Archive for September, 2005
So Marcia and I are up in Guadalajara, once again. spending the weekend with her mom, Martha. Martha is recovering from surgery and so Marcia and I are, well um, helping her recovery. Marcia is cooking a lot and I’m smiling and looking oafish a lot and probably cooking tomorrow. We’re mostly just sitting around the house keeping Martha company.
Last night, as we got into town, we stopped at Funicula, for a pizza dinner. And I gotta say, Funicula rivals Ben’s Pizza (on Thompkins in Soho) for the title of best pizza in the entire world. that’s a bold statement, i know. but one not made lightly. We’ll be going back tomorrow. fer sure.
The early entry on my trip through NYC got me thinking about my Uncle Tim. In 2001, I made another trip to NY, to see a house he had just finished on Washington Street, in Manhattan, for the guy who founded VH1. As I walked through the house taking photos i was blown away by his craftsmanship and mastery of materials. I immediately put together a little slideshow of the photos and posted it to my old blog: ed-one.com
It’s years later now, and that site is no longer around, so as I re-read that entry I decided to revisit those photos. And so, here they are:
Tim’s house on washington street
Architected, designed and built by my uncle Tim Seggerman and his Inca Building Workshop, this house is a living sculpture, once a public bus garage, it’s now a sprawling 5 story residence with lower floor retail space. It took Tim four years to complete the project. He spent the entire time, inside the building, designing every last little inch of space. 90% of the fixtures, wood work and furniture were designed by Tim and fabricated in the basement shops he set up. Tim is truly a master of materials. and a complete perfectionist. This piece of work is only rivaled by the current house he is working on in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Tim is a genius and an inspiration for my entire family.
enjoy!
I was bumbling around the internet just now and I happened upon MakingRoom Magazine : Matthew Curry. it’s a slideshow of a painting in progress. wicked! great interview too. here’s more on Matthew Curry, the artist.
So I’m still rocking the 3rd generation “Hal9000 orange-glowing-button” looking iPod. I’ve had this sucker for a little over 2 1/2 years. It’s been a total work horse, providing my car with tunes in two countries and countless miles.
Yesterday I had the thing hooked up to my computer all day, charging. when I unplugged it, I noticed the ipod was barely charged. I thought it was maybe just a fluke so last night I hooked it up to my funky little ipod speaker system / dock charger. It charged all night and as of this morning it’s half charged.
Let’s all give a moment of silence to my fallen ipod.
I guess I can still use it with the cigarette lighter charger in my car, but the battery is most certainly kicking the bucket. i’ll hold on to the end, but my mind can’t help but wander.
UPDATE: it turns out i was mistaken. that the juice meter had just not gone back up to 100% in the moment I checked. Next time I turned Mr. iPod on, the juice meter said 100%. so I guess my wandering eyes, need to stay closed for now.
mr. lizard is our friend, even mr. lizard knows a good color combination when he sees one:
a coupla nights ago we were out on the malecon, just before the sunset. It seems like there are always clouds these days. immense looming thunderous clouds, waiting to rain on us at any given moment. there’s something comforting in this and i’ll miss it when it’s gone, in a month or so.
The rainy season has been glorious and very very wet. i love it. i love the humidity and the sweat. the rain, the lightning, the sound. the butterflies, lizards and bugs of every shape and size. the rainy season brings everything alive. and the jungle is raw green and everywhere. i sometimes wish it were like this all the time.
then i’d probably never ever wear pants.
Nueva York, the big apple. home plate.
So our final stop was New York City. my second or third home, depending on how you see a thing. We ended up staying with my sister, Beth, who lives in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn. On our arrival, we promptly set off to see the sights at the West Indian Day Parade over on Prospect Parkway. It was a great experience. lots of Caribbean flags and colors and people and music. lots and lots of people. Marcia didn’t understand a word of the dancehall and reggae flavors pouring out of the various floats. actually, neither did I. but it was great anyway.
Over the course of three days, we hit Ben’s Pizza in Soho, the South Street Seaport (don’t ask me why - being a native new yorker, this kind of tourist spot gives me the creeps, although the view of the brooklyn bridge was great), indian food (twice, Marcia’s new favorite), not-so-good sushi, China Town, the L.E.S, Park Slope, Williamsburg, D.U.M.B.O, and a trip up to Queens to check out PS.1, which had an awesome show on New York area artists. PS.1 was dipped from head to toe in all kinds of art, good and bad. Always nice to see so many artists’ work at once.
We checked on the brownstone that my Uncle Tim, the architect/builder is redoing in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. It’s gorgeous and insanely designed. In 50 years people will appreciate it, long after Tim is gone. Tim is using all different kinds of plywood as the main finishing material with curved corners here and there. Every inch of the interior of the house has been designed and engineered. it’s insane. a living sculpture. Check out the last house he designed. Tim says that this is about “as good a job as he can do”, after this house he’s going to pack up shop and concentrate on painting, his first love. This is a bold statement coming from Tim, since he’s a complete maniacal perfectionist. basically he’s saying the house is perfect. insane.
I wanna thank my sister Beth and her man Taj, for dragging us around the entire new york area for 3 days straight. This was totally above and beyond the call of duty and they both deserve a big thanks. I also wanna give a big shout out to the peoples that I didn’t get to hang with, while I was there: Philbert Skiba, Kalz V, Michelle, and last but not least, my grand-pops Fredrick Bonsal Seggerman, who I affectionately call “Grumpy”. I feel terrible for not having the gumption to get it together to hook up with my grand-dad. Marcia basically met 90% of my family on both sides, it’s a shame I got all the way to NY and couldn’t get up to where he lives in Connecticut.
I’ll end this before all one of you who’s reading this falls asleep.
One last thing, it would have been really nice to take Marcia up to Croton-On-Hudson, the place where I grew up. I’d love to have shown her the house on Kings Street. and the funky little town that made me the sort of bad character I am today. Oh well, I guess we saved some goodies for the next trip…
and that, my friends, was new york in a nutshell.
New Jersey
After Maryland, Beth, Marcia and I said goodbye to my parents as they made their way back down to Virginia and then back to Mexico. We continued north on our way back to New York City. Along the way we stopped to visit our Aunt Carol and her family, The Doughertys, in Stockton NJ. Carol has three girls and they are all so cute and sweet. Since it was labor day weekend, we stayed at my grandparents house (other side of the family) in Frenchtown, the house is up for sale, so this was probably our last time at this house, it’s a grand ole’ thing, part turn three-hundred year old farm house, part mid-century modernist masterpiece, set up on the hills on a hundred acres above the Delaware River. My Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Tim came down from Brooklyn for the weekend as did Paula and David Siminski, with their kids Sonny and Saddie Pearl. it was a regular kid fest and it was wonderful hanging with them by the pool for two days.
Sometimes I like to peer into the mind of rich people. what do they think, how do they organize their time, what makes them tick? Read McSweeney’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. [via kottke]
hey cool toy! an online form builder: The Form Assembly. Free Web Form Builder, Form Templates and CSS Stylesheets. very cool
I know I know, i Haven’t been updating the site.
I’ve been working hardly. very hardly. I’m currently in the midst of coding the website for our big project. it’s a total nightmare. stubbornly, i’m trying to code the whole thing in transitional xhtml and css. this is a guy who started out coding sites visually with GoLive. hardly ever touching the code, itself (not to say i didn’t know html, because i did). I’d say I know css maybe 30%, the rest I’m learning on the fly or borrowing from folks gracious enough to post tutorials. The site is coming along nicely, the structure is up and running and now i’m concentrating on the templates for content of the pages. its been very fun and very frustrating at the same time. I’ve been going back and forth on hiring a css freelancer to clean up my code and create the various content templates, to save time. but I’m stubborn and want to do it myself, to save money. css may be cool programming logic perspective but for a visual designer it’s a total nightmare. the site may look nice, but under the hood I have random ‘divs’ popping out of every nook and cranny.
but i digress.
one of these days, as we get closer to launch, i’ll post a link to the site. it’s all so fun and exciting. i have a ton of pictures up on Flickr, that I haven’t posted here, so if you wanna see good pics from NJ and NYC, your digging will be rewarded.
here’s on of my favorites:
NaCo. the guys behind the “ser naco es chido” & “estar guars” fame. nice! go buy one, now. Art Center grads making hip mexican sub-culture in-joke tshirts. file this under: “ideas, i’d like to have thought of first”
my pops took this great photo of the Puerto Vallarta Skyline from Las Carmelitas. a great little restaurant above Vallarta. the perfect place to take visiting friends!
this video from “1st Ave Machine” is awesome. totally mesmerizing and great concept. slightly spooky. i couldn’t stop watching it. [via Peter Reid on k10k.net]
Hey! check this out. Heather Champ at Flickr, blogged my “Claire goes swimming” photo. Awesome, thanks Heather!
This photo is from my “East Coast Tour - part 3: New Jersey” set which I’ll post shortly. It was taken in my grandparents’ pool in Frenchtown, NJ, that had algae growing in it, from not being cleaned properly, hence the green hue (no photoshop here, just some saturation tweaking). The photo was taken with my Pentax Optio WP, a birthday present from my girl, Marcia Vara. Thanks baby!
Friday afternoon, I took off work to go surfing and enjoying the incoming swell. After thursday’s near death experience, I was on a mission to enjoy the waves without killing myself. First, I went to Veneros, thinking the gigantic waves wouldn’t be so heavy out on the point we call “el paredon”, but to my chagrin, there were basically no waves at all and just down the beach at Destiladeras, the waves were still easily eight feet, pounding the beach. I walked back up to the car and drove to Punta Burros. There the waves were still insanely large close-outs so I zipped up the coast to Punta Mita and took the old road to Sayulita.
Ahhhh, Venerable Sayulita. with it’s packed lineup and dirty water. There’s something about Sayulita that always keeps me coming back. The waves are like gentle teddybears. Thick and tall, but never too heavy. Friday’s waves were 4 to 5 feet with an occasional 6 foot outside set. Tons of beginners in the lineup assured that getting dropped in on was inevitable but surprisingly the locals that were out, were friendly and and even slightly accommodating. Friday was a good day.
Saturday, we made the trip out to Punta Mita to check up on the house we are finishing, Marcia had been to Anclote the day before, with some friends, and said that that the waves were nice and big and looooong. So we dropped by Anclote but alas no waves. So we drove up to Sayulita and the waves were much smaller, but again, Sayulita is a great place, if it weren’t for the 30+ people out in the lineup. We had a great little day, I caught a few waves here and there and the speed of my new 5′7″ fish made it all the more fun. There were a few Israeli guys out in the lineup who were driving all across latin america and we had some good conversations about traveling and surfing. Marcia and I decided to take the long way home and took the old road back to Punta Mita to drop by Burros, just to see the waves and sure enough they were still around 6 to 8 feet and heavy.
So on Sunday afternoon, I headed straight to Burros. I knew the waves size would be smaller and better formed, with the chance there would be larger outside sets. And I was right! It was the most perfect day of surfing in a long long time. The waves were 3 to 4 feet with 6 foot sets and my fish board was so nice and fast I could drop in the back door, get some nice speed and just coast up the face. a great feeling. Although I do gotta say, I’ve had trouble getting used to turning on the fish, and I found myself eating foam a few times as I’m used to the turn-on-a-dime easiness of my 6′2″ Flyer II. it feels a bit like having sacrificed turning ability for speed. All in all it was a great day!
It’s been a great couple of days and a much needed return to form, after basically having sat out the last month or so. The surf forecast calls for a pick up in the swell in the next few days and peaking on Friday.
I am the sound of Ed’s work productivity dropping…
Ocean City, Maryland.
My Grandparents, Ed and Edna (no that’s not a misprint), lived in Ocean Pines, Maryland, for a good 20 years or so. Ocean Pines is tucked away on the mainland just across the bridge from Ocean City, a 3 block narrow stretch of a sandbar island that is known for it’s seedy boardwalk. And every summer our family would descend on Ocean City for two weeks of good clean family fun.
My parents, sister, Marcia and I decided to come up to OC, one last time, spend a few days at the beach, hit the boardwalk and say goodbye to my grandparent’s funky little 1970’s nautical themed house, tucked away in Ocean Pines North. It was a great little trip albeit slightly melancholic seeing my grandparents’ house for the last time, it was really about saying goodbye to them, in that house, surrounded by their weird choice of things. and to say hello and goodbye to Ocean City for the last time.
The beach was great, just as I had remembered it, the perfect bodysurfing wave. the crabs and corn were delicious and “Old Bay” seasoning will forever remind me of Ed and Edna. The boardwalk was seedier then ever, but always fun. Mainly a place to grab all those flavors I enjoyed as a kid, sometimes I think I experience life through food: Thrashers - the best french fries ever, that’s all they sell and boy do they sell a lot of ‘em, served with tons of white vinegar and salt. Fischer’s Popcorn, simple caramel popcorn, right out of the mixer, hot and chewy, the best, we hear they ship and even have a website, although I don’t see an option to ship to Mexico. Dumser’s Frozen Custard, amazing. Dolle’s home-maid fudge and saltwater taffy. the list goes on and on.
Goodbye Ocean City!
Friday, Sep 16th, 2005
Categories: surfing
or how I almost died yesterday.
So there has been a mighty large swell hitting Puerto Vallarta over the past day or so. The surf report says 12 feet. I usually give the surf report a 50% accuracy rating at half the height. So if there are any waves at all, 12 feet would be 6 feet at my local breaks.
Sure enough as I headed up the coast yesterday afternoon, to catch me some waves, I pulled into the dirt lot next to Destiladeras which has one of those awesome views where you can see miles down the coast. you can actually see 4 or 5 different surf spots. The entire coastline was white with stirred up foam and the normally placid Destiladeras Beach was being pounded by 10 foot waves. I have literally never seen waves that big at Destiladeras. I looked off in the distance to Punta Burros and I could see the giants hitting the point that makes Burros such a nice break. I headed up the coast and pulled into the dirt road that marks Burro’s entrance.
As I got out on to the beach, the break was even bigger then Destiladeras. It was bad. I mean real bad. These waves had teeth. And 10 feet did not do them justice. I walked up the beach, with my ass in my hand. I really wasn’t sure if this was a good idea. As I got to the point, I saw two other surfers out. One guy tearing up the second break, closer to the shore and the other guy just trying to paddle out to the break, not going anywhere fast. The waves were breaking farther out then I have ever seen them, every 5 minutes, in sets of 10 or so. Big hairy waves with teeth. I stood and watched the two guys as the big set rolled in and each guy attempted to duck 6 to 8 feet of nasty white water as they were pushed back towards the shore. These were the kind of waves that could mess a brother up if he were to have been caught in the break zone during an incoming set, never mind taking 2 or 3 on the head, we’re talking about 10 or 11 in a row. no joke. After the sets finished you have a few nice secondary set waves with mostly glassy water. This is extremely misleading because you don’t exactly know where the break zone will be once the large set comes in.
I go over the pros and cons in my head. What if I just go home and skip today’s waves? Will I be able to forgive myself for being such a barney? But I haven’t been surfing very much recently and my swimming muscles could use a couple of days of practice before attempting something this big.
So what do I do? I wait for the set to finish, sack up and start paddling out. The current is insane and I head for the second break. the second break is easily 200 yards out. That’s two football fields. By the time i got out there, the set was coming in again and I was totally out of energy. I ducked under every incoming rush of white water, some 4 to 5 feet high. and just ride it out, trying to conserve energy.
My natural instinct takes over and after the last set wave I just make a mad dash towards where I think the set wave break zone is. Mind you, I’m not getting anywhere fast and the zone is at least another 100 our so yards, possibly 200. As I get to the break zone, the next set starts rolling in and I know that if I don’t make it past the break zone, I’m pretty much dead. and not in like that “hey guys, look at me, I’m stupid” way but in the “my legs and lower body were shaking so badly I thought I was literally going to shit myself” way. I had no energy, but I just paddled for dear life. The first one came in and it was like a rolling mountain. a wall of water, no channel, no peak, a wall of moving water. I safely made it over the top and down again. easily ten feet. as I was sliding down the back side, another one was coming at me, this one, larger and farther away. as I paddled towards it, I didn’t think I was going to make it. I was having visions of this thing coming down on my head and that’d be it. today was most certainly not a good day to die, but I had little choice in the matter. The highest wave of that set was easily 12 to 15 feet. It was like floating over a small house. As I realized I would be alright and that I was past the break zone, I took about 20 minutes to regain my composure and my breath. I had to keep paddling from getting caught up in the south moving current.
As I sat and watched the waves come in, I knew I was in over my head. and that there was no way I was going to get anywhere near one of these things as it was breaking and nowhere near having the cojones to catch one and actually ride it. After about an hour of floating out there, trying to dodge the incoming sets, it slowly dawned on me that I may be stuck out there. If it took my 20 minutes to paddle in, which was about right, I’d be paddling through the break zone for at least 10 minutes. that’s 2 sets or roughly 20 large waves. I was screwed. I was kicking myself that I didn’t follow the other surfer’s lead and stay tucked in at the secondary break. I was stranded at sea and mildly paranoid. At one point I though to myself that the hotel that sits near Burros could possibly have a jet ski that could come get me and then I brushed off the idea as ludicrous. This was now a mission. I got myself into this and I had to get myself out.
I knew that I’d have to paddle for far longer then my arms would endure and that I’d get crushed by at the very least, one set. Since the sets were breaking in one giant wall, there was really no channel that I could use to get out. The two other surfers were waiting nearby and I asked their advice, Phil, a nice gringo guy I know from Bucerias told me to suck it up and catch a wave, that was the only way. I had no energy to do that. I knew that if I was going to paddle in, I’d need to commit to it and paddle through the burn. or die.
As I looked at the latest set, I noticed the right side was breaking slightly lower. As the last wave passed I started paddling for the low spot. 2 or 3 minutes later I looked back and saw another killer coming towards me, so I turned around and paddled directly towards the wave, hoping to make it over. I made it safely over the first and second ones, but I just pierced the crashing lip of the third and fourth waves. It was real close. too close. After the last in the set I again paddled to the spot where I thought the least damage would be inflicted, and just as I got there a 6 foot wave broke and I paddled into it. As I was about to slide down the face I tried to lift myself up to stand up and my arms weren’t even having it. I rode that wave on my stomach for at least 150 yards, all the way to the beach.
Excuse my french but ‘Fucking A’ that was intense.
As I sat on the beach recuperating, talking with Phil who was brave enough to catch one in, we saw 2 other surfers go out into the nasty churning foam. We watched them for easily 15 minutes as they fought the oncoming white water. going nowhere.
As we were walking down the beach to our cars, we watched the gnarly sets come in. At one point I saw a wave that was literally a mile long, that broke almost entirely in one piece. and in my head I marked this down as the number one stupidest thing I have ever done.
I was checking out the url: Paragraph, a great little site for a brick and mortar startup company for new york area writers who need quiet space. Designed and coded by Khoi Vinh of Behavior. In Khoi’s blog he wrote a tiny blurb about employing sIFR.
Call me late to the game, but this work-around/hack is more then just a work-around or a hack, it’s elegant, wonderful and allows you to use fonts in the display of your site, that the end-user doesn’t have on their computer, with Flash, that degrades gracefully, bringing “Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses”. nice! Check out Khoi’s Paragraph site, it’s sweet and that vertically scrolling third column business is pure genius.
I like conferences like I like the plague. but the Dwell Magazine - PREFAB NOW conference is looking mighty cool. I may just have to figure out an excuse to go to LA for the weekend, just to go to this. I’m a prefab junkie and I’ve been thinking of ways to get prefab rocking down here in Puerto Vallarta. The price tag for the conference is a bit steep, but it would be so much fun to go.
[hat tip to jason fields].
not to be bandwagon jumper or anything, but Mint is the coolest thing since, well, since shortstat. I haven’t plucked down my cold hard cash just yet, but the day ain’t over.
I’m in love with the new iTunes 5. It looks 10x better, i love all the little improvements and to top it off: it’s rock solid and fast as all hell. I never see the beach ball anymore as I scroll my 13,000 + song library. thank you, Apple. now if you could put the same team on iPhoto, I’d give you my first born child, oh hi Marcia, just kidding.
yay Apple.
Also, we bought Marcia a cute little green ipod mini, the day before Steve announced the ipod nano. dang! how’s that for bad timing? i’m holding out for the 100 gig ipod nano. one of these days…
a very timely essay/poem/writing on Being Poor. “Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.” [via kottke]
antenna are responsible for the beautiful new subway cars in NYC. The colors, the swooping metal handrails, the materials. all top notch. i’d love to work for these guys. they also created the metro card kiosks. wow!
We’re back. er um, actually I’m back. Marcia is back in Guadalajara for a few days. Her mom, Martha, suddenly and unexpectedly was diagnosed with a very large cyst attached to one of her ovaries. So as soon as we got home, Marcia flew up to GDL to be with her for the operation, today, Saturday. We hoped for the best and the gods answered our prayers. Her cyst was removed quickly and gracefully and the doctors say that it showed no signs of being cancerous. My family and I were holding internal vigils until the operation was over, since we’ve experienced breast cancer with my mother and with a close family friend who eventually succumbed to a long and drawn out battle with ovarian cancer.
Martha is doing fine and I miss my baby like you could not believe. You know when I find someone and your lives just click, being away from them is good for a little getting-in-touch-with-yourself, but I can’t wait for her to come home.
whoa! this is a photo slideshow taken by a guy in New Orleans, that documents his 6 days in and around the French Quarter. amazing photos.
Ok, so we’ve been totally internetless since wednesday. lots of pictures and lots of stories on the way.
We went on from Virginia to Ocean City Maryland, spent a few last days at my grandparents house (on my father’s side), the OC beach and the boardwalk. It was wonderful being in OC again and saying goodbye to that part of my life, since I doubt I’ll ever make it back there again.
We then headed up to Frenchtown, New Jersey. A small little township north of Philly, where the family estate on my mom’s side is about to be sold off. So once again, it was nice visiting that house for the last time and see my uncles, aunts and cousins. Most everyone from that side masde it out to Frenchtown and we had a wonderful Sunday together by the pool.
This is the first time Marcia has seen scenic America. She has been to LA, SF, NYC and Boston, but never inbetween. and we have tauled up and down the eastern seaboard. it’s been great and she’s loved every minute of it.
Today we headed up to Fort Green, Brooklyn to spend our last few days with my sister and my Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Tim. This section os the trip is very dangerous. lots of buying temptation. but so much art stuff to do too. We’re going to show Marcia some good old New York City from the side of people who are actually from the city. No mid-town, no broadway shows, no tourist crap. the city from the inside. and I can’t wait.
on a more somber note, the Hurricane Katrina disaster has been unfolding before our eyes, as we’ve been here. It’s been heart-wrenching. and although we get constant news, i don’t feel the same rallying spirit I felt after 9/11. this time it’s much worse and I don’t see how our current administration can get out of this one. Like the man said: “Fool me once, can’t get fooled again.” Be my count this is the 4th time, these guys have tried to pull the wool. I think every last one of them needs to go. America is dying for a president that leads. and for an administration that takes responsibility. Conservatives and 50% of America really need to look within themselves, start telling the truth, and to just plain and simple: do the right thing.
