Category: ultrapress

As Featured in the New York Times

Photo by Rebecca Cooney for New York TodayGo and see what the Rumpus Room actually looks like in this article, which containa lots of cool pics of the pad, as well as the most unflattering picture of me ever seen by human eyes. It’s a very complimentery article, but I winced a little while reading it to see how even the simplest remarks can be misinterpreted by someone who doesn’t already know you, and who has to summarize you. Am I a vicitim of media manipultion? Or just a Virgo control freak who likes things just so?

The article is a bit weird: It’s loaded with little embellishments and things that miss the point, but I can see how someone who didn’t know me well could come to those conclusions. For instance, I don’t actively collect action figures, but I never throw anything away so I’ve found myself owning a bunch after years of getting a kick out of them. (By the way, I only have a couple dozen, not a couple hundred.) And I’m not all that zealous about home improvement, either. I painted my bathroom after two years of procrastinating about the day-long project. It also makes me seem really, really gay, but I guess I am. Whatever. It’s a nice, flattering article, even though it features a disturbingly unflattering picture of me in the photo slideshow.

You can see what a museum of various, uncurated pop junk the Rumpus Room really is. There aren’t any carefully cultivated collections of anything, but there are lots and lots of cool things lying around. If nothing else, a close look at the photos reveals just how many treasures there are to be found in thrift stores and sidewalk junk piles. After all, I don’t own a stick of new furniture, only thrift scores and trash relics abandoned by assorted friends and strangers. Behold the scavenger!

A Little Plug

Eagle-eyed New Yorkers will be able to spot a picture of me on page 52 of the current issue of Time Out New York (the 1/25-2/1 issue, with the ski bunny on the cover). Nothing very glam, just an unflattering shot of me addressing the rapt crowd at the last group meeting of the Brooklyn LiveWork Coalition. It’s a great article, actually, with a broad discussion of the issues at stake with this whole crackdown on loft living here in Crooklyn.

It’s been something of a revelation for me to get so involved with this whole thing. I’ve been spending about 20 hours week (you know, during all that spare time when I’m not scoping or working full-time) donating time to the Coalition, and I even seem to have become part of the leadership. It’s a shock to me because this issue has so easily tapped into some real passions of mine, passions I never really know about. I always saw myself as very apolitical, never getting myself into much of a twist about anything. This time around I haven’t felt any doubt or any apathy. Unlike times when I was faced with gay rights issues or presidential elections or whatnot, I really feel charged about the way my neighbors and I are caught in the middle of this time of adaptation in New York. As the city government reacts to the way life in the city has adapted on its own, I’ve realized that I am actually part of a community here in a way I haven’t experienced before. I started out just making sure I wouldn’t get booted to the street, but as I’ve gotten to know my neighbors and other painters, sculptors, musicians, designers, photographers, entrepreneurs and such I’ve realized that I really give a shit about making sure that we all have a way to continue living in a way that lets us unite our work lives with our domestic lives, uniting what might otherwise be disparate parts of ourselves. Not to mention it would be damn hard to pay for both homes and studios where we could really work.

It’s a delicate balance the Coalition is after. We actually enjoy the mixed character of our neighborhoods, and we want to be able to continue working where we live. As much as we want to bring improvements to these neighborhoods, we don’t actually want to see them overdevelop in ways that make it impossible for us to stay, the way things have gone overboard in Soho and Tribeca. Even though North Williamsburg has exploded in recent years, it’s still a long way off from that kind of exclusivity. I think that’s one way that living in Brooklyn may always make things a little easier for us: No matter how much things transform over here, New York’s geography will still concentrate the money and the attention in Manhattan.

We’ll see, I suppose. In the meantime, I have some more meetings to prepare for…

The Critics Praise Sparky

Fame! Fortune! Well, neither, actually. But it’s cool at least.

Thanks to a well-placed word or two from Jonno, Rumpus Room was picked as “site of the week” by New York’s own free fag rag, HX. (Of course, the issue also came out the day before my ISP shut down my site because of a bill payment problem, but we’ve settled all that now.) Maybe with all the attention I’ll get upgraded to a B-list fag now.

For posterity, here’s the review:

Sparky’s Rumpus Room
www.rumpus.org

We’ve been spending a lot of time in Sparky’s rumpus room lately. Hopefully we’re not overstaying our welcome, because this cute New York City native (yes, Staten Island does count) and self described bon vivant is a hoot to hang with. shake your booty over to Sparky’s cyber-digs and browse his collection of cool street junk, get to know his pals or let lust get the best of you and ogle the random cute guys and hunky cartoon superheroes collated in his galleries. There’s also the obligatory online journal, a photo album and a collection of Sparky’s contributions to various ‘zines and online discussion groups. The whole package is wrapped in a funky design that’s one of the best we’ve seen in a personal homepage. And best of all, Sparky’s single. [Ain’t that the truth – ed.]

Trust me, this won’t go to my head. But maybe I’ll get some out of it. Hee hee hee!