If you go there for groceries, you might never come back

I moved from Atlanta to New York in December of 2005 and so of course, a good number of the people I know still live in Georgia.  The other day, I noticed that a lot of my friends on Facebook "liked" a page dedicated to Murder Kroger and I kind of couldn't believe that someone actually created a Facebook page for the place.  But since my interests are often macabre, I "liked" it too.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Murder Kroger (aka Freddy Kroger) is the nickname for a Kroger supermarket located on Ponce de Leon Avenue in downtown Atlanta.  It first received this unfortunate nickname after a dead body was found in the supermarket's parking lot sometime in the early 2000s.  Throughout the years, there have also been other crimes committed in the near vacinity of the supermarket such as robberies and assaults, and it's generally considered not the safest place to do your midnight grocery shopping. Coincidentally, there's another Kroger supermarket located in nearby Buckhead that is referred to as Disco Kroger, which stems from the fact that the original Limelight nightclub (the one that would eventually be made famous by Michael Alig, James St. James and the other NY Club Kids of the 90s) was located next to the supermarket. And as you may recall, Michael Alig was convicted of committing the grisly murder of fellow club kid Angel Melendez in 1996.  It's a small, mad world, a'int it?

Kroger is one of the biggest supermarket chains in the south, and every time I visit Atlanta, I make a point to shop at one to pick up goodies for the duration of my stay.  The prices are reasonable, they have Krispy Kreme doughnuts flowing like honey and I never have to send out a search party to locate the fish fry (which is almost impossible to track down in the Stop & Shop up here).

Since I grew up in East Point, which is about 15 minutes south of downtown Atlanta, I never really had a reason to go to the Kroger on Ponce since there were other Kroger supermarkets located closer to my house.  It wasn't until I was in college that I made my first visit to the so-called Murder Kroger.

Even though I attended college in Athens, it wasn't unusual for me and my friend Melina to drive to Atlanta to see a band we loved play a show.  Oftentimes, these bands would play at The Masquerade, a venue located on North Avenue.  Despite the fact that at the pinnacle of our busy concert going lives we were going to The Masquerade at least once a week, Melina NEVER parked her car in The Masquerade parking lot.  I can't for the life of me exactly remember why, but it probably had something to do with having to pay to park there. 

Living in New York, people with cars are accustomed to paying to park their vehicles wherever they go.  But in Atlanta, that is a foreign concept.  I mean, look at all the space they have!  And why should you have to pay to park in the parking lot of a venue where you've already paid for a ticket to see the show?  And even though the shows we saw at The Masquerade were usually between $10-$12, we could never justify spending the money to park in the venue's parking lot.  The only other option was to park in the nearby Kroger parking lot.  If you parked towards the back of the supermarket that faced North Avenue, you could easily hop over the rusted railing and walk to the venue.

My mom always says that she was much more fearless when she was young and did a lot of things as a 20 or 30 something that she would NEVER do now.  Melina and I parked in that parking lot so many times, but we were never scared that anything would happen to us.  And nothing ever did.  Yes people got robbed there, and you'd see the occasional sketchy vagrant or prostitute walking around. The Masquerade even warned show goers not to park in the parking lot because lots of bad stuff happened to other people who had.  But we were fearless and it was so close and easy and it just made sense.  Also, after almost every show, Melina and I would actually go inside Kroger and purchase some snacks for the drive back to Athens.  I usually bought a raspberry filled Krispy Kreme doughnut (which when I'm craving really badly, I can thankfully purchase here in New York at Penn Station) and a bottle of soda, usually Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, or Mountain Dew Code Red (do they even make that anymore?). 

Since I haven't been to a show at The Masquerade in ages, I have no idea if kids still park in the Kroger parking lot when going to shows.  My friend tells me that the Kroger on Moreland is now much more dangerous than the one on Ponce, yet Murder Kroger will probably always live in infamy.

Earlier today, I came across this song about the supermarket by the band Attractive Eighties Women.  I'll leave you with this tune and a little advice.  You should always be hyper aware of your surroundings at all times, but especially at night.  But also, maybe don't shop at this supermarket at 2 in the morning. Just sayin'.

Book it

This morning on the train ride to work, I finished the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.  It's a super quick read but I really enjoyed it, in part due to all of the references to bands and books I love like The Smiths and The Great Gatsby.  The book was originally released in 1999 and while I sometimes feel like I'm going on 60, I was actually still in high school way back then so it really brought me back to that time.  I was always interested in reading the book but never got around to it, even though several years ago my cousin Michelle told me that I should because "it mentioned the Smiths and made we want to listen to them!"

A movie based on the book recently came out and I've been wanting to see it.   But not before reading the book since I didn't want anything to be spoiled. So I bought the novel on iBooks and downloaded it to my iPad. It's the 5th book I've purchased since I bought my iPad a couple of months ago.  It's the 5th book I've finished since purchasing my iPad.  It's the first time in a long time I've ever made it to a 5th book.  And I'm kind of proud of myself.

I used to read ALL the time. As a kid, I'd order books from Scholastic any time my teacher passed out orders forms to the class.  My parents were more than happy to give me the money for them because who doesn't want their kid to read books?  I was really into The Pizza Hut Book It program and thought it was the coolest thing ever that I could get a personal pan pizza just for reading something I would've read anyway.  I had a serious collection of R.L. Stein and Sweet Valley High taken up crazy amounts of space on the shelves in my room. I'd be elbows deep in boxes of books at garage sales and street fairs, scrounging around for anything that looked interesting.  I traded Anne Rice novels with my best friend. I actually enjoyed writing assignments on A Separate Peace and A Boy's Life in Mr. Patino's English class and going to the library during the summer to stock up on books for summer reading always felt ridiculously magical to me.

I worked in my high school library the four years I was a there and even considered going into Library Sciences for a while when i entered college. Though, I'm glad now that I didn't because apparently it's a very competitive field now.  I'd buy books like crazy on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble and always had at least one non-school related book in my bag.

During my first year in New York, I set out to read a lot of the books that most people read in their high school or college English classes but that I was never assigned.  Books like In Cold Blood, 1984 and The Bell Jar.  I read biographies about Truman Capote and Marie Antoinette and re-read some favorites like The Stranger and The Picture of Dorian Gray.  I even found myself refusing to see a movie that was based on a book until I had actually read the book, like with Little Children and Notes on a Scandal. 

And then somewhere along the way, I just kind of stopped.  I started spending train rides listening to music on my iPod, most of which was new to me thanks to the music industry jobs I had.  And I started making friends and spending less time at home and more time out going to shows and bars and out to dinner and whatever.  Before I knew it, ages had passed since I'd read anything other than amNY.

At about the same time, I also stopped writing.  I suppose for the same reasons: I wasn't home much and didn't have a lot of time to.  But the weird thing is that when I tried to write, I couldn't.  I had things to say but didn't know how to put them.  I had completely forgotten that in order to write you have to read. 

A college professor once told my creative writing class that to write well, you HAVE to read.  And not just read things that people make you read and not just once in a while.  You have to read all the time and make a real effort to do so.  And I hadn't really made an effort in a long time.

And then one day a few months ago, my cousin asked me if I wanted to meet her at the Apple store in Grand Central.  She said that she wanted to look at iPads since she was thinking about getting one.  I told her that I'd only go if she didn't buy one.  I didn't want her to buy one cause it would make me ridiculously jealous.  She said she wouldn't. And then she bought one anyway.  And I was jealous.

Over the next few weeks, she rarely put the thing down. She either played games on it, watched something on Netflix or read the newest issue of People.  Seeing her with it all the time totally filled me with envy.  I really wanted one but I couldn't really justify the cost knowing that I already had a trinity of apple products (iPhone, iPod, MacBook). And then she told me that she had downloaded the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy because everyone at her job was reading them.  She HATES to read.  Seriously. Never in our entire lives have I ever seen her finish a book.  Yet she felt that she might actually be willing to read the 50 Shades of Grey books because they were conveniently located on her trusty iPad, available at any time. And then it occurred to me that maybe if I had an iPad (or some other tablet or e-reader), it would encourage me to get back into reading.  I researched various devices and asked friends for their opinions on what they would get.  The recommendations overwhelming swayed in Apple's direction. So I brought my lunch to work for a while and tried not to go out much and plunked down the money for an iPad 2 (super cost efficient).

I of course downloaded all of the obligatory, free novels that everyone should have on their e-reader of choice including Frankenstein, The Odyssey, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula. (Yay for the Public Domain!) And then I purchased the following over the next several weeks and read them all:

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith (recommended by Lauren)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (recommended by my co-worker Rebecca)

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (recommended by Curtis who was correct in saying that it's more terrifying than the movie)
Life After Death by Damien Echols (ended up enjoying it even more than I thought I wouldm which I didn't think was possible)

*and of course*
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (now I can finally discuss it with cousin Michelle)

I only just downloaded The Perks of Being a Wallflower from the iTunes iBook store last week and didn't expect to finish it so quickly.  So now I'm faced with choosing my next book sooner than I had anticipated.  I'm thinking maybe The Mists of Avalon which Robin recommended the last time we hung out.  Or maybe Gone Girl which was the last novel the book club at work read. Whatever I end up choosing, I'm looking forward to the next story I let into my life.  Even if its electronic, it still feels really fantastic to have a good book in your hands. And I'm happy to be reading again.

The best shirt

There were a lot of great shirts for sale at The Cure show and I ended up getting three (and a scarf as well!)

This is my favorite one hands down.

Maxwell

Before The Cure show at The Beacon Theatre last night, Robin and I had dinner at a nearby diner where she gave me a cute little owl. His name is Maxwell :)

What's inside her never dies

On Saturday afternoon, I was watching a True Life marathon on MTV, trying to relax after getting back from the gym. The episode that was playing was "I Hate My Roomate" which I had seen a couple of times before. I started flipping through the channels to see if anything else was on. After going through all of the movies channels, I ended up on E!. Suddenly, I saw a ticker at the bottom of the screen that said that Amy Winehouse had been found dead in her London flat.

"OH MY GOD!" I yelled. My cousin asked me what was wrong and I said that Amy Winehouse had died. "WHAT?!" she said. I ran downstairs to get my laptop, flipped it open and typed cnn.com into my browser. There it was on the main page, highlighted with a "Breaking News" banner. Amy Winehouse was dead. Immediately I felt sad and ill.

One thing that seems to be the same with everyone's reaction when they heard of her passing was that no one was surprised. I wasn't surprised. We all know her history with drugs and alcohol and I'm sure that I'm not the only one who wondered how she managed to survive for so long in the first place.

I hadn't kept up much with what Amy had been doing lately but every once in a while, I'd see a photo of her on a gossip blog, walking around her neighborhood or hanging out with her boyfriend or something. She looked good. Certainly much better than those days she was running around town barefoot, with deshevled hair and smeared makeup. And I thought that she was finally getting her shit together.

A few weeks ago when video started to circulate of her horrendous performance in Serbia, I was so pissed off at her. I wanted to reach through the video and shake some sense into her and scream, "What the fuck is wrong with you?! Do you know how fucking talented you are? You're just pissing it all away and you don't even seem to care." When her camp released a statement saying that she was canceling the rest of her tour dates, I thought that was a sensible thing to do and hoped that the next time she came back, it would be in a good way.

But now she's dead. And any hope that any of us had for a healthier and better Amy is gone.


Towards the end of 2006, "Rehab" was floating around all of the music blogs that I frequented and the second I heard it, I was hooked. I didn't know who this Amy Winehouse person was but thought, "DAMN! This black girl can sing!" And then I saw what she looked like.

It's always a surprise when you're looking at someone and the voice that comes out of them isn't what you expected. But it's even crazier when you hear a voice first, and then see the person who it belongs to and the two don't match up in the slightest. Amy wasn't like anything that I pictured in my head. Here was this skinny, white, petite, English chick with the biggest bee hive hair since Priscilla Presley just demanding my fucking attention with a voice that you just didn't hear in modern day music. "Rehab" was catchy, super cheeky, dark, sad, funny, and just a plain damn good song. I searched the music blogs for as many of her other songs as I could find. Back to Black was out in the UK already (it was actually released in the UK on my birthday October, 4th) but wasn't released in the U.S. until March of 2007. I ordered it, along with some other albums from Amazon and waited eagerly for it to arrive.


I quickly fell in love with this record. I loved Amy's voice, her throw-back style, her fantastic sense of humor and the honesty with which she sang about her experiences. While I listened to every song over and over again, the one that really grabbed a hold of me was "He Can Only Hold Her." It's not a very long song, ending almost as soon as it begins, but those horns get me every time and the chorus is perfect.

When I found out that Amy would play a show at Highline Ballroom, I was so excited and made sure to stay on top of the ticket situation so that I'd be sure to get some. She had already played a show in New York so I wasn't going to miss another one. Luckily, tickets were cheap (something between $10-$12 I think which is nothing compared to what her tickets would go for now) and super hassle-free to purchase.

My cousin Nerrissa also loved Amy's record so I took her with me to the show. We went to Burgers and Cupcakes beforehand and then headed over to the venue. Some people who had been there earlier in the day said that Amy had come out to talk to fans and sign stuff and take photos and I thought that was super awesome of her. We got a good spot for the show. Patrick Wolf opened and he played a great set as Amy looked on from the VIP section smooching on and drinking with her then boyfriend/fiance Blake. When she finally took to the stage, the crowd was so excited. At this point, she had already had some much talked about bad performances and so there was definitely a sense of uncertainty in the air. But Amy didn't dissapoint and she played a great show.


Afterwards, we tried to meet her outside the venue, but once she left the building, she hoped into an SUV. A swarm of paparazzi came out of nowhere and started taking pictures like mad! I had only been in New York for a year and some change at that point but had never seen paparazzi in real life so that was totally crazy to me. I wondered if that happened to her everywhere she went and thought how awful it must be if it did.

Amy only got more popular after I saw her live and her legend seemed to grow and grow every day. How drunk was she going to be at her next show? How awful would she look the next time photographers snapped a photo of her? When she won all of those Grammy Awards for Back to Black (awards she couldn't even accept in person due to not getting her visa in time) I saw a woman who, despite her many faults and issues, had the platform to really turn her shit around and really live up to that same Amy that we fell in love with on record.

Every time I saw something unfavorable about Amy in the press, it just made me so sad because it always overshadowed and cheapened her talent. And while many legendary musicians have also struggled with additions, most of them didn't live in an age like ours where every little thing you do is inspected and torn apart and criticized. I can only imagine the pressure she felt with so many judging eyes on her while she wrestled with her demons.

I had always hoped Amy would surprise us one day and come out stronger and better having gone through her troubles. And if I am to believe some things I've read about her final days and weeks, she had sworn off the hard stuff and was seriously committed to getting back on track. It seems that her autopsy was inconclusive and so we may not know for a while what caused her death. But that doesn't even matter because knowing won't make her any less dead.

When I was a teenager the grunge/alternative scene was all the rage and I loved bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins. However, there was a period where it seemed that musicians were dying left and right from drug overdoses: Kristin Pfaff, Bradley Nowell, Shannon Hoon, Jonathan Melvoin. Their deaths had a huge impact on me, seeing all of these really talented people with bright futures and so much going on for them, being gone in an instant because of an addiction. I had always heard that the easiest way to quit smoking was to never start and it seemed to me that the same could be said for drugs.

Amy left us with a great legacy of wonderful music. But hopefully her death will also serve as a warning to people and show that addiction is a very real, very deadly thing that will do its best to swallow you whole. I only wish Amy was still around to show us that she could've beaten it. I honestly feel like she really did want to and would have some day.

When I remember Amy going forward, I hope to mostly think about the music she's left us with. I hope to remember smart, deeply personal and heart-achingly powerful lyrics and flawless performances like this one. I hope that we never forget that when she was on her game, the girl could really belt it out. And she could look damn good doing it.

Amy Winehouse
(September 14, 1983 – July 23, 2011)

Chopped!

I did it! I big chopped on Saturday, June 25th. I've been enjoying my shorter hair tremendously and don't know why I waited so long to do it! Hopefully, I'll get around to writing a longer post about my experience soon.

Shiny Happy People

Last week, my family and I went to New Jersey for an Indian wedding! Our family friend Rubi married here longtime beau Marc. My cousins and I decided that instead of wearing saris, we would wear a salwar kameez instead. A salwar kameez is basically a long top with a pair of pants (usually, a skinny leg pant). Since none of us know how to wrap saris (my Aunt Veronica wore a sari but one of my Uncle Anand's sisters had to wrap it for her) we figured that a salwar kameez would be much easier way to go.

We all purchased our outfits in Jackson Heights one Saturday afternoon (with the help of Adhalia's good friend Silby) and while our outfits did indeed cost a pretty penny, we all got

compliments on how great we looked. And if you've ever been to an Indian wedding, you know

that people go all out, so we didn't want to slack on our fashion game.

Anyway, here are some photos from the reception! Enjoy!