a neighborhood love story

the one where he doesn't get the girl

Last week I wrote about my local wine bar for Why is this interesting? as a case study in loyalty, restaurant economics, and social class. Or: What happens when crypto enters the physical places where I have vested interest?

Vicky here. My local wine bar is on the blockchain. We need to discuss this.

Specifically, it’s joined an early adopter group of restaurants on Blackbird, a new loyalty and payments app with its own rewards currency, $FLY. The backend is crypto: an ‘L3’ blockchain built on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum L2.

I live in Brooklyn, so I can't be too surprised at crypto showing up in my everyday moments. Still, the bar felt like an unexpected entry point—at least culturally. But zooming out at the business case? It actually makes sense, at least in theory.

I have more thoughts for another time. In the meantime, what actually happens at the bar…

Sitting outside in April with a glass of wine in hand

for once everything is sufficient, for once these streets that you have walked every day for four years are the place you are unafraid, every day a ceasefire where past trespasses are forgotten for the time of the sun to pass through the cracks in the pavement, where boundary lines fall in pleasant places, where formers and yet-to-be's walk alike, together watch the old man wander by, number his days knowing you will see him again, darkness too shall fall again, see how gently

Darkness comes next // See / how gently
Adam Zagajewski, "In Drohobycz"

Still sitting

you come here for the clams, not the garlic you eat by mistake but that's easy to forgive because no one's kissing you tonight and so you wait, wait until the ground feels holy again, wait until the words you wrote last winter receive the early rain, and the single tulips give way to double, until the magnolias remind you not of the one you loved but the one still true

"In 1846, surveyor Richard Butt planned gardens in front of the brownstone houses in the oldest section of [Carroll Gardens] when he developed it. The homes are set farther back from the street than is common in Brooklyn, and the large gardens became an iconic depiction of the neighborhood." (Wikipedia)

Now standing, maybe even dancing

you see jack in the window, walk in to do your happy dance and hear about a new sound engineer, pick up a record you don't need, today it's frank zappa who put the same image on the front and back cover of hot rats, but why not give another? why not give more? you might ask him, all of the hims but you found greater questions to behold, like why aren't we all born unicorns? why do we trade love for lust? why don't we get to see what was promised? why do weeds come back? why does everyone here act like they are not lonely?

what do you call the feeling when hope returns?

“...this book makes me almost believe in things I thought I'd given up on. I might even dance again, daring to move my legs across this wasted land.”

Eve L. Ewing, in her in her forward to Hanif Abdurraqib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

cheers