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Essays on Technology and Culture

On The Big Move

I am a city boy. I was born a city boy, and aside from Summer weekends in the South Jersey pine barrens, [1] I was raised a city boy—more specifically a Northeastern-US-city boy. I get nervous when there’s nothing around me taller than six stories. Nature bothers me. It’s nice to visit the “great outdoors,” but after a day or two, I just want artificial light, traffic noise, and to be able to walk somewhere for a slice of pizza. I’m not agoraphobic, but I do prefer close quarters. I value efficiency of space over room to spread out. I like to live high up, and I like to travel underground. I like to be anonymous. I like to be able to walk into a pharmacy, buy a box of prophylactics, and not have to worry about who sees me. Give me the city. Give me the big city. Give me places to go, things to do, people to see, and people to see me. Give me the option to live without a car, to walk to the grocery store, and to have actual weather.

My city, my home, has been Philadelphia for most of my life, but I’ve wanted to live someplace bigger for a while now. My sights have often cast themselves north, to New York City. It was a place, I thought, well suited to me, and ten years ago, I picked Polytechnic University in Brooklyn for college to give it a try. After a few difficult months of rooming issues, I eventually found myself settled in, but my place at the school never really gelled. I took the same Introduction to Pre-Calculus class seven times in three miserable semesters. After earning a 1.2 GPA, I was politely told to vacate the premises and never darken their doorstep again. I was more than happy to. [2] However, this meant I couldn’t stay in the big city any more. I would have needed a place to live, and money to pay for it. I didn’t have either. I had to tuck my tail between my legs, and slouch back home a mass of chagrin and shame.

While I didn’t settle in at the school, I became part of the city. When I left, I left behind dreams, and I left behind a wonderful person as well. Even as my academic life collapsed around me, I had found someone important and special in that city, and I wanted to get back for her, even more than for myself. Love has a tendency to do that to a person. Sure, we are now a two hour bus ride and an hour subway ride from each other—instead of just the hour subway ride it was before I moved home—but that extra two hours made all the difference. Thankfully, we’ve made it work, but it has been hard spending over seven years of our eight and a half year relationship separated by 115 miles. People have been separated by further distances, for longer, but I am not them.

My plan was to re-try college at the Community College of Philadelphia, pick up an Associate’s, enroll in a school in New York City, and try again. I got two out of the three, then ended up having to get my Bachelor’s in Philadelphia as well. [3] “Fine,” I told myself, “I’ll finish my education here and get a job up there.” No luck. I ended up taking a miserable job here, and got stuck for a time. I have a lot to say about that job, but that’s for another time. Still, with money coming in, I decide to live on my own and made the move to West Philadelphia. My new plan was to make a go of the crappy job for a year, and if I didn’t like it, start looking for work in New York. One big reason I took the job in the first place was that they had an New York office, and I thought I might be able to transfer up there. Turned out their New York office was just the second apartment of one of the owners, which says a lot about the place.

Fourteen months later, I was fired. If I were more clever, I would have seen that as my time to move, but I thought it would be smarter to stay local, collect my unemployment, and look for work in two places at once. Thus, I spent a year in the wilderness. I was saved by a low-paying, mind-numbing government job, but it was something. That was a year ago, and in that year I’ve struggled to find some direction in my life. All I know for sure is what I don’t want to do, and among the things I don’t want to do is stagnate. I don’t want to sit in the little fabric-covered box I sit in for eight hours a day, doing the exact same things, over and over again, until I’m 67 and can retire. That path leads to ruin.

This move is a chance to shake everything up. I will be leaving behind my home town, my apartment, my family and the social life I have slowly fallen into here. They’ll only be 115 miles away, not out of reach. It will be a goodbye, not a farewell. Still, it’s scary. Sometimes I wonder why I’m so willing to put everything I’ve built aside and try something new. Maybe it’s insanity, maybe it’s Saturn’s return. Maybe it’s both. Once again, I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want. I certainly don’t want ten times more of what I have now. For God’s sake, I am ready, at least, to be scared shitless and stop doing what I am expected to do, and go do something new and different. What, specifically? Hell if I know. But I will be doing it, in a new, and different place.

Just… not quite yet.

Let’s face it. I talk a big game in the last few paragraphs, but I am in a holding pattern for another few months. My lease expires in August, so the current plan is to move to New York City by August 31st. September 1st, at the latest. In the meantime, that leaves six months to make things happen: finding a job is probably the biggest concern, but I won’t let the lack of one keep me from making the jump this time. Things will happen. I am not going to die. Even still, I am done with putting it off. I am done with pissing around. The reason I am still here, and not there, is my fear. I’ve clung to my city, and my apartment, and my two sub-par jobs, because the idea of giving them up is scary as hell. Absolute brown trousers time. But, if I want to get what I want—even if I don’t know what I want—the only way out is through.

Wish me luck.

Or, if you live in New York City, offer me a job.


  1. Well, Villas wasn’t exactly the pine barrens. It was a quaint little bedroom community situated between the tourist meccas of Cape May and Wildwood, and all told, I spent about as much time in those two places as I did in Villas.  ↩

  2. In the intervening years, the school’s mismanagement caught up with it and now it is another tendril of the ever growing hydra that is NYU. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving institution.  ↩

  3. I was accepted into my school of choice in New York City, but by the time they got their acceptance letter to me, I had already said yes to Temple University… three months earlier.  ↩

On Dressing the Man

Until recently, I did not know how to dress myself. Well, I exaggerate. I knew what clothes were, how to put them on, and could arrange my clothing as to go outside clad in a manner that was mostly weather appropriate and in tune with local decency laws, but that still left a lot of leeway. I don’t know why I never learned how to dress myself properly. It may have been the stringent uniforms of my early Catholic School education days that left me with a distaste for ties, dress shirts, and canary yellow that I’ve only recently gotten over—save for the canary yellow part. It might also have been the adolescent infatuation I had with the “goth” thing which lead to me wearing all black in a vain attempt to be rebellious and threatening. It could also be the transition from that into an equally apathetic college wardrobe of all black because I was lazy. I don’t know.

I do know that awareness of “proper dress” came to me about the time I was about to graduate college. Facing down the idea of job interviews and life as a working man, I realized that something had to change in my appearance. I posted a question on Ask MetaFilter asking for advice on dressing like an adult, but the answers lacked some of the more concrete details… So, as I graduated college, I went from being a long-haired, bearded, chubby dork who wore monochrome to a clueless, short-haired, clean-shaven dork, who wore bad outfits, cheap clothing and a rather pretentious, cheap black felt hat. Still, I think I was more ahead of the game than some of my peers who even now somehow manage sartorial disasters that blow my mind, or just look like schlubs, even today.

It was during my period of semi-unemployment that dressing correctly really came to my attention, thanks in part to the great blog Put This On, which taught me the basic rudiments of classic men’s style. With my limited income and access to some thrift stores and eBay, I began to toss out the ugly sateen shirts and beat-up cheap shoes that I had worn to my office job. Sure, I’d dressed well enough to get the job, but that job probably would have hired me even if I had come in with only the barest minimum of interview-appropriate attire. I needed to step up my game, not just for the job hunt, but for myself.

Fear of a White Shirt

For many years, the only whites in my wardrobe were my undershirts. No other white garments even existed in my wardrobe. No white socks, no white underpants, nothing. I wore a lot of black and gray, some reds and blues, and the occasional spot of brown when I felt flashy. I remember the first non black or gray item of clothing I picked out for myself: a short-sleeved brown button-down shirt. I still have it, but not for long. The majority of shirts in my wardrobe were polyester blends, ill-fitting, and often in dark shades. It lead to a bit of teasing at my old job whenever I sauntered in wearing a bright red shirt. [1] I decided to invest in something white, just as a first step. I secured a lovely Oxford Cloth Button Down—OCBD, in the style parlance—at my local thrift store. It was as good a fit as one can get from off the rack, and looked good paired with dark denim. It was a start. Until then, my “best” shirt was a garish blue number with French Cuffs. [2] Not long after I got the first of my OCBDs, I got a full weeks worth, some with pointed collars, some button-down, and explored a new world to me: patterns.

Pattern Recognition

I never liked strongly patterned clothing. Still don’t. Stripes and things were just too darn complicated for me. Keep in mind, my idea of varying my wardrobe until about a year prior was wearing gray shirts or blue jeans instead of black ones. As I’ve grown my wardrobe, I’ve started to get an idea of what goes with what, both in terms of color and in terms of pattern. One help has been the BeSpeak app for the iPhone. It gives suggestions based on items in your wardrobe and tips on what patterns and colors suit you. It mostly focuses on suits and ties, but it is still a great resource. I now wear striped shirts and patterned ties, and thanks to BeSpeak, can even match them properly.

Suiting Up

Early on, I had made the mistake of thinking I could fake a suit. I had purchased a nice enough gray blazer, and it matched well enough with a particular pair of gray slacks I had, but it wasn’t enough. I think people could tell that I was trying to fake it. One of the most important purchases I made, early in this project, was a lovely, gray herringbone wool Hickey Freeman suit. It was a bit long at the sleeves and legs, but it was perfect interview wear. I kept promising myself that I would get it altered, and eventually I did—over a year after the fact. [3] Now that I have it back, I only wish I had done it earlier—the fit is so improved it’s insane. I look good, and I feel good in it. After alterations, the gray suit cost me a mere $80, and looks incredible. It feels great to wear a real suit, and to look good doing it. Now, I just need to get the three-piece navy pinstripe suit I found to my tailor, and I’ll really be set.

Shoes and Perish

Douglas Adams wrote an amazing thing about cheap shoes—the Shoe Event Horizon—which states that as shoe demand increases, quality diminishes, causing people to buy more shoes of lesser quality, until at last the economy collapses. I didn’t have $200+ to spend on high quality shoes, but there’s a wonderful resale market on eBay for them. I picked up a pair of $250 Allan Edmonds shoes for $80, and with care, polishing, shoe trees, and occasional resoling, they’ll last me for life. I’ve bought a few other nice pairs of shoes this way, too. The only shoes I’ve bought new were a pair of city boots that, though not exactly fashionable, are at least well made and good for the cold, wet, urban winter. Now I have shoes for almost every occasion I would need, and don’t have to pray someone doesn’t realize I’m wearing boots.

Putting it all Together

I’m far from a fashion plate, and I certainly am not trying to be. I do, however, have the ability to dress myself now, in a way that is attractive, appropriate and functional for home, work, and play. I’ll never forget visiting my parents and the look of surprise on my father’s face when I appeared with a striped Oxford Cloth Button Down, a brown sweater, and looking quite nice. I look better, and I feel better, and that’s a huge boost to my self-esteem—as long as I don’t have to wear canary yellow.


  1. I still have that red shirt, but it’s reserved, very specifically, as evening wear, not work wear.  ↩

  2. Nothing against French Cuffs, but they look a little absurd in an office environment. At least I thought to pair them with understated cufflinks.  ↩

  3. Making friends with a local seamstress was one of the best things I ever did.  ↩