Check me out, I'm in a concrete jungle.

Damn...it's been a minute. Hey friends.

I've officially been in NYC for...24 days. That's insane, especially considering all the shit I've done since September 4th. And you'll have to forgive me--this is definitely going to be less eloquent than my normal posts. I think the City is currently in the chewing phase of the whole 'New York will chew you up and spit you out again and again until you smack it in the side of the head and tell it 'Fuck you, fucking stop it'. So bear with me. I'm so tired. So happy, but so tired.

Let me start out by saying New York City is everything I imagined it to be and so so SO much more. I've been constantly on the go. Getting off the train, getting back on the train. Bar after bar after bar. Person after person after person. I decided if I ever write a memoir of my time in this city it will be called "Back to the Train Again". That or "New York City Tried to Kill Me" (I mean that in the best way possible).

Basics: I live in Washington Heights, a primarily Dominican (read: Spanish-speaking) neighborhood at the very top of Manhattan (in white below).

Every time I tell someone where I live, I get one of two reactions: "Oh shit, that's up there" and "I used to/have friends who used to live up there". I love my neighborhood. As a little white girl roaming around by myself, I get a lot of looks and a lot of various forms of attention. The first day I was here I was told "vayate"(go away) by an old man and "ooo chica, hola, where you goin'?" by some dude wearing Ray-Bans in the same block. The people around here are not afraid to speak their mind, and they're around CONSTANTLY. I sleepily get off the A train (conveniently located a block away from my apartment building) at 5am after going out, and the same group of guys that were outside my building when I left at around 5pm are still there. Chilling, passing a joint. Doing their thing. I wave 'hi' and stagger inside because they know me. This has been the last three weeks of my life.

My building is on the corner of Broadway, one of the most prominent streets in Manhattan. The few blocks north and south of my building are lined with delis (that sell SUPER cheap, amazingly delicious sandwiches and overpriced beer), bodegas (little convenience stores that have seriously everything-- from makeup to furniture), restaurants, clothing stores...fucking everything. I could walk a 6 block radius around my building and find everything I could ever need. One could survive in Washington Heights and never know an outside world existed (not my intention, but it's true).

My 5th floor apartment is A DREAM. A huge living room, a nice kitchen, two full bathrooms, and my bedroom is bigger than any bedroom I've ever had in my life. I have three massive windows that look over Broadway and if you're ever walking down my street, it's likely that if you look up, you'll see me leaning halfway out of one of them, watching New York City bustle by below me. And did I mention I'm living with my best friend? Yeah. That's pretty amazing.

God, but what have I done since I've been here? Really though...what haven't I done? I have two jobs so far. I got the first one nine days after moving to the city. I am the Operations Manager of the viral Youtube music channel Collective Cadenza. It's three amazing guys who are bringing their passion project to life and fucking KILLING IT. Check out their videos, they're incredible. Basically, I manage their emails, attend shoots (their studio is the in penthouse of a building in Times Square), and basically just do whatever they need. I'm also required to party with them (the job description read: sometimes we drink booze. they were being modest with the 'sometimes'). The first night I chilled with them we got dinner, fucking ran a bar called Bedlam until 2:30am, then went to a club that had a $40 entry fee and proceeded to do what you do at clubs: dance our asses off, drinks in hand. 7am rolled around I spent the cab ride home watching New York City wake up with wide eyes and dilated pupils.

Photo from our shoot with FuseTV on Monday.
Matt (behind me), Michael (with the creepy baby) and Joe (front and center) are like the big brothers I never had.

Yes. This is my life.

My second job starts tomorrow. I'll be working at the Bowery Electric, a venue located a few doors down from where the infamous CBGB used to be (could that be any more perfect?). I'm not totally clear on what I'll be doing yet. This is the gist of the interview I had with them on Tuesday:

Me: Hey, I'm Lauren, I have an interview with Amy,

Amy: Hi. I'm Amy. What's your experience in the music industry?

Me: I worked as a copywriter at a jazz club over the summer. I wrote all their press releases, ads, web content, newsletters...

Amy: We need someone to do that. What's your availability?

Me: Pretty much whenever.

Amy: We need someone Tuesdays and Fridays. Can you come in on Friday?

Me: Yeah, sure. That works for me.

Amy: Okay, see you Friday at 1.

Me: ...okay?

I'll keep you all updated.

Let's see...other highlights. I stayed up drinking until 10am on someone's rooftop in Brooklyn (and then went in for an interview for a job that I was offered but haven't decided if I want yet), went to Kieran Culkin's birthday party (yes, 'Mac', as he introduced himself, Culkin was there), drunkenly made out with a random dude on the subway, got my first black eye since I was like 7...yeah. I can count the number of times I've been home before 3am on one hand.

The weirdest thing about all of this is I've been so busy that I haven't even had time to reflect on anything. Today was the first time I didn't leave the Heights since I moved here and I spent most of it recovering under the covers in my bed (my body hates me from the constant walking around, running up steps in subway platforms, drinking, dancing, etc., etc). It's hard to think about Minneapolis and all my friends there because I feel so far removed from it all, and every time a flicker of a thought about anything that happened more than a month ago crosses my mind I feel really strange. It's almost like I can't remember anything outside of this city. I'm sure it's all just some weird form of culture shock that I'm going through and a more relaxed, sane-person adjustment period will come soon, but it's hard foresee that at this point. I'm thinking it will come once my life gets more scheduled and I have less time to lose track of time wandering around some new neighborhood, or can no longer afford to be at the bar and look at my phone and realize FUCK when did it become 4am?! (yeah, bar close not really existing here is really making hard to realize when it's time to go home).

So yeah. That's that. This is what I've been doing. Given a minute to sit and think about it, it's overwhelming. I feel an odd sense of displacement, like what am I doing here? Where is my place in this beast of a city? But I also know I don't want to be anywhere else. How could I? There is so much for me here, and I've already done so much to start finding it. And bitches, you should know I'm not one to speak too highly of myself, but I'm fucking killing it.  

Here's to the adventure that is sure to be the next few days/weeks/months/years of my life. 

(Inspiration for the title of this post comes from this song. New York really is a concrete jungle-- some wild-ass shit is lurking around under this canopy of glass and concrete. And the video is filmed at CBGB.)

Free.

My god, its taken me forever to write this post.

Its certainly has been a crazy few weeks months. I worked my ass off on what ended up being a 22-page senior thesis on a theory I don't care about and will henceforth never, ever think about again (god college was a joke) and thus, finished my undergraduate degree. I landed a job writing articles for Happy-Hour.com and was hired as a copy writing and editing intern for the chic and classy Dakota Jazz Club in questionable-but-lovey downtown Minneapolis (dreams come true <3). Summer joined the party and brought along sangria and reading in my sunny back yard and late, late full-moon nights.

Awww, the little bro and little sis. <3

Now that I have school and the search for summer work behind me, I finally have had some much-needed time to think through  the huge things that have happened to me this past year: coming back from Los Angeles; breaking up with Brian after a three-year, head-over-heels in love, roller coaster of a relationship, along with the subsequent fact that I am single for the first time since I was 15 (this blows my mind. 15!!!! ); finishing college; and the significant growing up life has sternly coaxed me to do in the few short months since I've started this blog.

After typing it all out, I'm kind of stunned at the myriad of places life has managed to take me in less than a year. I've been through a lot. Although, granted, a lot of these things have yet to sink in on an emotional level. But now I think its finally time for me to, for once, look back and focus on the past. My present/future-orientated self is resisting fiercely, but I have multiple reliable sources (guess not quite out of college mode yet) telling me its probably best to do some emotional housekeeping and face the reality of my situation: I'm done with college and really have no concrete plans for my life after this summer. If only I could go back in time and scold my drink-happy college-sophomore self. You were bad, 20-year-old Lauren. Get your life together (har har har yeah right, like she would listen. bitch).

The first glimpse I had of the reality that is hurdling towards me was in a short moment in May. As I walked out of my last exam on a lovely Friday afternoon, shaking with joy (but more likely due to the pot of coffee I had consumed after waking up at 6am to start studying), I suddenly felt the freest I had ever felt. It was incredible. I hope that all of you will experience this feeling someday; I can't describe it to you. But what I can tell you, is that in that that elating moment, I realized that I have nothing holding me back. With my college degree in the mail and the lack-of-boyfriend to consider when planning out my fast-approaching future (god that sounds cold. definitely haven't dealt with that yet), I can do whatever I want. I can go anywhere I want, become anything I want. I'm free. And although a month has passed since that moment, I still feel the same way, albeit in a slightly less intense state. Its morphed into a sort of electricity that I can feel buzzing at the back of my skull. And I like it. Change is coming, and I am so fucking ready for it.

That being said, I have obviously come to terms with the fact that that my time in Minneapolis is coming rapidly to a close. In a few short months, I'll be leaving this city. We knew this already. I've already freely spilled my guts about how Los Angeles beckons to me; how much that city whispers to me to return so we can continue our languid, dreamy romance. But there is something I need to tell the City of Angels, along with you, my friends. It's the one topic I'm going to try to tackle in the remainder of this blog post.

Because, truth is, my reunion with Los Angeles is going to have to wait. Because I'm going to New York City instead.

I miss California passionately. Sitting here at my desk, I look out my window and long to see mountains in the distance and know that just beyond them is the ocean. I miss the floral breeze, the beating sun on my bare legs, the citrus trees growing in gated front yards and my irreplaceable friends there. I still have an extensive list in the back of my planner of things I wanted to do and places I wanted to see in LA, most of them woefully lacking 'accomplished' check marks. But sometimes, no matter how much you want something, life offers you an alternative that you would be a fucking idiot to refuse. And that's where New York comes in.

Back in the winter, my displaced other half, the lovely Courtney Ryanne Morgan, landed an assistant teaching job in NYC with a great organization called Blue Engine. And that's when her unrelenting quest to get me in on her journey out East began. And for those of you who know Courtney, you're probably aware that when she wants you to do something, that shit is kind of hard to avoid (ilu Coco). Nearly every day there was a new NYC job posting, a new article about some awesome NYC event, or some strange happening in the city popping up in my Facebook notifications. She temped me with happy hours and glittery shoes and sex. Haha, okay, not that last one. But still. Shit that's hard to resist, you get the point.

Now, I'm generally not the kind of person who's easy to coerce into doing something. I have definitely inherited my father's famous stubbornness, and usually when I'm told to do something a ton of times I develop this strange, intense desire to do just the opposite (oooo, what a rebel). But Courtney's not-so-subtle attempts to get me to move to NYC with her did get me thinking. I've been to New York once, right after high school. My 18-year-old self sauntered around the Big Apple with freshly-dyed Atomic Pink hair and glittery orange eye shadow, accompanied by my then-10-year-old sister, mother and grandma. But aside from hitting up a sweet place called Jekyll & Hyde (which apparently is a horrible tourist trap, upon reading Yelp reviews. ouch), my first and only tour of NYC was pretty generic. Statue of Liberty, a Broadway show, lots of shopping. Ya know. Very vanilla.

So, aside from the 1. various 2. tempting 3. articles Courtney was sending me, I have very little experience with LA's cross-country metropolis sister. But the idea was starting to look more and more attractive the longer I considered it. So I did what I always do when I'm at an impasse: I called my mom. And this is what we came up with:

Thanks Mom.

1. I would have someone to live with (reunite the two halves of the antichrist in Gotham City? sounds like a double-dare)
2. I wouldn't need to get a car (i'm sensing a lot of crazy public transportation stories in the near future)
3. there are a lot of publishing companies in NYC (dream job = sexy socialite book editor)
4. why the fuck not (this was mostly a lauren contribution vs. a mom contribution)

And that was that. Point number 4 is the mantra I'm basing this life-decision on: Why the fuck not? And I feel pretty damn fine about it. Simply peachy.

Whew. That's one hurdle to get over. Or to at least have planned out, somewhat. Kinda. Not really. I still need a job. But WHATEVER. As my wonderful mother always tells me, "things always fall into place", and that claim has yet to let me down.

I'll try to keep you all updated as the other things mentioned previously in this post work their poisons out of my system. No promises though. I really don't want to bore you all to death.

With all that being said: my friends, this summer is sure to be a wild one. Lets do this.

Breaking up with Minneapolis

As the weeks go on and my California days slip further and further into the past, the urge to return to that place of near-constant sunshine and frustratingly incomplete adventure gets ever stronger. Sometimes I want it so badly I feel like I could puke. That's how I know its real.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately in my spare time (which isn't plentiful these days, what with three jobs and a full load of credits at the University of Minnesota), and figuring out what is pulling me back to Los Angeles with such an unrelenting force has been difficult. But, as I'm prone to obsessively prodding my brain for answers to such persistent questions, I've begun to piece together the scattered causes for this longing. I'll do my best to explain.

First major cause: Minneapolis has changed for me. Its not the city it used to be. Not to say that I dislike it here; that's far from the truth. I have the most amazing group of friends, I love my house, my jobs, (most of) my classes, and, fuck it, this winter has been kind to me so far. I kinda like the winter right now. And I guess I can't truthfully say that its the city that's changed. Its me that has changed. Or, more noticeably, my life here has changed. A huge part of what Minneapolis was for me before I spent four months in California is gone, and memories of it are scattered everywhere. Not a day has gone by since I've been back that something, some stupid little thing, has reminded me of my ex-boyfriend, who I broke up with shortly after returning to Minneapolis, putting an end to our extremely involved three-year relationship. And by extremely involved, I mean we did everything together. Spent every possible waking (and sleeping) moment together. Retrospectively, it was insane. I was insane. But that's fucking love, I guess. Stupid, crazy love. All I can really say is, shit. Things sure do fall apart quickly.

But, in order to spare you all from what is most certainly an extremely long and currently quite bitter retelling of my failed relationship, we'll move on to the next question: where does this leave me now? Minneapolis was our city. Not as in it belonged to us, or that he was the only thing that was keeping me here, but as in this is where we were together. This city is my relationship with him. And just like the memories of my relationship with my first serious boyfriend have claimed the suburbs around Milwaukee where I grew up, so memories of Brian have claimed Como and Dinkytown and Uptown and Downtown and everywhere else. Ending my relationship with him ended my relationship with Minneapolis. This city is over for me.

Now, I don't want you guys to think that the only reason I'm out of here is because I'm a huge pussy who can't bear facing a city with so many old, raw memories. Honestly, I was done here before I even left for L.A. That's why I left. And now I've just been given another reason to go.

So, Minneapolis is now officially out of the picture after I graduate. That's a fact. Now the question turns to where I want to go next. There are only a few places I can see myself living happily at this point in my life, and one happens to be not too far away from where I grew up: Chicago, motherfuckers (I expect some of you to get that reference).

From some not-so-distant corner of my mind, the Windy City has always called out to me. As a child/teenager, I had this image in my mind of Chicago as something akin to Milwaukee's cool older sister. So, naturally, having been raised in Milwaukee, Chicago beckons to me. I can guarantee you that there are countless middle-school-chicken-scratch poems about that city hidden in some notebook somewhere in my childhood bedroom, harmlessly threatening to run away towards that skyline. And Chicago has so much potential for adventure, which is something that I crave, if you haven't figured that out already. Just this winter break I started to explore some of the neighborhoods I'd never been to (specifically Wicker Park and Bucktown, for those of you who are familiar), and they're fucking awesome. So many hidden treasures to uncover. So much opportunity for...well, whatever it is that I'm looking for. I'm sure I'll be applying to jobs in Chicago soon enough. Why not? I could be happy there, with the lake and the museums and Lalapalooza and all the other awesome shit it has to offer. But honestly, I'm not sure if I would be completely satisfied if I moved to Chicago after I graduate. I would be lying to that city if I ended up there, because its painfully obvious that my heart is somewhere else: on the West Coast.

Here we go.

God Los Angeles, what have you done to me? Strangely enough, although I'm so far away, memories of you get tangled in with my daily life almost as often as memories of my ex. Memories of places so vivid that I have to take a minute to relocated myself in the world and realize that my favorite tree on campus isn't actually at the U of M, its at Cal State Northridge. Or, that I can't just walk to the orange grove today and chill out under the trees. And no, the 6 bus will not take me to Melrose, it will take me to Uptown. Fucking get it together, girl. Its been almost a month and a half since you left. Where is your head?

I have to say, these temporary moments of mixed-up reality are the strangest sensations I've ever had, and I'm not exaggerating their intensity one bit. When I reflect on them, I can't help but wonder how I will ever be satisfied in another city, knowing that in the most quiet, sleeping center of my mind, buried so deep that it doesn't even seem to be conscious of where I am in the world, images of L.A and the ocean and tattoos and palm trees spark into my consciousness every so often. I have to go back, or I know I'll regret it for the rest of my life. I haven't been that sure of anything in a very long time.

I apologize if this post is confusing. It makes perfect sense to me, but a few glasses of wine tend to make me overconfident in my ability to describe such abstract concepts. I guess if you're really curious take me out for coffee and I'll explain.

So, Minneapolis. I know you're a busy city and it probably won't mean too much to you, but, bottom line, I'm leaving soon. Prepare for a fond farewell.

(Now, wouldn't it be embarrassing if I got a really good job offer from a publishing company here in Minneapolis? If that happens, you have permission to rub all of this in my face. If you're an asshole.)

Revelations on Tattoos and Piercings

(There are some extremely personal disclosures in this post and I'm nervous about publishing it. But I want to, and I trust that you, dear reader, will do your best to not judge me for what I'm about to reveal to you. Please understand that a lot of what happened to me while in California is still unclear to even me. Part of my 2012 New Year's resolution is to open myself up more to people, and I'm hoping that this wasn't jumping into it too fast. And if it was, well, fuck. Too late. No regrets.)

I realized, after getting my fifth tattoo a few weeks ago, that I get tattoos in times of love and piercings in times of pain.

I got my first tattoo out of love for myself. I wanted to embody the kind of person that I had been emulating since I was young, and the first step in that process was a tattoo. So I hung around Brady Street early in the morning on September 8th of 2007 and waited for the first shop to open. Not having any sort of real idea of myself or what was meaningful to me, got my birth year tattooed on the back of my neck. It was safe; something that will never change. I was so young.




I got my second tattoo, again, out of love for myself, but out of love and respect for my parents as well. My straight edge tattoo signifies the importance of living up to my parents' expectations by staying away from activities that could have caused them to be disappointed in me. I also got it as a protection from the peer pressure that was trying to convince me to doing things I wasn't quite ready to do. Even though it no longer describes a part of me, that time in my life was important and I like to look back on it and congratulate myself on a childhood well-spent.

My back piece represents my love for Brian and the love of finding my own way. I don't feel like elaborating on this right now because I'm currently a little heartbroken and thinking too much about the significance of this tattoo while I deal with losing my best friend and my love of three years is painful. Another post, another time.

The swallow behind my ear was to bind me to my best friends for life. Having so few female friends made this easy, and I know Courtney and Katie will always be there for me. We will always, always love and care about each other. And though we're physically far apart, we'll all always return home to each other, like a swallow always returns to shore.

'Someday' is California and a someone I met there. My time in California is difficult to explain, especially since it hasn't been long since I left. I'll have time to reflect once I'm back to normal Midwest life and maybe I'll come back and develop that part of this tattoo someday. But this stranger was a whirlwind that I had been avoiding my whole time in California. I couldn't help being sucked in. Although there wasn't enough time left in my L.A. adventure for much to develop between us, such strong feeling can not be ignored. A tattoo was necessary so that I would never forget how he made me feel. I'm very, very rarely so driven to get to know a person, and the few times these people have snuck into my life they confuse the fuck out of me. Why did this happen? What was it about him that drew me to him so strongly, like a moth to a flame? How did my last two weeks of California life turn into me thinking about him constantly, begging my phone to reveal a text, pining for time spent with him? How does that happen to a person? Where did my fucking defenses go? What made him different? His smile? His laugh? His seemingly unbound kindness? Its fucking me up. All I can do is hope I'll be back someday, and maybe I can find the answers to all those questions.


My piercings are different. The only times I have the urge to get pierced is when I'm unhappy. Usually boy problems. The only specific instance I can recall are the piercings I got in California because they were so recent. This was related to problems with Brian when I was in California and just a general feeling of self-loss sometime in the middle of my trip when I couldn't motivate myself to do nearly anything. But I don't think the isolated instances are important by themselves; the act has a meaning as a whole that demands explanation.

The piercings are desperate attempts at control. I'm hurting because of someone else, but I can make myself hurt more by choosing to get pierced. Control over the pain; a pain to drown out the other pain. A manifestation of my childhood cutting, I suppose (please never bring this up to me. I don't want to talk about what a dumbass kid I was). And then, after I feel that needle through my skin once again, I return to the one who is hurting me and boast, 'oh, by the way, i got a new piercing. i didn't tell you i was getting it because i needed to control it. it needed to be mine and not yours. you have no part in this pain, and this pain is now more important because, you and i, we can see it. visual pain of my own doing has replaced the invisible pain you've inflicted on me. that pain is now gone. you no longer have control. i control the pain. i have control.' And I feel better. I won't crave another piercing until I'm in pain again, and when that happens, I'll labor over choosing a desirable place to pierce among a range of ever-diminishing options. What am I going to do with my pain if I'm ever unable to get pierced? I kind of don't want to find out.

(If you comment, please stay anonymous. I don't want to know who's read this post.)