Trading in the Ivy League for a Simpler Life

Deep in the woods of upstate New York, John Kuhner rubbed his hands together to stay warm as the morning light flooded into the window of his one-room cabin. Each morning for the past three and a half years, John has woken up much like this: completely solitary, eating food he has grown himself, and finding innovative ways to live on less.

John’s home has no electricity, no running water, and no companionship, for the most part.  He lives this way because he holds a deep, almost religious belief that upper and middle-class lifestyles are unsatisfying and unsustainable, and that to be happy, we as a culture need to live more simply.

“When I have had the blues, there are three things I want to do,” said John.  One, work more, as a relief from thought.  Two, drive around looking at things. And three, buy stuff.”

His theory is that contemporary American culture is explained by the fact that most people are actually depressed.  “That’s why they spend their lives on work, cars, and crap. This could be the motto of at least half of America.”

John didn’t always live this way, and his lifestyle would be incomprehensible to most of his former Princeton University classmates. But while most of his contemporaries were learning skills that would go on to reward them with big paychecks, John was discovering he valued something different.  Then again, he was already different than many of the more privileged kids at the school from the get go.

John’s parents were squatters, and dirt poor.  John’s father was a former priest who had left the church after getting John’s mother, who was a nun, pregnant.  His father refused to work, leaving the family in abject poverty.  John remembers scouring the neighborhood with his father in the dead of winter, searching for discarded wood pallets to burn in the fireplace for heat.

However, in spite of all this, John excelled at school, and was in a class for gifted children.  One day, his mother bundled him up and took him on the subway to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She had made an appointment at a prestigious Jesuit school known for giving scholarships to underprivileged Catholic boys.

When John walked into the dark, wooded chambers of the school’s foyer, he was awestruck.  “Here was a place where everything was majestic, solid, beautiful,” said John.  “It was the opposite of any environment I had ever known, and I fell in love.” John was accepted to the school, and this set him on his track to the Ivy League.  He thrived under the tutelage of the Jesuit priests, learned Latin, and upon graduation was accepted to Princeton.

At Princeton, John was miserable.  For a working-class boy from Queens it was hard to fit in. Neither he nor his parents could afford the money for tuition, so he had to work in the kitchen to get a subsidy.

“My fellow classmates would yell at me from their tables, ‘Hey, food person, get me some fries.’”

John reacted by trying not to fit in to an even greater degree.  He walked around campus in a Revolutionary War cloak his brother had found in an army reserve unit warehouse.  He let his hair grow long. His grades began to suffer.

Once he graduated from Princeton, John got his first job teaching, but he found it difficult to adapt to the lifestyle a regular job required.  Restless, he quit and got on his bike and rode to Seattle. He wanted to track down a man in nearby Eugene, Oregon he had read about.  The man lived on nothing – he hadn’t used money in years.  He survived off of things other people threw away.

The meeting had a big impact on John. They spent an afternoon on the riverbank, where the man explained in detail that if waste were drastically reduced, there would be enough for many people to live comfortably at very little ecological cost. John stayed and talked with the man for a week, then left and took a boat to Alaska.  He came back to Seattle, then biked to Tijuana.  He moved back to New York, and into the woods.

Most of John’s days at the cabin are taken up by physical labor – hauling water up from the spring, tending the garden, cutting wood for the fire.  At night he usually reads or writes – he is working on a novel about a terrorist, set in Paterson, New Jersey.  Or, he uses the internet at the country store nearby.

“What I love about cabin life is that every day is different,” John said without irony after describing his daily routine, which doesn’t alter much.

It’s been three and a half years since John moved up to the cabin. He grows most of his own food in the summer months, subsisting on a diet of tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce and supplemented by a little pasta or bread.  What is left over, he cans for the winter.  He works odd jobs landscaping to make extra cash for essentials.

John doesn’t regret not having the typical things that come with an Ivy League education.  “I moved to the cabin to be around nature and beauty and joy every day, waste less, and simplify my lifestyle.”

It works for him.

Not without drawbacks, though. “I certainly don’t get many dates out here. That’s been difficult.”

One Brooklyn Neighborhood, Two Very Different Purim Parties

In a neighborhood of Brooklyn south of the Williamsburg Bridge, dressing up to go outside is nothing new for the majority the menfolk.

The cylindrical hats and black cloaks of the Hasidic Jews are as much a part of the scenery of this Williamsburg neighborhood as corner bodegas and kosher bakeries.

But once a year, these normally austere ultra-orthodox Jews and their children trade in their traditional religious garb for Curious George masks, scarecrows and princess costumes.

Purim, Brooklyn-Style

The holy day of Purim has a reputation amongst Jews as the wildest holiday of the year, and members of this ultra-orthodox enclave of Brooklyn celebrate it as a community-wide party. This past Wednesday, however, the Hasids weren’t the only ones partying.

“It’s the only night of the year our neighbors all get drunk and rowdy,” said local resident David Small, 32. “We would hate to be the odd ones out on this front.”

Small is somewhat of an anomaly in this Hasidic-dominated neighborhood, where he lives with six other 20 and 30-something males in a cavernous loft with no central heating, a functioning recording studio, and bedrooms built out of sheet rock.

Their unusual residence may appear to be yet another evidence of the sprawling hipster gentrification of Brooklyn, but Small says it’s quite the contrary. “When we moved into this loft eight years ago there were no Hasidic people here. This neighborhood was scary – the projects are down the street, we’d get mugged.”

All that changed over the past five years as members of the Hasid community moved in, built condos, and altered the face of the place. With the influx of the new families, the atmosphere of the neighborhood changed. One benefit was that crime went down.

Another effect, however, was not as welcome. The roommates had been fond of throwing large dance parties, and these became increasingly difficult to hold as the new neighbors would inevitably call the police and get the parties shut down.

As a result, the loft-dwellers started a tradition of their own. Each year, the non-Jew residents of Lorimer Street hold their own Purim party.  It’s the one night no one minds the racket.

Two Parties, One Neighborhood

Purim celebrations begin at sundown for the Jews, with a feast. The meal is followed by determined drinking, with the general goal of getting drunk.

The imbibing has a religious significance for Hasidic men, who are encouraged to drink on Purim until they can no longer distinguish between two phrases that mean ‘Cursed is Haman’ and ‘Blessed is Mordecai.’  Haman and Mordecai are the villain and hero of the Purim story.

The party then moves out onto the streets; tour bus-sized party buses blast Hebrew pop music, criss-crossing the neighborhood. Children and young adults dress up in costumes, and underage drinking is rife. “All over the world every year rabbis will try to counsel Jews to not get so drunk, or to not permit underage drinking, but it doesn’t help,” said Zach Horowitz, a 23 year-old Hasidic man.

Surveying the street scene, another young Hasid named Getzy Rabin, 24, said, “It’s definitely crazy, especially since everybody is drunk. Some are rowdy drunks, but others, like my grandfather, are serious drunks who spend the whole time crying.”

Meanwhile in the hipster loft, drinking is a ritual of sorts, too, though not religious in nature. A cooler full of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer condensed on the concrete floor, ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts. A throng of young men and women bumped into each other as they danced in the center of the room; a thin man in skinny jeans fiddled with a guitar in a corner.

The normally austere Hasidic members of the community do not have much interaction with their gentile neighbors. But the party atmosphere of Purim lends itself to a more laid-back attitude.

“Last night we walked around for a bit and I think the drinking helped put their guard down,” said Andy Wang, 29, a resident of the Lorimer Street loft.  Wang noted that the only interaction he ever has with his Hasidic neighbors is when they request his assistance on Sabbath. “They never talk to me except when they need something turned on, and bribe me with oranges to come do it for them.”

Hasidic Jews are prohibited from doing any kind of work on the Sabbath, including turning on light switches or opening a fridge.

Another loft resident, Jesse Smythe, 33, chain-smoked over a DJ booth in one corner of the crowded dance floor. He dropped a track of Berlin techno-trance music, the bass thumping out of five-foot tall speakers worthy of a night club.

“Normally, if I had the music on this loud, the cops would be here in five minutes flat,” said Smythe, shouting. On this night, there wasn’t a cop or a complaint in site.

Meanwhile, outside the loft at street-level, Rabin glanced over at a passing party bus and said, “Purim is pretty much a free pass to do whatever you want for a day.”

East Village Neighbors Rally Against Local Illegal Nightclub

An East Village restaurant said to be operating as an illegal nightclub is up for a liquor license renewal, but First Street residents are rallying against the application.  The establishment, known as LaVie Lounge, originally applied for and was granted a liquor license to operate as a cafe/bar, but neighbors say it is now operating as a club.

Complaining about the constant barrage of noise, raucous drunken brawls and late-night dance parties originating from inside the establishment and pouring onto the street, incensed neighbors presented evidence at this Monday’s Community Board 3 Meeting that LaVie was in violation of the terms of its liquor license, and demanded that the license be revoked.

Resident Jason Weisfuse, 32, who lives next door to the establishment at 62 East 1st Street, produced recent screenshots of LaVie’s website advertising DJ dance parties and bottle service.  He also presented photographs printed from the LaVie Facebook fan page showing overcrowded dance floors and live DJs spinning records. Handing out copies of the evidence to board members, Weisfuse asserted, “It’s a bona fide dance club.” He also presented a report that measured the decibel level within his apartment to be “2.3 times higher than the legal limits.”

Mercedes Santana, President of the Property Management Corporation at 62 East 1^st Street echoed the neighbors’ assertions that LaVie does not belong in this residential neighborhood, noting, “Every Monday morning when I come to work I find vomit directly outside the entryway to the building.”

LaVie’s liquor license was originally granted in 2003 to operate as a café bar with a closing time of midnight and music limited to recorded cds and tapes.  Dance parties and live music are limited to establishments in possession of a cabaret license, which LaVie does not hold.

Monday’s Board Meeting was not an official liquor board licensing hearing. LaVie’s new part-owner, Joseph Shenouda, 32, was required to appear to request his addition to the license before the formal hearing, which is scheduled for March.  According to the State Liquor Authority, businesses with liquor licenses normally only have to appear before their local community board if ownership changes by 80 percent. Mr. Shenouda had only purchased a 50 percent stake, but was asked to appear before the board because of the history of complaints.

The history of incidents at LaVie include a Thanksgiving slashing, where two women and a man were attacked on the corner of First Avenue and First Street as they left the premises at around 4:00 a.m., an assault with a broken champagne bottle during an altercation between a customer and a bouncer, and fifteen violations for breaching the terms of their liquor license.

Shenouda said he has experience running other establishments in New Jersey, and bought the stake in Lavie “as an investment from the previous owner who wanted out.” He made attempts to reassure the board that he was going to make changes, and that he bought the fifty percent stake in the business with the idea of improving things.  “The bad old days are gone,” he told the board, noting a recent open house he held for residents the previous week, offering an open bar and a chance to voice their concerns.

Shenouda’s lawyer, Terry Flynn, also attempted to reassure the board that the situation was different now that Shenouda had come on board. Flynn stated that his client  “intends on making certain changes.”  He went on to detail Shenouda’s plan: hiring three security guards, contracting a cleaning team to clean the entirety of First Street each night, and disconnecting sub-woofers that cause vibrations in neighboring apartments.  When asked if the establishment intended on continuing to do business as a nightclub, Flynn asserted, “It’s not a club.”

Regardless of changes Shenouda plans to make, LaVie still seems to be in violation of its liquor license. First Street Block Association President, Robert Graf, 64, made this point as he passed out page 10 of the original license. The audience in the filled-to-capacity room broke out in applause as Graf read out the requirements of the original license, summing up, “LaVie never would have gotten this license if they had been upfront about wanting to operate as a restaurant-nightclub.”

After some confused discussion over what was within their rights to rule in the matter, the board passed a motion to not endorse the change in ownership. They moved to reaffirm the denial of the January 2011 renewal notice because “the method of operation remains that of a club.”