Cool As Quahog

Alex Waxman

January 26, 2022

The operation was set up with one white regatta tent outside the main mail office on the University campus. From a distance, it seemed as if it were another school-board sanctioned activity, like a food-truck festival, or any of the other bread and circus acts they allotted the undergraduates over the course of the year. Upon further inspection, however, the rag-tag, hastily put together construction, coupled with the man carrying a clipboard on the lookout for campus security, told a very different story. The tent was loaded with clothing: black and turquoise snapback hats, chuck tees, and all manner of jackets both appropriate and otherwise for the tepid mid-autumn climate. Students milled in and out, a crack of laughter rising from pairs trying on clothes? They had no thoughts of purchasing, and serious fashion collectors pawed through hangers as if they were handling gemstone necklaces in a jewelry store. I went up to the man serving lookout and took note of the clean sweatshirt he was wearing from Tyler the Creator’s designer line, GOLF, his Nike sports cap, and the fanny-pack he had repurposed over his shoulder as a cash bag. Once it became clear my intention was not to turn the operation over to the administration, he visibly relaxed, telling me that his name was JP. He couldn’t answer questions while handling the mock-register, so he called over his business partner, JC, another young man wearing faded blue jeans and a NASCAR branded long sleeve white tee-shirt. He told me that they hit up universities across the northeast with their moving thrift store. I asked him what he liked about thrifting, which he laughed at. “I don’t thrift,” he said, beaming, “I curate.” I considered the pop-up scene for a while and wondered what this meant for the secondhand clothing market at Providence, including the Providence flea market I had attended a week prior. I had been excited to learn that Providence, Rhode Island was home to a Sunday flea market. Better yet, it was one described to me by the liquor store owner as “very weird.” Providence was first described to me as being “weird.” This quirkiness is in part an artificial operation. There are local campaign slogans which read “Keep Providence Weird” and “Don’t Let Normal In.” Regardless, I was very excited for the Providence flea market. I adore thrifting. I should be clear. I love the idea of thrifting. When I look in awe at torn jean jackets and collared shirts with pearl buttons, I can no longer admire it with the same certainty that I once had that the indie (usually bearded) person wearing the attire got their look from a tiny speakeasy in Brooklyn. The aesthetic of “thrift” has become an antithesis to itself. What once existed as a pragmatic solution for finding cheap and good-looking clothing has become idealized and copied. Though people wanted to look as if they had taken those sweet jeans off a secondhand dealer, they don’t really want to smell like it. And sure, it was a nice enough idea that you were going to go to that little shop downtown someone tipped you off for, buuut, that Urban Outfitters is much closer, isn’t it? Admittedly, I am guilty of faux thrifting myself. I have a propensity for buying jackets with pre-worn qualities: green fabric frayed, but in the softest most manufacturable way. But still – in the wake of questionable authenticity – a flea market then is the ultimate thrifters’ pleasure. The crafty coupon-collector pinches savings from hand-me-down booths. The voracious haggler gets to demonstrate their business acumen. The environmentalist is filled with the pride of upcycling. Finally, the antiquarian finally gets the missing piece to their private museum of eccentricities. Truly, flea markets are bug traps for the weirdos, oddballs, and edge residents. That’s not even mentioning the sellers! The Sunday flea market officially begins at the start of a pedestrian bridge in a neighborhood called Fox Point in Providence. In actuality, it languishes out before and after its intended area. Whether this happens by logistical errors or by the addition of unregistered tents would be hard to say. As if they were a line of ants determining the best way to cut up and carry off a leaf, potential customers and window shoppers enclosed the perimeter of the market. When the ants move around their query, it gives the impression that the market were in motion – always marching towards you. The bazar took up a small patch of grassland which separated asphalt road from one of Providence’s brackish canals. Most of the tents were white with the odd black or beige colored tarp. While clothing sellers took up the majority of the stalls, another joy of the flea market was the endless supply of knick knacks also on display. Necklaces, candles, furniture, records – the flea is a nostalgic love-letter to the renaissance of yard sales before the economy of random item-selling was swallowed by Facebook marketplace. One of the best skills I learned in going to markets is to never buy anything the first time around. As with Farmer’s Markets, many people feel uncomfortable passing through stands, picking up this, sampling that, while at the same time knowing that they will not be dropping a dime as they do so. However, the buyer’s remorse that one feels after committing to three pints of mediocre cherry tomatoes, only to find a pallet of in-season heirlooms, feels far worse and is a quickly correcting force. Anyways, touring the stalls with an air of indifference can be a powerful thing once you’re past shame. The large open markets of New York City are apathetic to your existence while you peruse. While preparing to match a similar energy to what I was familiar with, I was surprised when the proprietor of each stand in the Providence Flea smiled happily at my gaze. Some even went so far to answer questions I didn’t ask: “They’re made from real cast iron,” or, “The deal is for everything on the shelf.” I noticed that the visual uniform of the different stalls tended to lean into the idea of progressive, dark rebellion. That is to say, a majority of the hobbyists’ tents boasted tarot cards, books on wicca, and plenty of “I’m a witch and a democrat” pins. It was unclear if the outjie boards were representative of the approaching October holiday or whether Providence was just simply a spooky town. What I didn’t fail to notice, however, was the diverse array of patrons who perused the aisles of the different haunted figure sets. As is often the case, there was my expected mix of goths, style icons, and neighborhood residents making up the general crowd. However, there tends to be something of a code for these groups. The goths get the occult stands. New couples get the scented candle outlets. Environmentalists lug their bucket of mystery compost into the drop off point, then they leave without doing anything else. These archetypes keep to themselves, and when they pass each other, they do so quickly and quietly with the purpose of people with places far better to be than near each other. The status quo is preserved. In the flea market by the waterfront of Providence, this couldn’t have been more untrue. Grandparents picked up crow skulls, admiring their weight. Record junkies smiled at stamp collectors. Pastel colors embraced a shadow, and I realized a goth was being hugged! By someone in tie-dye! I tried to express my concerns to one of the more niche store owners: a man selling antique travel booklets and maps. He laughed. “There’s so many weird people here,” he told me. “They just like each other.” And they were weird. It was impossible to explain. Small mannerisms and ticks, clashing color combinations, and off-mainstream greetings exchanged. Even the layout of the event itself was weird in retrospect. Although the outermost parts of the tents faced the adjacent canal, the middle section of the tents followed no pattern at all. It appeared that they had been thrown in haphazardly with walls only as much as they felt like putting up. I realized that this effectively created the rotating movement of bodies that I had observed before. There were no straight paths or roads to get from tent to tent; one moved by their interest and their fancies. There were no cordoned sections for this thing or that. In a way, you are forced to explore and to meander beyond your interest. It was more than mob psychology which moved the people around the tents cyclically. The strange phenomenon was, in fact, promoted by the venue. It was strange. No, it was weird. Why belittle the “weird?” The weird is just the authentic unrecognized. I don’t mean weird in the “quirky” sense. I mean it in the bizarre sense, the lifestyle decisions which turn heads. Weirdness is tenacity. It’s spontaneity. It’s a man selling records, but he’s a photographer, so he’s transposed images of his black and white photos over the records, rendering them useless and unplayable. I passed by the photographer and asked him for his prices. He didn’t have any. I don’t think he sold anything that day; he was just there for the ambiance. Rhode Island itself is a weird state, I suppose. It’s 1/173rd of a Texas. It was the last state to ratify the constitution. Just living in Providence is to be a part of an inside joke. While they maintained a certain tackiness, there was also an unabashed genuineness to these stalls which hosted images of Lovecraft and road signs pointed to the fictional town of Quahog from “Family Guy.” I viewed them first as tourist magnets: something like an “I ❤ New York” shirt. I hung out near one of the booths selling particularly egregious Rhode Island swag and asked anyone who bought anything where they were from. Every one of them said “somewhere nearby”. Here in Providence, the peas and carrots mixed. The grown-up versions of middle school cliques somehow came to terms and ignored ancient and unwritten laws of separation. Furthermore, the concept that you do not buy your city’s tacky souvenirs was disregarded. The flea market did not regulate itself to sell items with necessary value. Really, many of the crafters didn’t even intend to sell! They came out for the crowds and the weirdness of them, offering their own little corner of abnormalities to the curious. Despite an aura of a niche and frugal market, research shows that second-hand sellers are on the rise. According to a survey conducted by GlobalData, 33 Million more people purchased clothing from second-hand vendors in 2020 than the prior year. Besides the economic incentive of purchasing used goods, environmentalists have long praised the beneficial impact of thrifting. By buying previously owned clothing, consumers are able to keep excess fabric out of landfills and reduce the carbon footprint of the fashion industry, a notoriously large contributor to CO2 emissions worldwide. There are many factors that could be attributed to the rise in second-hand consumerism – notably the COVID-19 pandemic forced many indoor retailers to be shuttered and caused buyers to search for alternative shopping options. However, many predict that the second-hand market will continue to grow post-pandemic. Data shows that thrifting is more popular with Millenials and Gen Z than older generations, and thredup’s (an online second-hand clothing distributor) 2021 Fashion Resale Market and Trend Report expect secondhand clothing sales to more than double in the next five years. In numbers, that would mean going from $36 Billion in 2020 to $77 Billion in 2025. Remember, this is only in garment sales. Clearly, there’s real money to be made in thrifting. JC told me that he used to be a construction worker doing 40 hour shifts in construction. He met JP in a thrift store (of course), and having quickly hatched a plot to sell to college students, they set up shop and split the profits. JC made more in one day than in a week of construction. Upon hearing this, I also noticed that there was a distinct difference in the price tag of their goods than that of the flea market. Whereas a jacket at the flea would cost $10 on the pricier side, JC and JP were selling hats for $35 a piece. Yes, all their stuff was pristine, but I wondered if something was lost in that. They didn’t have weird little pins, and the student cliques that moved through the merchandise kept a wide berth. The only real difference between their tent and a fashion retailer was brick and mortar. Theirs was a pop-up situation, soon to move on to the next college and then onwards in another city. Maybe JC was right. Maybe it was a different kind of thrifting; maybe it wasn’t thrifting at all. On my way out of the market, I noticed that I had yet to purchase anything from the vendors. I had spent so much time looking at the different people and taking in their foreign personalities, I had made a full four circles through the place without taking a single item to the counter. I looked over at a flag and handkerchief tent. While mainly centered around feline prints, the store showed off the same pride of weirdness that I’d come to expect from the location. I walked into the interior of the store and checked if there was anything I might want for whatever reason I could think of. My eyes passed over a flag, nearly flush on the ground, showcasing a goofy clam wearing sunglasses with the absolute cringe-worthy slogan “Rhode Island: Cool as Quahog.” The flag was stained and a bit wrinkled. I laughed, turning away from it. I thought about how utterly outside the item was from the design of my room, before slowly turning back. There was a quality of strangeness to the thing – an outlandish essence of ridiculousness and shameless local love that I felt a newfound attraction to by the end of my trip. I paid the man at the front of the tent for my clam flag, and to this day it hangs above my bed.

More Than a Diner

Tevah Gevelber

January 26, 2022

Between 5:00 and 5:30 pm 7 days a week, 365 days a year, Ivan Giusti pulls into his reserved parking spot in front of City Hall and springs into well-rehearsed action. First, the 48 year-old co-owner of the Haven Brothers Diner, plugs the truck into the 70-year-old outlet on a nearby street lamp. Two blinding bulbs illuminate plastic tables that provide seating, or dance props, for the diner’s late night customers and the pulsing blue and red OPEN sign comes to life. The diner is ready for business. In the time of Covid-19 where connection is rare and many businesses have folded, Haven Brothers Diner continues its 128-year-long tradition of providing food and community for anyone and everyone in downtown Providence. Around 5:35, Ivan, wearing the diner’s black cotton t-shirt and cargo shorts, unlocks, unfolds and then climbs the truck’s collapsible stairs. “Go ahead,” he says. “Ask me anything.” The Rhode Island native has been working for his father’s diner in some capacity for 35 years. Ivan has seen a full life cycle of customers pass through the truck. “College kids come, twenty-some year old club-go-ers come,” Ivan explains. “Then they grow older, get married, and then come back to reminisce.” As if on queue, a young couple climbs the diner steps. Four years ago, after they got married at the Providence Public Library, Doyle, a Boston native, and her husband went out for drinks with friends. It was late but the couple knew they needed to make one last stop. They came to Haven Brothers Diner. Because, says Doyle, “it’s a quintessential Providence thing to do.” Four years later, on a Wednesday evening, they are back, recreating their wedding night. Doyle’s husband pulls out his phone to show a faded picture. “We had agreed that before we went back, I wanted a picture of both of us: me in my wedding dress and my husband in a tuxedo eating hot dogs in front of the truck,” said Doyle. Sure enough the photo shows two beaming twenty-some year olds under the glare of the diner’s lights, trying to stuff hot dogs into their mouths while keeping their wedding garb clean. You can imagine the diner’s usual late night crowd cheering the couple on from behind the camera, their hoots and hollers adding to the nightly Kennedy Plaza symphony of traffic and the diner’s quintessential near heavy metal rock music. As the giddy couple recounts their special night, Ivan is unfazed. “Yeah, that happens all the time.” The truck has been part of Providence nightlife since 1893 when immigrant Ann P. Haven first bought a horse-pulled wagon and converted it to a lunch cart that she named Haven Brothers. Back then, the cart provided late night sustenance to the workers of the 15,000 plus Providence factories of the 1890s. Though the cart became a truck in the 1950s, it continues to serve late night Providence. 57-year-old spin instructor and self-described “original Providence person,” Lori Mars, remembers a childhood tradition of Saturday night diner visits. “It was a me and my father thing,” Mars says. “After driving my grandmother home, my dad would play cards and I would stay up because I knew we would go get Haven Brothers after.” Mars first went to the diner in the 1970s when she was about 8 years old. Downtown Providence was different then. “When I grew up, there weren’t many restaurants to go to and the economy was bad.” she explains. “It was a different climate, kind of seedy.” Haven Brothers, the diner on wheels parked in front of City Hall, was at the center of it. “To go on that truck was really weird, so I liked it,” Mars says. “It was full of creatures-of-the-night type people.” Sal Giusti, Ivan’s father and the owner of the diner, agrees. “Everybody comes here: doctors, lawyers, homeless people,” says Sal. “There’s never a dull moment.” Sal moved to West Warwick from Italy 50 years ago. Though he had always wanted his own business, Sal didn’t attempt to start one until he was laid off from the Cranston Chemical Company. “Before I was afraid to quit because I had three kids,” Sal remembers. “But they fired me at the right time and I decided to buy the truck.” In 1986, the same year that Sal bought Haven Brothers, former Providence Mayor Joseph R. Paulino Jr. decided to move the diner. “Haven Bros. was attracting some groups of motorcyclists and gangs into the area,” Paolino Jr. explains in the diner’s documentary The Original Food Truck: Haven Brothers: Legacy of the American Diner. “It was disruptive.” As Mars explained, in the 1970s, Providence struggled economically and became increasingly violent as jobs left the area. “In the 80s and 90s there were fights every weekend,” Ivan remembers. As more clubs opened up in downtown Providence, many drunken arguments spilled over into the only open restaurant; Haven Brothers. “It’s not our fault,” Ivan says. “But maybe that’s why the mayor wanted to move us.” Paolino Jr. forced them to move during summer, the truck’s busiest time. “It was crazy,” Ivan remembers. “We had no business.” The Giusti family took the issue to court with the help of Paolino Jr.’s successor as mayor, Buddy Cianci. “He helped us get back here because he knew that this is Providence,” Ivan says. “It’s historic and you can’t move something that’s historic.” The people of Providence agreed. One citizen wrote in the Providence Journal: “That diner has been a fixture in downtown Providence longer than the mayor [Paolino Jr.] has, and will, we hope, be one long after the mayor is gone.” “Part of city life is and ought to be the juxtaposition of disparate elements that all come together to give a city its flavor,” another wrote. “At Haven Brothers, all elements rub elbows, and all contribute to the mix that gives the city its particular ambience.” Paolino Jr. realized his mistake and tried to save face before the next election. “He threw a 100th anniversary party in the plaza, but it wasn’t the 100th anniversary,” Ivan says about the 1988 celebration, five years before the true centennial. Paolino Jr.’s attempt to move the truck marked the first of Sal’s trials as the diner’s owner. In 1989, Sal’s business partner passed away, leaving him to run the diner alone. “The first ten years, I worked seven days a week,” Sal says. “I would wake up at 11 am and go to work.” Often, he would come home past 3 am. Now, at 78, Sal insists on coming into his truck about once a week, even if it’s just to deliver ice cream. Around 6 pm, a low two-seater car pulls off the main road and parks right in front of City Hall. Ivan looks up, “My weiner guy is here.” ‘Weiner guy’ is Monte Ferris Sr., the owner of the local family business, Venus De Milo. Ferris has been coming to the diner for over fifteen years. Giusti asks: “Three or four today?” “Three,” Ferris responds. “With mucho salsa, on the top, bottom and sides.” After a well-rehearsed routine of business banter, during which Ivan never stops grilling or wrapping or slicing, Ferris takes his hot dogs and drives away. On most nights, the truck slows down for the next several hours. In these quiet moments, when the three stools in the back of the truck sit unoccupied, the music is audible, and the TV that hangs on the back wall is unobstructed, the truck begins to tell its story. Pictures of famous customers, Bruce Springsteen, Federico Castelluccio, LL Cool J, among others line the diner’s back wall. The photos flow right into a black and white timeline of the truck’s history. And tucked in the corner sits a framed 2014 Providence Phoenix article with a picture of Sal leaning out the diner’s service window, titled “The Heart of the City.” It’s in this quiet that Ivan’s nonchalance slips for the first time, as he remembers his first few months at the diner. Because Sal was so overwhelmed in the diner’s early years, he put his kids to work as soon as possible. Ivan started working in the kitchen at thirteen and on the truck by fifteen. At the time, he was far from his current unflappable, multi-tasking self. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD “I was a shy kid, and I had a stutter,” Ivan chooses his words carefully. “I didn’t want to talk or upsell things, but my dad didn’t care.” He shrugs and says, “He’s hardcore because he’s a worker.” With that, Ivan returns to the grill to prepare burgers for that night’s rush. Around 8 pm, the people start coming, and they don’t stop. Luckily, the diner’s schedule is built for this. Reinforcements arrive in the form of Cassandra Grimaldi, a short woman with dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail who wears her Haven Brothers t-shirt with a small cut down the front. The 38-year-old mother of three has worked at Haven Brothers for the last ten years. Though Grimaldi paused her college career when she got pregnant, she is determined to go back. “I always said I’d never die without a degree,” says Grimaldi. She wants to study psychology. For now, she studies it unofficially through her nightly encounters on the truck. A homeless woman stands outside the truck around 10 pm on a Thursday. “She won’t tell me her full name,” says Grimaldi. “But every time she comes, she gets a cherry coke. Usually she pays the whole amount.” Sometimes, as was the case that Thursday, the woman is a little short on change. “No worries, it’ll go on credit. Pay me back next time,” Grimaldi says as she delivers the coke. Each time the woman returns, Grimaldi pretends to forget to ask for the money. “I just take two dollars from my own tips,” she says. “I’d rather go to heaven than hell and it’s just a cherry coke.” Around 10:30 pm on a Saturday, a balding man in ragged clothes wanders up to the diner’s collapsible outdoor tables. He blasts music on a speaker and intermittently gets up to dance or to proclaim loudly the importance of gospel. A woman with gray hair sits next to him, smoking a cigarette in silence. Twenty minutes later, a group of five nicely dressed teenagers bound over to their table and each teenager takes a turn exchanging a long, tight hug with the man. One of them walks towards the truck and shouts over his shoulder “Let me get you a shake.” The man doesn’t respond but mumbles that he doesn’t know what’s in that stuff that makes it so damn good. This unlikely group of seven; diverse in clothing and age, sits together, under the diner’s bright lights for forty five laughter-filled minutes before wandering separately back into the night. Around 11 pm, a formally dressed young couple occupies the other table. Suddenly, the young man shouts something incoherent at two women in sports bras and leggings. They turn. The families and couples in line pause their chatter, and for a moment the interaction could go in any direction. Fifteen minutes later they’re all sitting around the table, having shared names and a cigarette. Classic Haven Brothers. The truck’s location by Kennedy Plaza and its late hours enable it to be an unique place of exchange. Ironically, one of the biggest champions of this exchange is Linda Verhulst, Paolino Jr.’s former secretary. “It’s a riot,” Verhurlst says. “I enjoy the combination of people.” Verhuslt worked at City Hall for over a decade, and her many late nights gave her ample opportunity to observe the truck. But instead of the violence her boss reported, Verhuslt saw a uniquely safe community. “You can relax and enjoy, everyone gets along,” Verhurst says. “You couldn’t see that as easily at noontime at Kennedy Plaza as you could at midnight at Haven Brothers.” Grimaldi agrees. In fact, she feels safer as a woman working at Haven Brothers than she did in previous jobs. “My first job years ago was at a well known company. I made lots of money but I experienced sexual harassment,” Grimaldi remembers. Grimaldi is so confident in the truck’s safe environment that she allows her 15-year-old daughter Adriana to work there. Adriana has been working at the diner for two months, and her favorite part is seeing people’s reactions when she gives them food. “Every night someone tells me they love me,” she says. Her response? She gives a classic Haven Brother shrug and says with a big smile, “I love you too.” When Adriana was 8-years-old, those making the documentary about the diner asked her if she wanted to work there. “I said I didn’t want to,” Adriana remembers. “But of course I did, who wouldn’t want to?” Tom Field, another diner employee, feels similarly. “I love it, love my job,” he says. Field is the one who created the back wall tribute of famous diner visitors. His broad build and proud smile stand out in nearly every single photo. “When I first started eight years ago there was nothing on the walls,” Field shares. “I injected the decoration.” The father of three encouraged the addition of the diner’s TV and acts as the truck’s unofficial DJ. “I also added the milkshake flavors,” Field says. “We had seven to eight flavors, and I told Ivan we could do better.” Haven Brothers now has 160 flavors. Field’s vision for the diner is an extension of his other work as an artist. “I make cement statues,” Field says. “Big ones, like 18th century English garden planters and urns.” He hopes to launch a business soon but in the meantime will keep working on biggering and bettering the truck. Around 11:30pm on a Saturday, Field’s silhouette fills the diner’s narrow entrance. “You were asking about my least favorite parts of the job?” he says. “When people do stupid shit like this.” He approaches the crowd outside the diner and asks each group; “You haven’t seen a credit card reader have you?” For the rest of the night, the truck’s well-oiled routine is slowed down as Field inputs each person’s credit card number manually. Another Wednesday they are slowed down by the blender not working. And another Thursday by the outlet not quite plugging into the lamp post. One day, the usual parking spot is even obstructed by the police. Each challenge is met with a signature shrug and a re-adjustment. This adaptability is key to the diner’s success. The COVID-19 pandemic was just one more test of the truck’s resilience, especially in the beginning. “It was crappy,” Field says. “It was slow and people were afraid.” The truck was particularly vulnerable because most of its business, 70%, Ivan estimates, comes from people going to the clubs. “When the clubs shut, for the first month, we were dead,” Ivan says. But they adapted. “We relied heavily on Uber Eats and Grubhub,” Ivan says. “After the first month it picked up again.” Ivan credits the truck’s dependability with its survival. “We’re established,” he says. “Our reputation saved us.” Grimaldi explains that the truck is consistent because it has to be. “We’re working for the future of our kids and him,” she says pointing to Ivan. “It’s family. We want it to do well.” The diner employees’ commitment to keeping their door open to anyone at any time has allowed it to survive Providence’s deindustrialization, Paolino Jr. ‘s attempt to move it, and, now, COVID. In turn, the truck has been able to provide food, shelter and warmth for the people of Providence, 365 days a year for over a century. Grimaldi once said Haven Brothers isn’t a place where people feel welcome, it’s a place where they are welcome. Field summarizes the diner best. More than a food truck, landmark, or even memory: “It’s a Haven.”

Eyelid Movies

Asher Radziner

January 25, 2022

The Field on a weekend in the early afternoon. “Nowhere to go and all day to get there,” as Logan would later say. I bike over listening to Eyelid Movies, the debut album of Phantogram. I arrive more quickly than I expected; only “Mouthful of Diamonds” has finished and “When I’m Small” has just begun. Sarah Barthel sings, “take me underground, take me all the way. Bring me to the fire, throw me in the flames” over pristine, repetitive drums as I get off my bike and push it up the slope. Once I can no longer see the road, I lay the bike on its side and continue into The Field carrying only my backpack with Frankenstein, a blanket, and my water bottle inside. “So show me love, you’ve got your hands on the button now. Sure enough, you’ve got your hand on the button now.” It’s a cooler Southern California day, so the sun’s unblocked gaze is welcome for a change. I sit down in some taller grass next to one of the two mini-ravine-like ditches that extend slowly from near the site’s heart almost to the road. They must’ve been dug out by the elements and maybe previous construction. A piece of old white piping is lodged in the dirt next to the end of one of them. I wonder why? There’s not currently a building here, that’s for sure. “I’d rather die. I’d rather die, than to be with you,” Sarah sings as the song crescendos. I have no clue what the song’s about. Somehow the beautiful but melancholy atmosphere the experimental indie-electronic-pop album creates is perfect for this place. “When I’m Small” was my first love on the album, but “Let Me Go” has to be my favorite now. It lets me reflect and put all the various components of my life into perspective. I pull out my headphones and let “Turn It Off” play through my phone’s speakers, its drums blending with the chirps of birds and the racket of a jackhammer or two from the construction site across the street on the way to my ears. I pick up Frankenstein and flip to my page, for the first time in my life eighty pages behind where I am supposed to have read. The opposite wall of the canyon catches my eye. How have I not noticed this until now? The wall slopes up in a thick forest of trees rising from the single tier of houses running along the road. The trees are unbroken in their ascent to the baby blue sky and the final, winding row of houses that sit atop the overlooking cliffs at every edge, save for one massive exposed cliffside where the hill must have fallen away years ago. The exposed rock is vertically ribbed and curves inward, deepest into the cliffside in the middle, a miniature version in brown earth of “Oh Wow” on the northwestern coast of Kauai, a lava rock wonder named for the response it draws from boating passersby. I look back down to my book, rejoining Victor and Henry on their journey along the Rhine. “I lay at the bottom of the boat, and as I gazed on the cloudless blue sky, I seemed to drink in a tranquility to which I had long been a stranger,” Victor remembers about his time along the Rhine with his friend. I look up at my own cloudless sky and think about my own friends. They would love it here in this place of freedom and tranquility. While Frankenstein is primarily a story about Victor Frankenstein and the monster of his creation, in my time reading, I am most struck by the relationship that Victor shares with his friend Henry Clerval. It is one of love and support, of Henry’s exposing his truest self to his friend and helping Victor to find meaning in his own existence. That’s what I want with my closest friends. And that’s what I hope I’ve found. “So, what is this place exactly?” Drew turns to me. I click a button and the garage groans open behind me. I twist the key and my car blares to life, letting out exhaust as if I had just floored the accelerator. “You’ll see.” I smile back, putting the car into reverse and easing onto the gas. Once we’ve cleared the walls, I place my hand on the back of Drew’s seat, peer over my shoulder, and turn the wheel to my left, glancing briefly down at the picnic basket sitting on the back seat. This is going to be fun. Something is wrong. The tall grasses and weeds are gone. In their place are grass clippings scattered across the earth, short, flat, and dry. The sun is just high enough to give us at least a little light. It’s going to drop below the canyon wall soon. We make our way to the usual clearing and keep going. Today we can sit anywhere; it’s all clear. Drew and I spread the blanket out as I rave about how it’s usually so much more beautiful here. She tells me it’s still pretty. She’s glad I brought her. But it’s not good enough for me. Normally it looks like a snapshot of rolling green hills from the English countryside beside Stonehenge or like some field near a tiny village on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Drew pulls her long brown hair behind her neck and over one shoulder as we picnic on breakfast burritos and flies swarm us. She doesn’t seem to mind them, but I am beside myself. They must have been stirred up by the mowing. Once we’re done with our food, we move higher up the hill, deeper into the property. There are fewer flies, but they’re still a pain, so we head back to my house as the sun sinks. We broke up two weeks later. I wouldn’t return to The Field for the next eight months. Pushing the pedals down, down, and down again, turning the gears, rotating the wheels, moving faster than I ever could without the help of this contraption. The incline is only slight, no challenge for me but enough to slow my mom and sister’s pace. They disappear around a bend as I power on, Sarah Barthel’s voice and that striking beat keeping me company. I pass by little bungalows and large properties with homes set deep in their interiors, a wall of bamboo blocks up the entire right side of the road for a solid twenty seconds. “Lucy’s underground, she’s got a mouth to feed. Am I underground, or am I in too deep?” I’ve never heard this song before but am absolutely captivated, already anxious to get home and try to figure it out on the drums. Before I started my ride up the hill, I popped in headphones under my helmet and put on Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies. I heard “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore” off one of their other albums the other day and decided to check out their other stuff. It’s unreal. Seemingly infinite trees extend from within properties and by the edges of the road. A car zooms past going somewhere in a hurry or just speeding for the heck of it. Here in Mandeville Canyon, either is just as likely. “Where are you two going?” a voice behind me demands. “We were just going for a picnic.” I say, turning around to face the nosy neighbor and lifting the picnic basket in my hand. “You know that’s private property, right?” the guy says. “Really?” I ask, playing dumb. “I come here all the time, and it’s always fine.” “Ah, well I don’t mind, just letting you guys know, that’s all,” the guy says, suddenly very chill. “They just mowed it by the way. Because of all the fires; it was a hazard.” He adds matter-of-factly. “Okay, that’s too bad.” I say, “But I guess better to be safe, right?” “Right. Have a nice picnic now.” He smiles, raising a hand in farewell and heading through the gate of the house across the street. Drew and I turn back towards The Field, having surpassed this obstacle, and make our way inside. I’m biking slowly now, lazing my way up the street, hoping my mom and sister will catch up. At some point, I pull my bike over into a little patch of gravel and grass past a curve of multicolored two-story homes. Looking back over my left shoulder, I don’t see my mom and sister. I look to my right. A rusty chain hangs low between two rusted-over posts protecting a gradually rising grassy slope and beyond an expansive steeply rising hillside of tall, bright green grass and trees. I put my bike’s kickstand down, drape my helmet from a handlebar, and step forward, up the hill. After a few yards, the gradually rising slope turns left and runs alongside the road in a widening and leveling out plane. From here the road is invisible. The whole property is completely overgrown with grasses reaching past my knees. An oak sits deep in the site slightly up the hill, shading a clearing in the grass. Afternoon sun strikes the entire place while ignoring the road below. The road. I head back down to find my mom and sister. In a moment they follow me back into what we would come to call “The Field.” “I have to take you guys soon,” I say. Logan and I are reclined on black plastic chairs, our legs extended onto one of the benches of the lunch table at the top of our high school overlooking the middle school. Logan looks over, his hands linked behind his curling, strawberry-blond hair, “Definitely. It sounds awesome.” “We should do a picnic.” “And obviously Beth will come too. That’ll be sick!” Logan grins through his shades, gazing out over the campus. You can see Barrington Place in the distance past where the buses have already started gathering to take everyone home. Cars whiz by once every minute or so. People haven’t started lining up in the carpool pickup line yet, so traffic is still manageable. I take a small sip from my already opened water bottle. Thanks to a light breeze, the air is cool up here even under the afternoon sun. “And we should invite Liz too.” I suggest. “You have to hang with her; I can tell you guys would love each other if you spent more time together.” “Great idea.” Logan says emphatically, nodding his head in approval. “Any friend of yours, I’d love to meet them.” When I finally did return from my eight-month leave of absence from The Field, it was again with Drew. We had been spending considerable time together again for the last three months. Moving on over the past summer didn’t work out too well and luckily for me it turned out she hadn’t gotten over me either. So here we were together on New Year’s Eve, bathed in the early afternoon sunlight, sitting on the knee-high grass, soaking in the sun and each other. “I can’t keep chasing you like this. It’s not healthy.” I say, my eyes locked onto her face, “You liking me and not knowing if you want a relationship isn’t good enough.” Drew looks up at the oak and around at the hills for a few seconds, “I know.” “If you don’t know if you want this, I have to move on because this isn’t good for me.” “You’re right.” She says, looking me in the eye for the first time in the conversation. In a second we are together and nothing else matters. Our lips meet, the sun glinting off her hair, a perfect moment. Later we would lie side by side, arms around each other, in the ditch, our backs resting on the gently sloping crumbling dirt, staring out at the sun and at Oh Wow’s smaller cousin. I haven’t been back since. After Henry dies in the Frankenstein, Victor reminisces about his friend: “his soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the world-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination.” Frankenstein is not simply about a monster and its creation; Frankenstein is also about true friendship. While I haven’t been back since that New Year’s Eve, Drew and I did drive past The Field three days later. This was as much a drive down my street as it was a drive through memory. Drew’s car is parked at my house, but on the way back from our soba dinner at Yabu we keep driving up the canyon. “This golden glow is not happiness. It’s the dust that you kicked on my face before saying goodbye.” We reminisce about all our times together, going back to middle school, sharing everything we could never say. “Oh memory, won’t you speak to me? Can you show me the boat in my soul that can sail me back home?” I drive past The Field all the way to the end of the canyon and turn back. “And I try to leave, but my bones just won’t agree.” We pass my home again and exit the base of the canyon; we need more time together. “And I try to believe, you should try. Set me free.” At a certain point we’re in Rustic Canyon, and I point out an old house, where I lived when I was five. We get lost. I backtrack, and we end up in familiar territory. On the way home we pass a house with a two-bulbed pink and a blue light out front. The hues meld together in the night, two joined yet diverging colors. “Let me go.” That night marks the end of my time with Drew. Two souls joined yet diverging. After an hour and a half of driving, I pull into my driveway, and we say our goodbyes. Logan, Beth, Liz, and I spread our blankets over a patch of fallen leaves and low grass, scraps of plant matter immediately lodging themselves in the fabric. The edges of our blankets overlap, providing a refuge for the four of us from the itchy brush all around. Logan and I begin removing containers of food from the brown ROC paper bags: chicken fried rice, green beans, broccoli, vegetable fried rice, popcorn chicken, seaweed salad, more green beans, chicken soup dumplings, all arrayed between us, a picnic closer to a feast. Beth’s blanket is blue and somehow impervious to the spikey dead grass and leaves. Nothing sticks to it. Liz lounges back and takes in her surroundings. Logan smiles at me saying, “This place is great. I can tell this is the start of something special.” I laugh. Logan’s always making film-esque statements at opportune moments. We all dive into the food, comfortable enough on the bumpy earth beneath us. The oak rustles in the wind and a stray leaf or two make their way onto my blanket. Each one of us is simply happy to be here, happy to be in a beautiful place with good people. Maybe Logan is right: maybe this is the start of something special.

How to Break a Heart

Sam Hawkins

January 24, 2022

We sit in a quiet corner facing one another and rip off overheating winter coats. I poke fun at her fluffy, pink, pillow-jacket, and she shakes her head and rolls her eyes playfully. I tear the shiny foil off my burrito and sink my teeth into a gushy amalgam of beans and rice, smilingly reminiscing on our Valentines’ Day antics the night prior. After a bite herself she smacks her lips, indicating that she has something to say. She looks up at me with big, innocent, hazel-brown eyes. I look up, raise my eyebrows, and with my eyes still raised, throw my mouth back into my burrito. “Sometimes I feel like I like you more than you like me.” Teeth pause midway through a gnash of guacamole, chicken, and wrap. Juice drips down my chin. My frozen mouth slowly begins to chew again while she raises her eyebrows above a nervous grin. A grin. She expects me to say no. I finish chewing, look down, and slowly drop my burrito. I look up into her eyes again. “Yeah… I… kind of think you might be right.” As her nervous grin gradually becomes a widened gape, her eyes become moons, and her eyebrows twitch; she sits back in her chair. Red lines appear in suddenly bloodshot tear ducts. She freezes, armed with nothing but a half-wrapped sandwich. Her trembling mouth regretfully stutters, “Wh…” before trailing off into silence. Advertisement She turns her head away. My heart’s offbeat drum solo pounds through my chest, and I begin to think that maybe I should say something. “I just sometimes feel like you’re… thinking about me all the time.” My eyes make a circle of the room. “And I get like. Super distracted by school. And then I like… like I… sometimes don’t think about you at all.” She turns her head the other way. Thick, long, brown hair covers her left eye from my view, but I see her right begin to leak. Silence reigns. Thick carpet silence: the stupid banalities of strangers’ side conversations about “beans too spicy” or “my failed test” or “the broken toilet” the only exogenous threats to unfortunately un-closable ears. She pulls her hair behind her ear and I watch tears pool in her left eye. She bench presses the door and does not bother to hold it for me. With one arm in my jacket and the other still clawing at the sleeve, I awkwardly body slam the doorframe and sprint after my angry suddenly-ex. Most long-distance relationships come down to a coin flip. According to a KIIROO study of 1,000 Americans, long-distance relationships have a success rate of 58 percent. 88 percent of people consider technology to be the saving grace of a long-distance relationship; yet in my experience, it cheapened our bond. Text conversations made our interpersonal connection less tangible — less real — even though she and I well exceeded the 343 texts sent each week between the average long-distance couple. Another study from the University of Texas at Austin found that couples use the pronouns “I” and “we” more often leading into and directly after a breakup. This change of language does not occur purposefully but rather because those with heavy mental burdens tend to become more self-focused. I suppose my mind was already made up. When she steps on the bus, I know I have to as well. University of Connecticut’s massive 4,047 acres are only navigable by bus, and even though I have no student pass, the heavyset operator shows no interest in checking IDs. We again sit across from each other. Nobody talks. Half-working heaters fire cannons into the quiet air; no one fights the usurping sound. Her eyes do not meet mine but instead a phone screen. Watery brown eyes occasionally reflect blue from the screen’s light as her fingers tap softly but quickly, allowing the blue reflection once every few words. Months ago, those fingers sent me a direct message and we began talking. She took her only free period at school to skip lunch and grab a coffee with me. I was most shocked by her hazel eyes and the way her thick brown hair framed her striking face. She told me she was off to University of Connecticut in the fall; I was finishing up my gap year, soon headed to Brown University. I look around the bus at those sitting side-by-side and those sitting alone. Only 28 percent of people end up marrying their college significant other. And I had just landed myself in the other 72 that breaks up in burrito shops because they get distracted by a blonde athlete back at school that Snapchats them once a week. It’s the “might” that kills us 72 percent. As one professor from University of Utah puts it, “Humans fall in love for a reason… for our ancestors, finding a partner may have been more important than finding the right partner. It might be easier to get into relationships than to get back out of them.” One survey from Online Doctor found that the number one reason men cheated was because “the other person was really hot;” the top reason women cheated was because their partner was “negligent.” I had not cheated. I did not have the game for that. I had, though, sensed my mind drifting: pulling away from her, and towards other options. After another 20 silent minutes of soundless discomfort and eyeline avoidance she steps off the bus, trudges through a snowbank, and moves towards her dorm. A long, snow-swept path leads to massive brick buildings, now winter-white from snowfall. Covered by no real boots but instead Vans skate shoes, my socks freeze, snow-soaked; each step offers little more than burning pain. She opens the large glass doors, and steps into the building lobby. Backing out is not an option, I tell myself. Be a man. I stumble through the doorway, tripping on the way in. I see her roommate waiting in the beige-walled lobby with a furrowed brow and worry-sick eyes, as she stares at my now-ex. My ex shakes her head, says nothing, and keeps moving forward. I look at her friend from under the brim of my hat, but she does not look back. Silence holds its reign. My ex walks determinedly up a narrow dorm staircase. Lightly over-exerted breaths and heavy, snow-wet shoe steps fill the awkward soundscape. Her door creaks a regretful welcome and I let myself in. Bright pinks and blues color the posters on her walls. The room’s two beds leave a small corridor between, where she’s placed a fluffy, white rug. She steps onto the rug, her back turned toward me. I see her stuffed animals on her bed, my Valentine’s Day card on her dresser. I am reminded of the letter she wrote me after the first time we had split when we both went to college. Neither of us had found someone else at our separate schools. One short visit over Thanksgiving break left us both thinking the feelings were still alive. Studies have found that those with more fear of being alone are far more willing to settle for less just to be in a relationship again. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD She turns towards me and cracks our silence. “How could you do this to me?” she asks. The phrase emerges as more of a whispered scream than as a question. As tears splatter against shaking arms she looks right into and through my fearful eyes. “How could you?” “Just let me explain,” I say as I slowly approach and draw my arms around her. As soon as I make contact, she throws out her hands and screams, “Don’t touch me!” I back up slowly, eyes wide open. “I will never forgive you,” she declares. “I just don’t understand!” Her voice cracks my eardrums again. “How could you do this to me!” In a quiet, direct voice, I respond, “Listen, if you really want to hear, I will sit down and explain everything, with complete honesty.” She sits still for a moment. Silence echoes our frozen bodies. Slowly, she climbs onto the bed. I sit beside her, close, but careful not to touch. A bead of sweat drips down my back, soaking through my shirt and into my jacket. I have yet to remove the heavy coat. I anticipate escape. “Look,” I admit, “I just think it’s so goddamn hard to be so far away from you. Every time I see another girl, I’m reminded of just how far away you are and just how much easier it would be if I were with someone near me. If we were with people near us.” “But I don’t want them,” she says, “I want you.” “Rhode Island is only a few hours away from Connecticut, but it might as well be the other side of the planet.” Advertisements REPORT THIS AD She sniffles and rubs her eyes. “I just don’t understand… what did I do?” she asks. “Please,do not blame yourself. It has nothing to do with you. It is time and circumstance and place, and it hurts so much to hurt you, to tell you like this. But I feel like I have to remind myself to think about you. And when my mind drifts and thinks about other girls more than it does about you and I catch myself there, it’s just like… why keep doing this?” “I just…” she sniffles again and shakes. She stutters, “I — I just don’t understand.” “I should just go.” “No!” She stands, arms spread wide, and blocks my path. “Don’t leave. Whatever you do, don’t leave. I need you. Don’t leave me. I will never forgive you.” Her eyebrows crease and her voice lashes out, “I will never forgive you!” Her face shifts into drawn-down brows and a broken frown. “Don’t leave me. How could you do this to me. Just please don’t leave me.” I stuff the last pieces of scattered clothes into my two bags and sling one over each shoulder. She stands in the center of the room between me and the door. I coldly brush past her. Now the air holds just the sound of her quiet sobs. The room’s heat begins to overwhelm, like a two-faced, lying comfort of warmth from the bitter, truthful cold outside. I pause at the door and give one last look back. I look into her eyes. She does not bring herself to meet mine. “Goodbye,” I muster. I give her a moment to let her respond. She sniffles, and two more tears roll down her cheeks. I close the door and walk down the hallway. 66 percent of people agreed that the biggest challenge of long-distance relationships is a lacking sense of intimacy, one KIIROO survey found. 40 percent agree it’s a lack of communication; and for an entire 33 percent, it’s as simple as a time difference. Statistics fail to capture the irrationalities of relationships because relationships themselves are just as fragile as the people within them. When two people have to share one connection, its fragility doubles. According to matchmaker Hellen Chen, over 85 percent of dating relationships end in breakups. As she puts it, “If you are just dating with no intention of getting married to your partner, you are simply taking care of someone else’s future spouse.” Some psychologists associate the fragility of relationships with paradoxical over-optimism, fears of pain, fears of shame, anxiety, or pride – yet whatever the reason, a stable relationship seems to be just about the most unlikely experience one can imagine. Ten steps down the hallway, my eyes begin to tear up. Hell no. I do not have that luxury right now. I wipe my eyes and focus my attention on how I am going to get out of Connecticut and back to Rhode Island. Did that really just happen? I check my phone. Five percent battery. I mean, that was worse than a movie. I sprint down the stairs, pulling up the Connecticut bus schedule as I go. There is one bus into Storrs Connecticut, one bus out — one way of escape: the Peter Pan Bus line. I check the current time. 5:42 p.m. I wonder what she’s doing now. I look at the remaining bus times. 6:10 p.m. How will she spend the rest of this horrible day? I scroll down, scroll up, refresh the page: 6:10 p.m. I bet she’s with her friend right now, talking about how much of a dick I am. Fair enough. I refresh the page and it, yet again, stares me back with 6:10 p.m. Hang on, that can’t be right. One remaining chance to leave tonight? One more bus time, leaving somewhere across campus, in 28 minutes? Picturing the night I’d spend on a frozen park bench outside the Gampel Pavilion, I throw my thumb to the “buy” button and quickly input all my credit card information. I burst through the door into the blistering cold and pull down my hat brim, readjusting the backpack on my right shoulder and the drawstring on my left, the bags bouncing as I speed-walk through the snow. Still-soaked socks navigate more treacherous snowbanks, and I ignore pain both physical and emotional as I pull up my phone again to find the location of the bus station. Three percent battery. I press my thumb against the print reader. The screen shows just my wallpaper and the time. I press my thumb again. No change, just my wallpaper and the time. Then the screen goes black. Hm. Could this get worse? “Are you f***ing kidding me?” I yell aloud. Could this get any worse? Lord, please let me escape this town, I think to myself. Six of every 10 acres of Connecticut are completely forested, and the oasis of Storrs, Connecticut has little to offer that is not directly connected to the university. On Vacation Idea’s “Top 10 Things to do in Storrs, Connecticut,” number five is the school’s “Museum of Puppetry;” and number seven is the school’s “Dairy Bar.” The list ends at nine, as though the author was unable to find a tenth thing to do in Storrs. After a three-minute speed-walk-sprint-jog, my fingers begin to freeze and my contacts dryly blind my vision. Oddly I seem to be alone, navigating a deserted, frozen campus. I pass building after building on the sides of one long, empty road – sided by mostly grey, snow-covered dorms – until I reach the end of the path. I look at the building to my left and throw myself through a random grey door. My eyes enter tunnel vision as I seek out the nearest electrical socket. I wander through a dimly-lit hallway, wallpaper falling off the walls. I take a right and stop quickly. The hallway I stare down is unlit, uncarpeted, with dusty construction hats and drills reposing quietly in a corner. I turn back around, re-enter the hallway of sickly wallpaper, and find a pseudo-electrical socket I had missed before – just a drywood panel, holes, and open wires behind. I rip my charger from my drawstring and risk electrocution to give my phone some life. Like phones, relationships become an addiction. As St. Louis University evolutionary psychologist Brian Boutwell explains, “you have that drive to get that fix in the form of being around that person you care about.” And when one loses that person, symptoms equivalent to withdrawal appear; although many consider a breakup something to just “get over,” there are physical consequences to a seemingly literal “heartbreak.” The heart “suddenly [grows] weak due to physical or emotional stress” and gives off symptoms of a heart attack, such as “chest tightness and shortness of breath.” Broken heart syndrome literally enlarges part of your heart due to the overflow of the stress hormone adrenaline. This size change physically alters how your heart pumps: doctors call this reaction “stress-induced cardiomyopathy.” My heart pumps hard. My stint at this dilapidated charging station was costing me precious time, and I was probably illegally trespassing. I hold down the power button and wait for the big white apple to take the screen. Finally, my wallpaper returns, and the time: 5:56. I pull up Safari and search, “Storrs CT bus stop location.” Google Maps gives me 2075 Hillside Road. I double-check the Peter Pan bus website to verify the address. Peter Pan gives me 1356 Storrs Road. Dear god please no. Trust the address of a potentially outdated website, or a disconnected but constantly updated Google Maps? I flip a coin in my head and choose to head for the Peter Pan website stop. After sprinting through now-packed college streets with Maps embarrassingly screaming at me before and after every turn, I finally arrive at the location. No physical benchmarks exist to mark the so-called “bus stop” — just some students walking up and down the street. I check my phone. 6:07. I panic. I put the other address – that from Google Maps — into my phone, and sprint there. I arrive at 6:11. No signs of a bus. Students mill about in heavy hoods, snow-stained boots, and sweatpants, some seemingly already buzzed. I turn to a couple guys nearby and ask if they know the location of the bus stop. “No clue bro, sorry,” responds the beanie-wearing frat bro. I throw my hands up in defeat. With his head turned away, his hooded friend speaks up. “Yo, you heading to Providence?” “Yeah.” “Peter Pan bus?” “Yeah.” He pauses for a moment, as if to double-check his eyes. “…Yeah, that’s your bus.” He points at the massive bus hurtling up the street with “PROVIDENCE” plastered on its screen. “No way. Thank you guys so much,” I shout. I watch the bus approach. I watch it pull up to the stop. I watch it not decelerate. I watch it accelerate. I watch the big green bus pass the stop and roar its engine as it speeds up the hill. I break into a maximum effort hill sprint. I hear groups of college kids cracking up behind me as I run full tilt, two bags violently bouncing over my shoulders. As I sprint up this hill in the 10-degree darkness, I have just one thought: Karma. I make it up the hill and watch the bus cross the street. It goes down another side road and slows down, stopping right next to the old benchmark-less Peter Pan website address. When I approach the bus, my battered lungs speak first. I manage to burst out to the driver, “Providence?” between gasps for breath. He takes one millisecond to look me over in distasteful judgment. “Just get in,” he responds coldly. He too does not bother to check for my ticket. I step into the dark bus, choose a seat alone in the back, plug my now re-dead phone into the bus plug, throw my headphones on, and consider my next unknowns. According to a study from Nanaya, the average person has a 25% chance of entering a new relationship after seven months, a 50% chance after a year and eight months, and a 75% chance after three years and six months. I calculate where I might fit into this timeframe. Younger, self-certain people tend to stay single for less time than older individuals. I was young. But I was not self-certain. I watch UConn roll away in the snow-lit dark. I wonder quietly whether to text her that I’m safe, or to Snapchat that athlete from school, “hey.”

Brown State: The Open Curriculum Meets the Gridiron

Nicholas Miller

January 14, 2022

On Saturday mornings in the Fall, ESPN’s College Gameday airs for a whopping three hours in preview of the day’s most prominent college football matchups. Filmed live on the campus to host the most enticing game, commentators speak in front of a sea of students who, while brandishing signs that creatively bash the opposing school, seem to never stop screaming. It is a weekly celebration of college football culture, showcasing the tribal pride, social unruliness, and unparalleled extravagance of football at large state schools. On a brisk September morning, I grabbed a bowl of dry Bran Flakes and a blanket, and tuned in. The show was in State College, Pennsylvania to preview the ranked clash between Auburn and Penn State to be played later that night. Much of the conversation centered around the game being a “White Out,” meaning that Penn State was instructing all fans in the 106,572-person capacity stadium to wear white. Students and fans would consent with remarkable unanimity and produce the tremendous visual effect of a pulsing, pure-white oval. The crowd at Gameday was already properly dressed. An anchor joked that they weren’t loud enough, a dangerous stunt that triggered an auditory explosion. It was with this ringing in my ears that I started getting ready for my own Gameday: Brown University edition. This story is not about the grandeur of football at a huge Southern state university, nor is it the underdog story of a small college finding pride through its football team. This is the story of a fabulously wealthy, elite institution, its terrible football team, and a student body, that for the most part, thinks of it all as a joke. That Saturday, Brown was to host the University of Rhode Island in the Governor’s Cup: a matchup 112 years old. It would be the team’s first game in nearly two years after the Ivy League, the only Division I conference to do so, cancelled all athletic competition during the 2020-21 school year because of Covid-19. As a result, it was my first time attending an athletic event as a college student, and even though I knew Brown has overall the worst sports teams of the Ivy League, general memories of college students storming the field or roaring thunderous chants still fueled my excitement. But before I got to the game, I had to find the shuttle bus, the required first leg of a Brown University gameday. The football stadium, built in 1925, is more than a mile and a half from the center of campus, an irritating quirk that forces the University to call upon the might of its shuttle bus fleet to ferry students to the game. If Brown were to imitate the “Tiger Walk”—a tradition originally of Auburn in which the football team marches to the stadium flanked by masses of rambunctious students—players might become rather tired traversing the hills of the tranquil residential areas between campus and the stadium. I walked to the shuttle’s pickup location with my friends Miles and Eshaan. Miles, a lacrosse player with curly brown hair, thick eyebrows, and broad shoulders, received his college football education growing up next to the stadium of Boston College. He was already lamenting Brown’s inferior athletic culture. “My dad always says I should’ve gone to a big state school,” he told us. Eshaan, a spectacled computer science major whose arm lay in a sling after recently breaking his collarbone in a biking accident, was more concerned about reinjuring himself amidst a rowdy student section. We soon joined the blob of students waiting on the sidewalk. When the bus arrived, those in the back of the congregation who had entered too late to find any empty seats were told to plop down on the floor. They formed a single-file line in the bus’s aisle, like a team of rowers readying before the start of a race. There was certainly a buzz about. Conversation hummed; people called to their friends on the other side of the bus. All sported some sort of Brown-licensed apparel. And yet, even amid the excitement, it was clear that this was not a case of avid fandom and genuine pride for a school’s football team. Brown football had won just five of its last 31 games, and the bus’s passengers seemed hyper-aware of what they should expect. Someone cracked a prediction to his friend: “URI by 38.” Eshaan called to his friend two rows ahead and jokingly posed a question: “Over or under 5 and a half 3-and-outs?” After some laughing, “Over” came as the reply. There seemed to be a sense that we were going to the game ironically, understanding that the combination of college football and Brown University was a prime target for jokes. “Oh my god, there actually is a spread,” one kid next to me said, referring to the game’s betting odds (URI was an 11-point favorite). A similar joke would be made later by the “brownumemes” Instagram page, which pointed out that the Google search “uri brown spread” only produced results about the spread of Covid-19. We arrived a little late, in the middle of Brown’s first drive, but the unenclosed Brown Stadium allowed us to watch as we walked to the entrance. Surrounded by a track, the field is a bright green of alternating shades with the endzones a clash between the brown background and the red outline of the words “Brown” and “Bears.” The turf was added earlier this year to replace what was the Ivy League’s only remaining grass football field, which Coach E.J. Perry said had an uneven, “domed” shape. The stadium itself consists of two stands: on Brown’s side, a tall concrete structure sits with open arches supporting a trapezoidal arrangement of metal bleachers; and on the other sideline, a short, uniform rectangle. As we walked around the field to the Brown side, we caught a long look at the home stand: loosely populated with pockets and slashes of empty bleachers, depressingly conspicuous. Brown Stadium holds 20,000 people, but for Brown’s season opener, only 5,243 attended. The student section didn’t at first make itself obvious, so we sat down in an open spot of bleachers at midfield next to two 70-something year old men. They were alumni, one told me; they try to go to every home game. A survey of the crowd replicated this theme: the older people were a lot more invested than the students. On every Brown kickoff, a middle-aged man two rows in front of us yelled, “Hit someone, Bruno!” in a powerful, gravelly voice, producing a snicker from the students behind. The man’s demand for violence seemed to belong more in the era around the turn of the 20th century when football, in the time before the forward pass, consisted exclusively of running plays and brutal techniques—the most famous being the flying wedge, in which both teams charged full speed into each other. In 1905, a year in which football caused 19 deaths, President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to ban the sport. Ivy League schools, as some of the first colleges involved in the development of American football, were the kings of this bloody era. An Ivy won at least a partial share of each of the first 31 National Championships beginning in 1869 and a majority of titles in the 1900s and 10s. Brown, although never a national champion, achieved a Rose Bowl appearance in 1915 and had a winning record in 22 of 24 seasons between 1902 and 1926. The final year of this run became a part of Brown football legend when the same eleven men played for the entirety of two straight games, and 58 minutes of a third. The eleven were nicknamed the “Iron Men,” en route to the only undefeated season in program history. But now, with athletic budgets that dwarf those of large state schools—Penn State’s budget is about eight times that of Brown—combined with the inability to give out athletic scholarships, Ivy League schools can hardly compete with the best of the country. But this Saturday against URI, Brown effortlessly drove down the field on their opening possession, which ended with quarterback E.J. Perry supplying a perfect looped touchdown pass to the back of the end zone. I jumped up in surprised elation, turning wide-eyed to Miles: “Maybe we’re not so bad!” I saw now where the student section was. A few rows of kids were standing up and hollering in the bleachers on Brown’s 40-yard line. It was obvious how far away we were from the thrilling revelry of typical Division 1 college football. The touchdown produced a moderate cheer rather than a roar: a self-conscious, uncertain applause rather than unmodulated, elated screaming. A group of students behind me stayed seated, managing a few loud but uninspired claps. Perhaps giving in to true celebration of something as mainstream as football was a little too awkward for our ironic sensibilities. We are the “cool” Ivy, after all. But the amateurish organization of the game didn’t help the atmosphere either. During a timeout in the middle of the first half, the scoreboard lit up to display in big, white block letters “T-Shirt Toss,” signaling Brown’s cheerleaders to run towards the bleachers clutching rolls of cloth. It was Brown University’s devolved version of the T-shirt cannon, the beautiful American sports tradition in which T-shirts are fired into the crowd at high speed. While Auburn uses a humongous gatling gun to mow down its fans with clothing, Brown relies on the arm strength of its cheerleaders, a lucky fact for those sitting in the first and second rows. Later in the half came the “Punt, Pass, Kick” event in which a student starting from one endzone had to cumulatively punt and pass the ball as far as he could to set himself up for a field goal attempt at the other end. After the event was announced, but before he was able to begin, the teams returned to the field, forcing him to awkwardly run off. When he was finally able to show off his skills during the next timeout, his shanked punt actually hit the Brown defense’s huddle. Perhaps the most professional facets of the game were the exorbitant concession prices–$8.00 for a small sausage sandwich—or the men’s bathroom: a grimy square that opts for long troughs instead of urinals. “Our uniforms are so ugly,” Miles said to me. They were a purplish brown, with silver helmets, white numbers, and bright red outlines. The ivy-intertwined “B” on the helmets was a completely different shade of brown than the jerseys. I thought again about the “white-out” that Penn State would have that night. It appeared that Brown couldn’t organize color uniformity on its own uniforms. And our crowd, an ugly rainbow of shades within the realms of brown and red, reflected the disjointed branding of the university overall. On the field, the team was able to hold its own for the first half, entering halftime losing only 17-14 and preserving my own delusions for the moment. At halftime, I suggested we move to the student section, which now seemed to cover about 15 rows. Eshaan, still worried about his collarbone, was hesitant. “Dude, look at them,” I said, pointing to the tranquil congregation of students. “You’ll be fine.” There, the crowd was packed far closer together, but most still appeared relatively apathetic about the actual game. The main source of sound was side conversation, rather than cheering or hollering, and as the second half began, any remaining traces of genuine fandom dissolved. A URI touchdown and a Brown three-and-out had people again making deprecating jokes. After another three-and-out, the subsequent Brown punt was shanked much like the one during “Punt, Pass, Kick,” traveling a whole 15 yards before going out of bounds. The crowd emitted a collective “Oohh,” which was not quite a groan, but more a cringe, simultaneously conveying sympathy for the punter and the humor wrapped into the entire experience of Brown football. Now people started to leave, and those who remained seem to have lose all interest, using the time to take group pictures or to meet up with other friends. I didn’t even notice when our running back fumbled inside the URI 20-yard line. As we started to gather our things ourselves, a girl in front asked us if we were travelling to Boston for the Harvard game next week. “I think it’s our rivalry game,” she said. “Rivalry” would prove to be a stretch. We would go to the Harvard game, and we would again leave in the third quarter, this time after a Crimson touchdown made it 49-3. The Brown vs. Harvard game was far more demoralizing a defeat than the Governor’s Cup, which ended 45-24. Harvard’s pass-rush bullied our offensive line; their running back shrugged off our tackle attempts; their receivers glided past our coverage. It was an absolutely one-sided beatdown. And yet, interestingly, for about a quarter and a half, the Brown community, in a beautiful display of school pride and imagination, pretended it was actually a rivalry, as if Brown actually had footballing clout. Swarms of students had made the trip, wreaking havoc on transportation the way sports fans are supposed to. On the 5:30 p.m. train from Providence to Boston, a trail of people searching for empty seats trekked up and down cars filled by Brown students. My brother, a Cambridge resident, texted me saying that Brown chants arose during his subway ride. A man on the T informed me slightly accusatorily that a Lyft ride from South Station to Cambridge cost $50 because of the surge of Brown students trying to get to the game. For a night, Brown University had invaded the Amtrak, the Boston subway, and Harvard Square, all a week after large swaths of Brown Stadium had been left empty during the team’s first home game in two years. After arriving at the Harvard T stop, we walked past the overwhelming buzz of Harvard square, across the Charles River sparkling with the lights of Boston’s skyscrapers, and through the gates of Harvard’s athletic complex. The environment was completely the opposite to that of the previous week. We walked past ticket lines that stretched to the street, zig-zagged through a plethora of food trucks, darted through chaotic blobs of people on the concourse, and gazed up at Harvard Stadium’s iconic horseshoe-shaped stands, the sides of which were nearly packed. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD And yet, tonight, our traveling pack seemed to have matched Harvard’s energy, supplying a good percentage of the game’s 20,748-person attendance. I crammed into a visitor’s section that was nearly full. The crowd didn’t hum with conversation but swelled and popped along with each play. A third down got everyone on their feet; a pass breakup prompted demonstrative sweeping gestures with outstretched arms, and a questionable call drew boos. A group of kids in front of us stood up, turned to the crown and started chanting “Let’s go Bruno.” Later, another section directed a “safety school” call toward the Harvard side, supplying the pettiness necessary for a college student section. Although still a long way away from State College, we were unrecognizable from the half-interested crowd of last week. I asked people why so many students made the trip. Some told me it was because of the “aura of Harvard,” saying the fame and notoriety of the school draws people. Perhaps in that sense, the pilgrimage is a product of an intra-Ivy inferiority complex, or a desire to assert ourselves against the grandeur and prestige of Harvard and Boston, hence the “safety school” chant. But more superficially, students, some of whom say they don’t plan on going to another game this year, told me they came because their friends were going, or because they heard it was a Brown tradition. This social aspect points to the Harvard game as a cultural creation, a sort of manufactured event in which students ditch their disparaging scoffs and ironic chuckles and agree to temporarily buy-in to a different Brown University, one of school pride and athletic extravagance, where students travel with and excitedly support the central representatives of their school: the football team. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD Sadly, however, this fantasy of Brown State quickly deteriorated. Brown’s first possession ended after two plays and a fumble on our own five-yard line, allowing for an easy Harvard touchdown. After a series of Bruno punts with a missed field goal in between, Harvard was up 21-0. A tall, blonde-haired kid to my right turned to me, in a humorous but sad scoff: “We are so bad.” A promising drive took Brown to the Harvard nine-yard line until a Perry pass was intercepted and returned 77 yards. Harvard was up 28-0 with three minutes left in the first half when Miles and I descended into the concourse to get something to eat. When we climbed the stairs again, Miles looked at the scoreboard and stopped in his tracks. “Oh my god, look.” Harvard: 42. Brown: 0. Still the first half. It was now impossible to maintain the collective illusions we created for the night. Miles seemed genuinely disappointed. “I’ve lost so much school pride,” I heard him tell several people later that night. Others expected this. I said to the blonde kid next to me, “I didn’t realize we were this bad.” “Oh, I knew we were,” he replied with little hesitation. People started to descend the stairs towards the concourse, never to return for the second half. Those remaining had again lost interest. The same picture-taking routine started up again. Chants and cheers beyond the sarcastic kind were long gone. It was a sad ending to the night, but I was intrigued at the Brown I saw earlier. Even if it only lasted for about an hour, Brown students unified in an expression of true, collegiate festivity and pride that I wasn’t sure existed in our strange cultural mix of bohemianism, intellectuality, and nerdiness. Whether this was just an ephemeral illusion, or a true subsurface part of Brunonian culture, or even just a more elaborate expression of self-deprecating irony, remains unclear. Certainly, College Gameday isn’t coming to the Main Green anytime soon; but the beautiful phantom of Brown State might just appear again.