To Have and to Hold: My Vinyl Year

When I lived in Chicago and Milwaukee was an hour away, I rarely heard of anyone's day trip to Milwaukee. Living in the D.C. area, you find that most people have a solid sense of Baltimore (also an hour away) and can name a few favorite spots there. And I kind of get it. I can see how a Chicagoan (rightly or wrongly) would think of Milwaukee as being the same...but much less so. Baltimore, however, is an entirely different animal than D.C. Baltimore isn't the smaller version of anything. It's just big enough to be on the national stage, so to speak, and just small enough to have the chip-on-its-shoulder pride that smaller big cities have. Baltimore, I am a fan. And not just because of The Wire--a show largely shot on streets the likes of me will probably never see. (But, god damn, The Wire was something.) The neighborhood "up there" that I'm most likely to find myself in is Hampden. Once a haven of funky thrift shops, it has sense evolved into a haven of well-...

The first time I heard about Bikini Kill was from a friend in the punk scene in Chicago in 1993. He told me there was this girl band that didn't let any guys into their shows. I'm sure I said something like "That's lame" and went back to listening to Jawbreaker and whatnot. For all of the misinformation and general shittiness of our digital age (and hence, hello, vinyl), one can at least make an earnest effort to go online to seek clarification. In 1993, in a scene that was still more or less "underground," a falsehood could remain firmly in place without any obvious means of fact-checking it. Sure, I could have somehow made an effort, but I had a glut of stuff I was already obsessed with, so it was easy enough to shrug and write off a band that possibly wouldn't want me at their shows. However: Holy shit, was that wrong. A few years later, I got word that Bikini Kill was, in fact, an excellent band, and the famed "girls to the front" thing...

In the summer of 1994, I went on a road trip to the west coast—a first for me, a kid from the Chicago suburbs who had previously only made it as far west as Iowa City. I was nineteen. The world was rediscovering the Beatniks. One song on Jawbreaker’s new album name-dropped Kerouac. Another song on that same album featured a recording of Kerouac in the background. More visibly, Ginsburg did an ad for Gap. More bizarrely, Burroughs did one for Nike. Say what you want about the commercialism of counterculture…say even more about whether any of those 1950s white male hedonists would survive a contemporary, woke reassessment. All you might say is true. But here’s something: When you grow up in a world believing sports were everything—and you sucked at sports—it was more than a little bit liberating to learn about this other world where suddenly the writers were the cool guys. All of which to say: a long road trip out west with barely any money, nowhere to stay, and no firm plans…this re...

My kids were off school for Rosh Hashanah, a holiday that we do not celebrate. But fair enough. Non-Christians have to deal with having their school year built around Christian holidays. My county now calls it winter break…but we all know what we’re talking about. And spring break, without fail, aligns with Easter. This was just one day, I could make it work—despite my ignorance about this specific holiday. I loaded my kids (quantity: two) into the car and brought them across the Potomac into Washington, DC. The Smithsonian museums are always free and always open (save for Thanksgiving and Christmas). My kids were not consulted and made their unhappiness known at every opportunity, even as they picked out their favorite cakes in Wayne Thiebaud’s Cakes and as they laughed at all the butts delicately carved in smooth white marble.  Admit that they liked it, however, and I “win.” And we can’t have that. American History was up next, where we encountered the stylish Girlhood exhib...

In most parts of this country, crossing a state line is a noteworthy occurrence. The new state announces itself with a large highway sign, and a welcome center often appears quickly thereafter. This makes living in Arlington, Virginia a bit different. Going into the “city” means entering a non-state. And, among the convoluted highways, parkways, and beltways, a wrong turn or a missed exit can land you in Maryland before you realize what happened. There was a time when crossing over from Virginia to Maryland meant leaving the Confederacy and entering the Union. A Union slave state, but still…kind of a big transition. Now you can do it by accident.  Times change. This month I found myself headed up north, just a handful of miles, to Hyattsville, Maryland. Like most of the small cities surrounding DC, Hyattsville feels very much like a DC suburb. Tucked away on a side street, next to a yoga studio and across from the Masonic lodge, is a tiny, unassuming storefront. This is Red O...

I saw Michael Ian Black do stand-up in Arlington, Virginia about six months ago. He talked about moving from Connecticut to Savanna, Georgia. In this bit, he said something along the lines of: “Connecticut has so many great cities, such as…” …and then could not name any. Someone in the audience shouted, “Hartford!” He quipped back: “Hartford is a city in Connecticut, I’ll grant you that. Is it a great city? Who’s to say?” A reductive look at the east coast would chalk up the major cities as: DC, Baltimore, Philly, New York, maybe Providence, and then Boston. What’s to know of Connecticut? They invented Lyme disease and sometimes they put clams on pizza. Oh, and some old money, country club buttholes were won over by Trump. As far as stereotypes, I’ve seen worse. But I am here today to tell you that Niantic, Connecticut is a straight-up cultural mecca. I am speaking of the very specific culture of books and records. If you’re a book person, you probably know of Powell’s in P...