scene from Utica

Here is my favorite personal story about Utica which I think about sometimes. We walk our dogs every day on city sidewalks past a light pole. One day as we are walking toward this particular pole, we notice a pair of pants wrapped around the base of the pole. There's lots of discarded clothes and shoes and purses on the streets and sidewalks of Utica, why I don't know. The purses are easy as they are clearly the discards of a robbery but the clothing and shoes I just don't get.

Anyway, as we get closer to the pole there is a smell. An awesome, monumental, physical impediment of a smell. We walk faster but it just gets stronger until its clear that the smell is coming from the pants. They are completely covered in shit. Human shit. Encrusting the pants all over. The pants which are wrapped around the pole. This is a part of the sidewalk where there are overgrown trees and bushes on the left of the sidewalk and the shitpants pole on the right so there is no way to give it a wide berth. We hustle the dogs past the shitpants and even they seem grossed out. The next day we forget about the shitpants wrapped around the pole and so are unpleasantly reminded at dog walk time. This goes on for a week. Sometimes we remember to walk a different block and sometimes sheer curiosity demands that we check in on the shitpants. And the pole. One day we walk up the block and we don't see the pole. The entire pole is gone like it was never there, and with it the shitpants. Sometimes I try to picture the scene of the shitpants pole removal. Were there five or six Utica City workers standing around while some poor new hire tonged the shitpants away from the pole, or did the whole pole come out with the shitpants attached. Is there a special procedure for this? Did they get hazard pay? Was the pole due to come out anyway and when they got there there was an unfortunate surprise?

Now that I have written this out it seems less amusing to me and more a sad allegory of Utica but there you go. The shitpants pole story.

The more you know

Utica fun fact #1
The city's name, which was said to have been picked out of a hat, is
In honor of Utica, Tunisia, destroyed by the Arabs in 700 A.D.
BUT WHAT KIND OF HAT?

Utica fun fact #2

http://www.city-data.com/city/Utica-New-York.html

Utica fun fact #4
The arrival of a large number of Bosnian immigrants over the past
several years has stanched a population loss that had been steady for
more than three decades. Bosnian immigrants now constitute about 10% of
the total population of Utica

Utica Fun Fact #5
There are at least 12 reported UFO sightings for Utica, NY on the National UFO Reporting Center State Report Index For NY
http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxlNY.html

Utica Fun Fact #6
The "Union Suit"- a type of red-colored long underwear jumpsuit with a
buttoned flap on the backside was invented in Utica.

Utica Fun Fact #7
Average Season Snowfall : 98.9"
2004-05 Final Snowfall Total: 93.4" 2005-06 Final Snowfall Total: 106.8"
This is probably the reasoning behind Fun Fact #6

Utica fun fact #8
F. W. Woolworth opened his first store in Utica in 1878, but the store failed within a year

Utica Fun Fact #9
The Utica Zoo is home to the world's largest watering can. The 2,000 pound
can is 15 feet 6 inches in height and 12 feet in diameter.

SPECIAL BONUS!!!
verification photo of giant watering can attached. Not my photo so if this is your work let me know and I will credit.


Utica Fun Fact #10
Because of the decline of industry and employment in the post-World War II era, Utica became known as "The City that God Forgot." In the 1980s and early 1990s, some of Utica's residents could be seen driving cars with bumper stickers that read "Last One Out of Utica, Please Turn Out The Lights,"

tore up from the floor up

Sup HUGE Garage Sale Utica LQQK!!!! TO MUCH TO LIST. You playin all coy advertising your wares on the craigslist. Say you gonna be there on Sunday selling books an seasonal items and when I roll up in my rizzle you aint no kinda there. WHAAAT? It coulda been ballin outta control boo, I brought the washingtons. I woulda been good to you. Why you gotta be like that baby? That shit is half steppin and my feelins is hurt now. That how you want ta represent HUGE Garage Sale Utica LQQK!!!! TO MUCH TO LIST? Wack.

peace out

Oh no I didn't!

Oh yes I did.

After the last post wherein I expressed my "inner fountain of fury and wrath" (thanks Carl Hiaasen) I thought a lot about what kind of bookseller I want to be. Turns out it isn't unskilled garbage picker. The local libraries feature hip hop classes and free internet porn, the one bookstore in the whole area is mostly a coffee shop. That's just the way it is. I can sit in my book room and spew out my frustrations over what isn't here or I can move on.
So, I canceled my expensive annual subscription service that allowed me look up isbns on a pda and get real time values. Yes, its super cool to put in a title about macrame or day trading and have that little machine tell you that you just scooped $10, $20 or even $60 dollars out of a pile of crap, but it doesn't increase my knowledge and connoisseurship. It just made me more anxious to find more books to sell as fast as possible, any books, where are they, omg I need more books. I have to justify the cost of this machine! Next garage sale! I only found $30 today! I am a failure! I hate everyone!
Meanwhile, the books I'm really interested in, the slow sellers, the long dollar: classic literature, Sci Fi, pulp, detective fiction, early Modern Library editions in perfect jackets, non fiction in interesting subjects like science, cooking, and history, pile up like driftwood in my book cave.
The fast dollar book dealer lifestyle is like day trading. A hot new book today could be worth pennies tomorrow. If you don't sell it immediately, you will shortly have a worthless book about fad diets or navel gazing self improvement taking up your limited storage space. Susan Powter anyone? No? Anyone?
I still feel the call of the fast dollar, but there are Iphone apps that do the same basic thing should I get the urge. In fact, I'm going to try one out at the thrift today. I'm still going to estate sales but not as urgently. AND I'm going to start cataloging the huge backlog of books I've already stashed for my website. It's like the Collyer brothers up in there only with fewer boobytraps and more Ulysses.
I won't have to sit up in my book cave to do it either thanks to my new friend MacBook. Hello MacBook, I'm making kissy noises at you. We're free to roam you and I. AND I can listen to pod casts and news feeds that give me news from outside this cultural dystopia. I'm as happy as a North Korean with a secret radio.