Congratulations on Finding a New Place to Live!

Pitchfork writers are a homogenous bunch. They’re white, educated, unmotivated and perceive themselves as being better than the people around them for no apparent reason. They also only wear clothing “ironically,” smoke clove cigarettes and they live exclusively in Brooklyn, where they attend shows and have “other interests” aside from music which seem to exist constantly in theoretical space.

As such you should’ve known you wouldn’t fit in with you genuine passion for music and subculture, your journalism degree and your apartment in the Bronx. You even spent time volunteering at local soup kitchens. How could you possibly think this would work?!

So today, when your boss calls you into his office, you’ll feel a twinge of surprise and a strong undercurrent of dread. When he says your name like he’s your dad you know what’s coming next and you won’t even hear him talk about synergizing brand image and ensuring consistent quality of work without sacrificing journalistic integrity.

All you’ll be able to do is stare at his cochney cap and think “what a fucking douche.” You’ll be on your feet by the time he finishes, staring at him like all you want him to do is shut the fuck up. He’ll pause briefly in his speech and give you a look like “could you please sit back down and let me finish?” but you’ll just take the pause to walk calmly out of his office, knowing that the uncoolness of shouting or chasing after you would keep him glued to his chair, twitching and sputtering in impotent suburban rage.

You’ll emerge from his office and grab your laptop from your desk and a handful of pens and notepads, ignoring your hanging cat picture and your bobble head doll. You’ll even leave your Pitchfork mug, depicting a young man with an apathetic expression on his face wearing a shirt one size to small for him.

You’ll stuff the milieu of useful shit you scavenged from your desk into your laptop bag and step briskly out of the office to the bafflement of your co-workers, as going outside during the day is shamefully un-hip, leading to such uncool activities as sweating and meeting foreigners who haven’t had the benefit of an American college education.

Out on the street you’ll hop from train to train to get from Bushwick to your shitty, un-air conditioned rent controlled apartment. There you’ll think about went wrong. You wrote intelligent commentary about music, assessing it not objectively but with a transparent means of interpretation which any of your readership could comprehend. You had an excellent rapport with the bands you interviewed, but you never became friendly with them or perceived them as friends. You were a perfect music journalist. There were only two problems.

You never grew an absurd moustache and you lived in the Bronx.

You’ll smack your forehead and make an exasperated groan. You know it’s too late for you and Pitchfork now but you’ll flip open your laptop and start cruising through Craigslist to see if you can find something in Bushwick in your price range anyway. Even if Pitchfork has rejected you Vice might still have room for someone too “edgy” for Pitchfork.

After twenty minutes of looking, however, you’ll realize that all of these places are too expensive for you to afford without assistance from a large financial institution or wealthy parents. You’ll look out your window at the ruin of your street, your local crackhead trembling with arms stretched towards God, muttering to himself.

You’ll wonder how people like that come to be. They must have been sane at one point, but something must have happened to make their minds break that way. Perhaps it’s something within themselves. Or perhaps it’s the city.

With this thought in your head you’ll dial your mother on your cell phone. After a three minute conversation you’ll have made arrangements to stay with her back in Wisconsin until you can get into grad school in Madison. She’ll sound happy that you’re coming back and you’ll just feel relieved, even as you inventory your apartment deciding just what can fit into your Tercel and what you’ll leave behind in New York.

In the end you’ll find there’s very little you want to bring with you.

Congratulations on Finding a New Place to Live!