Nick Engvall 
I was in Tokyo on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, walking around Shibuya jet-lagged and hunting for coffee, when a sign stopped me. Nothing flashy. Just enough to make me turn my head. And behind the glass, parked inside like it had every right to be there, sat a widebody Volkswagen Golf with its fenders flared out … Read more
The best meal I had in Tokyo came from a place with six seats and a chef who had, from the look of him, been making the same dish for longer than I have been alive. No menu to speak of. No decor to mention. Just one thing, done so well it reorganized my idea … Read more
People ask why Monterey, usually with a small note of surprise, like they expected me to say Los Angeles or Tokyo or somewhere with more obvious gravity. The honest answer is that this is where I stopped feeling lost. Monterey does not perform. It has the ocean and the fog and a car culture that … Read more
My car is a POS, and I mean that with my whole heart. Its check engine light has become a badge worn with pride. There are rattles that show up at times and vanish the second I spend any amount of time trying to find them. The interior has a smell that is either nostalgia … Read more
There is a pair of 2001 Air Jordan 3 True Blues in my closet I will never wear again and will never get rid of. The sole has crumbled. The color has gone the particular yellow that no cleaner reverses. They are covered in scuffs. By any reasonable standard they are trash. I would run … Read more
The Porsches were parked on a Hollywood backlot, on a fake New York street that has stood in for a hundred movies, under the clock tower seen in Back to the Future. A 1967 911 sat where a taxi should have been. A Rothmans rally car on the dirt street of an old western movie, … Read more
For a couple of months after I lost my job, I mostly sat with the quiet. Not the peaceful kind. The other kind, the one that fills a room after the thing that gave your days a shape just disappears. One week I had meetings and deadlines and a reason to open the laptop before … Read more
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