The People In Your Neighborhood: Alex Karpovsky
You’ve only recently settled down into a more-or-less permanent space. What made you decide on Greenpoint?
So, yes, I had been moving around a bit, and this is the first place where I’ve ever been in a real place. I chose Greenpoint because of the familiarity. I’ve lived around the area for a long time. I live in the northern, sort of Polish part. It’s the part furthest away from Williamsburg, so it’s still very Polish and it’s still pretty low-key, quiet and peaceful. It’s nice. It’s relaxed.
Do you have any favorite places you like to go? Restaurants? Bars? Bookstores?
There’s a great bookstore called Word, on Franklin Street. Although, I don’t go there that often. There’s Calexico, which I like a lot. I like this place near McGolrick Park that just opened called Little Dokebi, there’s a Dokebi here (in Williamsburg) too. I don’t know if I’m saying that right? (Ed. note: He was.) The food there is awesome. And there’s a bar that I like a lot also near McGolrick Park called Greenpoint Heights. And it’s nice because they have a big outdoor area and the food’s pretty good there.
It’s important to have a neighborhood bar.
Totally. It’s also a good place to eat. And they have board games. I just don’t know how much longer it’s going to stay nice. The neighborhood…everything is changing. It’s really on a fast track for change. I don’t know how much longer it’ll be a comfortable place to hang out, and I also don’t know how much longer I’ll stay here. You never can tell.
So do you think about leaving? Where would you go next?
If I had to go anywhere? It’s hard to say. I really like LA. Which I guess you’re not supposed to say out loud. But I really like it there, and I’ve never lived there so maybe if I spent a month there my opinion would change. But I like the layout and I like the space and I like how it’s close to a lot of mountains. So I don’t know, a part of me is flirting—first-base flirtation, low-level flirtation—with going out there. But I’d like to go out there with a job, rather than going there just to start a new chapter in my life, because, for me anyway, that could be a recipe for existential anxiety and recklessness.
Yeah, you probably want to avoid that. But so, what are you working on next?
Now I’m writing a few things that I’m working on for some point next year.
That’ll take you to LA?
Actually, no, none of these projects will take me to LA. They’re all kind East Coast ideas, so they take place in New York, or Boston where I grew up. And so I’m focusing on that, and then hopefully another season of the show. That’ll start up in March or April, if we stick to the same schedule as we did last year.
I’m fascinated with productive writers’ writing habits. Like to the smallest degree. Especially when it has to do with food. So, what do you eat or write when you drink?
Oh, yeah, me too. In fact, someone just gave me a birthday gift, a book called Daily Rituals which is portraits of dozens and dozens of artists and how they do what they do. Everyone’s so different.
I usually drink a cup of coffee as I sit down to write first thing in the morning, and I need to do it on an empty stomach because I feel like the kick of caffeine is stronger in the morning on an empty stomach, it’s not negotiating food absorption. And then, I usually try to write for 3-4 hours a day.
In the mornings?
It’s usually from 10-1 or 2. But there’s usually a 15-20 minute semi-break in the middle when I make food. And that’s oatmeal usually, gluten-free oatmeal. I put a lot of stuff in it: raisins, walnuts, pine nuts, cinnamon, ground flax meal and blueberries, banana. I drink a lot of tea. Green tea mostly. Probably a cup an hour. Over the course of the day I drink like ten cups of tea.
And beside the book you just got, have you ever received writing advice from anyone else? Are you tempted ever to ask for advice? Or for rules of the trade or anything?
I mean, no. I guess if I was in a room with a writer I really respected, I’d be open to asking them questions or picking their brains. But that’s never really happened. I’ve never really been in the room with someone I really liked and then been in the position of being able to ask them questions like this. Actually, there was one author, that I did have a chat with and he writes from 11-4 every day.
Who was it?
Gary Shteyngart, who’s also a really nice guy. And he writes from 11-4 every day. And he writes from his bed. Which Lena does too. But I just can’t do that. I just get sleepy. Especially in the winter. My bed’s too cozy. I have a table in my living room. A dining table. And that’s where I write.
A lot of writers write standing up.
I’ve heard that, like Saul Bellow, I think. But I can’t do that. My feet have high arches, so they get tired and they hurt very, very easily. So…no. I wouldn’t stand.
So do you do always do your writing at home or is there someplace in the neighborhood you like to go?
I do it at home, mostly. There’s a little coffee shop around the corner that I go to sometimes, but, you know, I pee a lot. And I can’t control the music. And my computer doesn’t hold a charge for very long. And sometimes there’s people talking. And the temperature isn’t always right, and there’s all this bullshit. So, I do like kind of being out in the world. And it sort of eases the loneliness, which is inherent in writing for me, but there’s too many little hassles for me. And then there’s, you know, Cafe Grumpy, where I work on the show. That’s down the road from where I live and I love it there, but I feel like it’s weird for me to go there now.
It would definitely be weird.
I used to go there all the time. I’ve never even been back since the show started. I mean, I’ve gone there for interviews, because interviewers think it’s an interesting idea to do that. But I’ve never been back on my own to work.