A friend of mine and me ride our bikes to Rockaway Island in a 3 hour trip. It takes 2 freaking hours to cross Brooklyn from Brooklyn Bridge to its Southern tip! Once we get there we cross a bridge which looks like from a Jules Verne book to finally get on the island in the Atlantic Ocean. An Italian girl rides her bike on the island’s main road holding up a flag to celebrate Italy’s victory in the World Championship.
We go through a deserted military area and reach a sand beach with only a few people. On the other side of the island we find a beach community with neat little wooden houses.

The band Awesome Colour who have just been signed by Sonic Youth onto their label SYR play an energetic live gig at the Cake Shop. They consist of a guitar player who has figured out a very special way to play his Rickenbacker guitar fucking fast, a bass player and a young female drummer who bangs the drums like it was the last day on earth. They create an energy onstage which is breathtaking.

Take the subway out to JFK and continue with a shuttle train to the peninsula which lies south of Brooklyn and Queens in the Atlantic Ocean. Like Coney Island this place is a summer hangout for mostly lower class people. The beach is that long that you cannot make out either end of it. It seems like a city on its own stretched out along the ocean.
There is again skywriting but performed only by a single plain whose pilot seems to be drunk. In a shitty way he writes letters across the sky which make up the words „Who is KyleXY?“. This is far away from the perfection of the Fire Island skywriting, but also funnier.
We then cross the peninsula to the Nortwest side where we have dinner in a restaurant by the water. We watch a beautiful sunset behind green islands which look like birds’ paradise. In the background we see airplanes descending to JFK.

The Eels play an open air live gig at the World Financial Center by the Hudson River.
They are dressed like freaks in a military-like outfit. Their rowdy appearance seems to shout out Fuck Bush! loud. There is a huge security guy onstage who watches the audience suspiciously. He then starts to perform Karate moves onstage and does other funny things. Latest by then you have realized that he belongs to the band. During the breaks he speaks to the audience things like „I am enjoying this!“ and then goes on to pick up different instruments and play with the band. It is an amazing live gig! After the concert their is a great sunset over the Hudson which is also for free.

A friend takes me out to Fire Island, which is 1,5 hrs from NYC. As soon as we get off the highway there is a nice breeze from the sea which feels so very different from the heat and humidity you get in the city. The Island stretches out in the Atlantic Ocean over 30 miles and lies in front of Long Island. The water is still quite cold, nevertheless I have a good swim.
Lying idly in the sand I see little airplanes pass by with banners (ads) on their tails. I think, of course there is no place to escape advertising. After a while I discover 5 airplanes in the sky which do skywriting. They emit bits of gas which make up letters. It reads as follows:

I see Wes Anderson (director of Royal Tennenbaums, Life Aquatic etc.) at an exhibition opening in the East Village. After getting advice from a friend of mine i go to talk to him. He is a very nice and quite a shy person. He looks like a 28 years old student. I really like his films, they are very funny and smart.

This is Fred. Fred looks at you when you look at him. If you enter the Chinese restaurant where he is forced to live his short life, you could point at him and they will cook him for you. But you don’t wanna do that, do you? Instead you just watch this little monster in the shop window.

Went to a club called the Apt in the Meat Packing District yesterday. The evening is hosted by the New York record shop Other Music. There is a live gig of the Berlin based electro-techno outfit Modeselektor which is on Ellen Allien’s BPitch Control label.
I have a great evening with friends dancing and drinking both intensely. Modeselektor rock the Apt’s basement hard! Everybody is dancing. I am dancing and sometimes screaming. As we leave the club it’s dawn. It is a nice feeling to be up at dawn after partying hard…

is back in town. It’s tight black jeans (especially at the lower legs), a t-shirt and long black hair. Larry Clark uses the same look for his new film “Wassup Rockers”, too.

is a new documentary about the disfranchisement (Aberkennung des Wahlrechts) of black voters in Florida in 2000 and about the remarkable politician Cynthia McKinney (black female Democrat) of Georgia. The Republicans drove her out in past elections with a trick. They sent their voters to vote for a black Democratic candidate different from Cynthia McKinney instead for a Republican. But in the last elections she fought her way back. She speaks out about issues no-one else dares to and leaves Rumsfeld speechless in Congress.

walks by under my window. I see him go around the corner on the other side of the street. He has a black bag on his shoulder which makes his walking look clumsy. He looks almost like a business guy.
I really like him as an actor. He played in good movies (Todd Solondz’s Happiness, in both P.T. Anderson’s great films Boogie Nights and Punch, Drunk, Love). He also played Capote (for which he won an Oscar) and he makes a good mark in MI3, too.