7, ’11 8:39 AM

We spent the afternoon with cousin Jill sipping Belvedere cocktails and playing Nerf tennis in Moët’s spaceport headquarters. Her company sponsors the US Open so they built a miniature tennis court in front of the bar, just big enough that you don’t have to put your drink down to play.

Bannack was pretty good at swinging the racket like an ax and yanking at the net but preferred running the ball back to the server to return it so I out-scored him pretty early in the match.

Does this photo make my nose look big?

Before heading back on the train to Brooklyn we all got wide slices of pie at a little hole in the wall in Chelsea. We were just a few doors down from The Leo House, the small nun-run hotel that our family used to stay in for our first few visits to New York with the Carroll College plays.

Seeing the front door triggered memories of eleven year old me eating cold porridge from the early morning breakfast buffet, talking with my mom in the drizzly shabby back garden and asking the elevator operator for a lift to the sixth floor please.

“Are you sure?” He asks me from his worn out stool.

Suddenly unsure, I nod, “Uh huh.”

He closed accordion elevator grate and pushed the brass handle  forward starting our slow and silent climb to the top floor. I took one step out of the elevator and knew immediately that I didn’t belong. The nuns lived on the sixth floor. I met one in the hallway and without a word she returned me to the elevator. I can’t remember if the operator apologized to her or not but it was an awkward ride down to whatever floor I was supposed to be on.

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Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Sep 1, ’11 12:54 AM

Sara and Chris and little June the Wheaten Terrier picked me up at JFK airport last night. It’s a short drive to their new apartment in Brooklyn and soon we were around the dining room table toasting over cold Manhattans. Maybe you’ve seen photos of their new place? It really is a unique and beautiful home, but what struck me most is that it is EXACTLY LIKE the last three places Sara and Chris have lived. So much so that Sara spent half a moment planning what to bring to a party back home, forgetting for that little while that she was in a New City. They’ve definitely found the right place.

This clown was catching up on sleep and had a long nap into the afternoon. He was up just after Chris and his brother Mike came home and the five of us, plus June, went for a meander through Williamsburg.  McCarren Park was busy with little kids and littler dogs. Skaters filmed each other grinding on hurricane Irene’s one downed streetlight while outside the cameraman’s frame three sunbathers lay working on tans and a woman daubed at her plein air oil of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral that just peaked out over the trees.

Bannack alerted us every time he saw a subway station by asking for a, “Ride? Ride? Ride?” Sara and I had three dollar falafel at the corner just past the Bedford stop. We passed highfalutin dive bars, a few dusty book stores, a top notch cheese shop, a heavy metal barber shop with a pile of cow skulls in the window, a panoply of the coolest retail experiments of the millennium. But my favorites were the Brooklyn Art Library and Mast Bros. Chocolate storefronts sitting side by on North 3rd Avenue.

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