Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman

Author:Ryan Chapman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2019-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

Apologies for my brief absence. Wouldn’t you know it, just when I was getting to the heart of the matter, to the white-hot center of this official accounting of events, as they happened, Devon the Pedo began banging on the hallway window of the Media Center. He’s a boiled potato of a man, glistening with sweat and the wild-eyed exuberance of an adrenaline spike in full flush. He had stripped down to his underwear—or had been stripped down to his underwear—with blood caked over his mouth and chin. My first impression upon seeing him was of a large newborn. “Devon, my good man! How are you?” I asked, between the bass thumps of his fists on the glass and his legato chants of “Let me in let me in let me in let me in . . .” I told him, “You look great”—he did, despite all—“but I’m afraid there’s no room at the inn. Scoot.” I pointed to the keyboard, coupled with what I hoped was a light-hearted bounce of the shoulders as if to say, “It’s a living!” He continued his arrhythmic pounding and I was reminded of why I never liked the man, besides the pedophilia, or in addition to the pedophilia—which, if I’m being honest, isn’t really a problem here, there wasn’t any temptation or anything; if pressed I would say the man was simply a shithead. I flapped my hand to shoo him away. Devon glanced backward, possibly in response to something I didn’t catch or couldn’t hear, mumbled a generic invective, then signaled his leave with a phlegmatic gob loosed right into my line of sight. A class act, that Devon.

To return: the Wagner filibuster was merely the mainstreaming of our popularity. Coolhunters and tobacco marketers both know if you’re going to get big, first you have to get the influencers: your Lego architects, your SXSW “experiential leads,” your prop stylists for Japanese workwear zines. I direct new readers to “We Have All Killed the Widows,” a rather thorough listserv of Holding Pen scholarship. The moderators claim with some degree of confidence two distinct and near-simultaneous first sightings of The Holding Pen in the cultural underground.

Last December a restaurant named Napkins opened in the Mission District of San Francisco, the newest addition to celebrity chef Frankie DiCredenza’s growing empire. DiCredenza has the reputation for being as lax with his restaurants’ decor as he is meticulous with his crudo. It would not surprise any of his many loyal fans to learn his first Michelin star (French Stuff, in London’s Gravesend) was awarded only after fierce internal debate whether he even qualified: his plywood tables had been pulled from the refuse pile at a nearby wharf and gave the judges several splinters in their hindquarters. As for Napkins, the chef was dating a homeless teenager he’d found shooting up in the alley behind the restaurant; DiCredenza asked the young man to furnish the place for $800. Destiny pushed the doped-up kid into a nearby dumpster, and two weeks later Napkins opened to rapturous reviews about its duck à l’orange .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.