friday night kreppa

Last night was my first downtown in a little while. In my new incarnation as a tame, dinner-party-hosting suburbanite, I just don't get down there that much. It's just too much hassle.

But last night I headed on down with a buddy of mine and we had beers at Brons before a few other dudes showed up. So began a rollicking Friday. Only the thing was, there was hardly any rollicking to be had.

The only place with any kind of "scene" going on appeared to be b5, our second stop. It was hard to squeeze past a thick crowd at the bar and later there were even the beginnings of a line outside. Other than that, there was hardly anyone on the sidewalks, which on a decent Friday night can become almost impassable between the hours of 1 and 4 a.m.

Not wanting to miss any kind of hijinks anywhere else, we left b5 and headed up the street. The next port of call was Ölstofan where we did the obligatory one-lap. There were maybe 30 people there, hunched over drinks in the warm, humid, beer-scented Ölstofan air. But none of the rippling roar of a good Ölstofan crowd at full tilt. Next was Oliver, which had all of the excitement of my grandmother's sitting room. Empty chairs at empty tables, and so on. Thinking we were missing something, we headed upstairs expecting to maybe run into the Star Wars Cantina scene, and instead found only a lonely bartender and two people at a corner table.

Back on the other side of Lækjargata, Apótek didn't even have a line outside at 2 a.m. and inside was lackluster. We ended up at Wrecks which just re-opened after four weeks of "extensive renovations" which seemed to basically consist of new wood paneling nailed onto the columns by the door. The place was desolate, but at least had comfy couches. And no night out is really complete without Nonnabiti, which had our sandwiches ready in record time as there were no customers around.

Now, I realize that Friday night always takes a back seat to Saturday in terms of its importance in the Icelandic social spectrum. But this was the emptiest Friday downtown I've ever seen. If I decide to fire up this blog-writing again for real, I'll for sure delve deeper into the economic meltdown here, but suffice it to say that the monetary woes here seem to be having a marked impact on even something as culturally sacrosanct as getting blitzed downtown on a weekend night.

the walk for sy

A good friend of mine, a guy always full of jokes, witticisms, commentary, and wacky ideas, was undergoing cancer treatment last year before Christmas. About that time he suggested jokingly that I organize a one-man "cancer walk" for him, then send him half the proceeds I collected and keep the other half for myself. I decided to take the idea seriously and so I sent him a map of the route I would walk, from my house to the lighthouse at Grótta. I told him that instead of sending him cash, I'd make a donation to a cancer society here in the Land. Then I hauled myself out of bed in the predawn 11 a.m. light of a December Saturday morning, and did the walk. You can follow along with the walk here.

After finishing the walk, I wrote my friend:

It was really quite a time, and I'm so glad I did it. I started out at 11 a.m. on Saturday morning (keep that time in mind when looking at the pictures!) and was out to the lighthouse around 11:40 or so. The path was snowy and icy and it was cold but still. I was plenty warm as I was dressed well and in motion, except for when I was taking pictures.

... the path was quiet save for a couple of joggers and then a running team of 8 or 10. I could hear the snow crunching underfoot on the path, and the views out off to the right were great: the calm Reykjavík harbor and snowy mountains beyond. (The mountains in the pictures are named Esja and Akrafjall, with Akrafjall being the "leftmost" in the pictures. Esja is the one towering over the gasoline tanks.) The sun wasn't up over the mountains to the south yet, but there was a cloud hovering over one of the mountains and that cloud was reflecting pink sunlight and bathing the entire city and the harbor mountains beyond in that soft predawn glow. The sky was pink at the horizon and powder blue above. Then just as I was crossing the tidal flats that lead to the lighthouse at Grótta (11:40ish), the sun popped over the mountain and bathed everything in a brilliant and wintry light.

I was lucky that it was low tide, as I was able to walk all the way out to the lighthouse. At high tide, the lighthouse is on an island. Many a summer tourist has been known to be caught out there for 6 hours, waiting for the tide to subside. It comes in pretty fast. But they have a posted sign with the times that there are open "windows" to walk out there.

Out by the lighthouse it was peaceful and grassy. It even felt warm in the sunlight. I was the only one there, and there were lots of birds singing around me. There is a sign on the side of the lighthouse memorializing the two 20th century lighthouse keepers. (It's now automated.) There is a little house out there that's now become a coffee house and art gallery in the summers, thanks to a friend of mine. I walked a loop around the lighthouse and peeked in at the coffee shop and then headed back across the tidal flat to get to land before the water rose.

My friend passed away two weeks ago. I'll miss you, Sy.

here comes the darkness

It's 12:30 a.m. and a week ago at this time it was still post-sunset and light outside and there were some girls eating pizza below my balcony at the rotary, big white cardboard Dominos boxes spread out on some rocks. But tonight it's pretty dim at the same time, and after months of nothing but light here it's a little shocking and a relief all at the same time. It won't be until next month that we get our first taste of real inky black darkness, the kind the rest of you experience every night. But this is a marker anyway of what's coming, the real deal. In a few more months, the real-deal darkness will be almost all we know here in the Land. And having to put some lights on in my place in the middle of the night is a little reminder of that.

morning practice

Many mornings on my way to work, walking down the final cobblestoned hill to Ingólfstorg (the path that freezes over into a kind of ice-slide in the winter), I hear a brass player working his way up and down the scales, major and minor. It's usually very quiet in that area of town, and the smooth brassy tone carries its way on the wind, working a half-block radius among the corrugated-steel houses and old streets of that little quarter.

Just now, on the way to the post box to mail a letter, I took a slightly different route and ended up walking right past the player's house, past the open window. I heard the rich tones of what I think is a trombone or euphonium floating out. But today, instead of scales the player was working on a melody that is all to familiar to me (and to some IR regulars as well): Ravel's Bolero. It gave me goosebumps: it was beautifully and perfectly played, and all that was missing was the driving and incessant percussion.

snow!

This morning both Esja and Akrafjall were powdered with snow. And now outside it is alternating between sunshine, flurries, and serious "wintry mix" type stuff, the kind of thing guaranteed to cause miles of backup on Route 128. But here people are just going about their business. After such a beautiful, sunny few days this weekend, a little May snowshower can't really get us down. The downtown café tables will probably be out by this afternoon.