for the past while, i’ve been flirting with the idea of starting a blog or a newsletter about eating out. not reviews or anything like that. just the little things that can happen. small stuff. sometimes, when you’re in a diner or a boba bar or a taquería or an izakaya or an icehouse or a noodle bar, and you’re a regular, or a newcomer, or if you’re just passing through, then you’ll run into the mundane. and, sometimes, the mundane becomes a little inexplicable.
sometimes, it’s little conversations.
maybe you’ll spot a kid do something funny in the booth behind you.
or the food’s just really fucking good.
or a waitress will say something funny.
just depends on the day.
and I go to all of those places fairly (very) frequently. they’re homey. i live in a city (Houston) where you can do that. for better and worse. and i have friends in those spaces. and, sometimes, i go to new places, where i don’t have friends, that don’t feel like home, so i’ll probably write about those, too, if i get around to it, if it feels right.
so I guess this’ll be a newsletter. but I’ll mostly be treating it like a blog. mostly things that are just barely too long for twitter (which i hate), but way too brief for an actual essay, or too ordinary/unbelievable for fiction. or, sometimes, there might be proper essays (probably not lol). or, sometimes, it’ll be as short as a text.
who fucking knows. it’ll be casual.
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also, briefly: my name’s Bryan Washington. i wrote a book called Lot (here’s me talking about that). and i’ve got another book called Memorial on the way. and i’ve written for the NYT and the NYer and BF and TPR and other delicious places around the internet. for a minute, i wrote a column over at Catapult. here’s a picture from a reading i gave at a bookstore i really like. i am wearing my favorite shirt:
but this space has nothing to do with any of that.
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i’ll try to post reasonably often, depending on your interest, or the lack thereof. at least once a week, i think. just so i don’t psych myself out. and i love money, truly, but i’m not asking for any here. at least not right now. this isn’t that kind of space. and, like, i do love money, so i could change my mind. but i probably won’t. or maybe you could contribute to my coffee fund. if you felt like it. unless you’re, like, Oprah, and you had a lot of money, and you were willing to share it. that would be okay.
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anyway. more soon. but to finish — here’s The Best Thing i’ve eaten in a while:
it was probably The Best Thing because i shared it with friends. they were visiting from abroad. we hadn’t seen each other in months, and honestly, i think that might be the ideal way to share a meal. but i could be wrong.