#397: Brooklyn Crab, Giant Pigeon Invasion, Motel Morris & More!

+ Weird New Yorker Emails, NYC Summer Streets & Much Less!

Welcome to issue #397 of New York Cartoons!

I’ve been attempting to quit coffee this week. I’m at the drawing board buried in book edits and dog farts, so I’m getting a little jittery. The only issue is, I can’t find a decent replacement. If you have any tea recommendations, throw them in the comments below.

Thank you to everyone who jumped on board my new adventure last Thursday. I got hundreds of really nice responses, convincing me I’m not totally crazy for pursuing this thing. The next post is due this Friday— if you enjoy the process of making things (with human hands) and geeking out about the nuts and bolts of art, you can subscribe here for free before the post goes out.

You can watch a 3-minute primer on more of what it is all about below:

If I'm honest, I've been pretty down about living in New York lately.

Since the newspaper/magazine/publishing industry has all but dried up here these past 10 years, it’s hard not to feel like I arrived at the party just as they're sweeping up the cups. As of November, I will have worked in the industry for 20 years, and in that time, I've had a front-row seat to its precipitous decline. (Don't panic, I'm not leaving. I'm just bummed out.)

The decision to live here was in no small part to be 'on the ground' where things in my industry were happening. The New Yorker. MAD. Spending time with actual humans in person, getting to know people beyond an email address. It seemed like a good idea. Sadly, MAD closed up its New York offices in 2018, and the New Yorker no longer permits cartoonists to visit their offices to pitch cartoons. As of 2020, everything is now done via email. With the exception of our summer softball games, I don't see anyone from the office anymore.

These days, you can work from anywhere and still make a decent fist of it without having to get your boots dirty on a sidewalk. The pandemic saw a huge volume of creators flee the city, never to return. When things opened back up, it felt like a very different place.¹

But... it's for that reason that it feels reassuring —even exciting— to be here to witness the ground floor of something new and innovative growing right here in New York. The community of writers in this city is second to none, and other big cohorts in London and around the world are gathering steam at a cracking pace.

Substack’s Head of Writer Relations, Sophia Efthimiatou, welcomes everyone to Brooklyn Crab - Photo by bryonsummers.com

The NYC team at Substack invited me to another great writers' meet-up on Thursday night. As the sun set over Red Hook and the spontaneous torrential downpours loomed, I had the opportunity to put faces to usernames. There are writers whose work I read every week and develop this weird parasocial closeness with. To speak with them IRL feels like what Mark Zuckerberg probably wishes the Metaverse would have been. (Except this one has more beer.)

Photo by Byron Summers

It felt good to be around people who are actually trying something new, and finding success with it. Listening to what they’re doing is so helpful. It was nice to see New York's best on-the-ground reporter, Anne Kadet of CAFÉ ANNE, and to finally meet Jillian Hess from Noted (Subscribe to both, you won’t regret it).

Ambitious, diligent, creative people are making a real go of it with this thing. It feels like a glimmer of light amid the dark clouds of closures and redundancies everywhere else.

Substack Co-Founder and CTO, Jairaj Sethi goes acapella

I'm grateful to you, dear reader, for subscribing to this newsletter and sticking with me as I figure it out. Since my syndicated comic strip was dropped last year, I've been committing more and more hours each week to making this worth your time, and I appreciate your support.

Attack of the Giant Pigeon

Every morning I walk up and down the High Line to get my steps in (and —let’s be honest— read my emails). But this fall, I’ll be sharing my walk with a 16-foot-tall pigeon — its chest puffed out proudly, head high, not down pecking at some errant pizza crust, its pitiless red-eye gaze looking out over the traffic. The monster will be sitting, presumably pecking at bagel crumbs, on the part of the High Line that bridges Tenth Avenue at 30th Street. (Read more: Curbed)

Concept photo via Curbed

NYC Summer Streets

On Saturday, NYC’s Summer Streets transformed Harlem (125th Street) to the Brooklyn Bridge into car-free zones for walking, biking, running, shuffling hungover, kvetching, spitting, ironically rollerblading, and skateboarding. They’ll be doing it again this Saturday 10th, and next Saturday 17th from 7-1. It’s a really great vibe. Unless you want an Uber. (Get a bike. Or some rollerblades.)

“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave …your food unattended.”

1. There are plenty of other reasons to live in New York. This was merely one of them for me. I ain’t going anywhere.