: march 2002: a whole screen full of the letter j :
update 144
We also got out: ate at various restauants, caught "American
Modern, 1925-1940: Design For a New Age" at the Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Art, browsed record shops on South Street, had a drink at an open-air
cafe, and watched a decent amount of TV. Each of the two days were capped
off with a drink at the Town House, a musty, legitimately quirky bar and
restaurant in Media featuring popcorn and peanuts, various real, dead
animal heads on the wall, and a real, living, middle-aged woman playing
ragtime numbers on a pair of keyboards in the back corner. The
conversation was alternately heavy and light. Beth is moving into an
apartment within Philadelphia with a roommate she doesn't know very well,
so she had that to think about. There is also the matter of the company
she works for, which she likes but may or may not be on somewhat shaky
ground. I'm in the process of trying to figure out what the heck to do
with my life. Do I want to leave Pittsburgh? Do I want to stay? What are
the potential implications and/or consequences of each side? Beth said
that, when she was thinking about how the weekend might be, she imagined
I'd say, "I don't know," a lot. And of course I did. Sitting at the bar
in the Town House, sipping an Amstel Light, watching Pitt lose the
championship game of the Big East Tournament in double overtime to UConn,
there were no clear answers. I woke up early the next day and got a
fast start, but the driving conditions were less ideal (e.g. more windy)
than they had been on Friday. The headwinds were bad enough that I
required an extra third of a tank of gas, and my Escort was seriously
jostled in a few places, moistening my palms, but leaving both car and
driver unscathed. Getting back was bittersweet. I was to come home to
my life and my stuff, but rather unhappy about the fact that I was
returning to Pittsburgh. At this point, I'm pretty sure I want to leave
town, but I also don't want to leave what I have. Blah, blah, blah. It
goes around and around. In the meantime, there is my Roadtrip a Month
campaign. In April, Cindy, Dave and I will drive to Washington D.C. That
is Dave's home territory, so it should be interesting.
"So you heard about Gerry?" she said.
"No," I said. "Who is that? What about him?"
"He had thick, black hair," Anne said, "He used to come here all the time.
He was killed in New York last week."
Right then it came together. I'd read something in the Post Gazette about
a 25-year-old aspiring artist and musician from Pittsburgh
being murdered in his Brooklyn apartment, but I didn't recognize the name:
Gerald Bacasa.
I should have figured with the age and interest similarity and the general
smallness of Pittsburgh
that I knew the guy, but it being in the newspaper and all, it didn't
occur to me. I re-read the brief
a couple of times, felt bad, and kept on reading.
But when I heard Anne's description, I knew immediately who it was. He was
un-missable on the
street or in the Cage or any of the other, various bars around,
flamboyantly Mod to the point of not
looking like a regular person, but a star. Only he wasn't a star. Not yet,
anyway.
This, from the Newsday: Bacasa, who moved to New York City
two years ago from his native Pittsburgh, worked as a waiter's assistant
at Joe's Pub on Lafayette Street in the West Village. Relatives said he
was determined to "make it big" in his adopted city with music and art,
and had recently been featured as a model in V Magazine.
also:
Bacasa's sister had recently visited him in his Brooklyn home,
relatives recalled, and the two bought a $7 copy of V, a European fashion
magazine, at a newsstand the day it came out.
I didn't really know Gerald Bacasa -- the only times I tried to make
conversation were at a bar and a party, both times in an advanced stage of the evening, and neither
really worked out -- but I began to feel sick as I watched
his friends, the Pittsburgh Scenesters of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,
file into the Cage, dressed
in black. It was surreal and sad.
Life is difficult. That much is abundantly clear to me at this point. But
sometimes it's worse than that, and I'm really not sure what to do in those instances. Or what to say. Or
what to think.
Just got back from a memorable show the band did with True
Love Always and Weird Paul at the Mr. Roboto
Project, a one room co-op
in Pittsburgh's East End. There were five paying customers, which is fewer
than one would prefer,
but it was a lot of fun. TLA were great and Weird Paul lived up to his
name, doing a five-song set
of Billy Joel covers in a Billy Joel mask. That in and of itself would
have been strange, probably
not quite weird. But Paul topped it all off by changing all the important
words to "cake," and
serving an actual cake to the crowd. It was classic.
At the risk of veering off into Cheesy, Obvious Territory (well, I'm sure
this Web page already
did that a long, long time ago), shows like tonight get at the reason
people are in bands. Or,
at least, should be. For the overwhelming majority of us, being in a group
isn't going to make
us even moderately rich or famous. We do it because we like to play, and
because we like to
share our music with other people. It doesn't really matter how many.
Last night, kind of at the last minute, Cindy and I decided to go catch
the New Alcindors at
the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern. I'd just written a story about that band for
the City Paper and
really liked their demo
and the guys in general, so I figured it might be fun to see them play
and, in the process,
score a few BBT pierogies. And they did not disappoint. I've never heard a
band that sounds
so much like the background music for the basketball scenes in "The White Shadow," and I mean that in the best way possible. It was a fun, fun show.
When we got back, Cindy and I caught the end of an episode of Changing
Rooms, with which I've been
semi-obsessed since my Philadelphia trip. I must have been very
tired, because the last thing I remember is a woman on the show, unhappy
with her drastically changed living room, saying, with a thick British
accent, "I hate it."
I should probably wrap this message up now, or maybe my last memory
tonight will be of Notpad or my
computer or something equally unsavory. One day, back was a junior in
college, I passed out in front of my friend's desktop. In the morning,
there was a whole screen full of the letter j.
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