The building sits on a residential block of Greenkill Avenue between Sterling Avenue and Iwo Jima Lane across from the train tracks that slice through Midtown Kingston, neatly dividing the city in half. It's equidistant from the Maennerchor and Damenchor German social club (established 1868) and the marijuana dispensary set to open in the coming months at the thorny intersection of Route 32, Wall Street, Fair Street, South Wall Street, and Greenkill Avenue, known colloquially as "Five Ways to Die."
I'd driven past the building for years, the parking lot overgrown with weeds and the sign above the door, "Kingston News Service," broken between the first and second words and "News Service" angling obliquely toward the ground.
Riding by last month on my bike (Greenkill Avenue now doubles as part of the Empire State Trail), I noticed a new, enigmatic sign above the door: "You Done Messed Up." It's at once a tease, a joke, a provocation, and a condemnation. (Or a sly reference to the Substitute Teacher sketch from a 2012 episode of "Key & Peele.") But who is it directed at?
Is it meant for the dog walkers on the rail trail to refuse to clean up their pets' shit? The teenagers (and occasional magazine editor) who cut across the train tracks as a shortcut? Is it the freight trains that thunder through the neighborhood, some carrying a highly flammable gas/oil mixture, 30,000 gallons per rail car? Is it an attempt to trigger our internal critic, activate the malicious inner monologue we carry around like a supernumerary nipple of self-doubt. (Did you know that extra nipples are fairly common, affecting six percent of the US population? News to me.)
Or is it the city itself, the commentary a gnomic thumbs down to Kingston's transformation in the past decade from post-IBM doldrums to white-hot it city? Hillary Harvey explores the city's varieties of longing this month in "The Yearning of Kingston" (page 40).
Housekeeping
Speaking of messing up: Last month, we misattributed an article on an exhibition of Bert Stern's photographs of Marilyn Monroe. The writer was Julia Dixon. Our apologies.
I'm excited to announce that Chronogram will be taking part in this year's Woodstock Film Festival. I'll be moderating a panel discussion, "The State of the Industry and How to Break into It," with film industry vets William Horberg, Gill Holland, and Blair Breard on October 16, 6pm, at the Fuller Building in Kingston. The conversation will focus on advising aspiring filmmakers how to get into the film and media industry in today's ecosystem. Tickets at Woodstockfilmfestival.org.
And thanks to all who answered the call last month—via the odious QR code—to subscribe to our newsletter. It's a surefire way to not miss out on any of the stories we're publishing every day on Chronogram.com. Plus, we've added a daily Hudson Valley trivia question and ticket giveaways in Monday's event newsletter. Recent giveaways included a sail on the Hudson River Maritime Museum's solar-powered boat Solaris and John Sebastian and Jimmy Vivino at Bethel Woods. You can sign up for our free newsletter anytime at Chronogram.com/newsletter.
