I think it’s time to add a new category to Chickarina. I’m probably the last one to realize that I like blogging about two things: 1. my book and its attendant categories; and 2. NYC, specifically my neighborhood, aka the East Village, specifically the Bowery, aka the fastest gentrifying patch of real estate in the universe, aka a sort of pretty, sort of horrifying sort-of-quartier, sort-of-mall.

I tend to blog my NYC inspirations on my Tumblr blog in effort to keep this space sort of me/Girl’s Guide-centered. But I can’t do it anymore. So I’m adding an NYC category. Huge news, I know. I considered issuing a press release, but you know — August, my people are all “out East.”

Without further ado: Ew.

“The Bowery is what the Meatpacking District was three years ago…With the opening of new retail tenants in [nearby] Avalon Bay, the level of luxury is getting very high. Within the next six month to year, the neighborhood will look more like [the West Village.] Within two years you’ll see that almost all the retail businesses there will have changed.”

– Some Cocky, Life-Ruining broker [Via Racked]

Can I say just a couple small things about this “Bowery” you may be hearing more about as it becomes really hip and cool and a great destination for all you jackassy unreformed fratboys and tourists tourists tourists looking for a fat slice of this chronicle of a louche life foretold?

As I’ve established I’m hardly an olde-timer here — I’ve only put in 11 years on the Bowery, but in blog years, that’s like two millennia.

Anyone legitimately complaining about the gentrification of the Bowery really needs to be over 40. I’m complaining about my quality of life now that the Berlin Wall-as-oceanliner is being erected a millimeter from my window, but this whining has nothing to with gentrification. Because I’m part of the gentrification of the East Village, and I know this. This was a safe block when I moved here in 1996. My cohort did not party ’til the sun came up with Joey Ramone. We did not shoot up in Tompkins Square or live in squats on Avenue D.

What we did was brave the exotic frontier of Avenue B where, next door to the farthest-east ATM in the city, which we thought made it badass, we caught the very tail end of Save the Robots‘ existence. We hung out with equally over-educated white kids at the Kiev, and considered Lakeside Lounge, Bar Thirteen and later, an “upscale” dive called Drinkland “our places.”

My god Drinkland was a really ugly bar. It was like “Alice in Wonderland Bar Theme From a Kit You Buy at a Halloween Shop”.

So this is what I’m saying: I am the gentrification. I own it. The gentrification happened for me and my ilk, as a service to us. So I can’t complain (too loudly) about the hordes of drunken idiots hailing my cabs on Bowery and 2nd Avenue because I was just a stepping stone to making this their playground. I was them. Now I’m a young/old fart, but I used to be a young asshole, just like the young assholes who will definitely be stumbling out of the hotel next door in their ridiculous shoes and their flat-ironed hair and their over-gelled boyfriends (Confidential to twentysomething guys: The wet look is not working for you) when it opens next spring.

That doesn’t make me like it any better. I can’t set foot in the Meatpacking District like ever. I once attempted to go to a birthday party at the Gansevoort Hotel and I lost one of my nine lives trying to squeeze my way through the crowds. And to think, once upon a time, I worked there, in the Chelsea Market, and there wasn’t a single place to get a drink after work besides the Red Light bar across the street which was a total fleabag. Ah, the bad ol’ days. Which were like five minutes ago.

Pasty gnocchi came in a sour bolognese that approximated what I’d expect from a can, and the dish had the uneven temperature consistent with a quick zap in the microwave. It was one of the worst things I’ve ordered all year

Time Out New York, Review of Gemma

[Ed: The restaurant in the other Bowery hotel.]

So yesterday’s post about credit card debt vs. student loan debt was probably one of the least scintillating things I’ve ever written about. But it’s a major source of stress and financial outlay for trillions of people, so I took my theory to my financial analyst and he had a surprising response.

Sounds counterintuitive, but pay down your credit card first, as credit card debt is seen as “bad debt” in building your credit score, and long-term debt that is serviced on time is good.

Which would refute my theory that I should pay down my interest-accruing student loans before my non-interest-accruing credit card debt. I had suspected this might be the case. Credit cards are evil. Student loans are good. Even if they cost you more in the long run.

Which is why it would be batshit crazy to pay off student loans with a 0% credit card. You wouldn’t pay interest, but you would look like a credit risk to anyone interested in giving you credit (that means mortgage officers, loan officials of any stripe). A long-term loan that’s paid off slowly and steadily, like a student loan, doesn’t look as bad as a credit card balance. So forget what I said. I’m back to attacking the credit card debt. And you should too.

Comments/advice welcome.

You know as well as I do that Sallie Mae’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In The Book, I endorse locking in your student loans at the lowest rate possible, then paying off your credit card debt first, because if Sallie Mae is a flesh-eating bacteria, the credit card companies are the plague. Wait, the flesh-eating bacteria is sort of the modern-day equivalent of the plague. They all suck. You owe them money, they are charging you interest, they’re going to come and get you and roast you on a spit.

But usually you can get a low rate for the life of the loan with Sallie Mae (mine is 4.86%, since I consolidated in 2000, much lower than you can typically get now, due to some crap laws enacted in 2005/6) and credit cards typically charge high interest rates (think 19% or more). So if you’re in this typical situation, you pay the minimum on your student loans, and aggressively pay off the credit card.

However, your student loans aren’t always going to be giving you a lower interest rate than you can get from the evil credit cards. I have a credit card balance that, since I have impeccable credit, is living on a 0% interest rate credit card for one year. My student loans (which, not incidentally, are much larger than my credit card debt), are still earning interest at a rate of 4.86%. At the end of the year, I can “surf” the remainder of my credit card debt to a new 0% card. (NB: I don’t use any credit cards anymore besides American Express because I’m not buying things I can’t afford. I suggest you do the same.) But my student loans will be earning interest at a rate of 4.86% until 2018 without abatement. No one is going to offer me a lower rate. Certainly not that viper Sallie Mae. I could do something insane and put my student loans on a 0% credit card, but the monthly payment for that kind of credit card debt would be more than I could pay, and also much harder to surf to a new card at year’s end.

Which brings us to the obvious conclusion: Pay off the highest interest-rate loans first. In my case, that means pay off the student loans more aggressively than the credit card. Since my student loan principal dwarfs my credit card debt, I’m earning interest on an already large principal interest every month. Meanwhile, my relatively paltry credit card debt is earning no interest at all. Watch out, Sallie Mae. I’m not flattered that I’m so ahead in payments I don’t owe anything until Jan. 2008. You’ll be getting large-as-I-can-manage checks from me every month.

I’m going to investigate this further. Remember: the 0% interest credit card is only a good deal if you’re scrupulous about paying the minimum on time every month. And you have to leave ample time to surf to a new card at the end of the year or your 0% will turn instantly to some insanely high rate and you’ll find yourself exactly where the banks want you: in a whole bunch of bad, useless, idiot debt.

Grace Paley died yesterday.

I love her writing, it’s impossible not to. I love her politics. I am suspicious of anyone who doesn’t love Grace Paley.

From the NYT:

Ms. Paley was among the earliest American writers to explore the lives of women — mostly Jewish, mostly New Yorkers — in all their dailiness. She focused especially on single mothers, whose days were an exquisite mix of sexual yearning and pulverizing fatigue. In a sense, her work was about what happened to the women that Roth and Bellow and Malamud’s men had loved and left behind.

In the meantime, I’ve been reading Julia Cameron’s memoir, Floor Sample. After years of making fun of The Artist’s Way without having actually done it, blowing it off as some new-agey journaling cult, I find myself reading Cameron’s memoir and being very, very inspired.

I’ll admit I picked it up not because it was by Cameron, but because I heard that it detailed her cocaine addiction and marriage to Martin Scorcese, neither of which I’d been aware (of), both of which made her much more interesting to me. Those who know me, and even some of those who who don’t, know I am a sucker for any memoir in which the writer hits rock-bottom and has to claw his/her way back up from the depths.

Can someone help me? Do I need another “of,” and if so, where does it go in the first sentence of the previous paragraph? Catherine? Anyone?

I did not anticipate finding Julia Cameron’s memoir so fascinating. She does cover her drug addiction, some juicy Hollywood details, but it’s her AA-inspired writing habits that I’m loving. Her writing style is strange and hard to get used to (Argh, I am having a hard time with prepositions in this post –Ed.), sort of formal and stilted, but I’m used to it now and I highly recommend the book. If it continues to be this good, I am warning you: I might try The Artist’s Way. Anyone who will defriend me for this should let me know immediately.

I like Julia Cameron. She’s no Grace Paley, but who is?

UPDATE: THE JULIA CAMERON BOOK TURNED OUT TO BE NOT GOOD. Don’t read it. I take it back. After her “awakening,” she reports on like 400 moves between Taos and NYC with a prolonged description of her psychotic break. It was terribly hard to get through. Maybe just read the first third and then stop.

Argh, today. Usually, Chickarina’s an optimist. These past couple days, strangely not so. Somehow feeling ungenerous, spiteful, rain-bitten. However, the antidote: I’m starting a new project. Which requires an excess of hubris, which I’m working hard on developing. I can do anything. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten on the hubris front.

I can cancel a trip to Europe in order to do research in the U.S. (as I just did). I can remember why on earth I decided to write books anyway. I spent eons writing The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything, then flogging it, and I’m still flogging it (buy me! buy me!) but something has clicked. I’m ready to be engaged in a big project again. Finally.

There’s a certain mourning period that goes on after the publication of a book, I think, after the tour and publicity push where things aren’t as urgent and you suddenly think, “Oh! So I’m still a writer! That’s what I do!” Because otherwise, you forget, you’ve been a publicity machine for so long, you think that writing is more about selling than it is about “the craft,” you’re consumed with business, you’re triumphing and stumbling publicly, you’re feeling jealous of people who are better at self-promotion even though their books aren’t great. See, I’m feeling uncharitable. You were warned.

The secret of book publishing, maybe 85% of the time: The emperor has absolutely no clothes. So many books that are only half-readable, maybe 1/4-readable, are trumpeted as the Next Big Thing, or their authors are toasted for their precocious wit, or publiciation is lavished with news of improbable Hollywood megadeals. This sounds like jealousy. It is jealousy, but I think that’s healthy when a book is good and gets the attention it deserves. I’m inspired by that. It’s the really (subjectively, but this is my blog, so how could it be otherwise) crappy books that are held up as perfect specimens of literature and/or wit that rankle.

But back to me. I’ve managed to sustain a low boil of excitement over a new project for about two weeks. I’m not ready to talk about it. I’m ready to do a little research and see if maybe. In the meantime, I’m working on my mood. Because I’m finding myself slightly annoying right now.

Okay, Pinkberry, I don’t know what or where you are, but if there’s a trend, I see no reason why we all shouldn’t get rich from it.

I noticed yesterday that a “Yogurtberry” has opened in the ‘Duke in Times Square, selling the same LA-imported, or-is-it-Asian? yogurt-flavored yogurt everyone in New York is plotzing over. I’ve heard tell of a “Berrywild,” a “Yogurtpia,” something known as “Frogurt” that is only available at Bloomingdale’s and is, for those truly in the know, the best curdled milk with the consistency of snow out there. I tasted Yogurtberry and it’s sour. Kind of good. But not change-your-life good. Or seek-it-out good. Or even have-again good.

If you can find yourself a scrap of sidewalk, folding table and a metal cash box, and maybe a pint or two of Sealtest, help yourself to the following still available names for yogurt franchises. I cannot guarantee that any of these will still be available by the end of the day. Or the hour. So act quickly.

What do all these things have in common?

One of those weird wooden tabletop artist’s mannequins that you can pose in any way you choose (but you probably choose some weird arched-back pose with arms flailing)?

Stumped? These are just a few of the items in the tableau vivant that you are going to be victim to while waiting to pick up your ten weeks worth of laundry at my laundromat.

I have spoken before about the lifetime of nightmares that can be brought on by inexplicable nail salon art. But laundromat art — it’s a whole new invitation to Crazytown.

I was so freaked out/sent into a fugue state by the laundro-art that I could not really process the two people I saw while walking home.

1. Perez Hilton. The gossip blogger. On the corner of St. Mark’s and Second Avenue. White, leather man-loafers. I mean the shoes, not him — Perez Hilton is not (to my knowledge) a white leather man. You know what I mean. He appeared to be motioning to me to come over to him, but I may have confused him with the harlequin clown photo back at the laundromat that was yelling after me.

2. My neighborhood boyfriend. I am not sure how long we have been together — maybe 8 years? I have never spoken to him. It’s really a great relationship: we see each other every six months or so. When he’s not around, I don’t think about him. But when I do see him — on the street, in stores and restaurants when I’m on dates with other guys, at the movies — I fall head over heels for him again. When I see him, it is like no time has passed at all since our last tryst. We share a secret smile. Sometimes we laugh. Once, we ate dinner in the same restaurant, walked our respective dinner dates to the same corner to say goodbye, looked at each other, chuckled our secret “us” chuckle, and walked away.

My relationship with the neighborhood boyfriend is probably my longest relationship to date. We’ve been going steady for almost a a decade. Today, he was decidedly less East Villagey than in the past–he’d traded his tank top and low-riding shorts for a button-down shirt, his hair (which I never noticed is sort of strawberry blond) was cut in a respectable(ish) buzz cut. He gave me our usual bemused, we’re-in-love smile, and walked past.

I’ve considered talking to him. I’ve vowed (this was in my younger years) to stop him and talk. I’ve possibly glanced at “Missed Connections” on Craigslist after an encounter, just in case. It is entirely possible he is five people and not just my one true love, since I would be hard-pressed to give a very accurate description of him to a police sketch artist. That’s not a good thought. I hope I never have to pick him out of a line-up or call the police on him. He’s my BOYFRIEND, for crying out loud. I do wonder how much he knows about me. Or if he feels the same way about me as I do about him. Because it’s so hard to know. Guys can be so uncommunicative. Especially guys you’ve never spoken to.

The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything is ChickSpeak’s “Must Read” for August. There’s a very lovely interview with me there as well. Because you don’t know enough about me. Well, you don’t know what I’d do with a magic wand if I had one — which I am not saying I don’t –but you don’t know that, and you can find out in this most delightful of interviews. If I do say so myself. And I do.

They’re going to be giving away two signed copies of the book later this month, so check back if you still haven’t bought it. (PS What are you waiting for? )

In case you want to go hang out with the book, my sister tells me that the book is large and in charge on the table next to the register at Barnes & Noble. Go visit it. Heck, let’s have our own giveaway.

A signed hardcover (rare! collector’s item!) to anyone who sends in a photo of him/herself with the book at their local bookstore.

Fun! Who doesn’t love free stuff? Free, possibly priceless stuff? Offer good while supplies last.