Sparkle Waters

Burn night, shoe stories

Now live on Paul Andrew’s Instagram is the collaborative work of 12 international artists interpreting shoes—Paul Andrew’s shoes—in various mediums. For the project, I wrote some paragraphs as the beginnings of chapters in an imagined novel or collection. A couple of those are up, interspersed with the other content, all of which I like.

The campaign is still rolling out and will culminate in a limited-edition book, released on February 3rd. The other contributors are Frédéric Sanchez, Luna Conte, Jet Swan, Jasa Muller, Sungi Mlengeya, Jack Lovatt, Erica Ohmi, Jorden Steward, Sienna Murdoch, Jeffrey Dalessandro, and Rei Nadal.

Last night was Substack’s first annual fireside Burns Night, an evening of roast readings by a lineup of newsletter writers in The Back Room, an LES “speakeasy” that actually serves drinks in mugs, like it’s prohibition times. As fellow reader Alex Auder noted, establishments can’t take their own concepts that seriously these days. No one likes drinking a well cocktail from a teacup and saucer.

The bar, however, was open, event coordinator Matt Star brought 50 burgers and 50 fry orders from the nearby Burger King for those interested, and most importantly, there was a working fireplace. In fact, Matt said he found this venue, which is totally hidden, behind a building, accessible only via dark alleyway, by Googling fireplaces in Manhattan. All the readers did a great job. I laughed. When it was my turn, I read an edited version of something I wrote here earlier, which I’ll copy below: