Tag: NYC

Am I Being Delusional To Think I Could Make It In NYC? (Yes, Probably)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I look back on my life and am sad that I didn’t have the gumption to visit NYC on a regular basis when I was in my 20s. Maybe things would have worked out differently for me. Now, as an Old, I visit NYC every once in a while and I love it. It’s really inspiring and, as an extrovert, I feed of the city’s intense energy. Whenever I go, find myself slipping into a daydream where I live in the city full time and I’m a regular bon vivant.

Me, in LA 2025?

In other words, I’m delusional.

But there’s some context. I’ve found most New Yorker’s have a lot of heart despite being very cold and distant to strangers. The city if full of characters and, being a character myself, I find myself drawn there. If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere, as the song goes. I think back to my drunken rampage when I was living in Seoul many moons ago, and a little part of me wistfully wonders if I could pull off similar success on Trantor instead of Terminus, to use an Isaac Asimov reference.

Here’s my thinking — the same dynamic that caused me to become one of the best known expats in South Korea would be at play in New York City. I’m an extreme extrovert and the more I drink, the more extroverted I become. The usual caveats about drunks thinking they’re the funniest person in the room apply, of course.

And, yet, every time I delude myself into thinking this, I realize maybe I have the wrong city in mind. There are plenty of cranks on the streets of New York City that get nowhere in life. New York City is full of larger-than-life, colorful characters who pretty much exist solely to inspire drunk writers like me.

As such, maybe LA is where I should head instead, given the opportunity. The only reason I even suggest this is I’m such a good schmoozer (especially when intoxicated) that I have a hunch that someone, somewhere with a little bit of clout might notice me if I ended up at a cocktail party. As I’ve written before, I’m known to pontificate a lot like Quentin Tarantino in the movie “Sleep With Me.”

But, of course, I’m old. I’m not as cute as I used to be, far from it.

So, I think my best bet is to just keep my head down and keep working on these six novels I’m developing and writing. And, should the opportunity come, look into writing a screenplay or three as well.

Oh, To Be Young In The City

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hate to inform you that I’m no longer young. As such, even if I get what I want, which is to become a successful novelist / screenwriter / photographer and I turn into one of those insufferable wealthy liberals who can afford Blue Apron meals — I will never get to enjoy my youth in New York City or LA.

The only way I can console myself is by accepting that I did get to have some sort of youthful fun in Seoul a long time ago. That was pretty cool. But I really long to live in either NYC or LA.

I visit NYC every once in a while and I love it. I love it because of its energy and how much it reminds me of Seoul. In Seoul, however, people won’t talk to you because they can’t speak English while in NYC they won’t talk to you because they are too busy and they don’t care.

I think if I ever get a little extra money that my best shot is to go to LA because I’m a good enough schmoozer that I could probably talk myself into a three picture deal just by getting drunk and having a very interesting conversation with a producer.

But there comes a moment when I have to measure those expectations some. Unless I win the fucking lottery — which I suppose is possible — any success I have from this point on will be framed by my age.

I will be an “old person” who “came out of the blue” to be successful. But I can’t help that I’m a late bloomer and always have been. That’s just my lot in life. One thing I do know, however, is that I still have one last hattrick in me. I believe with all my heart that the best is yet to come.

I’m going to surprise a lot of people who think I’m a loser, or a failure or just another Internet crank. I’m going to be bonified, as they say.

While there’s life, there’s hope.

Do New Yorkers Have It In Them To Fuck Shit Up In 2024 – 2025 During The Likely Certification Crisis?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hate violence. I hate conflict. This is just me wondering out loud if one of my idle “terribly negative” daydreams have any basis in fact. You see, as I’ve written before, there are two places where a Second American Civil War could start. One is California (by simply leaving the Union) and the other is New York City.

Will New Yorkers Do It Again, This Time Against Trump?

As you may know, in the early days of the First American Civil War, New York City dallied with the notion of becoming a Free City as the United States was beginning to tear itself apart. Nothing came of it, but it is enough to make you wonder if something similar might be in the air should a Second American Civil War begin because we don’t know who the fuck POTUS is around late 2024, early 2025.

I’ve already mentioned the scenario I have in mind — at some point after Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025, it becomes clear that Steve K. Bannon’s “administrative coup” has worked and even though Trump would otherwise win fair and square, the whole process is so fucking corrupt that we can’t agree on who won the election.

As such, the passions of the day become so much that New Yorkers grow enraged and storm Trump Tower, Fox News, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal. It would all be very dramatic and historic and would likely cause our incoming ding-dong tyrant Trump to do something complete insane that would cause a number of Blue States to bounce out of the Union in unison.

And, yet, is this really possible?

I don’t think so. I just can’t imagine it would be spontaneous. You would need some sort of leadership and even in New York City — as far as I can tell — there really isn’t much leadership in the anti-MAGA movement.

For the time being, I think my prediction that we’ll just slip peacefully into autocracy is the right one. American democracy is in its twilight and, really, there is so much slack available to the forces of tyranny in the United States that we will all wake up in twenty years and wonder why a huge statue to Trump is being constructed on the Washington Mall.

It definitely seems as though gradually after 2025 the United States is going to become a fascist autocracy and that will be that. Things won’t change all that much at first, but soon enough, just like with the end of Animal Farm, we’ll look back and forth between ourselves and Russia and realize we’re the same animal.

Is New York City Going To Hell In A Handbasket?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is the kind of story I would write if I won the lottery and had the funds to start a snarky Gawker-like blog. But, alas, I have no money and one listens to me. But it is interesting how there is a growing sense among some that New York City is lurching towards turning into a 1970s shit hole again.

I only visit NYC occasionally and whenever I do, I love the place. I may never be “young in the city,” but it would be pretty great to live there long-term before I drop dead.

From what I can tell, while NYC is definitely going through a transition of sorts, I don’t know if it’s turning in to an Escape From New York hellscape. Things are different from when they were before the pandemic, but they’re not, at least as of yet, THAT bad.

I think it’s a time of wait and see.

It could go either way. But we’re dealing with long term, macro trends. If I was writing for a neo-Gawker, I would talk to NYC experts and to everyday New Yorkers about what they thought.

It would be all very hammy and snarky. But, lulz, nothing matters.

Vibe Shift: A New Gawker For Generation Tik-Tok



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The Tik-Tok generation doesn’t really have a blog of its own. I’m old enough to see the progression from Late Night With David Letterman to Spy Magazine to Gawker to….uh…..nothing? And I use Tik-Tok a lot even though I’m an Old and it seem pretty obvious that Tik-Tok is Ground Zero for modern pop culture.

Julia Fox — Tik-Tok icon.

If you believe we’re in the midst of a “vibe shift” then it makes a lot of sense that the new vibe would have its own publication. It’s kind of sad that Gawker is now an undead husk of itself — even though the original version was fucking hateful and nasty before its demise.

Anyway, here’s what I would do. I would start a site that was ostensibly obsessed with Tik-Tok and the pop culture it flings off at an astonishing rate each day. But, I would also produce a lot of really interesting, serious commentary about other topics — politics, what have you. You get The Youngs hooked on this new blog by taking Tik-Tok deadly seriously, then prepare them for the Adult World by presenting them with hot takes on what’s going on in the broader world.

And, if I was involved, I would occasionally throw curve balls involving doing something silly with Julia Fox around New York City or whatever. Or maybe the occasional sexxy snap of this or that celebrity simply to be ornery. The issue is — do anything not to be meh. Not to be boring. The whole reason the blog would exist would be to provoke a response of some sort.

As best I can tell, Generation Tik-Tok doesn’t have its own Gawker at the moment. Of course, there is a risk that, lulz, by definition Generation Tik-Tok doesn’t want it’s own Gawker-like blog and fuck you.

But it is something to think about.

My Conflicted Relationship To Magazines Is Comical


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On one hand, I love, love, love magazines. I love them so much as an art form that I keep wanting to start a zine just so I can enjoy the opportunity to actually work for one.

But.

On the OTHER hand, I never read them — even when I subscribe to them.

I guess like creating them and the idea of them, but when it comes to consuming one…meh. That’s been a real problem for me the last few years. I’m so obsessed with being A Creator that I almost never actively consume media. This is a real problem when I’m trying to develop and write four novels because, lulz, I need to keep an eye on the competition.

I can only conclude that, but for the want of a nail, I would be in NYC pounding the pavement trying to start up some sort of vaguely Village Voice type publication. It’s sad that barring something pretty dramatic, I’m going to die never fulfilling my dream of starting a magazine in, say, NYC or LA.

Ugh.

The Vision Thing: My Pitch For A ‘Political Gawker’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A lot time ago, Ana Marie Cox ran Wonkettte. It was a sister blog to Gawker in NYC. It was really fun and was known for its coverage of one particularly sordid Capitol Hill sex imbroglio.

Anyhoo, that was a lot time ago. Wonkette was sold and the last time I checked it was so over the top in its political coverage as to be something of a more serious version of The Onion. Gawker, meanwhile, died from hubris. Then came back. Then died. And now is back in a undead form

I’m completely consumed by this blog’s Webstats and, as such, I’ve noticed a minor uptick in traffic for one specific reason — a lot of other people besides me have our looming autocracy or civil war existential choice on the brain. To me, it seems obvious that there is a sweet spot out there in the aether for a blog that would sort of be Wonkette-Gawker-Spy in nature.

It would take both seriously and literally Trump and the entire shit show that is the modern MAGA New Right. People like Jesse Kelly and his “Welcome To The New Right” catch phrase would be our meat and potatoes. We would attack that fucker — and people like him — with all the snark at our deposal. And this new blog would wallow in pacing out what is going to happen in the late 2024 – early 2025 timeframe in regards to autocracy or civil war.

I say “we” only as a rhetorical device. I have tried — and failed — repeatedly to start various new blogs over the years (usually about 1 a year in August). And I’m just not going down that route again. I really — REALLY want to wrap up four novels sooner rather than later and I’m just not going to divert my attention away from that massive project.

But.

If I could get someone with some business sense to join forces with me, I could be convinced to narrow the amount of time I work on those four novels. I have the experience and vision to build the editorial side of a “political Gawker” up from the ground up. I don’t know shit about the business side and would only throw myself into such an endeavor if I could find someone with the money and business sense (and shared political vision) to help me out with the basics of starting such a blog.

And, yet, I’m realistic. I don’t live in a big city and all this writing about this subject is hence very moot. I would love to write for the new, undead Gawker in some capacity, but I don’t live in NYC and, lulz.

I keep telling myself I’m going to stop writing about this particular dream, then I turn around and write about it some more. I think this summer dream will burn itself out by late August. If I can just get a few URL hits from NYC or LA that would be enough to make all this verbiage entertaining.

I have a lot of experience in writing in the Gawker-style (see below) and it’s kind of a shame that just because I have no friends and no one likes me that I can’t find someone, anyone, to be my business partner for something that would probably be quite lucrative and influential.

ROKing Sinchon with Jenny 8

Jennifer 8. Lee likes food.

A lot.

Recently, I hung out with the New York Times reporter and her friend Tomoko Hosaka of the Wall Street Journal here in Seoul.

The plan was for her to go to a jimjilbang with Annie Shapiro and ms. tiff, but that didn’t work out. Tomoko wanted to go to eat “Korean barbeque” and since Annie and Tiff are veggies, they were left out. This story was supposed to be about Annie and Tiff taking Jenny to a jimjilbang and getting all nekkid – now that would have been funny – but there are no happy endings in Korea so you get this write-up instead. I took a picture of the two ladies at the restaurant, but they wouldn’t let me use it. I generally think taking pictures of yourself with famous people is kind of lame, so you, gentle reader, will just have to settle for a picture of the fortune cookie I was given. If Annie and Tiff had done the story, maybe the situation would be different.

On the way to the subway, Jenny kept stopping to eat stuff from street vendors. I had to DJ that Friday night and we had to go all the way across town, so I was starting to stress out a little bit.

Again and again, she would ask me what this or that food was offered at street vendors as we headed towards the subway station. I had no clue. “I eat because I have to, not because I want to,” I told her finally. What else could I say? I

The fact that I met her is a testament not only to this wacky Internet age that we live in, but how being an expatriate in a place like Korea has its quirky advantages.

I met Jenny ’cause I, well, picked on her middle name online. When I first came to Korea I had way too much drunken spare time on my hands, so I often found myself in bouts of soju-fueled writing binges.

“I can not stress enough how odd it is that Jennifer Lee uses an ‘8’ for her middle name. It’s just totally unheard of. It’s like one of the

columns of Western civilization has suddenly become just a little unstable,” I once wrote. “I don’t care that her name really is ‘Jennifer 8. Lee.’ In

years gone by, an editor would have taken one look at it, eyed the flask of Jack Daniels in his desk drawer then said, ‘Look, kid, I don’t care how

lucky the damn number is, you’re going by ‘Jennifer Lee‘ from now on.'”

Her middle name is a lucky number in Chinese culture. How exactly she was able to keep it in her byline eludes me. The fact that she graduated from Harvard University may have something to do with it.

When this actual famous reporter out of the blue contacted me, it both made me very happy and very nervous. She contacted me because she had read some of the shit I had written about her online and she needed some help finding Chinese restaurants in Korea. She’s on sabbatical from the Times to write a book on, like, the best Chinese restaurants in the world or some such. The first time she contacted me, I suddenly felt kinda bad about all the pointless mental masturbation I expended on her.

It’s funny how you can talk shit about a famous person online, but when you actually meet them you treat them like you would anyone else. While she’s no Maureen Dowd, in some media circles, Jennifer 8. Lee is, in fact, “famous” or “notorious.” For people who read Gawker.com, Jenny is shorthand for a reporter who writes seemingly pointless trend stories about things like “man dates.” She had the odd habit of using the phrase, “people of my generation” in a very authoritative tone, like she literally was speaking for everyone her age. “Jenny, you’re younger than I am,” I said teasingly at least once over galbi.

She actually has a rather bubbly, cute personality. My lone meeting with her did leave some1thing of a mystery in my mind — how is it that someone who, in the words of one article “causes $148,000 in damage to her Washington condo” actually be quite nerdy? What the heck does she do? She is obviously an extremely smart woman and from the little mischievous glint in her eye I can see how she probably loves to host a great party. But like all the great reporters I’ve known, she didn’t seem like much of a extrovert. She was quiet and curious about everything.

I picked her up at the Ritz Carlton. When I met her, she handed me a fortune cookie, while I handed her a copy of ROKon. “Fortune cookies are actually originally from Japan, not China,” Jenny said. It was a huge fortune cookie. It looked like a piece of found art. “I’ll either eat it when I’m drunk or crush it when I’m drunk,” I quipped.

I took the women to Sinchon to my favorite Korean restaurant. I go there so much that I’m like a part of the family. Tomoko seemed a bit uneasy hanging out with little old me, while Jenny was a good sport. I wanted to get Tomoko drunk to loosen her up a bit, but she had an early morning date with the DMZ.

At one point, I felt kinda bad for Tomoko. She’s a fairly important journalist in her own right, and all I did was talk to Jenny.

“I know you went to Harvard, Jenny,” I said invoking the “H-bomb” without meaning to, “But where did you go, Tomoko?”

“Northwestern,” she said with just a touch forlornly.

We talked a long time. I talked up ROKon, while the ladies were more interested in the food than anything I had to say. They’re an intense bunch, those two. I told them about knowing another Wall Street Journal reporter, Lina, but neither of them knew her. They were perplexed that they didn’t know her ’cause she has some connection to the Washington Post. Jenny acted like if there was an Asian who worked in any capacity at the Post, she would know her.

I had of vision of taking Jenny to Nori People and being able to see her shake what her momma gave her to my musical selections, but it was not to be. Jenny couldn’t stay. I did take Tomoko and Jenny there just to show it to her. “Oh, this is fun,” she said. You have to give those New York Times reporters credit, they are an observant bunch.

They left a lot sooner than I’d liked. As I said, I had all these grand plans to show them what a fun time we ROKon staffers were. Jenny promised to show me around New York City if I ever happened to end up there. The more I look at that fortune cookie, though, the more it looks like something that rhymes with “Mulva.”

By SHELTON BUMGARNER

ROKon Magazine Editor

V-Log: Did Millennials Kill Snark? Or Did Twitter?

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some thoughts on NYC media.

One Of New York City’s Best Kept Secrets

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I don’t go to New York City very often. In fact, I go very rarely. I love the city dearly and one of the major problems for a broke-ass writer like me is finding a place to stay (should I feel like spending more than just the day.)

You see, getting there is cheap — I just take the ChinaTown bus overnight and wake up there.

It’s taken me a little bit of time, but I think I may have stumbled across what I’m going to do going forward. I used to live in South Korea and one of the staples of Korean life is the jjimjibang, or sauna. A Korean sauna is kind of like a YMCA if going to the YMCA was a central aspect of American life.

You have your male side and your female side and then you put your sauna issued jammies on and go to the common area. If you don’t have much — if any — luggage on you, then it’s pretty easy to spend $60 for an overnight stay at a jjimjibang and be on your way. You have a locker that fit a bookbag’s worth of clothes, so there’s that.

There are some downsides for the uninitiated — you do have to get naked with (same sex) strangers while you put your jammies on to go the common area, but at $60 a night in the middle of the city, that’s not bad. No sexual activity is permitted and, really, I can honestly say all the times I’ve been there — even late at night — the bare-ass section of it was almost completely devoid of any homoeroticism. Of course, if you’re, like, a twink, YMM.

The one I go to is K Town Sauna. It’s not perfect and it’s kind of small, but it gets the job done. It’s strategically located in NYC’s K Town, which is pretty cool. It closed at some point in the last year, only to re-open, so it might be worth your while to swing by or call to make absolutely sure it’s open.

Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He is writing his first novel. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.

Idle Mulling Of Seoul’s Haebangchon Versus NYC’s Brooklyn

by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner

I lived in Seoul a few years, specifically in the Haebangchon, or HBC neighborhood. It was all a long time ago and I have romanticized the experience so much that it’s virtually a daydream. But what is interesting is when I finally managed to find myself in Brooklyn, I found it rather meh compared to HBC.

HBC, at least when I was there, was a small and intense community of creative types from all over the world. It was almost like a really, really small college town. There were a lot of older guys dating younger women. Lots of sex. Lots of booze. Lots of drugs. But all of that has very much changed as best I can tell.

It’s all a very different experience now. The place has gentrified to a great extent and I think native Koreans have largely lost their unwillingness to live near expats. So, things are different. It used to be you could get a decent apartment for about $300 a month with an amazing view of the Seoul cityscape. This is, alas, not the case anymore I don’t think.

I really miss my time in Seoul. It was a lot of fun. But that moment in my life is over. I can’t go back. I’ve gotten older and all the energy I felt back about 10 years ago is long gone. I sometimes idly think about one last trip to Asia at some point in the future before I turn 50, but that doesn’t seem likely at this point.

But for the want of a nail, I would still be in Seoul. But it just wasn’t meant to be. My future is — if anything — one of a novelist. It will be interesting to see how things work out.