20 Questions with Ian

[Detectorist]

I did get a lot of hate mail at a certain cycling forum which, given I've been annoying people on the internet from 1993, wasn't exactly the place I expected to encounter it. I mean serious 'kill yourself' missives, which is, I think uncharitable. They didn't even send pills. Also a threat to tell my employers about my thought crimes, though the link was to some other poor sap's LinkedIn profile, so I wasn't contending with geniuses. Then loads of sign-ups to various fora and other spam that I banished to the junk bin. I assume one very passionate individual with too much time on their hands.

(36 long seconds to contemplate a punctuational atrocity before the lyrics start. Seriously, I don't know why it bothers me; some quite decent writers have been witnessed throwing in that unnecessary apostrophe, and frankly, who cares, right? RIGHT?)

For this centennial post, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to turn this format around and ask me a question.


PS. This video is more fun, and a better recording.

[finestre]

I suspect you may have answered it, but why did you end up in your particular part of the south-east? A love of Kipling, or perhaps a dread misapprehension about the origins of his exceedingly nice cakes (they're, for the record, not – the last time I indulged on a Mr Kipling's Almond Slices the package turned out to be mostly packaging with near homeopathic level of actual cake, as so often, they'd hermetically sealed disappointment).

Apropos of Kipling, my first cinema experience was The Jungle Book, which my cousins and I left at the intermission, pondering the peculiar ending. In my defence, I was about seven, and fuelled by large quantities of broken biscuits and Kia Ora. We went sent back for the remainder.

[Detectorist]

That Kipling lived here was pure chance. I've still not read anything of his other than If, a copy of which was given to me by my parents on the day I left home. I should try something else, but don't appear to be in a hurry.

We started in London after moving from the New World (though my wife had lived in England for a while as a child). Heedless of Samuel Johnson's warning, she grew tired of the city after half a dozen years. I would've been happy to stay, but didn't have a problem moving.

I don't remember exactly why we chose this direction as to be preferred over the others. It probably started with many visits to friends near Biggin Hill, then excursions beyond. We'd done loads of sightseeing all around, and gradually became inclined to the south (though I'm also a fan of Scotland, the government excepted. Hard commute though.)

Tunbridge Wells was our first stop. The door-to-door wasn't too bad, with lovely countryside to make the trip worthwhile. We lived in a great little house which it grieves me to this day we didn't buy when it became available: detached, with a garage, in an exceedingly convenient and deceptively nice location. This was a little over 20 years ago, before prices became exceedingly bonkers. If only we weren't plagued by neighbours from hell, who had a profound influence on the course of our lives. They loved to blast music in the midnight hours. When I complained, they slashed my tyres. We decided no more neighbours.


Do I count?

From then it was choosing the first suitable and not too inconvenient property to be shown by an estate agent. Another rental (we've never owned property, and barring a premium bond win, never will). We saw a couple of awful places, then love at first sight.

I recently rewatched My Boy Jack, which it surprised me to learn is freely available on the poor man's Netflix. If you've seen it or want to (it's not something I particularly recommend), note that the opening has Rudyard racing his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost up to Windsor Castle to impress George V with his time, when he never drove in his life.

Are there any movie scenes that bother you?

[finestre]

I don’t live far from Biggin Hill, though it’s a curiously difficult place to get to, as it involves the Tatsfield portal, a village defended from south by impenetrable lanes and then, should you get that far, made of streets that appear to go anywhere except where you expect them to go. Bromley is odd in general as you very quickly fall into a rural space that could be the middle of Kent but is still within the London pale. Seems a bit wrong.

Kipling’s Rolls Royce is on display outside Bateman’s and they do explain the entire didn’t-drive-it-thing. I am pleased I have the same gig, I don’t drive either (I do have an expired Virginia licence which isn’t especially useful, and probably a Connecticut one somewhere). Broadly, that’s probably good, as I learned my core driving skills getting lost in NYC. You try and find your way from Staten Island to the Fort Jefferson ferry terminal. I didn't need to take the ferry I could have just cut across but ferries are fun. For reasons, I regularly used to drive from Rutgers to the middle of Connecticut. Actually I used to take adventure routes all the time. Driving up the Hudson and crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge was good (now replaced, it was a bit creaky, though really, the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge doesn't have quite the same zing). I liked the George Washington Bridge too, but I always figured I'd take a wrong turn and get eaten in the South Bronx. America is also the place of great place names. I'd drive through Armonk, well, because why wouldn't you. It sounds like the noise an amorous moose would make.

Sorry about the neighbours from Hell, ours died and didn’t come back (which was bad for her, good for us). The new ones are nice enough, though they go to bed worryingly early. We’ve done OK with neighbours, the best one was Shepherd’s Bush where our downstairs neighbour was a surgeon commander on a nuclear submarine who disappeared for nine months at at time with a plea to ‘water the plants.’ A friend of ours had a terror, drum and bass at all hours, one evening she cracked and hammered on his door. He was curiously agreeable for once. It was only when she got back to her flat and calmed down that she realised she clutching a large chef’s knife coated in pizza sauce.

Movie scenes that bother me? I’m quite squeamish so anything with violence tends to me wince (for instance when Kathy Bates’ smashes the guy’s ankle in Misery, or the ear-off in Reservoir Dogs). The dead baby in Trainspotting, a grim reminder that it’s all fun and games until, well, it isn’t. Put me off heroin for life, that. The ending of The Mist. Goes hard, that one. I won’t say it bothers me, but the Joe Pesci ‘funny like a clown’ scene in Goodfellas is awesomely discomfiting.

[Detectorist]

ferries are fun.

Totally agree.

Could you make a list of fun stuff for me? (Or for you, which might be easier.)

[finestre]

Yes, there is something about ferries. I can’t see myself on a cruise, but a ferry, that’s where boats are at. Even a brief Thames crossing on the now rarefied Woolwich ferry, untidily sewing up the south and north circular, is one of my favoured delights. Of course, the Staten Island ferry is the best way to examine at Manhattan’s lower regions. And wander to Snug Harbor for lunch. I have wandered and driven across Staten Island more often than the average man. This reminds me that I like bridges too. Staten Island has some good bridges. Or are they crossings? I suppose given the choice the Outerbridge Bridge and Outerbridge Crossing. They should have called it the Eugenius Bridge, given it was named after Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge; some claim you can learn a lot from the internet, I dispute this, pretty much everything I know, I learned from plaques and display boards – please add these to the things that are fun, I will happily be detoured by any kind of public information amenity. I learned how America got its sparrows from the board in, if I recall, Brooklyn Park. Somewhere near the bridge. Took persistence and a not insignificant number of dead birds. You don’t build an empire without sweat and feathers.

Anyway, I’m skipping my boroughs. I think Arthur Kills was replaced by the Goethals Bridge which post-dates my adventures and I just use this because I like writing Arthur Kills, which sounds like an movie made in Ealing in some time past. Actually I think the vertical lift train bridge is still there. Now I know you think I’m going to nominate the Verrazano-Narrows as my favourite Staten Island Bridge, but you’d be wrong, but it has nice views and no real personality. Bayonne is where it’s at, which is why it’s in the movies.

The Long Island to Connecticut ferry comes in two flavours but they only let you take the car on the slow one which is fine, because you should only take the slowest ferry available. I forgot, there’s also the Cross Sound ferry that runs from Orient to New London and is the better option since you get flung off the wild edges of Long Island and across the sound. That and I lived near(ish) New London, I suppose.

So, yes, other fun stuff. List. I realise I’m quite boring but I’m content with that.

Freewheeling. Honestly the most fun thing about cycling. A delight at any age.

That sensation at the end of a long walk or bike ride where tiredness takes over but doesn’t win, resulting in an immensely pleasurable fugue.

Daydreaming. My advanced autopilot facilities means I rarely have to think about practical things, so I don’t. Do other people have to think about where they are going? I don’t know. Maybe this is another state of fugue.

Doing what I’m doing now, in the house alone, drinking a beer (or any other poison), draining my idle thoughts into my fingers, listening to tunes watching the day slowly inch into darkness on the other side of the balcony doors.

I think they may work for both or us, if I may be so presumptuous.

[Detectorist]

It sounds like you got to know NYC pretty well! I bopped around in my early years, living for a time in Astoria, the West Village, Greenpoint (I think), Spanish Harlem, and a few other forgotten places, before finally ending up in Jersey City, which I'm going to go ahead and call West New York even though that name is taken.

Speaking of bridges, the award for most annoying one may go to the permanent temporary Bailey bridge that connects my old stomping grounds to Ellis Island, not open to the public thanks to pleading from the ferry company.

pretty much everything I know, I learned from plaques and display boards – please add these to the things that are fun, I will happily be detoured by any kind of public information amenity.

When you're in front of an exhibit in a museum, which do you do first, read or look?


Fugue State Revisited #10

...The images displayed in this particular series were taken as standard and familial analogue portraits until Smithson chemically damaged the emulsion side of her negatives, permanently altering each delicate shot. Taking the negatives into the digital archive space Smithson then leaves each film roll in its inverted and original condition in order to showcase the potential to restore irreparable destruction of remembrance. This demonstration only further reflects the impact of tangible images on cultural histories for families across the globe.

In the midst of creating her photos, Smithson lost over 20 years of analogue scans after a hard drive was lost and corrupted. While upsetting at first, the corrupted images revealed themselves to be distinctive in their own pixelated disruption. Smithson soon reimagined each loss as another opportunity to expand on the work made for Fugue States, thus creating Fugue State Revisited.

[finestre]

I had forgotten the Ellie Island bridge, is that still cruelly fenced off in Liberty State Park? Always looked quite substantial. I have poked that fence, so I may be on a database somewhere, but then I’ve pogoed between Canada and the US at Point Roberts. It’s probably a minefield today, but back then the border was nothing more than fluorescent yellow painted kerbstones and signs telling you to report to the US Customs station and declare your nefarious intent to stray south of the 49th parallel.

Not really sure it’s going to dent the ferry company profits, you have to get to NJ first and then walk.

You probably know that Ellis Island ‘belongs’ to both NY and NJ, which makes it the most unusual island in the New York Bay, the subject of a long running territorial dispute that fortunately didn’t result in open warfare (though NJ did invade in 1956*). The original bit of island belongs to NY, all the infill parts to NJ (well, jurisdictionally, so check the law in each state before choosing where to break it). Conceivably, you could steal something from the gift shop, stray between jurisdictions and then have to be chased down by the FBI. I’ve not tried this, but I like to think that it might happen.

A guy I knew bought a gas station in Jersey City to convert to a home. Turned into decade plus of hydrocarbon-based nightmares, but is now worth a bazillion dollars to escaping Manhattanites and is, I have to admit, far cooler than my house (whose only distinction is being on a steep hill, which it might slide down one day, and our living room is level with the top of our neighbours’ roof.)

The only other pedestrian bridge I can think of in NY is Ward’s Island. Not very exiting though, other than say you’ve done it. Greenpoint is very gentrified now, but I mostly know NYC from the 90s when it had a bit more of an, erm, rustic texture. I have actually walked everywhere in NYC from top to the bottom. Walking places is my thing.

Museum exhibits. I look at the thing first, then read, then look again. Although an inveterate reader of things, I sometimes like exhibits to go without explanation (the majority of life doesn't come with notice boards). I never do that ‘audio tour’ nonsense. Things are best discovered. Either that or ignorance is to be embraced.

*led by the then Mayor of Jersey City, part publicity stunt, part that he wanted the current immigration museum and NY wanted to dump all its homeless there. He also banned rock and roll. I don’t know why I know these things, there’s probably an information board on Ellis Island.

Edit: actually, I checked and it was resolved by the Supreme Court in 1998, when I was a resident alien, so possibly the news.

[Detectorist]

I had forgotten the Ellie Island bridge, is that still cruelly fenced off in Liberty State Park?

And guarded by the Jersey Devil, who makes the commute up from the Pine Barrens. Which automatically triggers this scene from the famed docudrama about a certain Italian-American subculture:

From an article about the bridge:

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop is among those who would like to revive the plan to build a new bridge with pedestrian access of Ellis Island.

“Taking a ferry a quarter-mile, or less, doesn’t make much sense. Liberty State Park is already kind of a destination. If you had access to Ellis Island, that could take the park to a whole new level."

"Kind of a destination" belongs on a postcard, no?

You're probably aware that this scene was shot in what was to become the park:

The only other pedestrian bridge I can think of in NY is Ward’s Island. Not very exiting though, other than say you’ve done it.

Done it. The Brooklyn Bridge was a regular trek, as my wife used to work in an ice cream shop in a mob hotspot in Brooklyn.

A guy I knew bought a gas station in Jersey City to convert to a home.

Sorry, can't get the mob out of my head now.

way off-piste

From a trans thread I just read:

They're far fucking worse than the mafia. Nobody in noncorrupt governments defers to the mafia. Nobody in civil society says it's morally okay to join the mafia. Nobody says we need to 'listen to mafia voices'.

That last bit got a lol out of me.

[close]

Where was I?

I’ve pogoed between Canada and the US at Point Roberts.

???

PS.

[finestre]

There were always the – probably apocryphal – stories about the mob pizza places in Rhode Island that were never actually pizza places but had to look them to avoid being too obvious. This stretched to them having to make the occasional pizza when those not in the know wandered in to order them. Apparently the pizzas were surprisingly good, though probably served with a spicy topping of don’t-come-back. I have had very good pizza in Rhode Island (there used to be a great place in Narragansett Bay with a nice view of the sea), I didn’t check for Italian-American stereotypes and I did go back.

Better than NJ – my wife worked in Hackensack for a while. Ok, Paramus, if I recall. I used to get the train to Broadway and wander down the eponymous Broadway when I flew over. It was always odd but pleasing to fly the Atlantic to wander through suburban NJ on a Friday evening (and Broadway is as much suburban Americana as it gets) and then leave Sunday. Though I had to negotiate a fence to the get to the hotel/apartment place she was saying because it’s America and there might be a right to guns but not to sidewalks. I followed a well-trodden path around the edge of a gold course and found a hole in the fence that the, I assume, hotel workers were using to access the place (or I’d stumbled on a Jersey Devil trail). And thus I conquered Paramus.

Point Roberts is a bit of the land that was stranded on the US side of the border when the treaty cartographers got achy wrists from all the squiggly lines and finished it with a straight bit. You can only get there from Canada, but it’s all American and didn’t really have a border other than those curb stones back in the day, so experimentalist border ignorers could leap back and forth and not do as the sign advised ‘report to US CBP.’ Doesn’t look much different now, there’s not much to stop the Canadian’s invading, and likely no one would notice. That said, you still have to collect your food takeaways and other deliveries at the border or pay a friendly Canadian to lob them over their back fence. If war does break out, takeaways might not be all they are lobbing.