sambecker.com/blog

I am writing in a diner on 79th and 1st (ingeniously) titled Café 79th and listening to Don’t Stop Believing by Journey, a tremendous 80s rock ballad playing over the loudspeaker.

The sizeable window next to my booth frames the crisp late-afternoon autumn scene unfolding right before me: people and vehicles going uptown, downtown and crosstown (79th street is a major crosstown road, as is 86th, 72nd, 57th, 23rd, 14th). Cabs, families, joggers, a gentleman carrying a ridiculous television under his arms. It is Sunday afternoon and—after many, many months—it is time to resume my long-stalled, oft-talked about, water cooler mainstay reportage on the rich mosaic of modern young adult living. You’d better hope I haven’t gotten rusty. This could be one excrutiating slideshow.

As of the first of October, I have been living two blocks from this very diner, at the corner of 78th street and 2nd avenue: 308 East 78th Street, Apartment 19, New York, NY in the “coveted 10021 zip code” of the Upper East Side (UES, hereafter) according to the New York Times? popular handbook, If You’re Thinking of Living In … All About 115 Great Neighborhoods in and Around New York.

So how on earth did I get here from my last humble sambecker.com serial offering: a series of photographs depicting the not-so-obvious merits of a line of junk food utilizing Passover to exploit common Jewish stereotypes? The answer is long and uninteresting, so I am going to boil down these last six months into a succinct and highly accessible account of good versus evil, love and loss, the graduation procedure at Syracuse University, a tantalizing summer in Highland Park and the bold coming-of-age, often-talked about but rarely understood process of finding your first major graphic design job in Manhattan. This would be a good place to stop reading if you don’t have a room to yourself and generous block of free time—you have been warned.

The second semester of my senior year was fantastic on most levels. I arrived back from London last December (where I studied during my penultimate semester of higher learning) and readied myself for four more months of grueling Communications Design work (four new massive projects, a portfolio that makes a case for my existence) and hanging out/saying goodbye to all of my Syracuse friends, who I’d been missing for the last eight months. During this time I developed a family of logos for myself:

as well as an elegant resume and thorough portfolio of work to store in an expensive, embossed leather box. These were “supposedly” the tools I would need to seize a job in the real world. As it turned out, there was a little more special sauce necessary, but I will get into that later.

One notable academic achievement was being selected, along with four of my fellow CMD students, to participate in the Art Directors Club Top 100 Student Review (a quartet are chosen from each of the top twenty-five design schools in the country). Brie, Laura, Dara (my current roommate, more on that later) and myself drove down in the trusty silver CR-V (admittedly, a much nicer drive than the bloated, sluggish, black CR-V which sits “around” the garage in Highland Park) and stayed at an excellent Double Tree Hotel the night before the show, which was located at the ADC?s main offices in downtown Manhattan.

It was a six hour affair where the students stood behind their portfolio and pounced on the seasoned professionals who tepidly approached their book, wanting to know more about their work. It was just wonderful going down for a New York road trip with good friends at the end of my final semester at SU. A lovely bookend for an education that included everything I had dreamed it would: writing, graphic design, computer graphics, photography, programming and studying design in London. I couldn?t have asked for more: very good closure.

This was the quickest-vanishing semester to date, and before I knew it, I was having dinner with my family, along with Phyllis and Duke, and Eunie and Poppa, all who graciously dropped what they were doing to fly in to glamorous Upstate New York and celebrate my birth into the real world (as Stewie?s effeminate acting coach would say in The Family Guy, “now, burst through the placenta!”).

Later that week I packed up my Livingston apartment and hit the road with Mike back to HP. We drove through the night and finally, at around four in the morning, stopped at a Motel 6 with $39.95 two-bed suites featuring floor-to-ceiling windows exposing our 1st-floor room to a parking lot full of onlooking ne’er-do-wells (honest-to-god, we passed up a Red Roof Inn first when we found out our room would cost $59.95. Who do I look like, Donald Trump?).

I spent my summer in Chicago doing freelance work for several HP proprietors, and working out of an empty cubicle in my parents’ architecture firm. This was good fun: I had full use of the office printers and wireless internet connection as well as the able minds of the talented Becker Architects staff for questions regarding everything from building materials to billings invoices. Everyone offered their advice for how to fabricate the new stainless steel portfolio I was building as well as how to maintain the fickle surface (which, I might add, picks up more fingerprints than Paris Hilton—Buuuh-Zing!):

Weekends that summer included trips to the newly furnished lake house, hanging out with friends (Zach Norman, Jon Sugar, Marc Frost, et al.), family (Sally, Sibz, Schneiders, etc.), pets (Harrold the Magnificent) and an outrageous European trip with Mike originating where he studied in Dublin and then going on to Paris and Amsterdam, including an unintended detour to Brussells that nearly cost us $2000 in travel rebookings (which we cleverly avoided through our depthless and sensitive knowledge of the French language and the tireless spirit necessary to extract information from virulently anti-American ticket clerks) when we boarded the wrong train. See several photo-illustrations below:

There were also, of course, games at Wrigley field

And, as we ally know, all good things must come to an end, thus this summer concluded with one well-documented, thoroughly enjoyable, blockbuster of a family vacation. Our beloved road trip to the Cape of Cod:

We swing by Syacuse to drop off Mike’s car

Then eat at the worderful Stella’s

This would be P-town

I love Romans!

A day in Newport

Does anything catch your eye in this photo?

Has anyone seen my sister?

Do we have an appointment?

Home sweet home

Once we returned, I began to tie-up my freelance work as well as initiate the multi-pronged approach that I engineered to land me a job at a top-paying, high-prestige, highly-sought-after Manhattan graphic design firm. This process, finishing my work and setting up job interviews, consumed many, many days and nights that month, but ultimately culminated in my finding an excellent job, building terrific contacts and securing a delightful apartment.

To get my job, I first created what I affectionately called employment care packets. Said parcels were scarlet 9″x12″ envelopes containing: a cover letter, portfolio CD, resume and “employer questionnaire” complete with a calendar to be filled out in order to book me for a week in New York. See personalized front:

… and the back …

All told, I sent out eighty of these packets to roughly forty firms, and was able to organize one week consisting of fifteen separate interviews. I flew to New York and stayed with the lovely Lewins for eight crazy nights. I met up with my roommate, saw roughly twenty apartments and then spent the remainder of the week running in the thick summer smog to job appointments scheduled far too close together. I went home weighed my flattering offers and flew to New York, again, for good, about just two weeks later with all of my worldly possession (ok, so I mailed some stuff, and left most of my junk in my room in Highland Park. I was tired!). Faîte accomplis.

A word about my apartment and neighborhood before I sign off: I am located on the quiet 78th street block between 1st and 2nd avenue. Please accompany me on a virtual tour:

You enter the apartment directly into the kitchen

And then you have the rich choice of going into the bathroom

or the living room

This is Dara

and her bedroom

Next to Dara’s room would be mine

Comfortably furnished by IKEA (no hard feelings Crate and Barrel)

Here’s my bookshelf, or as I like to call it, the Tower of Power (what is life without poetry)

and my immaculate desk (you can take the farm out of the girl but you can’t…  how does that go?)

I take the six train (Lexington Avenue Local) every morning to get to work

I am located directly above the famous hundred-year-old Orwasher’s Bakery

From the ground floor up to the fourth floor, where my apartment resides, you can smell freshly baked bread around the clock; it is a perpetual tease. I proudly note that I have only succumbed to the pastries there twice, however a third gorging cannot be too far off. The nicest part about where I live would have to be the close proximity of so many delectable amenities. I am not exaggerating when I list these alarming figures: within approximately 100 feet of my front door there are 6 sushi restaurants, 7 twenty-four-hour diners, 3 major drug doors, 3 synagogues and a multitude of bagel shops that seem to have no problem with carbs after 5PM.

Do not fret, I will talk about my brand new job (though I’ve been working for two months) and all of my delicious NY happenings in the next post. I would say it all right now, but no one’s going to buy the cow—you know how that one ends! Leave some love below. I am desperately looking forward to a “comment orgy” in the ensuing week.

PS. I’ve very recently read the following awesome books (In Cold Blood, Freakonomics, Breakfast at Tiffany?s, Killing Yourself to Live) and seen the following amazing films (Capote, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, The Squid and the Whale). In case you were wondering how I was watering my brain.

PPS This beefcake, come-hither shot is supposed to balance the supposedly “unflattering” shot of my father