Flags

Caroline Sassan
February 14, 2022

My Nan tells me about a plant she was given by her friend Joanie. Some people say they ain’t good at caring for plants, she says, and I know she’s shaking her head on the other end of the line, but I always tell them: Just keep watering your flowers. She has no such problem with caring for things. When her new plant bloomed, she says, It was like Joanie every day. There is absence and there is distance and there are the things that fill the gaps. When I answer her questions about the rest of my family, she holds onto my words in that particular way people hold onto wishful truths, wringing them out along the sidewalk without ever needing to loosen their grasp. She is among the ranks of old persons who have an exceptionally strong grip–even keeping a hand on the possibility of death, if only to make it seem like less a fact of inevitability and more a question of when she concedes. I am among the ranks of human beings who like to touch everything at once, if only to find some guaranteed presence in the point where my fingers meet something solid. As if a place of one dimension is somewhere you could ever survive; as if that one dimension–a certain scent, striped moonlight through the window–could ever constitute a place at all, let alone one high enough for you to stand. If a thought is merely a point of departure, then it is a place to which we never return again. If life is spent accumulating distance, then there is no way for you to understand this story. The light changes just as I turn the corner. The flowers flutter as if to fly out the window. The leaves flood green over the wide road and I think to myself that I do not know what makes a place a thing you can inhabit. *** When I was young, my mom gave my brother and I buckets and gloves and sent us into the yard to pick weeds. She particularly wanted us to go after the dandelions, incentivizing their capture with five cents per flower we picked. I wound up kneeling in the grass with a flower cupped in my hands, leaning close to listen—the flower was alive! Humming with energy even after the plucking! I opened my hands to add it to the bucket, and out flew an undoubtedly angry bee. It circled me once, twice, and then was off. I wasn’t stung that day and haven’t been since. I was recently informed that dandelions are hydrophobic when they go to seed. What this looks like when a stem is plunged under the water is: every seed equidistant from the center. I thought for a while that when you are yourself, you are a sphere, which is to say that you are someone whose every part is equally distant from their center. Maybe when you are this spherical self, maybe with the water pressing in, there forms a membrane of what can be seen on the surface and spun any which way to always resemble the whole. If this is true, then the integration of your being is mostly composed of that distance between the center and the things it reaches out to touch. I’m not sure. Regardless, I no longer pick dandelions. When I left home, my mom packed five tubes of sunscreen. She insisted on buying a wedge of asiago from the grocery store even though I rarely eat cheese. She inspected the bathroom once, twice. She talked over and over about the best beaches in Rhode Island. I only knew beaches, real ones, from family vacations long ago. She has some infatuation with the shoreline from childhood days spent at the cottage in Maine. On our family trips, she would always sit back in her white sunhat, reading a book or a magazine with toes sunken into the sand while I dared myself to go farther into the surf. She surveyed the scene with a contentment I didn’t then understand and now am too far from to picture clearly. In the times she let me drag her out to the ocean, I felt safe enough to swim out to the bigger waves, safe enough to stop my paddling and put my face up close to hers to see through her brown tinted sunglasses. I’m losing track of the story. Let me try again. I’m driving home. The flowers are fluttering, remember? To my right, a man raises a flag from half mast. I never find out why the flag had been lowered. I think about it from time to time, along with the image of your face in the moonlight asking some perpetual question. I’d charcoal in the moon to dust over your superstitions, but how do you begin to forgive the things you cannot see? I cut the flower stems diagonally like you taught me. They are sharp at the bottom, but this way they can take in more water. Using the present indicative is maybe a way of getting closer to acceptance, just like tricks of the light are maybe a way of getting closer to home. *** The stone skips on the water because it has something to say, but it says nothing but look. That’s all I can give you here. I grew up in a house with a mother who loved me in ways she doesn’t remember and said things I’d rather forget; with a father who hid things in the back of the cupboard and always liked watching TV for the knowledge that thousands of people were watching at the same time. Sometimes there were flowers on the counter. For my Nan’s second wedding several years ago, I made a bouquet of origami flowers: paper that would last forever. But flowers, I think, are in a forever way of leaving. I was younger then, anyway. She keeps the flowers on her desk, and when the sun strikes through the window, all I see is the dust folded between each layer of tissue. When I return home for the first time, I find that even a homecoming can be a way of moving farther away. My favorite scabs to pick began to heal when I wasn’t looking. I pass streets I have no need to turn down; houses on corners with porches to which I can no longer walk up and knock. The flag still remains at full mast, but I didn’t stop by to tell you. I was somewhere else, thinking that if I fall away from every person I want to address in the second person, maybe I’ll fall into myself. Distance, by definition, is the length from here to where we began. What does it ignore? A final memory I offer you: I am small and my mom lets me choose the plants for the little garden patch right beneath my bedroom window. I’m standing with the hose showering that pine bush, the one perpetually dying with half its needles red and dry. We kneel among the coneflowers and dogwood and sprawling tree with the soft little buds on it, and she explains why we have to cut back the lamb’s ear, trimming its lushness to some arbitrary margin; the gangly offshoots will stretch farther away and steal more and more water from the original plant. Still, she smiles to see me sitting in the grass, clippers cast aside, with the softest of leaves between my finger and thumb. Sometimes I look at a flag and see a distress signal. Someone raised it from the froth of peonies, tumbling over each other in a way that we call blooming, because they have reason to want to return home. Sometimes I look at a flag and see you, waving your white hat from somewhere further down the beach.

A Tale of One City: Pawtucket’s Old and New

Nicholas Miller
February 10, 2022

A giant mural decorates the main concourse at Pawtucket, Rhode Island’s McCoy Stadium, the abandoned home of the Boston Red Sox’s former Triple-A affiliate, the Pawtucket Red Sox. It displays a green box score with 33 innings in commemoration of the longest game in baseball history, played at McCoy in 1981 by the PawSox and the Rochester Red Wings. Next to the mural is a photograph of the PawSox’s Marty Barrett scoring the winning run. The caption reads, “A Moment in Baseball History.” But now, not just the photograph, but the entire stadium is a relic of the past. The PawSox, a part of the Pawtucket community since 1970, left for Worcester, Massachusetts in 2018 after a long and emotional fight to keep the team in the city failed. McCoy has been largely unused since then. High tufts of grass pop up unevenly in the outfield. Section placards rest in the stands, having fallen from the walls. Pawtucket, a 70,000-person city 20 minutes northwest of Providence on the banks of the Seekonk River, is filled with these memorials to a former time, which are decaying even as the city shows signs of an evolution. It was in Pawtucket that the American Industrial Revolution began in 1793. Samuel Slater, the superintendent at a British mill, fled to America with stolen textile factory designs and established the country’s first fully mechanized cotton-spinning mill at Old Slater Mill, a site just 400 feet from Pawtucket’s current city hall. It was the beginning of the city’s prolific manufacturing career, which would remain prosperous through the 19th century and into the 20th. But eventually, in the mid-20th century, much of the city’s textile industry closed or moved elsewhere. Together with the later construction of strip malls outside of the city, this development led to the decline of Pawtucket’s downtown economy. Further, the construction of I-95 through the downtown area, allowing travelers to whizz past the city with their dollars unspent, meant that the city became passed by both literally and metaphorically. When former city councilor John Barry III, 72, was a child, he couldn’t walk in the downtown during the Christmas shopping season because there were so many people. “There was not a vacant storefront. There were clothing stores, appliance stores, hat stores, and bakeries. That’s all gone,” he said. Instead, what remains are old buildings with empty storefronts and “For Rent” signs and, fitting with the city’s aged aesthetic, a collection of apartment buildings inhabited by the elderly. Even one of the businesses that does exist is a call back to a former time. Stillwater Books, a quaint bookstore owned by husband and wife, Dawn and Steven Porter, sits on the corner of the city’s central intersection and supplies a clichéd representation of the sense of the past that hangs over Pawtucket. But while Stillwater is a charming piece of nostalgia, just across the Seekonk River looms the Apex Building, a futuristic, pyramidal monstrosity that shows the ugly decay of Pawtucket. It was built in 1969 as a department store for the Apex Company, with its huge ziggurat design allowing for the company to broadcast its name to I-95 drivers while avoiding billboard regulations. But the company faltered in the early 2000s and the building has been mostly empty since 2015. The Apex served as the cover for Business Insider’s list of the ugliest building in each state, and while perhaps intended to seem sent from the future, its sci-fi-like pillars and pyramid crown only convey a lamentable architectural style of the distant past. The city’s proposal to keep the PawSox in the city would have torn down the Apex and built a stadium in its place, which Dawn Porter hoped would revitalize the “sad and depressing” downtown. The PawSox had agreed to a deal with the city and state to pay for half of the 83-million-dollar stadium, more than any other minor league team has paid for their ballpark. Former Pawtucket Director of Administration Tony Pires was part of the effort to build the new stadium, and said the deal, which also included new hotels and houses, was a “home run,” and would’ve raised significant tax revenue for the city while also energizing the declining downtown. However, many Rhode Islanders were wary of significant statewide investment after the Rhode Island legislature had sunk $75 million to bring to the state 38 Studios, a video game company that quickly went bankrupt. “There was always resistance from the general public [in Rhode Island],” said Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien. He said he understood public hesitancy but that keeping the PawSox and developing around the stadium would have meant “more taxes, more jobs, more revenue in the long-term for the city.” “It’s hard to explain that to people,” he said. After a public outreach campaign to try to win support, the bill to approve the spending passed the Rhode Island Senate in 2018, but in the House, Speaker Nicholas Matiello never put the bill to a vote, citing worries about the legislation’s state bond guarantees, which would have left the state on the hook for the money if the team defaulted. Matiello proposed a new bill, without state bond guarantees, but without that security, the cost of building the stadium would likely have spiked. The new bill, introduced the day before the legislative session ended, passed both the House and the Senate, but the lack of state bond guarantees seemed to be a dealbreaker for the PawSox owners. On Friday, August 17th, the owners held a press conference to announce their agreement with the city of Worcester, and suddenly, the PawSox, after 48 years, were set to leave. “My heart was broken,” Pires said. “I think a lot of people’s hearts were broken.” “It was such a good vibe in the neighborhood,” said resident David Lithgoe of having the PawSox in Pawtucket. “To see families, little kids excited with their glove… it was real, real nice.” “Everybody was happy,” said resident Diane Proulx. “Now there’s nothing.” When the PawSox left, they joined the city’s Memorial Hospital and beautiful Leroy Theatre as community institutions to depart in recent decades. The hospital was built in the early part of the 20th century, and went through a number of expansions, serving a large portion of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. It began to have financial difficulties in the mid-2000s and closed in 2017. The Leroy, a lavishly decorated movie theater, was built in 1923 and destroyed in 1997, even after it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. “It feels like Pawtucket is losing everything,” a customer of McCoy Market–a convenience store next to the baseball stadium–told me. “It’s like the wild, wild west.” It’s a harsh description, but I know what he means. Walking through Pawtucket means taking note of the creepy deserted warehouses, office buildings, and stores. At one point, I walked into the shadow of an abandoned school building that towered over the sidewalk. It had a symmetrical brick structure, with the roof forming a sharp triangular peak in the middle. “St. Mary’s School” was carved into a stone patch on the front façade, with “A.D.” and “1890” chiseled on either side, and a crumbling stone sculpture of the Virgin Mary above. All the windows were wide open; many had holes in their glass panes. Behind the spiky, metal fence, the front yard contained ugly, overgrown vegetation. And of course, there was a graveyard right next door. But beyond the occasional horror-movie feel, the deserted buildings are indicative of a more serious reality. The Pawtucket of today seems an artifact of the past, a sad collection of remains from a better, more prosperous time. But there is also another, more hopeful side to Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The most obvious piece of evidence sits on the western bank of the Seekonk River. For now, the site doesn’t look pretty. Three yellow excavators rest beside mounds of sediment in a mini-wasteland surrounded by green brush. But in a year and a half, the site, together with its counterpart directly across the river, will hold new shops, restaurants, apartments, a riverwalk, a pedestrian bridge, and the chief feature, a brand-new 7,500 seat soccer stadium, which will host Pawtucket’s own professional soccer team from the United Soccer League, U.S. soccer’s second tier. Labeled “Tidewater Landing,” the project, with a $284 million price tag, will be the largest development in Pawtucket’s history. The idea for the project arose when the city listened to development proposals for the deserted McCoy Stadium shortly after the PawSox left. While nothing has come to fruition for McCoy, out of those discussions, the city established its relationship with project developers, Fortuitous Partners, and began conversations about Tidewater Landing. Grebien said the city didn’t have the intention of replacing the PawSox with the new project, but added that the loss of the PawSox made the state government more willing to help out Pawtucket. They “realized something needed to be done,” Grebien said. For the Tidewater Landing project, the state will provide $50 million in incentives, including a $36 million loan that will be repaid with future tax revenue. The stadium itself will be entirely privately financed. Rhode Island’s Department of Commerce estimates that the project will create 2,500 construction jobs and 1,200 permanent jobs, and Grebien said that over the next 20 years the project is expected to bring in an additional $800 million in tax revenue. And while some residents and business owners I spoke to questioned how much new business the soccer team will really bring to the struggling downtown area on the other side of I-95 from the stadium, Brett Johnson, founder of Fortuitous Partners, argues that the development will “lift the collective boats in the broader region.” More corporations and investors will want to take advantage of the increase in economic activity, Johnson reasoned, and that will lead to new ventures located in the areas beyond Tidewater Landing, including the downtown. Compared to the failed PawSox stadium, “It’s a much bigger, better project,” Mayor Grebien said. And by investing in soccer, the city has an eye to the future. “Baseball is a slower sport” mostly watched by the older generation, Grebien said. “You’ve got the younger generation that wants soccer….It’s an up-and-coming sport.” In addition to Tidewater Landing, the city is also building a new train station that will be completed in the summer of 2022 and will connect to Providence and Boston, an idea that has been in the works since 2005. City officials hope the train station, while making it easier for residents to commute, will also draw both visitors and new residents to the city, and therefore, promote business investment. But beyond these plans for economic prosperity, Pawtucket’s social dynamics also invoke the coming of a new age. One of the reasons the city government and developers are so confident in Tidewater Landing’s success is Pawtucket’s demographic mix. The city has large immigrant communities from Cape Verde, Portugal, and Latin American countries, for whom soccer is very important. But Pawtucket’s immigrant population—25.85% of the city’s population was born outside the U.S.—does more than just supply sufficient interest in soccer. It positions the city as a representation of the future of the United States, where the immigrant percentage has tripled since 1970 and is only continuing to rise. While walking to the Tidewater Landing construction site, I passed a community garden with signs written in three languages in addition to a trilingual school. When knocking on residents’ doors in search of interviews, I had to on multiple occasions awkwardly apologize and slink away when I realized my potential source didn’t speak English. In this way, Pawtucket, while representative of the American manufacturing town fallen from its prosperous past, also symbolizes the future American community in which diversity is high and English as the primary language is not taken for granted. Pawtucket’s connection to a new America also reveals itself in the city’s politics. In the 2020 city council election for the city’s fourth ward, Alexis Schuette, a 34-year-old progressive, queer woman from North Carolina defeated Barry III, a 72-year-old, 30-year incumbent. One of Schuette’s first actions was to remove all gendered pronouns in city council procedures. “Pawtucket is an amazing place,” Schuette told UpriseRI. “It is progressive.” In her conversation with me, Schuette showed the idealistic positivity that defines progressive youth in America. She expressed intense excitement about the potential for Tidewater Landing, and when I asked about the current state of Pawtucket, she spoke with remarkable passion and pride about several small businesses that have thrived even through the pandemic, and others that have recently opened up. “I don’t see it as a city in decline,” she said. “I see it as a city that has room and potential to grow.” Barry, who, in addition to his political career, spent nearly five decades working for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, is less optimistic than Schuette. He thought the new soccer team would provide some enjoyment for people, but questioned how much the soccer stadium would really help the city’s businesses. “I think people will go to the game and then get in their cars and leave,” he said. Regardless of who’s right, the transition of power in Pawtucket’s fourth ward seems not just a harbinger for new, progressive policies in the city, but also a representation of a new optimism and energy. Still, amidst these changes, reminders of Pawtucket’s sad aging process remain prevalent. In addition to the decaying McCoy Stadium and Apex Building, both of the city’s high school buildings are over 80 years old, and the city hall building was constructed in 1933. All three will need to be replaced soon, Tony Pires told me. Many residents also expressed continued anxiety about the departure of Memorial Hospital. One woman told me the hospital was where she gave birth to her two daughters, and she said was worried about how far people now have to go for medical care. The closest acute care hospital is now Kent Hospital, about 25 minutes away. Even as the city awaits the arrival of a professional soccer team, the loss of the PawSox still pains the community. A woman who lives behind McCoy Stadium told me the city has too many memories of the PawSox for the soccer team to make up for the team’s departure. Even Mayor Grebien agreed, saying of the PawSox leaving, “We’re losing part of our history, part of our being. So I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to replace that.” At the construction site for the new train station in the northwest part of the city, behind an excavator, black rubber tubes, and mounds of rubble, an attractive stone brick wall rises partially completed. While the new station takes shape, just a half-mile away, Pawtucket’s historic former station, constructed in 1916 and closed in 1959, is crumbling. It is covered with trash and graffiti; it attracts squatters and drug abusers. Once considered for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, the miserable condition of the building’s structure means that it now is a significant safety risk. “This building has fallen into such disrepair, and it is disheartening,” Mayor Grebien told The Providence Journal. The two train stations seem a representation of the Pawtucket of today, where residents celebrate the burgeoning of an exciting future while at the same time mourning the demise of a cherished past.

We're Going on a Coronacation

Gabby Sartori
February 4, 2022

Rhode Island might be the smallest state in the country, but this place is simply unapologetic from day to night. It’s Saturday, approximately 7 am on September 11, 2021. I’m a recovering insomniac feeling the wrath of the night before that left me with burnt retinas. I had a god-awful sleep and, if I’m being honest, I don’t think I closed my eyes for more than 2 minutes. What do you expect? You can’t get a good night’s sleep on a typical Friday night in Providence. You think New York City is the city that never sleeps? Fuhgeddaboudit. Tell that to the Thayer Street motorcycle brigade that hums their motors in hopes of catcalling college girls two times younger than them at midnight. That’s not even the worst part. The entirety of my time in my brand spankin’ new apartment has involved the same construction starting at 5 in the morning. The construction is so close that I actually made friends with one of the construction workers from simply opening my blinds. At least I know that if I ever feel alone, I can simply open my window up to be greeted by my non-English speaking companions. Oh, and the neighbors screaming across the way from what you thought was a party being thrown? Yeah they didn’t shut up either, sick invite by the way. The temptation to march across the hall in my pajamas was at an all-time high. Luckily someone else was bothered by the fear of missing out and took matters into their own hands. Yes, I’m talking about the one of many skunks on Brown’s campus that broke into my apartment complex, not all heroes wear capes. Ah yes, that 7 am wake up was sweet. The morning was bright with a solid 70-degree breeze that was creeping through my half-cracked window. It was reminiscent of the same morning 20 years ago before all hell broke loose. I guess September 11th has a tendency to mislead us with a good day ahead. My nose has been burning for the past 48 hours, as if I took a spoonful of wasabi and shoved it down my throat. I feel so worn down without motivation to do as much as lift my head off my pillow. “This is the best way to wake up before a 90-minute lacrosse scrimmage,” said no one ever. It’s this type of adversity that really bodes well for the entirety of a student athlete’s college experience. Aside from all this, the morning routine is plain and simple. Checking my phone and seeing that there’s 20 plus unopened emails is my new love language, especially the Healthy Verily account that is so desperate to know if I’m alive and breathing. There’s nothing quite like going through a “check all that apply” symptom survey and submitting “none of the above” for each question. No, I’m not on the brink of death. So why should I even address my ringing head that’s completely congested and scratchy throat I have persevered through for the past 24 hours? I finally get out of my bed, drink the occasional pot of coffee I doused with half a creamer bottle, and munch on a crumbled Kind Bar that laid on a bed of fruit and yogurt. Instead of a typical grandpa’s sit and read of the morning paper, my go-to is always a verse of the day from my Bible app and then the newest edition of “Today@Brown.” Huh, an 82 percent increase in Covid cases on campus has been confirmed within the past seven days? Don’t worry, they’re all asymptomatic. Meh, if it’s not me, why should I even be remotely concerned? Departing for the two-minute trek to the athletic fields has officially commenced. It always starts with the warm welcoming of a Kelsey Shea smile waiting in the elevator to pick you up, because just like girls having to go to the bathroom with a buddy at a party, Kels needs me to hold her hand and help her cross the street for any lacrosse practices. I constantly have a bone to pick with Kelsey. She always leaves temporary tattoos on my arms after practice. Of course I am referring to the absurd number of bruises that make my skin tone blue, purple, and green. As a defender, Kelsey loves leaving her mark (both literally and figuratively). I mean she is a captain; she has no choice but to do so. Of course me being an attacker, I avoid going against Kelsey and rather than apologizing for the hits and bumps that are simply illegal, you’d think she would apologize, right? Nope. A casual “Suck it up Gab, you bruise like a peach!” is her response. Preparing for the scrimmage took longer than anticipated. I was in the locker room suiting up in the pinny I own covered in blood stains and while doing so, caught my hair on the bathroom stall door. Not to mention, I was also battling the constantly spammed calls from random numbers that made my phone jump off the wazoo for 10 minutes straight. At this point I’m really questioning my existence and really wish I had a hard copy of “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide.” Stepping on the turf and actually having the opportunity to play a real game is sacred these days. As a junior, I have half a freshman years’ worth of athletic experience from missing out on two seasons. And the kicker? I’m referred to as an “upperclassman.” I have yet to experience an away game and have to pretend to assert dominance on freshmen and sophomores, when unbeknownst to them, I have the same confusions about the season as they do. Continuing on with the trend of today’s misfortune, I regret to inform that my team was absolutely demolished by the other team. I don’t know what hurt more; losing, the check that left a swelled-up golf ball on my left arm, or the wrist that wore my Apple Watch. Not that I was checked it or anything; I just had to keep slapping it to turn off the ringing that persisted from yet again, more prank calls from numbers I am probably going to block. It was a hard-fought scrimmage from both teams, leaving everyone sweaty and smelling like according to one of my teammates, “a wet dog.” However, I heard this comment and simply couldn’t comprehend it. “I can’t relate,” I said. “My nose has been burning all morning and can’t even smell it. Guess I have corona haha!” Yea, let the film scratch marinate here for a minute. Let’s just say this is the last off-color comment this story has to offer. Brace yourself, shit’s about to hit the fan. I was in so much pain after the scrimmage that I was craving an ice bath that would succumb my entire body in frost bite. Of course, I had to walk a good five minutes bare footed on the cement and sidewalks to get to the nearest bath that was inevitably closed. I guess that’s okay, at least I was stopped by President Paxton and her dog, Cooper, on the trek back to the locker room. I wish Cooper Paxton got to decide on whether my last season could’ve been cancelled or not. When I petted him, I told him to put in a good word to his mother. Can’t blame a girl for trying. After arriving back to the locker room, I discovered that the showers were of course out of service, which left me no choice but to shower at home in my lavish off campus apartment (yes, the same one that can’t accommodate my sleep needs). Since I’m heading back toward Andrew’s, a spontaneous overpriced yogurt bowl has to be secured. I’m not on meal plan, so the very thought of even walking into a dining hall this semester had yet to cross my mind. What better way to celebrate the worst Saturday morning in a while than with a guest appearance in a place I haven’t been in since freshman year? Not to mention in broad daylight looking like I just walked out of a Peloton class drenched in sweat. I finally understood why this was the first I stepped into Andrew’s in a while. The line was FAT. How was I supposed to hush the rumbles my stomach made in hopes of catching my attention? It was a valiant effort from it though, but my phone’s constant badgering officially made me crack. WHO IS CALLING ME NOW? The one call that I actually had the energy to answer had a name on it. My trainer was calling. Did I not submit a form? Why on Earth is she calling me when I was just at the fields? If it were that important, she would have taken me aside. Since time was slowly going by on the Andrew’s yogurt line, maybe whatever she had to say would fulfill my need of entertainment. Upon answering the call, I was mid-completion of my yogurt concoction. I felt bad having to tell my trainer some of my order…“Hi Kendall, how’s it going – Wait just a sec – Yes, I’ll take some honey and extra strawberries thanks.” What I thought would be a friendly conversation quickly turned into an exchange no one ever wants to hear, especially in the midst of a highly populated dining hall. “WHERE ARE YOU RIGHT THIS INSTANT,” Kendall screamed at me. I mean did she really have to make her voice blare like I was on speaker? When asking her if she could hold on for a second while I settle down and mix my yogurt bowl at a table, her voice started getting frantic. I mean spit it out already, the suspense is killing me! Well, after her next sentence, I think it’s safe to say that not every story has a happy ending. She screamed at me: “YOU. HAVE. COVID.” I mean ouch. She couldn’t have asked how my day was going or what I was up to for the weekend? I don’t know who was more alarmed by her words, the two short dudes behind me who overheard the call and abruptly got up from sitting at the table next to me, or the actual person that had corona. Yes, that being me. The funny thing was that I was in so much denial that I started pleading my case saying I didn’t have it since I had no symptoms. Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t have read the “Today@Brown” statistics that showed the number of asymptomatic cases had increased by 82 percent increased. Instead, I should have opened the test result I received at 6 am this morning telling me I had tested positive. Swearing to my trainer that I had a negative test persisted, trying to change her mind on the news she broke. I mean how hard would it have been for her to say: “Gabby, you don’t have Covid. Why? Because you said so.” One question remained with me after hanging up the phone with my trainer. Why was she the one to relinquish the news to me instead of Health Services, which is what’s supposed to happen? Well, after reviewing my missed calls and recollecting on the annoyance I’ve had with over-the-phone pranksters all day, let’s just say I’ve had this virus longer than I’ve been awake and people attempted to inform me… I really didn’t know what someone was supposed to do right when they find out they’ve been diagnosed with the virus responsible for being the deadliest pandemic in history. I mean, this thing just passed the influenza pandemic of the early 20th century with a higher death toll. Since I could not be bothered with the stress that was sure to ensue, I simply sat in the corner room of Andrew’s in complete isolation, put “My Way” by Frank Sinatra on full blast to really feel the magnification of my situation, and simply ate my yogurt bowl. Ahh, peace at last. The undefeated streak of negative tests was breached and the ego I expressed toward this virus was humbled at last. It really was reminiscent of the same feeling I got when my brother acquired Boardwalk in Monopoly; game over, there’s nothing else to do but surrender. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if someone had to get the coronavirus, it had to be me. Not once did I give the virus any credence for its destruction, no way this thing was real. How is this beast still up and running, hasn’t it taken enough? A freshman college experience? Gone. My best friend, personal confidant, also known as grandma? Gone. The entirety of my sophomore lacrosse season? Gone. And just because I never believed in its power, let alone refuse to receive a vaccination until Brown’s ultimatum, it was time the virus seized the final thing I had left: my pride. I finished my yogurt, savoring every last second taste I may or may not have within the next couple days. It was now time to alert the authorities, or as some people call her, my mom, on the breaking news. When I told her of the illness, she did not even bat an eyelash, responding in a way that made it seem like I lost a peewee soccer game and came home with a participation medal. “Ahh okay, that’s unfortunate. Well, that didn’t take long,” she huffed at me. “Okay, I’ll get the Amtrak and ferry ticket, see you home in four hours.” What do you mean “see you at home?” Thayer Street is my home, now I have to be nomadic? I can’t just leave like this. I just had my first week of class. Not only that, but my lacrosse fall season just commenced. God really does have a sense of humor. Five months of being on Long Island during the summer wasn’t enough, so luckily for me he was gracious enough to bless me with a solid ten days extra. Well, after telling my unphased mother of what transpired, it was time to tell those who really needed to know: the potential contacts. This elite list of people included the following: my boyfriend; three roommates; Kelsey Shea; Christine and Cooper Paxton (tried emailing her, hope she sees it eventually?); and my coach who would alert the teammates I just had full contact with at practice less than an hour ago. My boyfriend was the first one I called, but, of course, no answer. After spamming his phone like mine this morning, I started to head out of the dining hall. Fully masked out in public and still maintain that post-practice glow, I think I saw just about every single human being enrolled in this school. Like I mentioned before, I was known for my distaste for covid and anything it stood for, including mask mandates. Therefore, when people saw me walking down Thayer Street with a mask on, some were confused, but others were quick to realize what was going on. All except the one person that I wished understood what was going on: my boyfriend. The one time I see this kid on a walk by, it’s when I have full blown corona. He finds me and attempts to give me a hug, but I quickly back up. “DON’T TOUCH ME,” I shouted. Pretty sure people mistook him for attempted assault with the way I delivered this shriek of fear in the middle of the street. I simply started tearing up, sat on the curb and once again embraced the sense of defeat from this damned virus. You can take as many seasons of my lacrosse career as you want, but cutting off the embrace from loved ones is where I draw the line. Because of this stupid thing, I haven’t had a hug from my late grandmother for the past two years. Now I can’t even get one from a guy that gives them out like free candy every day. That wasn’t even the worst part. If anyone was going to be at risk from me acquiring this virus, my boyfriend is number one on the hitlist. I gave him the warning, wishing him luck with what’s to occur within the next 24 hours, and even devised an escape plan for if and when he was to receive a positive test tomorrow. Although a Marriot might be nice since he lives on campus, Ratty grab-and-go doesn’t compare to a homecooked meal on Long Island. Thankfully he was showed mercy, an absolute miracle that he tested negative. My coach and roommates wished me well and safe travels for the journey I was to embark upon. The last contact to notify was Kelsey Shea, who was traveling the same time as me, currently in Philadelphia’s airport fresh from landing for a bridal shower. I felt like a federal criminal going on an Amtrak and Ferry with corona, but I guess just keep the mask on and stay away from everybody? I tried hard being as non-discrete as possible, but how could I when I was fully conversing with Kelsey, explaining I had a virus in the middle of an Amtrak? Oh, and in the quiet car no less. Yeah, I would’ve kicked me off too. Kelsey landed in Philadelphia just so she could immediately fly back to Providence after I broke the news. It was a race between the two of us now to see who got home first. Well, let’s just say a plane is certainly faster than a ferry holding a dozen cars across a bay. Within four hours, I was back in my childhood bedroom, resuming online school like I never left it. My taste and smell disappeared instantly after my last taste of a Long Island Italian ice. I shoved an onion up my nose just to feel something. Nothing. At least I could save money on coffee creamer since black coffee tasted like warm water. I was bedridden for days, feeling so weak that at one point I felt like a corpse. How special am I to be probably the only symptomatic case the campus had at this point? Needless to say, my days of underestimating Ms. Rona were over. There was nothing else to do but lay, sleep and, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers say, “Dream of Coronacation.”

A Pandemic Ended My Relationship (with New York City)

Peter Zubiago
February 2, 2022

The Metropolitan Museum of Art stands regally on the line between one of the most important urban parks in the United States and the glorious brownstones of the Upper East Side. Looking at it from the outside is breathtaking – you wouldn’t even be able to tell that the façade used to be completely different when the museum was first conceived. Of course, that’s been papered over now. Similar to other major art museums, like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this one looks like a palace, as if it were too perfect to be marked by anything happening beyond its walls. Like the rest of New York City, it is here to prove only that it can be. That everything it contains is ordered and quantifiable. That it is a monolith because it was created out of nothing beyond sheer will. On the steps leading into the shining edifice sit flocks of young people, crowding around the artistic treasures commemorating multiple cultures and multiple generations. Nearly all of them have masks pulled tightly under their chins, ready to be pulled up to their face when their reservation finally begins. To adapt to the numerous public health standards, the Met – like nearly everything else in New York – has decided that the best way to keep crowds limited within the museum at any time is to require people to tell them when exactly they will be arriving. I was one such guest. I respected this caution. The more infectious Delta variant now accounted for about 97% of all cases in the city and I was desperate to avoid it. In the city, the average number of cases on any given day was about 1,900, which was too high for my comfort. I did not want to add to that. Nonetheless, I had received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine in May and felt like there was no need to completely quarantine myself anymore. But I would go out of my way to follow every guideline imposed upon me – I had no intention of getting the coronavirus, even if I ended up with a mild case. As I walked towards the entrance, I was overcome by the sheer amount of noise surrounding me – cars rushed along the road, a street performer loudly blew into a trumpet at the base of the steps, fountains throughout the courtyard resounded with their glorious displays of splashing water. I had to choose what to pay attention to. Carefully pulling into the line, just two minutes after our reservation began, I pulled the mask I wore around my wrist over my nose. A worker at the museum was coming through the line, asking for IDs and vaccination cards. Her voice cut everything else out of the way; she was doing her job. Having forgotten that most places in New York City required proof of vaccination, I pulled up a picture of mine on my phone, which felt like an inadequate substitute. I also pulled up my reservation to prove that I was being a goody-two shoes and did everything I was told. The museum’s rules seemed to indicate that visitors had to, no? Apparently, not. Most lines have a starting point and an ending point, but that wasn’t the case here. People were being let in at the front of the line as one would expect, but as the staff member approached me and I showed her my documents for approximately one second, I was told to go past the front of the line and enter the museum. She was doing the same for everyone that stepped into line. I almost asked her about my reservation, but she had moved on to another group by the time I looked back. Baffled, I made my way up some more stairs, then looked back quickly. The line was fragmenting, with some people (like me) slipping by the others waiting in the bureaucratic queue. I slipped inside, with barely any staff doing a substantial check to make sure that I was who I said I was. Wasn’t the point of the rules they set in place to limit the number of people in the museum to a documentable number so that it would be easier to trace who may have come into contact with someone infected by the coronavirus? Weren’t the rules that New York City had set in service of rooting out the disease? Where was that happening here? I expected it to be harder to get in. I wanted it to be harder to get in. But stepping in the grand entrance hall, I forgot all about that chaos. The first impression the Met makes is grandiosity. With enormous vaulted ceilings and a spattering of Ionian columns, it appears classical and austere. The scale and craft on display impressed itself on the guests too; it was eerily quiet for the number of people packed inside. Were they also taken in by the monolithic space? Perhaps it was the ability of the museum to seamlessly blend the old and the new, as projectors beamed text written in carefully stylized fonts onto a big marble wall, thus tying modern technology into the old architecture. The building itself seemed to be pleading its visitors that it was worth coming back: Attendance in 2021 is about only half of what it had been in 2019. International visitors used to account for a third of visitors, but now form only a sliver of the visitor percentage, which greatly impacts the economics of the entire operation, since non-New Yorkers must pay $25, while city natives get to pay what they can. The stakes are higher now; visitors need to be impressed in order to come back. The design of this remarkable entrance hall – which previously might not have drawn so much attention – now begged me to trust the museum again. Naturally, there was another line to wait in to buy tickets, so that’s what I did. This one kept its structure. It moved relatively quickly (and groups mostly kept six feet apart), as the system churned out happy people with maps of the halls, but I nonetheless got the chance to inspect the careful grandiosity of the space. The floor was slick and smooth and I felt that the building implored me to call it impressive. A vague echo through the hall made every word sound like it came from the voice of God, and each utterance carried the same message: There is order here. I allowed myself to delight in the ostentatious touches that made the hall what it was. But when I looked behind me, a man stood with his mask fully off. He was standing with another man, who had his secured over his nose and under his chin, but this guy confrontationally had it off. He wasn’t scratching his nose; he wasn’t drinking water. The mask was nowhere near his face. It wasn’t even in his hand or on his wrist. I noticed other people noticing in the line. This was simply not done. Not here, not in New York, this beautiful city. He broke the contract and nothing was happening to him. It was clear that no guests had the courage to say something to him – I certainly didn’t. But it took a while before a worker summoned up their courage to tell him to put his mask on. Thankfully, he did, without a fight, but the glare with which he stared at the worker as they walked away was deathly. The spectre of danger raised its head, and though the course was corrected, it could only be so long before it happened again. I saw him later in the modern art exhibit, next to a block of cheese with hair on it (meant completely unironically, by the way), with his mask boldly pulled completely under his chin. July 2021. Delta Rising. I’ve always seen New York as a place of great refinement. Fifth Avenue, for example, practically begs you to fawn all over it, with the decadent window displays and fancy skyscrapers. Of course, not every part of the city can be so elegant. The subway system that sits underneath all the luxury is a testament to this. And though it has never been a particularly lovely part of New York, the coronavirus pandemic has made riding on the Metropolitan Transit Authority even more uncomfortable, sharpening the disconnect between the life lived above ground and the one traveled through below. In these pandemic times, no matter where you are looking when you’re on the subway, you will always see a sign that tells you that masks are required and must be worn correctly. Most of these signs are bright yellow, with cartoon faces drawn over them. These little faces are surprisingly cute – the folks over on Madison Avenue did a good job on the design – but there’s a strange harshness to it all. For one, the masks really do look like they’re suffocating the animated faces, especially the faces that are double masked. There’s secure and then there’s muzzled, and these pictures come way too close to the latter. One variant of this ad campaign completely betrays the sincerity of the public health crisis. It depicts two people talking without masks underneath a caption that says “Bad.” Fair enough. The next scene shows two people talking, but wearing masks securely. “Better,” the caption reads. To close out the sequence, the two people are silently looking down at their phones or books. The caption: “Best.” Great. While it is a relatively harmless ad, it speaks to the wide disconnect between the enforceable, rigid policies that the city and state governments are trying to enact and the mundane manner in which people go about their lives. It’s bold of the MTA to assume that people are willing to give up talking to each other for the sake of preventing the spread of the coronavirus. It’s not even like this is a particularly dangerous situation – although the close-quarters of the subway are not at all conducive to social distancing, if people are wearing a mask, why tell them that they can’t talk? Why even put an ad out there that even suggests muzzling yourself when you put a mask on? The ads are a parody of themselves, so convinced that they’re showcasing safety on a subway, when they’re actually parroting a strange reality that maybe suggests that communicating with others is not allowed. I wouldn’t mind, but they also seem to be failing to inspire subway riders of anything either. Masks are supposedly required to ride on the subways, yet on any given ride, there are two to three people forgoing that requirement. After all, who’s enforcing it? In a city of rugged individualists, who am I – a mere weekend visitor to this metropolis – to tell them what to do? The city certainly can’t afford to hire workers whose only job is to make sure every passenger on the subway is following the rules. Besides, there is evidence that public transportation is not a serious Covid-19 risk, provided that riders are masked and subway cars aren’t stuffed full of passengers. There’s not a threat of the subways becoming that packed for a long time – ridership on subways in the city is still only at about 50% of pre-pandemic levels. So what’s the use of me sticking my neck out to call someone else out? It’s easier to make peace with the fact that the rules aren’t always going to be followed. In July, I was taking the train downtown to get on a ferry to Rockaway Beach. A large white man entered the subway car without a mask on. When he took a seat across from me, I tried hard not to make eye contact. He was a big guy and clearly knew that he was an outlier on the train. Apparently, that status was a hard pill for him to swallow, because he looked just about ready to fight anyone that dared to challenge his lack of mask wearing. Confusingly, he was wearing a Boston T-shirt and a New York Yankees hat. I guess he was just conflicted. Regardless, I didn’t know what to do. Signs everywhere within sight said that everyone was required to wear a mask, regardless of their vaccination status. This man just knew that that didn’t apply to him. But should I say something? A quick look around the train told me no. No one else even batted an eye. When in Rome, I guess. The silence surrounding this guy sucked all the energy out of the train car. It wasn’t quite so much that he was going to ignite a super spreader event (he probably wasn’t, at least, not right now) as it was that he willfully balked at the rules set to protect public health. This guy – yawning and making faces into his phone – was upending the social norms of New York City. And all he did was ignore some words, some ideas, plastered as bright yellow warnings on the walls surrounding him. He’s no hero, that’s for sure. But he proved so succinctly the falsity of the promise that lies at the heart of this metropolis: People will not, in fact, conform to order. June 2021. Light at the End of the Tunnel? I ate at a restaurant in Midtown called Chop-Shop when cases were low. I walked there directly from the shiny new Moynihan Train Hall, a cosmetic upgrade to Penn Station (even if it was probably an unnecessary one), with my girlfriend at the time, Caroline. It was raining, so even though it wasn’t exactly far – maybe half a mile or so – the two of us were drenched upon arrival. We were meeting some of Caroline’s friends, Anna and Gigi, there for her birthday celebration and they had initially planned a whole night out, but since they had all been activities for outside and it was currently pouring, it had been pared down to just dinner. I was excited to have a lux (though not luxury) meal in a restaurant, since it had been over a year since I had done so. Chop-Shop is a tiny little place, with perhaps 10-12 tables in the front section and perhaps half that number in a back section. An old street sign from a trading post in Chinatown hangs on the wall, looming large over the small room and giving the whole place a feeling of history. I got the sense that this restaurant’s roots go very deep into New York’s Asian community. As I looked at it, it left me thinking about the time I went to a restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown with my sisters, where we were embarrassed to be the only people in the restaurant that spoke English as our first language. From there, I flashed back to when I walked through San Francisco’s Chinatown with my mother and, for the first time, saw a wet market. It made me think of another wet market in Wuhan. But I was spiraling down a rabbit hole of generalized, probably racist associations that led me to one of the most pressing social disruptions the world had ever seen. The tight intimacy of the small place was nice. I was shocked by how much I had missed being in a restaurant. The smells wafting in from the kitchen, the dim clatter of forks and knives on dishes, the animated conversations that people get carried away in – all of it enveloped me in a warm embrace, like a warm blanket wrapped tight during a thunderstorm. I felt thankful that this place had made it through the worst of the pandemic over through the winter. Now, people were starting to get vaccinated and everything was safer. This was going to be a flawless dinner. Apparently, there was no table for us when we arrived. So, I guess it wasn’t going to be flawless after all. We waited about 15 minutes for a table large enough for our group of four, even though we had a reservation. As we waited, I started talking with Gigi, who struck me as a highly social person. It might’ve been the fact that she took it upon herself to say hello to everyone that walked into the restaurant and looked at her for a second too long. Her parents owned a restaurant in Worcester, Massachusetts, so she was being very patient for the restaurant to get itself in order. She asked me about myself, wanting to know what I did, what sort of circles I ran in, what I wanted to do with my life, all that jazz. As I spoke with her about myself – something I hate doing and had, thankfully, been spared from because the pandemic had made meeting new people extremely difficult – Anna and Caroline were commiserating over how frustrating it was that there were no open tables, despite having a reservation. Anna was standing quietly, with her arms crossed across her chest and assuming a stance that said “You messed up” to the waitstaff. Eventually, a host came over while Gigi was explaining the musical she was currently writing and led us off to a table. When we were seated, we looked over the menus and quickly debated what we should get. Should we go for fried rice? Or curry? What about lo mein? Nothing on the slate sounded anything less than delicious. I proposed getting pork dumplings as an appetizer, not realizing that Anna and Gigi were vegetarian and the idea was scuttled, until Caroline proposed vegetable dumplings. Not a crime, but a disappointment. I had forgotten what it meant to be beholden to others when ordering for a group. A waiter arrived and we ordered some drinks, but needed more time for the food. When drinks arrived, none of us could agree on which ones were good and which ones were not. For my part, I liked the beer I had ordered and Caroline’s Moscow mule, but was not particularly enthused by Gigi’s cucumber gin and tonic, which was otherwise a big hit. Anna seemed to take personal offense to my taste in drinks and told me that I had a simplistic palate. I think it was meant as a joke, but I couldn’t be sure. Eager to avoid rocking the boat, I took great care to not say anything controversial (i.e. share my opinions about anything) for the rest of the night. A new group was seated near us while we waited for our food to come. They were an especially loud group and it was very easy for us to overhear what they were talking about. We listened all night. Unfortunately, they mostly talked about politics, and, suffice to say, they had different opinions on matters than anyone at my table had. However, what was more uncomfortable was how clear it became that one of them was vaguely sick. There was an irregular, but throaty, coughing emanating from one of them, and each time that she did it, the four of us looked at each other with a little panic. Our food could not come out fast enough, so we could eat and move away. And when it did, it actually did not. A waiter mistakenly brought us another table’s dishes, though the matter was quickly sorted out without any fuss. As we continued to wait, Caroline, as is her custom, blew out the candle on our table, negating its warm glow. Something was lost then; the whole project of going to a restaurant with a group suddenly seemed less appealing than it had just an hour earlier. The food arrived to save me from solipsism. We all ate voraciously, trying each other’s dishes and licking each plate clean. The fried rice I ordered was satisfying to the extreme – the savory saltiness forced me to continue plunging my fork into the deep dish. I was, however, even more impressed by the curry Gigi ordered at Anna’s suggestion, which was perfectly absorbed by the white rice that accompanied it, making a warm, richly spicy feast. I told Anna that she had good taste, in an effort to smooth over the tension that had been percolating all night. She scoffed, but I think she appreciated my effort. It was hard to talk with her. All in all, I proclaimed to the table, this had to be one of the greatest dinners I had ever eaten. Everyone – even Anna – agreed, and I felt that the two of us had finally found some common ground. If only there hadn’t been an ominous coughing emanating from the neighboring table. With each belch all four of us stiffened, our bodies physically unsure of whether we should rush through the meal or drop everything and leave. Was the risk of the coronavirus really worth the excellent food? To say that felt disingenuous, especially when the restaurant business has been so hard hit by the pandemic. New York’s dining scene has been impacted even more than in other places, with 54% of restaurants saying in January 2021 that they could not survive the next 6 months without federal aid, compared with 34% nationwide. Nearly 1,000 eateries had been closed since the beginning of the pandemic in the city alone, and that number is almost certainly an underestimate. But in spite of the plight of restaurant workers and owners, I was uncomfortable sitting in a tightly packed, small restaurant. The city closed down sections of some avenues uptown to let restaurants build outdoor seating on the weekend, but that wasn’t a possibility down here, and though it wasn’t a weekend, the rain made it undesirable too. There was so much effort put into making dining out seem safe, but it wasn’t exactly working. It just looked like effort. When the bill came, the four of us decided to split it. Naturally, there was debate as to how to do so. Anna, who had ordered one of the more expensive meals, wanted us to just split the meal four ways, but I didn’t think that was fair, given that my fried rice was not nearly as costly as her poached salmon. The one thing about eating out that I never for a second missed was splitting up payment. It always hurts somebody, usually the person who bought the most expensive things. It was no different this time, with Anna leaving a little mad at the rest of us for not covering her meal. We split off into pairs after that meal, since Anna and Gigi wanted to meander around midtown for a bit, while I was eager to put my things down and relax. I took the C train with Caroline to 109th Street, and we walked through the city thinking about how odd the concrete skyscrapers looked as they intruded into the night sky that floated high above us, vast, formless, dark, and free. March 2020. The End of the World. I had a ticket to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – my favorite play – on Broadway on March 25, 2020. It was going to be the first time I would have been in the city by myself. I was excited to explore the vibrant, bustling place and get lost in the concrete jungle. I wasn’t even going to have to pay for a hotel – an old friend of mine was going to let me stay with her. It was going to be perfect. Then, I got an email, one that still sits in my inbox, even though I compulsively delete everything. It arrived in my inbox on March 12, telling me that I would not, in fact, be seeing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway on March 25, 2020. In truth, I had known such a message was coming, since by that point it was clear that the world was folding in on itself. My heart sank anyway. But I was not to worry, the email said, because “performances beyond April 12th are still on sale and are expected to play.” As that date kept getting pushed back, 51,000 members of the Actor’s Equity Association lost their jobs. In the television and film industries, nearly 295,000 (including movie theater workers) people lost work. The performing arts – long centered in the Big Apple – withered. Nearly a year and a half later, Broadway made its big return. It has since been marred with cancellations and restrictions, as cast and crew members continue to contract the coronavirus. Some productions haven’t been able to manage these cancellations and have had to close. It’s no longer a draw. It no longer feels safe, even if it is. People suffered, lost their jobs, and were told it would be fine soon. It is still not fine. Governor Andrew Cuomo made the directive to close down Broadway. At the time, he seemed like he was doing a pretty great job containing the coronavirus. In releasing a message on March 12, 2020 that all but admitted the city was unsafe, however inadvertently, he shut off the lights of New York City.

Cool As Quahog

Alex Waxman
January 26, 2022

The operation was set up with one white regatta tent outside the main mail office on the University campus. From a distance, it seemed as if it were another school-board sanctioned activity, like a food-truck festival, or any of the other bread and circus acts they allotted the undergraduates over the course of the year. Upon further inspection, however, the rag-tag, hastily put together construction, coupled with the man carrying a clipboard on the lookout for campus security, told a very different story. The tent was loaded with clothing: black and turquoise snapback hats, chuck tees, and all manner of jackets both appropriate and otherwise for the tepid mid-autumn climate. Students milled in and out, a crack of laughter rising from pairs trying on clothes? They had no thoughts of purchasing, and serious fashion collectors pawed through hangers as if they were handling gemstone necklaces in a jewelry store. I went up to the man serving lookout and took note of the clean sweatshirt he was wearing from Tyler the Creator’s designer line, GOLF, his Nike sports cap, and the fanny-pack he had repurposed over his shoulder as a cash bag. Once it became clear my intention was not to turn the operation over to the administration, he visibly relaxed, telling me that his name was JP. He couldn’t answer questions while handling the mock-register, so he called over his business partner, JC, another young man wearing faded blue jeans and a NASCAR branded long sleeve white tee-shirt. He told me that they hit up universities across the northeast with their moving thrift store. I asked him what he liked about thrifting, which he laughed at. “I don’t thrift,” he said, beaming, “I curate.” I considered the pop-up scene for a while and wondered what this meant for the secondhand clothing market at Providence, including the Providence flea market I had attended a week prior. I had been excited to learn that Providence, Rhode Island was home to a Sunday flea market. Better yet, it was one described to me by the liquor store owner as “very weird.” Providence was first described to me as being “weird.” This quirkiness is in part an artificial operation. There are local campaign slogans which read “Keep Providence Weird” and “Don’t Let Normal In.” Regardless, I was very excited for the Providence flea market. I adore thrifting. I should be clear. I love the idea of thrifting. When I look in awe at torn jean jackets and collared shirts with pearl buttons, I can no longer admire it with the same certainty that I once had that the indie (usually bearded) person wearing the attire got their look from a tiny speakeasy in Brooklyn. The aesthetic of “thrift” has become an antithesis to itself. What once existed as a pragmatic solution for finding cheap and good-looking clothing has become idealized and copied. Though people wanted to look as if they had taken those sweet jeans off a secondhand dealer, they don’t really want to smell like it. And sure, it was a nice enough idea that you were going to go to that little shop downtown someone tipped you off for, buuut, that Urban Outfitters is much closer, isn’t it? Admittedly, I am guilty of faux thrifting myself. I have a propensity for buying jackets with pre-worn qualities: green fabric frayed, but in the softest most manufacturable way. But still – in the wake of questionable authenticity – a flea market then is the ultimate thrifters’ pleasure. The crafty coupon-collector pinches savings from hand-me-down booths. The voracious haggler gets to demonstrate their business acumen. The environmentalist is filled with the pride of upcycling. Finally, the antiquarian finally gets the missing piece to their private museum of eccentricities. Truly, flea markets are bug traps for the weirdos, oddballs, and edge residents. That’s not even mentioning the sellers! The Sunday flea market officially begins at the start of a pedestrian bridge in a neighborhood called Fox Point in Providence. In actuality, it languishes out before and after its intended area. Whether this happens by logistical errors or by the addition of unregistered tents would be hard to say. As if they were a line of ants determining the best way to cut up and carry off a leaf, potential customers and window shoppers enclosed the perimeter of the market. When the ants move around their query, it gives the impression that the market were in motion – always marching towards you. The bazar took up a small patch of grassland which separated asphalt road from one of Providence’s brackish canals. Most of the tents were white with the odd black or beige colored tarp. While clothing sellers took up the majority of the stalls, another joy of the flea market was the endless supply of knick knacks also on display. Necklaces, candles, furniture, records – the flea is a nostalgic love-letter to the renaissance of yard sales before the economy of random item-selling was swallowed by Facebook marketplace. One of the best skills I learned in going to markets is to never buy anything the first time around. As with Farmer’s Markets, many people feel uncomfortable passing through stands, picking up this, sampling that, while at the same time knowing that they will not be dropping a dime as they do so. However, the buyer’s remorse that one feels after committing to three pints of mediocre cherry tomatoes, only to find a pallet of in-season heirlooms, feels far worse and is a quickly correcting force. Anyways, touring the stalls with an air of indifference can be a powerful thing once you’re past shame. The large open markets of New York City are apathetic to your existence while you peruse. While preparing to match a similar energy to what I was familiar with, I was surprised when the proprietor of each stand in the Providence Flea smiled happily at my gaze. Some even went so far to answer questions I didn’t ask: “They’re made from real cast iron,” or, “The deal is for everything on the shelf.” I noticed that the visual uniform of the different stalls tended to lean into the idea of progressive, dark rebellion. That is to say, a majority of the hobbyists’ tents boasted tarot cards, books on wicca, and plenty of “I’m a witch and a democrat” pins. It was unclear if the outjie boards were representative of the approaching October holiday or whether Providence was just simply a spooky town. What I didn’t fail to notice, however, was the diverse array of patrons who perused the aisles of the different haunted figure sets. As is often the case, there was my expected mix of goths, style icons, and neighborhood residents making up the general crowd. However, there tends to be something of a code for these groups. The goths get the occult stands. New couples get the scented candle outlets. Environmentalists lug their bucket of mystery compost into the drop off point, then they leave without doing anything else. These archetypes keep to themselves, and when they pass each other, they do so quickly and quietly with the purpose of people with places far better to be than near each other. The status quo is preserved. In the flea market by the waterfront of Providence, this couldn’t have been more untrue. Grandparents picked up crow skulls, admiring their weight. Record junkies smiled at stamp collectors. Pastel colors embraced a shadow, and I realized a goth was being hugged! By someone in tie-dye! I tried to express my concerns to one of the more niche store owners: a man selling antique travel booklets and maps. He laughed. “There’s so many weird people here,” he told me. “They just like each other.” And they were weird. It was impossible to explain. Small mannerisms and ticks, clashing color combinations, and off-mainstream greetings exchanged. Even the layout of the event itself was weird in retrospect. Although the outermost parts of the tents faced the adjacent canal, the middle section of the tents followed no pattern at all. It appeared that they had been thrown in haphazardly with walls only as much as they felt like putting up. I realized that this effectively created the rotating movement of bodies that I had observed before. There were no straight paths or roads to get from tent to tent; one moved by their interest and their fancies. There were no cordoned sections for this thing or that. In a way, you are forced to explore and to meander beyond your interest. It was more than mob psychology which moved the people around the tents cyclically. The strange phenomenon was, in fact, promoted by the venue. It was strange. No, it was weird. Why belittle the “weird?” The weird is just the authentic unrecognized. I don’t mean weird in the “quirky” sense. I mean it in the bizarre sense, the lifestyle decisions which turn heads. Weirdness is tenacity. It’s spontaneity. It’s a man selling records, but he’s a photographer, so he’s transposed images of his black and white photos over the records, rendering them useless and unplayable. I passed by the photographer and asked him for his prices. He didn’t have any. I don’t think he sold anything that day; he was just there for the ambiance. Rhode Island itself is a weird state, I suppose. It’s 1/173rd of a Texas. It was the last state to ratify the constitution. Just living in Providence is to be a part of an inside joke. While they maintained a certain tackiness, there was also an unabashed genuineness to these stalls which hosted images of Lovecraft and road signs pointed to the fictional town of Quahog from “Family Guy.” I viewed them first as tourist magnets: something like an “I ❤ New York” shirt. I hung out near one of the booths selling particularly egregious Rhode Island swag and asked anyone who bought anything where they were from. Every one of them said “somewhere nearby”. Here in Providence, the peas and carrots mixed. The grown-up versions of middle school cliques somehow came to terms and ignored ancient and unwritten laws of separation. Furthermore, the concept that you do not buy your city’s tacky souvenirs was disregarded. The flea market did not regulate itself to sell items with necessary value. Really, many of the crafters didn’t even intend to sell! They came out for the crowds and the weirdness of them, offering their own little corner of abnormalities to the curious. Despite an aura of a niche and frugal market, research shows that second-hand sellers are on the rise. According to a survey conducted by GlobalData, 33 Million more people purchased clothing from second-hand vendors in 2020 than the prior year. Besides the economic incentive of purchasing used goods, environmentalists have long praised the beneficial impact of thrifting. By buying previously owned clothing, consumers are able to keep excess fabric out of landfills and reduce the carbon footprint of the fashion industry, a notoriously large contributor to CO2 emissions worldwide. There are many factors that could be attributed to the rise in second-hand consumerism – notably the COVID-19 pandemic forced many indoor retailers to be shuttered and caused buyers to search for alternative shopping options. However, many predict that the second-hand market will continue to grow post-pandemic. Data shows that thrifting is more popular with Millenials and Gen Z than older generations, and thredup’s (an online second-hand clothing distributor) 2021 Fashion Resale Market and Trend Report expect secondhand clothing sales to more than double in the next five years. In numbers, that would mean going from $36 Billion in 2020 to $77 Billion in 2025. Remember, this is only in garment sales. Clearly, there’s real money to be made in thrifting. JC told me that he used to be a construction worker doing 40 hour shifts in construction. He met JP in a thrift store (of course), and having quickly hatched a plot to sell to college students, they set up shop and split the profits. JC made more in one day than in a week of construction. Upon hearing this, I also noticed that there was a distinct difference in the price tag of their goods than that of the flea market. Whereas a jacket at the flea would cost $10 on the pricier side, JC and JP were selling hats for $35 a piece. Yes, all their stuff was pristine, but I wondered if something was lost in that. They didn’t have weird little pins, and the student cliques that moved through the merchandise kept a wide berth. The only real difference between their tent and a fashion retailer was brick and mortar. Theirs was a pop-up situation, soon to move on to the next college and then onwards in another city. Maybe JC was right. Maybe it was a different kind of thrifting; maybe it wasn’t thrifting at all. On my way out of the market, I noticed that I had yet to purchase anything from the vendors. I had spent so much time looking at the different people and taking in their foreign personalities, I had made a full four circles through the place without taking a single item to the counter. I looked over at a flag and handkerchief tent. While mainly centered around feline prints, the store showed off the same pride of weirdness that I’d come to expect from the location. I walked into the interior of the store and checked if there was anything I might want for whatever reason I could think of. My eyes passed over a flag, nearly flush on the ground, showcasing a goofy clam wearing sunglasses with the absolute cringe-worthy slogan “Rhode Island: Cool as Quahog.” The flag was stained and a bit wrinkled. I laughed, turning away from it. I thought about how utterly outside the item was from the design of my room, before slowly turning back. There was a quality of strangeness to the thing – an outlandish essence of ridiculousness and shameless local love that I felt a newfound attraction to by the end of my trip. I paid the man at the front of the tent for my clam flag, and to this day it hangs above my bed.

More Than a Diner

Tevah Gevelber
January 26, 2022

Between 5:00 and 5:30 pm 7 days a week, 365 days a year, Ivan Giusti pulls into his reserved parking spot in front of City Hall and springs into well-rehearsed action. First, the 48 year-old co-owner of the Haven Brothers Diner, plugs the truck into the 70-year-old outlet on a nearby street lamp. Two blinding bulbs illuminate plastic tables that provide seating, or dance props, for the diner’s late night customers and the pulsing blue and red OPEN sign comes to life. The diner is ready for business. In the time of Covid-19 where connection is rare and many businesses have folded, Haven Brothers Diner continues its 128-year-long tradition of providing food and community for anyone and everyone in downtown Providence. Around 5:35, Ivan, wearing the diner’s black cotton t-shirt and cargo shorts, unlocks, unfolds and then climbs the truck’s collapsible stairs. “Go ahead,” he says. “Ask me anything.” The Rhode Island native has been working for his father’s diner in some capacity for 35 years. Ivan has seen a full life cycle of customers pass through the truck. “College kids come, twenty-some year old club-go-ers come,” Ivan explains. “Then they grow older, get married, and then come back to reminisce.” As if on queue, a young couple climbs the diner steps. Four years ago, after they got married at the Providence Public Library, Doyle, a Boston native, and her husband went out for drinks with friends. It was late but the couple knew they needed to make one last stop. They came to Haven Brothers Diner. Because, says Doyle, “it’s a quintessential Providence thing to do.” Four years later, on a Wednesday evening, they are back, recreating their wedding night. Doyle’s husband pulls out his phone to show a faded picture. “We had agreed that before we went back, I wanted a picture of both of us: me in my wedding dress and my husband in a tuxedo eating hot dogs in front of the truck,” said Doyle. Sure enough the photo shows two beaming twenty-some year olds under the glare of the diner’s lights, trying to stuff hot dogs into their mouths while keeping their wedding garb clean. You can imagine the diner’s usual late night crowd cheering the couple on from behind the camera, their hoots and hollers adding to the nightly Kennedy Plaza symphony of traffic and the diner’s quintessential near heavy metal rock music. As the giddy couple recounts their special night, Ivan is unfazed. “Yeah, that happens all the time.” The truck has been part of Providence nightlife since 1893 when immigrant Ann P. Haven first bought a horse-pulled wagon and converted it to a lunch cart that she named Haven Brothers. Back then, the cart provided late night sustenance to the workers of the 15,000 plus Providence factories of the 1890s. Though the cart became a truck in the 1950s, it continues to serve late night Providence. 57-year-old spin instructor and self-described “original Providence person,” Lori Mars, remembers a childhood tradition of Saturday night diner visits. “It was a me and my father thing,” Mars says. “After driving my grandmother home, my dad would play cards and I would stay up because I knew we would go get Haven Brothers after.” Mars first went to the diner in the 1970s when she was about 8 years old. Downtown Providence was different then. “When I grew up, there weren’t many restaurants to go to and the economy was bad.” she explains. “It was a different climate, kind of seedy.” Haven Brothers, the diner on wheels parked in front of City Hall, was at the center of it. “To go on that truck was really weird, so I liked it,” Mars says. “It was full of creatures-of-the-night type people.” Sal Giusti, Ivan’s father and the owner of the diner, agrees. “Everybody comes here: doctors, lawyers, homeless people,” says Sal. “There’s never a dull moment.” Sal moved to West Warwick from Italy 50 years ago. Though he had always wanted his own business, Sal didn’t attempt to start one until he was laid off from the Cranston Chemical Company. “Before I was afraid to quit because I had three kids,” Sal remembers. “But they fired me at the right time and I decided to buy the truck.” In 1986, the same year that Sal bought Haven Brothers, former Providence Mayor Joseph R. Paulino Jr. decided to move the diner. “Haven Bros. was attracting some groups of motorcyclists and gangs into the area,” Paolino Jr. explains in the diner’s documentary The Original Food Truck: Haven Brothers: Legacy of the American Diner. “It was disruptive.” As Mars explained, in the 1970s, Providence struggled economically and became increasingly violent as jobs left the area. “In the 80s and 90s there were fights every weekend,” Ivan remembers. As more clubs opened up in downtown Providence, many drunken arguments spilled over into the only open restaurant; Haven Brothers. “It’s not our fault,” Ivan says. “But maybe that’s why the mayor wanted to move us.” Paolino Jr. forced them to move during summer, the truck’s busiest time. “It was crazy,” Ivan remembers. “We had no business.” The Giusti family took the issue to court with the help of Paolino Jr.’s successor as mayor, Buddy Cianci. “He helped us get back here because he knew that this is Providence,” Ivan says. “It’s historic and you can’t move something that’s historic.” The people of Providence agreed. One citizen wrote in the Providence Journal: “That diner has been a fixture in downtown Providence longer than the mayor [Paolino Jr.] has, and will, we hope, be one long after the mayor is gone.” “Part of city life is and ought to be the juxtaposition of disparate elements that all come together to give a city its flavor,” another wrote. “At Haven Brothers, all elements rub elbows, and all contribute to the mix that gives the city its particular ambience.” Paolino Jr. realized his mistake and tried to save face before the next election. “He threw a 100th anniversary party in the plaza, but it wasn’t the 100th anniversary,” Ivan says about the 1988 celebration, five years before the true centennial. Paolino Jr.’s attempt to move the truck marked the first of Sal’s trials as the diner’s owner. In 1989, Sal’s business partner passed away, leaving him to run the diner alone. “The first ten years, I worked seven days a week,” Sal says. “I would wake up at 11 am and go to work.” Often, he would come home past 3 am. Now, at 78, Sal insists on coming into his truck about once a week, even if it’s just to deliver ice cream. Around 6 pm, a low two-seater car pulls off the main road and parks right in front of City Hall. Ivan looks up, “My weiner guy is here.” ‘Weiner guy’ is Monte Ferris Sr., the owner of the local family business, Venus De Milo. Ferris has been coming to the diner for over fifteen years. Giusti asks: “Three or four today?” “Three,” Ferris responds. “With mucho salsa, on the top, bottom and sides.” After a well-rehearsed routine of business banter, during which Ivan never stops grilling or wrapping or slicing, Ferris takes his hot dogs and drives away. On most nights, the truck slows down for the next several hours. In these quiet moments, when the three stools in the back of the truck sit unoccupied, the music is audible, and the TV that hangs on the back wall is unobstructed, the truck begins to tell its story. Pictures of famous customers, Bruce Springsteen, Federico Castelluccio, LL Cool J, among others line the diner’s back wall. The photos flow right into a black and white timeline of the truck’s history. And tucked in the corner sits a framed 2014 Providence Phoenix article with a picture of Sal leaning out the diner’s service window, titled “The Heart of the City.” It’s in this quiet that Ivan’s nonchalance slips for the first time, as he remembers his first few months at the diner. Because Sal was so overwhelmed in the diner’s early years, he put his kids to work as soon as possible. Ivan started working in the kitchen at thirteen and on the truck by fifteen. At the time, he was far from his current unflappable, multi-tasking self. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD “I was a shy kid, and I had a stutter,” Ivan chooses his words carefully. “I didn’t want to talk or upsell things, but my dad didn’t care.” He shrugs and says, “He’s hardcore because he’s a worker.” With that, Ivan returns to the grill to prepare burgers for that night’s rush. Around 8 pm, the people start coming, and they don’t stop. Luckily, the diner’s schedule is built for this. Reinforcements arrive in the form of Cassandra Grimaldi, a short woman with dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail who wears her Haven Brothers t-shirt with a small cut down the front. The 38-year-old mother of three has worked at Haven Brothers for the last ten years. Though Grimaldi paused her college career when she got pregnant, she is determined to go back. “I always said I’d never die without a degree,” says Grimaldi. She wants to study psychology. For now, she studies it unofficially through her nightly encounters on the truck. A homeless woman stands outside the truck around 10 pm on a Thursday. “She won’t tell me her full name,” says Grimaldi. “But every time she comes, she gets a cherry coke. Usually she pays the whole amount.” Sometimes, as was the case that Thursday, the woman is a little short on change. “No worries, it’ll go on credit. Pay me back next time,” Grimaldi says as she delivers the coke. Each time the woman returns, Grimaldi pretends to forget to ask for the money. “I just take two dollars from my own tips,” she says. “I’d rather go to heaven than hell and it’s just a cherry coke.” Around 10:30 pm on a Saturday, a balding man in ragged clothes wanders up to the diner’s collapsible outdoor tables. He blasts music on a speaker and intermittently gets up to dance or to proclaim loudly the importance of gospel. A woman with gray hair sits next to him, smoking a cigarette in silence. Twenty minutes later, a group of five nicely dressed teenagers bound over to their table and each teenager takes a turn exchanging a long, tight hug with the man. One of them walks towards the truck and shouts over his shoulder “Let me get you a shake.” The man doesn’t respond but mumbles that he doesn’t know what’s in that stuff that makes it so damn good. This unlikely group of seven; diverse in clothing and age, sits together, under the diner’s bright lights for forty five laughter-filled minutes before wandering separately back into the night. Around 11 pm, a formally dressed young couple occupies the other table. Suddenly, the young man shouts something incoherent at two women in sports bras and leggings. They turn. The families and couples in line pause their chatter, and for a moment the interaction could go in any direction. Fifteen minutes later they’re all sitting around the table, having shared names and a cigarette. Classic Haven Brothers. The truck’s location by Kennedy Plaza and its late hours enable it to be an unique place of exchange. Ironically, one of the biggest champions of this exchange is Linda Verhulst, Paolino Jr.’s former secretary. “It’s a riot,” Verhurlst says. “I enjoy the combination of people.” Verhuslt worked at City Hall for over a decade, and her many late nights gave her ample opportunity to observe the truck. But instead of the violence her boss reported, Verhuslt saw a uniquely safe community. “You can relax and enjoy, everyone gets along,” Verhurst says. “You couldn’t see that as easily at noontime at Kennedy Plaza as you could at midnight at Haven Brothers.” Grimaldi agrees. In fact, she feels safer as a woman working at Haven Brothers than she did in previous jobs. “My first job years ago was at a well known company. I made lots of money but I experienced sexual harassment,” Grimaldi remembers. Grimaldi is so confident in the truck’s safe environment that she allows her 15-year-old daughter Adriana to work there. Adriana has been working at the diner for two months, and her favorite part is seeing people’s reactions when she gives them food. “Every night someone tells me they love me,” she says. Her response? She gives a classic Haven Brother shrug and says with a big smile, “I love you too.” When Adriana was 8-years-old, those making the documentary about the diner asked her if she wanted to work there. “I said I didn’t want to,” Adriana remembers. “But of course I did, who wouldn’t want to?” Tom Field, another diner employee, feels similarly. “I love it, love my job,” he says. Field is the one who created the back wall tribute of famous diner visitors. His broad build and proud smile stand out in nearly every single photo. “When I first started eight years ago there was nothing on the walls,” Field shares. “I injected the decoration.” The father of three encouraged the addition of the diner’s TV and acts as the truck’s unofficial DJ. “I also added the milkshake flavors,” Field says. “We had seven to eight flavors, and I told Ivan we could do better.” Haven Brothers now has 160 flavors. Field’s vision for the diner is an extension of his other work as an artist. “I make cement statues,” Field says. “Big ones, like 18th century English garden planters and urns.” He hopes to launch a business soon but in the meantime will keep working on biggering and bettering the truck. Around 11:30pm on a Saturday, Field’s silhouette fills the diner’s narrow entrance. “You were asking about my least favorite parts of the job?” he says. “When people do stupid shit like this.” He approaches the crowd outside the diner and asks each group; “You haven’t seen a credit card reader have you?” For the rest of the night, the truck’s well-oiled routine is slowed down as Field inputs each person’s credit card number manually. Another Wednesday they are slowed down by the blender not working. And another Thursday by the outlet not quite plugging into the lamp post. One day, the usual parking spot is even obstructed by the police. Each challenge is met with a signature shrug and a re-adjustment. This adaptability is key to the diner’s success. The COVID-19 pandemic was just one more test of the truck’s resilience, especially in the beginning. “It was crappy,” Field says. “It was slow and people were afraid.” The truck was particularly vulnerable because most of its business, 70%, Ivan estimates, comes from people going to the clubs. “When the clubs shut, for the first month, we were dead,” Ivan says. But they adapted. “We relied heavily on Uber Eats and Grubhub,” Ivan says. “After the first month it picked up again.” Ivan credits the truck’s dependability with its survival. “We’re established,” he says. “Our reputation saved us.” Grimaldi explains that the truck is consistent because it has to be. “We’re working for the future of our kids and him,” she says pointing to Ivan. “It’s family. We want it to do well.” The diner employees’ commitment to keeping their door open to anyone at any time has allowed it to survive Providence’s deindustrialization, Paolino Jr. ‘s attempt to move it, and, now, COVID. In turn, the truck has been able to provide food, shelter and warmth for the people of Providence, 365 days a year for over a century. Grimaldi once said Haven Brothers isn’t a place where people feel welcome, it’s a place where they are welcome. Field summarizes the diner best. More than a food truck, landmark, or even memory: “It’s a Haven.”

Eyelid Movies

Asher Radziner
January 25, 2022

The Field on a weekend in the early afternoon. “Nowhere to go and all day to get there,” as Logan would later say. I bike over listening to Eyelid Movies, the debut album of Phantogram. I arrive more quickly than I expected; only “Mouthful of Diamonds” has finished and “When I’m Small” has just begun. Sarah Barthel sings, “take me underground, take me all the way. Bring me to the fire, throw me in the flames” over pristine, repetitive drums as I get off my bike and push it up the slope. Once I can no longer see the road, I lay the bike on its side and continue into The Field carrying only my backpack with Frankenstein, a blanket, and my water bottle inside. “So show me love, you’ve got your hands on the button now. Sure enough, you’ve got your hand on the button now.” It’s a cooler Southern California day, so the sun’s unblocked gaze is welcome for a change. I sit down in some taller grass next to one of the two mini-ravine-like ditches that extend slowly from near the site’s heart almost to the road. They must’ve been dug out by the elements and maybe previous construction. A piece of old white piping is lodged in the dirt next to the end of one of them. I wonder why? There’s not currently a building here, that’s for sure. “I’d rather die. I’d rather die, than to be with you,” Sarah sings as the song crescendos. I have no clue what the song’s about. Somehow the beautiful but melancholy atmosphere the experimental indie-electronic-pop album creates is perfect for this place. “When I’m Small” was my first love on the album, but “Let Me Go” has to be my favorite now. It lets me reflect and put all the various components of my life into perspective. I pull out my headphones and let “Turn It Off” play through my phone’s speakers, its drums blending with the chirps of birds and the racket of a jackhammer or two from the construction site across the street on the way to my ears. I pick up Frankenstein and flip to my page, for the first time in my life eighty pages behind where I am supposed to have read. The opposite wall of the canyon catches my eye. How have I not noticed this until now? The wall slopes up in a thick forest of trees rising from the single tier of houses running along the road. The trees are unbroken in their ascent to the baby blue sky and the final, winding row of houses that sit atop the overlooking cliffs at every edge, save for one massive exposed cliffside where the hill must have fallen away years ago. The exposed rock is vertically ribbed and curves inward, deepest into the cliffside in the middle, a miniature version in brown earth of “Oh Wow” on the northwestern coast of Kauai, a lava rock wonder named for the response it draws from boating passersby. I look back down to my book, rejoining Victor and Henry on their journey along the Rhine. “I lay at the bottom of the boat, and as I gazed on the cloudless blue sky, I seemed to drink in a tranquility to which I had long been a stranger,” Victor remembers about his time along the Rhine with his friend. I look up at my own cloudless sky and think about my own friends. They would love it here in this place of freedom and tranquility. While Frankenstein is primarily a story about Victor Frankenstein and the monster of his creation, in my time reading, I am most struck by the relationship that Victor shares with his friend Henry Clerval. It is one of love and support, of Henry’s exposing his truest self to his friend and helping Victor to find meaning in his own existence. That’s what I want with my closest friends. And that’s what I hope I’ve found. “So, what is this place exactly?” Drew turns to me. I click a button and the garage groans open behind me. I twist the key and my car blares to life, letting out exhaust as if I had just floored the accelerator. “You’ll see.” I smile back, putting the car into reverse and easing onto the gas. Once we’ve cleared the walls, I place my hand on the back of Drew’s seat, peer over my shoulder, and turn the wheel to my left, glancing briefly down at the picnic basket sitting on the back seat. This is going to be fun. Something is wrong. The tall grasses and weeds are gone. In their place are grass clippings scattered across the earth, short, flat, and dry. The sun is just high enough to give us at least a little light. It’s going to drop below the canyon wall soon. We make our way to the usual clearing and keep going. Today we can sit anywhere; it’s all clear. Drew and I spread the blanket out as I rave about how it’s usually so much more beautiful here. She tells me it’s still pretty. She’s glad I brought her. But it’s not good enough for me. Normally it looks like a snapshot of rolling green hills from the English countryside beside Stonehenge or like some field near a tiny village on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Drew pulls her long brown hair behind her neck and over one shoulder as we picnic on breakfast burritos and flies swarm us. She doesn’t seem to mind them, but I am beside myself. They must have been stirred up by the mowing. Once we’re done with our food, we move higher up the hill, deeper into the property. There are fewer flies, but they’re still a pain, so we head back to my house as the sun sinks. We broke up two weeks later. I wouldn’t return to The Field for the next eight months. Pushing the pedals down, down, and down again, turning the gears, rotating the wheels, moving faster than I ever could without the help of this contraption. The incline is only slight, no challenge for me but enough to slow my mom and sister’s pace. They disappear around a bend as I power on, Sarah Barthel’s voice and that striking beat keeping me company. I pass by little bungalows and large properties with homes set deep in their interiors, a wall of bamboo blocks up the entire right side of the road for a solid twenty seconds. “Lucy’s underground, she’s got a mouth to feed. Am I underground, or am I in too deep?” I’ve never heard this song before but am absolutely captivated, already anxious to get home and try to figure it out on the drums. Before I started my ride up the hill, I popped in headphones under my helmet and put on Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies. I heard “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore” off one of their other albums the other day and decided to check out their other stuff. It’s unreal. Seemingly infinite trees extend from within properties and by the edges of the road. A car zooms past going somewhere in a hurry or just speeding for the heck of it. Here in Mandeville Canyon, either is just as likely. “Where are you two going?” a voice behind me demands. “We were just going for a picnic.” I say, turning around to face the nosy neighbor and lifting the picnic basket in my hand. “You know that’s private property, right?” the guy says. “Really?” I ask, playing dumb. “I come here all the time, and it’s always fine.” “Ah, well I don’t mind, just letting you guys know, that’s all,” the guy says, suddenly very chill. “They just mowed it by the way. Because of all the fires; it was a hazard.” He adds matter-of-factly. “Okay, that’s too bad.” I say, “But I guess better to be safe, right?” “Right. Have a nice picnic now.” He smiles, raising a hand in farewell and heading through the gate of the house across the street. Drew and I turn back towards The Field, having surpassed this obstacle, and make our way inside. I’m biking slowly now, lazing my way up the street, hoping my mom and sister will catch up. At some point, I pull my bike over into a little patch of gravel and grass past a curve of multicolored two-story homes. Looking back over my left shoulder, I don’t see my mom and sister. I look to my right. A rusty chain hangs low between two rusted-over posts protecting a gradually rising grassy slope and beyond an expansive steeply rising hillside of tall, bright green grass and trees. I put my bike’s kickstand down, drape my helmet from a handlebar, and step forward, up the hill. After a few yards, the gradually rising slope turns left and runs alongside the road in a widening and leveling out plane. From here the road is invisible. The whole property is completely overgrown with grasses reaching past my knees. An oak sits deep in the site slightly up the hill, shading a clearing in the grass. Afternoon sun strikes the entire place while ignoring the road below. The road. I head back down to find my mom and sister. In a moment they follow me back into what we would come to call “The Field.” “I have to take you guys soon,” I say. Logan and I are reclined on black plastic chairs, our legs extended onto one of the benches of the lunch table at the top of our high school overlooking the middle school. Logan looks over, his hands linked behind his curling, strawberry-blond hair, “Definitely. It sounds awesome.” “We should do a picnic.” “And obviously Beth will come too. That’ll be sick!” Logan grins through his shades, gazing out over the campus. You can see Barrington Place in the distance past where the buses have already started gathering to take everyone home. Cars whiz by once every minute or so. People haven’t started lining up in the carpool pickup line yet, so traffic is still manageable. I take a small sip from my already opened water bottle. Thanks to a light breeze, the air is cool up here even under the afternoon sun. “And we should invite Liz too.” I suggest. “You have to hang with her; I can tell you guys would love each other if you spent more time together.” “Great idea.” Logan says emphatically, nodding his head in approval. “Any friend of yours, I’d love to meet them.” When I finally did return from my eight-month leave of absence from The Field, it was again with Drew. We had been spending considerable time together again for the last three months. Moving on over the past summer didn’t work out too well and luckily for me it turned out she hadn’t gotten over me either. So here we were together on New Year’s Eve, bathed in the early afternoon sunlight, sitting on the knee-high grass, soaking in the sun and each other. “I can’t keep chasing you like this. It’s not healthy.” I say, my eyes locked onto her face, “You liking me and not knowing if you want a relationship isn’t good enough.” Drew looks up at the oak and around at the hills for a few seconds, “I know.” “If you don’t know if you want this, I have to move on because this isn’t good for me.” “You’re right.” She says, looking me in the eye for the first time in the conversation. In a second we are together and nothing else matters. Our lips meet, the sun glinting off her hair, a perfect moment. Later we would lie side by side, arms around each other, in the ditch, our backs resting on the gently sloping crumbling dirt, staring out at the sun and at Oh Wow’s smaller cousin. I haven’t been back since. After Henry dies in the Frankenstein, Victor reminisces about his friend: “his soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the world-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination.” Frankenstein is not simply about a monster and its creation; Frankenstein is also about true friendship. While I haven’t been back since that New Year’s Eve, Drew and I did drive past The Field three days later. This was as much a drive down my street as it was a drive through memory. Drew’s car is parked at my house, but on the way back from our soba dinner at Yabu we keep driving up the canyon. “This golden glow is not happiness. It’s the dust that you kicked on my face before saying goodbye.” We reminisce about all our times together, going back to middle school, sharing everything we could never say. “Oh memory, won’t you speak to me? Can you show me the boat in my soul that can sail me back home?” I drive past The Field all the way to the end of the canyon and turn back. “And I try to leave, but my bones just won’t agree.” We pass my home again and exit the base of the canyon; we need more time together. “And I try to believe, you should try. Set me free.” At a certain point we’re in Rustic Canyon, and I point out an old house, where I lived when I was five. We get lost. I backtrack, and we end up in familiar territory. On the way home we pass a house with a two-bulbed pink and a blue light out front. The hues meld together in the night, two joined yet diverging colors. “Let me go.” That night marks the end of my time with Drew. Two souls joined yet diverging. After an hour and a half of driving, I pull into my driveway, and we say our goodbyes. Logan, Beth, Liz, and I spread our blankets over a patch of fallen leaves and low grass, scraps of plant matter immediately lodging themselves in the fabric. The edges of our blankets overlap, providing a refuge for the four of us from the itchy brush all around. Logan and I begin removing containers of food from the brown ROC paper bags: chicken fried rice, green beans, broccoli, vegetable fried rice, popcorn chicken, seaweed salad, more green beans, chicken soup dumplings, all arrayed between us, a picnic closer to a feast. Beth’s blanket is blue and somehow impervious to the spikey dead grass and leaves. Nothing sticks to it. Liz lounges back and takes in her surroundings. Logan smiles at me saying, “This place is great. I can tell this is the start of something special.” I laugh. Logan’s always making film-esque statements at opportune moments. We all dive into the food, comfortable enough on the bumpy earth beneath us. The oak rustles in the wind and a stray leaf or two make their way onto my blanket. Each one of us is simply happy to be here, happy to be in a beautiful place with good people. Maybe Logan is right: maybe this is the start of something special.

How to Break a Heart

Sam Hawkins
January 24, 2022

We sit in a quiet corner facing one another and rip off overheating winter coats. I poke fun at her fluffy, pink, pillow-jacket, and she shakes her head and rolls her eyes playfully. I tear the shiny foil off my burrito and sink my teeth into a gushy amalgam of beans and rice, smilingly reminiscing on our Valentines’ Day antics the night prior. After a bite herself she smacks her lips, indicating that she has something to say. She looks up at me with big, innocent, hazel-brown eyes. I look up, raise my eyebrows, and with my eyes still raised, throw my mouth back into my burrito. “Sometimes I feel like I like you more than you like me.” Teeth pause midway through a gnash of guacamole, chicken, and wrap. Juice drips down my chin. My frozen mouth slowly begins to chew again while she raises her eyebrows above a nervous grin. A grin. She expects me to say no. I finish chewing, look down, and slowly drop my burrito. I look up into her eyes again. “Yeah… I… kind of think you might be right.” As her nervous grin gradually becomes a widened gape, her eyes become moons, and her eyebrows twitch; she sits back in her chair. Red lines appear in suddenly bloodshot tear ducts. She freezes, armed with nothing but a half-wrapped sandwich. Her trembling mouth regretfully stutters, “Wh…” before trailing off into silence. Advertisement She turns her head away. My heart’s offbeat drum solo pounds through my chest, and I begin to think that maybe I should say something. “I just sometimes feel like you’re… thinking about me all the time.” My eyes make a circle of the room. “And I get like. Super distracted by school. And then I like… like I… sometimes don’t think about you at all.” She turns her head the other way. Thick, long, brown hair covers her left eye from my view, but I see her right begin to leak. Silence reigns. Thick carpet silence: the stupid banalities of strangers’ side conversations about “beans too spicy” or “my failed test” or “the broken toilet” the only exogenous threats to unfortunately un-closable ears. She pulls her hair behind her ear and I watch tears pool in her left eye. She bench presses the door and does not bother to hold it for me. With one arm in my jacket and the other still clawing at the sleeve, I awkwardly body slam the doorframe and sprint after my angry suddenly-ex. Most long-distance relationships come down to a coin flip. According to a KIIROO study of 1,000 Americans, long-distance relationships have a success rate of 58 percent. 88 percent of people consider technology to be the saving grace of a long-distance relationship; yet in my experience, it cheapened our bond. Text conversations made our interpersonal connection less tangible — less real — even though she and I well exceeded the 343 texts sent each week between the average long-distance couple. Another study from the University of Texas at Austin found that couples use the pronouns “I” and “we” more often leading into and directly after a breakup. This change of language does not occur purposefully but rather because those with heavy mental burdens tend to become more self-focused. I suppose my mind was already made up. When she steps on the bus, I know I have to as well. University of Connecticut’s massive 4,047 acres are only navigable by bus, and even though I have no student pass, the heavyset operator shows no interest in checking IDs. We again sit across from each other. Nobody talks. Half-working heaters fire cannons into the quiet air; no one fights the usurping sound. Her eyes do not meet mine but instead a phone screen. Watery brown eyes occasionally reflect blue from the screen’s light as her fingers tap softly but quickly, allowing the blue reflection once every few words. Months ago, those fingers sent me a direct message and we began talking. She took her only free period at school to skip lunch and grab a coffee with me. I was most shocked by her hazel eyes and the way her thick brown hair framed her striking face. She told me she was off to University of Connecticut in the fall; I was finishing up my gap year, soon headed to Brown University. I look around the bus at those sitting side-by-side and those sitting alone. Only 28 percent of people end up marrying their college significant other. And I had just landed myself in the other 72 that breaks up in burrito shops because they get distracted by a blonde athlete back at school that Snapchats them once a week. It’s the “might” that kills us 72 percent. As one professor from University of Utah puts it, “Humans fall in love for a reason… for our ancestors, finding a partner may have been more important than finding the right partner. It might be easier to get into relationships than to get back out of them.” One survey from Online Doctor found that the number one reason men cheated was because “the other person was really hot;” the top reason women cheated was because their partner was “negligent.” I had not cheated. I did not have the game for that. I had, though, sensed my mind drifting: pulling away from her, and towards other options. After another 20 silent minutes of soundless discomfort and eyeline avoidance she steps off the bus, trudges through a snowbank, and moves towards her dorm. A long, snow-swept path leads to massive brick buildings, now winter-white from snowfall. Covered by no real boots but instead Vans skate shoes, my socks freeze, snow-soaked; each step offers little more than burning pain. She opens the large glass doors, and steps into the building lobby. Backing out is not an option, I tell myself. Be a man. I stumble through the doorway, tripping on the way in. I see her roommate waiting in the beige-walled lobby with a furrowed brow and worry-sick eyes, as she stares at my now-ex. My ex shakes her head, says nothing, and keeps moving forward. I look at her friend from under the brim of my hat, but she does not look back. Silence holds its reign. My ex walks determinedly up a narrow dorm staircase. Lightly over-exerted breaths and heavy, snow-wet shoe steps fill the awkward soundscape. Her door creaks a regretful welcome and I let myself in. Bright pinks and blues color the posters on her walls. The room’s two beds leave a small corridor between, where she’s placed a fluffy, white rug. She steps onto the rug, her back turned toward me. I see her stuffed animals on her bed, my Valentine’s Day card on her dresser. I am reminded of the letter she wrote me after the first time we had split when we both went to college. Neither of us had found someone else at our separate schools. One short visit over Thanksgiving break left us both thinking the feelings were still alive. Studies have found that those with more fear of being alone are far more willing to settle for less just to be in a relationship again. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD She turns towards me and cracks our silence. “How could you do this to me?” she asks. The phrase emerges as more of a whispered scream than as a question. As tears splatter against shaking arms she looks right into and through my fearful eyes. “How could you?” “Just let me explain,” I say as I slowly approach and draw my arms around her. As soon as I make contact, she throws out her hands and screams, “Don’t touch me!” I back up slowly, eyes wide open. “I will never forgive you,” she declares. “I just don’t understand!” Her voice cracks my eardrums again. “How could you do this to me!” In a quiet, direct voice, I respond, “Listen, if you really want to hear, I will sit down and explain everything, with complete honesty.” She sits still for a moment. Silence echoes our frozen bodies. Slowly, she climbs onto the bed. I sit beside her, close, but careful not to touch. A bead of sweat drips down my back, soaking through my shirt and into my jacket. I have yet to remove the heavy coat. I anticipate escape. “Look,” I admit, “I just think it’s so goddamn hard to be so far away from you. Every time I see another girl, I’m reminded of just how far away you are and just how much easier it would be if I were with someone near me. If we were with people near us.” “But I don’t want them,” she says, “I want you.” “Rhode Island is only a few hours away from Connecticut, but it might as well be the other side of the planet.” Advertisements REPORT THIS AD She sniffles and rubs her eyes. “I just don’t understand… what did I do?” she asks. “Please,do not blame yourself. It has nothing to do with you. It is time and circumstance and place, and it hurts so much to hurt you, to tell you like this. But I feel like I have to remind myself to think about you. And when my mind drifts and thinks about other girls more than it does about you and I catch myself there, it’s just like… why keep doing this?” “I just…” she sniffles again and shakes. She stutters, “I — I just don’t understand.” “I should just go.” “No!” She stands, arms spread wide, and blocks my path. “Don’t leave. Whatever you do, don’t leave. I need you. Don’t leave me. I will never forgive you.” Her eyebrows crease and her voice lashes out, “I will never forgive you!” Her face shifts into drawn-down brows and a broken frown. “Don’t leave me. How could you do this to me. Just please don’t leave me.” I stuff the last pieces of scattered clothes into my two bags and sling one over each shoulder. She stands in the center of the room between me and the door. I coldly brush past her. Now the air holds just the sound of her quiet sobs. The room’s heat begins to overwhelm, like a two-faced, lying comfort of warmth from the bitter, truthful cold outside. I pause at the door and give one last look back. I look into her eyes. She does not bring herself to meet mine. “Goodbye,” I muster. I give her a moment to let her respond. She sniffles, and two more tears roll down her cheeks. I close the door and walk down the hallway. 66 percent of people agreed that the biggest challenge of long-distance relationships is a lacking sense of intimacy, one KIIROO survey found. 40 percent agree it’s a lack of communication; and for an entire 33 percent, it’s as simple as a time difference. Statistics fail to capture the irrationalities of relationships because relationships themselves are just as fragile as the people within them. When two people have to share one connection, its fragility doubles. According to matchmaker Hellen Chen, over 85 percent of dating relationships end in breakups. As she puts it, “If you are just dating with no intention of getting married to your partner, you are simply taking care of someone else’s future spouse.” Some psychologists associate the fragility of relationships with paradoxical over-optimism, fears of pain, fears of shame, anxiety, or pride – yet whatever the reason, a stable relationship seems to be just about the most unlikely experience one can imagine. Ten steps down the hallway, my eyes begin to tear up. Hell no. I do not have that luxury right now. I wipe my eyes and focus my attention on how I am going to get out of Connecticut and back to Rhode Island. Did that really just happen? I check my phone. Five percent battery. I mean, that was worse than a movie. I sprint down the stairs, pulling up the Connecticut bus schedule as I go. There is one bus into Storrs Connecticut, one bus out — one way of escape: the Peter Pan Bus line. I check the current time. 5:42 p.m. I wonder what she’s doing now. I look at the remaining bus times. 6:10 p.m. How will she spend the rest of this horrible day? I scroll down, scroll up, refresh the page: 6:10 p.m. I bet she’s with her friend right now, talking about how much of a dick I am. Fair enough. I refresh the page and it, yet again, stares me back with 6:10 p.m. Hang on, that can’t be right. One remaining chance to leave tonight? One more bus time, leaving somewhere across campus, in 28 minutes? Picturing the night I’d spend on a frozen park bench outside the Gampel Pavilion, I throw my thumb to the “buy” button and quickly input all my credit card information. I burst through the door into the blistering cold and pull down my hat brim, readjusting the backpack on my right shoulder and the drawstring on my left, the bags bouncing as I speed-walk through the snow. Still-soaked socks navigate more treacherous snowbanks, and I ignore pain both physical and emotional as I pull up my phone again to find the location of the bus station. Three percent battery. I press my thumb against the print reader. The screen shows just my wallpaper and the time. I press my thumb again. No change, just my wallpaper and the time. Then the screen goes black. Hm. Could this get worse? “Are you f***ing kidding me?” I yell aloud. Could this get any worse? Lord, please let me escape this town, I think to myself. Six of every 10 acres of Connecticut are completely forested, and the oasis of Storrs, Connecticut has little to offer that is not directly connected to the university. On Vacation Idea’s “Top 10 Things to do in Storrs, Connecticut,” number five is the school’s “Museum of Puppetry;” and number seven is the school’s “Dairy Bar.” The list ends at nine, as though the author was unable to find a tenth thing to do in Storrs. After a three-minute speed-walk-sprint-jog, my fingers begin to freeze and my contacts dryly blind my vision. Oddly I seem to be alone, navigating a deserted, frozen campus. I pass building after building on the sides of one long, empty road – sided by mostly grey, snow-covered dorms – until I reach the end of the path. I look at the building to my left and throw myself through a random grey door. My eyes enter tunnel vision as I seek out the nearest electrical socket. I wander through a dimly-lit hallway, wallpaper falling off the walls. I take a right and stop quickly. The hallway I stare down is unlit, uncarpeted, with dusty construction hats and drills reposing quietly in a corner. I turn back around, re-enter the hallway of sickly wallpaper, and find a pseudo-electrical socket I had missed before – just a drywood panel, holes, and open wires behind. I rip my charger from my drawstring and risk electrocution to give my phone some life. Like phones, relationships become an addiction. As St. Louis University evolutionary psychologist Brian Boutwell explains, “you have that drive to get that fix in the form of being around that person you care about.” And when one loses that person, symptoms equivalent to withdrawal appear; although many consider a breakup something to just “get over,” there are physical consequences to a seemingly literal “heartbreak.” The heart “suddenly [grows] weak due to physical or emotional stress” and gives off symptoms of a heart attack, such as “chest tightness and shortness of breath.” Broken heart syndrome literally enlarges part of your heart due to the overflow of the stress hormone adrenaline. This size change physically alters how your heart pumps: doctors call this reaction “stress-induced cardiomyopathy.” My heart pumps hard. My stint at this dilapidated charging station was costing me precious time, and I was probably illegally trespassing. I hold down the power button and wait for the big white apple to take the screen. Finally, my wallpaper returns, and the time: 5:56. I pull up Safari and search, “Storrs CT bus stop location.” Google Maps gives me 2075 Hillside Road. I double-check the Peter Pan bus website to verify the address. Peter Pan gives me 1356 Storrs Road. Dear god please no. Trust the address of a potentially outdated website, or a disconnected but constantly updated Google Maps? I flip a coin in my head and choose to head for the Peter Pan website stop. After sprinting through now-packed college streets with Maps embarrassingly screaming at me before and after every turn, I finally arrive at the location. No physical benchmarks exist to mark the so-called “bus stop” — just some students walking up and down the street. I check my phone. 6:07. I panic. I put the other address – that from Google Maps — into my phone, and sprint there. I arrive at 6:11. No signs of a bus. Students mill about in heavy hoods, snow-stained boots, and sweatpants, some seemingly already buzzed. I turn to a couple guys nearby and ask if they know the location of the bus stop. “No clue bro, sorry,” responds the beanie-wearing frat bro. I throw my hands up in defeat. With his head turned away, his hooded friend speaks up. “Yo, you heading to Providence?” “Yeah.” “Peter Pan bus?” “Yeah.” He pauses for a moment, as if to double-check his eyes. “…Yeah, that’s your bus.” He points at the massive bus hurtling up the street with “PROVIDENCE” plastered on its screen. “No way. Thank you guys so much,” I shout. I watch the bus approach. I watch it pull up to the stop. I watch it not decelerate. I watch it accelerate. I watch the big green bus pass the stop and roar its engine as it speeds up the hill. I break into a maximum effort hill sprint. I hear groups of college kids cracking up behind me as I run full tilt, two bags violently bouncing over my shoulders. As I sprint up this hill in the 10-degree darkness, I have just one thought: Karma. I make it up the hill and watch the bus cross the street. It goes down another side road and slows down, stopping right next to the old benchmark-less Peter Pan website address. When I approach the bus, my battered lungs speak first. I manage to burst out to the driver, “Providence?” between gasps for breath. He takes one millisecond to look me over in distasteful judgment. “Just get in,” he responds coldly. He too does not bother to check for my ticket. I step into the dark bus, choose a seat alone in the back, plug my now re-dead phone into the bus plug, throw my headphones on, and consider my next unknowns. According to a study from Nanaya, the average person has a 25% chance of entering a new relationship after seven months, a 50% chance after a year and eight months, and a 75% chance after three years and six months. I calculate where I might fit into this timeframe. Younger, self-certain people tend to stay single for less time than older individuals. I was young. But I was not self-certain. I watch UConn roll away in the snow-lit dark. I wonder quietly whether to text her that I’m safe, or to Snapchat that athlete from school, “hey.”

Brown State: The Open Curriculum Meets the Gridiron

Nicholas Miller
January 14, 2022

On Saturday mornings in the Fall, ESPN’s College Gameday airs for a whopping three hours in preview of the day’s most prominent college football matchups. Filmed live on the campus to host the most enticing game, commentators speak in front of a sea of students who, while brandishing signs that creatively bash the opposing school, seem to never stop screaming. It is a weekly celebration of college football culture, showcasing the tribal pride, social unruliness, and unparalleled extravagance of football at large state schools. On a brisk September morning, I grabbed a bowl of dry Bran Flakes and a blanket, and tuned in. The show was in State College, Pennsylvania to preview the ranked clash between Auburn and Penn State to be played later that night. Much of the conversation centered around the game being a “White Out,” meaning that Penn State was instructing all fans in the 106,572-person capacity stadium to wear white. Students and fans would consent with remarkable unanimity and produce the tremendous visual effect of a pulsing, pure-white oval. The crowd at Gameday was already properly dressed. An anchor joked that they weren’t loud enough, a dangerous stunt that triggered an auditory explosion. It was with this ringing in my ears that I started getting ready for my own Gameday: Brown University edition. This story is not about the grandeur of football at a huge Southern state university, nor is it the underdog story of a small college finding pride through its football team. This is the story of a fabulously wealthy, elite institution, its terrible football team, and a student body, that for the most part, thinks of it all as a joke. That Saturday, Brown was to host the University of Rhode Island in the Governor’s Cup: a matchup 112 years old. It would be the team’s first game in nearly two years after the Ivy League, the only Division I conference to do so, cancelled all athletic competition during the 2020-21 school year because of Covid-19. As a result, it was my first time attending an athletic event as a college student, and even though I knew Brown has overall the worst sports teams of the Ivy League, general memories of college students storming the field or roaring thunderous chants still fueled my excitement. But before I got to the game, I had to find the shuttle bus, the required first leg of a Brown University gameday. The football stadium, built in 1925, is more than a mile and a half from the center of campus, an irritating quirk that forces the University to call upon the might of its shuttle bus fleet to ferry students to the game. If Brown were to imitate the “Tiger Walk”—a tradition originally of Auburn in which the football team marches to the stadium flanked by masses of rambunctious students—players might become rather tired traversing the hills of the tranquil residential areas between campus and the stadium. I walked to the shuttle’s pickup location with my friends Miles and Eshaan. Miles, a lacrosse player with curly brown hair, thick eyebrows, and broad shoulders, received his college football education growing up next to the stadium of Boston College. He was already lamenting Brown’s inferior athletic culture. “My dad always says I should’ve gone to a big state school,” he told us. Eshaan, a spectacled computer science major whose arm lay in a sling after recently breaking his collarbone in a biking accident, was more concerned about reinjuring himself amidst a rowdy student section. We soon joined the blob of students waiting on the sidewalk. When the bus arrived, those in the back of the congregation who had entered too late to find any empty seats were told to plop down on the floor. They formed a single-file line in the bus’s aisle, like a team of rowers readying before the start of a race. There was certainly a buzz about. Conversation hummed; people called to their friends on the other side of the bus. All sported some sort of Brown-licensed apparel. And yet, even amid the excitement, it was clear that this was not a case of avid fandom and genuine pride for a school’s football team. Brown football had won just five of its last 31 games, and the bus’s passengers seemed hyper-aware of what they should expect. Someone cracked a prediction to his friend: “URI by 38.” Eshaan called to his friend two rows ahead and jokingly posed a question: “Over or under 5 and a half 3-and-outs?” After some laughing, “Over” came as the reply. There seemed to be a sense that we were going to the game ironically, understanding that the combination of college football and Brown University was a prime target for jokes. “Oh my god, there actually is a spread,” one kid next to me said, referring to the game’s betting odds (URI was an 11-point favorite). A similar joke would be made later by the “brownumemes” Instagram page, which pointed out that the Google search “uri brown spread” only produced results about the spread of Covid-19. We arrived a little late, in the middle of Brown’s first drive, but the unenclosed Brown Stadium allowed us to watch as we walked to the entrance. Surrounded by a track, the field is a bright green of alternating shades with the endzones a clash between the brown background and the red outline of the words “Brown” and “Bears.” The turf was added earlier this year to replace what was the Ivy League’s only remaining grass football field, which Coach E.J. Perry said had an uneven, “domed” shape. The stadium itself consists of two stands: on Brown’s side, a tall concrete structure sits with open arches supporting a trapezoidal arrangement of metal bleachers; and on the other sideline, a short, uniform rectangle. As we walked around the field to the Brown side, we caught a long look at the home stand: loosely populated with pockets and slashes of empty bleachers, depressingly conspicuous. Brown Stadium holds 20,000 people, but for Brown’s season opener, only 5,243 attended. The student section didn’t at first make itself obvious, so we sat down in an open spot of bleachers at midfield next to two 70-something year old men. They were alumni, one told me; they try to go to every home game. A survey of the crowd replicated this theme: the older people were a lot more invested than the students. On every Brown kickoff, a middle-aged man two rows in front of us yelled, “Hit someone, Bruno!” in a powerful, gravelly voice, producing a snicker from the students behind. The man’s demand for violence seemed to belong more in the era around the turn of the 20th century when football, in the time before the forward pass, consisted exclusively of running plays and brutal techniques—the most famous being the flying wedge, in which both teams charged full speed into each other. In 1905, a year in which football caused 19 deaths, President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to ban the sport. Ivy League schools, as some of the first colleges involved in the development of American football, were the kings of this bloody era. An Ivy won at least a partial share of each of the first 31 National Championships beginning in 1869 and a majority of titles in the 1900s and 10s. Brown, although never a national champion, achieved a Rose Bowl appearance in 1915 and had a winning record in 22 of 24 seasons between 1902 and 1926. The final year of this run became a part of Brown football legend when the same eleven men played for the entirety of two straight games, and 58 minutes of a third. The eleven were nicknamed the “Iron Men,” en route to the only undefeated season in program history. But now, with athletic budgets that dwarf those of large state schools—Penn State’s budget is about eight times that of Brown—combined with the inability to give out athletic scholarships, Ivy League schools can hardly compete with the best of the country. But this Saturday against URI, Brown effortlessly drove down the field on their opening possession, which ended with quarterback E.J. Perry supplying a perfect looped touchdown pass to the back of the end zone. I jumped up in surprised elation, turning wide-eyed to Miles: “Maybe we’re not so bad!” I saw now where the student section was. A few rows of kids were standing up and hollering in the bleachers on Brown’s 40-yard line. It was obvious how far away we were from the thrilling revelry of typical Division 1 college football. The touchdown produced a moderate cheer rather than a roar: a self-conscious, uncertain applause rather than unmodulated, elated screaming. A group of students behind me stayed seated, managing a few loud but uninspired claps. Perhaps giving in to true celebration of something as mainstream as football was a little too awkward for our ironic sensibilities. We are the “cool” Ivy, after all. But the amateurish organization of the game didn’t help the atmosphere either. During a timeout in the middle of the first half, the scoreboard lit up to display in big, white block letters “T-Shirt Toss,” signaling Brown’s cheerleaders to run towards the bleachers clutching rolls of cloth. It was Brown University’s devolved version of the T-shirt cannon, the beautiful American sports tradition in which T-shirts are fired into the crowd at high speed. While Auburn uses a humongous gatling gun to mow down its fans with clothing, Brown relies on the arm strength of its cheerleaders, a lucky fact for those sitting in the first and second rows. Later in the half came the “Punt, Pass, Kick” event in which a student starting from one endzone had to cumulatively punt and pass the ball as far as he could to set himself up for a field goal attempt at the other end. After the event was announced, but before he was able to begin, the teams returned to the field, forcing him to awkwardly run off. When he was finally able to show off his skills during the next timeout, his shanked punt actually hit the Brown defense’s huddle. Perhaps the most professional facets of the game were the exorbitant concession prices–$8.00 for a small sausage sandwich—or the men’s bathroom: a grimy square that opts for long troughs instead of urinals. “Our uniforms are so ugly,” Miles said to me. They were a purplish brown, with silver helmets, white numbers, and bright red outlines. The ivy-intertwined “B” on the helmets was a completely different shade of brown than the jerseys. I thought again about the “white-out” that Penn State would have that night. It appeared that Brown couldn’t organize color uniformity on its own uniforms. And our crowd, an ugly rainbow of shades within the realms of brown and red, reflected the disjointed branding of the university overall. On the field, the team was able to hold its own for the first half, entering halftime losing only 17-14 and preserving my own delusions for the moment. At halftime, I suggested we move to the student section, which now seemed to cover about 15 rows. Eshaan, still worried about his collarbone, was hesitant. “Dude, look at them,” I said, pointing to the tranquil congregation of students. “You’ll be fine.” There, the crowd was packed far closer together, but most still appeared relatively apathetic about the actual game. The main source of sound was side conversation, rather than cheering or hollering, and as the second half began, any remaining traces of genuine fandom dissolved. A URI touchdown and a Brown three-and-out had people again making deprecating jokes. After another three-and-out, the subsequent Brown punt was shanked much like the one during “Punt, Pass, Kick,” traveling a whole 15 yards before going out of bounds. The crowd emitted a collective “Oohh,” which was not quite a groan, but more a cringe, simultaneously conveying sympathy for the punter and the humor wrapped into the entire experience of Brown football. Now people started to leave, and those who remained seem to have lose all interest, using the time to take group pictures or to meet up with other friends. I didn’t even notice when our running back fumbled inside the URI 20-yard line. As we started to gather our things ourselves, a girl in front asked us if we were travelling to Boston for the Harvard game next week. “I think it’s our rivalry game,” she said. “Rivalry” would prove to be a stretch. We would go to the Harvard game, and we would again leave in the third quarter, this time after a Crimson touchdown made it 49-3. The Brown vs. Harvard game was far more demoralizing a defeat than the Governor’s Cup, which ended 45-24. Harvard’s pass-rush bullied our offensive line; their running back shrugged off our tackle attempts; their receivers glided past our coverage. It was an absolutely one-sided beatdown. And yet, interestingly, for about a quarter and a half, the Brown community, in a beautiful display of school pride and imagination, pretended it was actually a rivalry, as if Brown actually had footballing clout. Swarms of students had made the trip, wreaking havoc on transportation the way sports fans are supposed to. On the 5:30 p.m. train from Providence to Boston, a trail of people searching for empty seats trekked up and down cars filled by Brown students. My brother, a Cambridge resident, texted me saying that Brown chants arose during his subway ride. A man on the T informed me slightly accusatorily that a Lyft ride from South Station to Cambridge cost $50 because of the surge of Brown students trying to get to the game. For a night, Brown University had invaded the Amtrak, the Boston subway, and Harvard Square, all a week after large swaths of Brown Stadium had been left empty during the team’s first home game in two years. After arriving at the Harvard T stop, we walked past the overwhelming buzz of Harvard square, across the Charles River sparkling with the lights of Boston’s skyscrapers, and through the gates of Harvard’s athletic complex. The environment was completely the opposite to that of the previous week. We walked past ticket lines that stretched to the street, zig-zagged through a plethora of food trucks, darted through chaotic blobs of people on the concourse, and gazed up at Harvard Stadium’s iconic horseshoe-shaped stands, the sides of which were nearly packed. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD And yet, tonight, our traveling pack seemed to have matched Harvard’s energy, supplying a good percentage of the game’s 20,748-person attendance. I crammed into a visitor’s section that was nearly full. The crowd didn’t hum with conversation but swelled and popped along with each play. A third down got everyone on their feet; a pass breakup prompted demonstrative sweeping gestures with outstretched arms, and a questionable call drew boos. A group of kids in front of us stood up, turned to the crown and started chanting “Let’s go Bruno.” Later, another section directed a “safety school” call toward the Harvard side, supplying the pettiness necessary for a college student section. Although still a long way away from State College, we were unrecognizable from the half-interested crowd of last week. I asked people why so many students made the trip. Some told me it was because of the “aura of Harvard,” saying the fame and notoriety of the school draws people. Perhaps in that sense, the pilgrimage is a product of an intra-Ivy inferiority complex, or a desire to assert ourselves against the grandeur and prestige of Harvard and Boston, hence the “safety school” chant. But more superficially, students, some of whom say they don’t plan on going to another game this year, told me they came because their friends were going, or because they heard it was a Brown tradition. This social aspect points to the Harvard game as a cultural creation, a sort of manufactured event in which students ditch their disparaging scoffs and ironic chuckles and agree to temporarily buy-in to a different Brown University, one of school pride and athletic extravagance, where students travel with and excitedly support the central representatives of their school: the football team. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD Sadly, however, this fantasy of Brown State quickly deteriorated. Brown’s first possession ended after two plays and a fumble on our own five-yard line, allowing for an easy Harvard touchdown. After a series of Bruno punts with a missed field goal in between, Harvard was up 21-0. A tall, blonde-haired kid to my right turned to me, in a humorous but sad scoff: “We are so bad.” A promising drive took Brown to the Harvard nine-yard line until a Perry pass was intercepted and returned 77 yards. Harvard was up 28-0 with three minutes left in the first half when Miles and I descended into the concourse to get something to eat. When we climbed the stairs again, Miles looked at the scoreboard and stopped in his tracks. “Oh my god, look.” Harvard: 42. Brown: 0. Still the first half. It was now impossible to maintain the collective illusions we created for the night. Miles seemed genuinely disappointed. “I’ve lost so much school pride,” I heard him tell several people later that night. Others expected this. I said to the blonde kid next to me, “I didn’t realize we were this bad.” “Oh, I knew we were,” he replied with little hesitation. People started to descend the stairs towards the concourse, never to return for the second half. Those remaining had again lost interest. The same picture-taking routine started up again. Chants and cheers beyond the sarcastic kind were long gone. It was a sad ending to the night, but I was intrigued at the Brown I saw earlier. Even if it only lasted for about an hour, Brown students unified in an expression of true, collegiate festivity and pride that I wasn’t sure existed in our strange cultural mix of bohemianism, intellectuality, and nerdiness. Whether this was just an ephemeral illusion, or a true subsurface part of Brunonian culture, or even just a more elaborate expression of self-deprecating irony, remains unclear. Certainly, College Gameday isn’t coming to the Main Green anytime soon; but the beautiful phantom of Brown State might just appear again.

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