this is what concerns me:

John Jones plugs in the light under the hand painted sign outside his store so passersby can read: “jigsaw. affordable art, shoestring media, zines and comics, obscure bands.” Then he starts to get ready for his last party. It’s cold this weekend, and the radiator is wheezing and rattling as he straightens the books on the shelves, re-stocks the bar, takes out the trash. He sighs when he starts and finishes each task, as he resigns himself to the idea, then is relieved when it’s finished. Jones, 31, is a little goofy and childlike, with a baby face and dimples, and a mess of wavy brown hair that he yanks straight up in a fist when he’s concentrating. Jones dresses up for work: thick-rimmed glasses, button-up shirts, nice slacks and wingtips – even though work is just upstairs. He sleeps in the shop’s basement: it’s the only way he could afford to have his dream store in New York City. “It was always kind of a weird thing that I wanted to do,” he says. “I had all of these different interests, and I thought, why don’t I just try to combine them all? Hence the name.”
Jigsaw is an expression of his personal vision, the piecing together of different parts of his life. It’s part small-press comics store, indie novel and magazine shop, art gallery, concert venue, open bar and sometimes living room. Or rather, it was. Now the metal gate below the hand painted sign at 526 East 11th Street is down and locked. The lukewarm response to the store and the high cost of living in New York have forced John Jones and Jigsaw to move to Durham, North Carolina at the beginning of April. “I thought, why not just go somewhere and get a cheaper, bigger place in a city that is perhaps in need of a little more blue in their red?” He pauses. “Where I could make it more purple at least.”
His last weekend in New York, February 24 and 25, is a relatively tame ending to Jigsaw’s geek chic history of late nights fueled by liquor, art and indie rock. The store’s closing coincides with the first New York Comic-Con, which means two back to back book releases and industry types filling Jigsaw on its last Friday and Saturday nights. A few fans are still convinced the move is some elaborate April Fool’s joke, that come the first, John Jones will roll up the metal gate on Jigsaw around noon as usual. Others are just sad, annoyed, both. There’s nothing like this in New York, they say: it’s not a pristine Soho gallery, or nerdy comics shop, or dingy indie rock venue, or East Village watering hole in the wall. It’s not really anything they’ve seen before. And he was just gaining momentum. “I don’t see this as ‘the end’ like they do,” he says. “One of the reasons I did the shop in the first place was to show people it could be done.” With only a little research into business structure, a short-term lease, and some start-up capital, Jones thinks, anyone could open their own shop. “It just takes being stupid enough to actually do it.”
But instead he seems to have proven that it can’t be done, that it’s virtually impossible for even the most driven and visionary impresario to pull off a project like this in New York City.

John Jones refers to the Durham move as “the move back south”: he grew up in nearby Charlottesville, Virginia, where his mother still lives. He’s more comfortable in the South than in New York City, where he moved on a whim in 2003, after a rough divorce. He didn’t quite know what his next step would be. He’d worked at Barnes and Noble, made his own mini comics and paintings, wrote three novels for National Novel Writing Month. There was too much he wanted to do. He finally decided to bring all of his passions together, and in the process, bridge the gap between creators and fans by hosting events where the two could mingle. In June ’04, Jigsaw was born.
The space is tiny – only about 50 people can cram in at a time without suffocating – but Jones somehow makes it aptly comfortable and homey. There’s a black leather couch by the shelves, and the register counter in the back doubles as a bar for parties. He chooses the stock for the store based on his own personal preferences. There’s nothing on the shelves that he hasn’t read at least once – most, several times. “It’s kind of a weird trust exercise to ask someone to spend 12, 15, 20 dollars on something they might not like just because it’s what I’ve handpicked,” he says. For that reason, he avoids the hard sell. At most, if he notices a customer is lingering a while and seems interested in the products, he’ll try to play matchmaker, asking what their favorite books and comics are and trying to find something he thinks they’ll like. “I’ve only had one person bring something back and say they really didn’t care for it.”
But the daytime sales are only one piece of Jigsaw. Jones has hosted pumpkin carvings and film debuts, along with the requisite book release parties and art openings – one complete with a go-go dancer. When the shop first opened, he hosted open mic ‘Jigsawlons.’ There were even small concerts, with the couch tipped on end to make room. Some of the parties drew up to 300 people, filling Jigsaw for five solid hours as the crowd rotated in and out of the shop. Throughout the past two years, he’s brought nearly every kind of art into the space at one point or another. And the events in turn brought in the bulk of the store’s customers: they were drunk and their inhibitions were down, and Jones didn’t need the hard sell to get them to buy some comics or artwork.
In its first month, Jigsaw turned a profit. But ever since then, sales have been steadily slipping. Businesses across the East Village have taken a hit, and many of the independent stores that sprung up optimistically after 9/11 are cutting back their hours or closing altogether. “The neighborhood got too big for its britches. It tried to become Greenwich Village,” he says. “Now it’s economically impossible to succeed unless you’re a bar.” It’s gotten even worse in the last six months: most days go by without any customers.
The last two walk-ins come Friday evening, the second to last day of Jigsaw New York. When Jones sees them, he calls out hello and nonchalantly makes his way to the back of the store behind the register/bar counter. The customers, two hipster guys in head to toe black, flip through the comics for nearly fifteen minutes. One of them reads an entire book. “This is great,” he comments to no one in particular. “I should get it for my sister.” But instead he checks his watch and reminds his friend that they have to meet someone at a nearby bar. As they leave, he calls out “Thank you.” Jones responds, “We’re having some events here later tonight if you’re interested.”
“Events?” The hipster looks confused.
“From 8 to 11, a book release, open bar.”
“Oh, okay,” the hipster says, still puzzled. “Thanks.” They don’t come back.

Jigsaw begins to fill up a few hours later with editors, publishers, creators, and others involved in the comics business. A little over 100 people show up over the course of the evening, even though it’s 7 degrees outside and the L train isn’t working, leaving Jigsaw a 15 minute walk from the closest subway station. People’s thick-rimmed glasses steam up when they come inside from the cold.
“Wait, what is this?” one 20-something in a long trench coat asks his friend.
“It’s just kind of … what it is,” the friend offers.
The store is buzzing with compliments for “Crazy Papers,” Jim Dougan and Danielle Corsetto’s debut graphic novel, but people seem to be more interested in Jigsaw and the news that tomorrow is its closing day. Even some of Jones’ good friends are hearing this for the first time. The long trench coat laments that he didn’t discover the shop sooner.
A little after midnight, Jones turns off all the lights. Someone asks him why. “I like disappearing into the shadows like a ninja,” he says. The last people leave around 1. John Jones gets three hours of sleep.
The next evening is a little rougher than expected. The New York Times runs an article on the Comic-Con and mentions John Jones and Jigsaw – and the public party with open bar, beginning at 7 p.m. Even with the L train out of commission and a wind-chill of 9 degrees, there’s a palpable dread about how many people will show up.
In the end, it’s only a few dozen more than the previous evening, but this crowd feels rash and desperate. Brendan Deneen and Szyman Kudranski, creators of the new comic “Scatterbrain,” decide to give their books away for free: it’s too much trouble to sell, and who wants to cart all the extras home? No one really talks about the end of Jigsaw – they accept the inevitability, the pointlessness of complaining. Everyone seems more interested in the liquor than the comics. By 2 a.m., patrons who started the evening drinking Stella have moved on to tall cans of Pabst bought at the deli next door. In the end, Jones has to kick everyone out around 4. He stays in bed for the next two days, dreaming of a real kitchen, a living room, “and a bedroom with a door.”

the family subotnick, inertia, meaninglessness

January, 2006. profile.

On the wall to the left of Jacob Subotnick’s bedroom door are three-foot letters spelling out “BEER” in green spray paint. Red plastic cups and Stella Artois bottles are strewn about the living room on the coffee table and folding TV trays in front of a television blaring an old episode of Law and Order. There are bits of toilet paper on the floor. Jacob shares the Bushwick loft with three other NYU students, one of whom asks if Jacob would like him to turn off the TV. Jacob says it doesn’t matter.
He moved out to Bushwick because it’s cheaper, and because he put off finding an apartment until the last minute, when no more East Village leases were to be had. “I certainly like it more out here. To me it somehow fees like the country, even though I live amidst a bunch of warehouses and factories,” he says over the melodic clink-clunk-clunk-clink of the metal factory across the street. He takes a green disposable lighter and a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his pocket and places them on the table next to a Stella bottle containing a couple inches of cigarette butts and ash. Jacob is scruffy and barefoot, wearing a black T-shirt and dark jeans, looking rumpled and tired as if he just rolled out of bed at two in the afternoon, which doesn’t seem entirely unlikely. His speech is measured and he yawns frequently, sometimes taking off his glasses off to rub his eyes.
Jacob is a senior at NYU where he studies music production. “He has a definite talent in the medium,” says his friend Jesse Malmed. “I wonder sometimes if he will live up to his potential.” But Jacob sees music less as his calling and more as a last resort. “It was the only logical way to go,” he says between drags from his cigarette. “The way that I got started was we just had all this extra equipment in our house so I could record all these bands in high school.”
Jacob was born in Santa Monica on September 2, 1984 to Joan La Barbara, a renowned singer, and Morton Subotnick, one of the premier composers of electronic music in the U.S. and a celebrated professor. When Jacob was six months old, the family moved to Pecos, a small town in New Mexico. As an only child, he accompanied his parents on their near-constant travels. “I would always go with them to all these bizarre places.” He pauses. “Well, not that bizarre, like Western Europe. But their music was certainly bizarre.” Morton Subotnick’s compositions are more soundscapes than traditional songs, and Joan La Barbara has worked with everyone from John Cage to Steve Reich.
They’re both bold-faced names in the New York City music world that Jacob is trying to maneuver through relatively unnoticed, which is nearly impossible when your dad teaches at your college, in your department. “The first like couple semesters, every music class I was in, they’d do the roll and be like, Oh, are you Mort’s kid?” He sighs. “But it doesn’t, like, bother me necessarily.” During the final for his ear training class, Jacob was singing off-key when the professor stopped him. “He was like, well, I trust that you actually can do this based on your parents. And I think I probably passed specifically because the guy had faith that I was actually capable of doing it even though I didn’t try.” I ask if he thinks he could’ve passed on his own merits if he had tried. He shrugs and lights another cigarette.
In recent years, the electronica movement in contemporary music has introduced Morton Subotnick to younger fans. He’s influenced popular bands from Radiohead to Animal Collective to Caribou, whose most recent album includes a track entitled “Subotnick.” “When I first moved out here one of the people who worked at the store across the street looked at my credit card and was like, Subotnick? Are you related to the one?” He laughs and shakes his head. “The majority of people who live in this area are like into that avant garde kind of stuff,” he says. There have been a few “bizarre” low-fi electronica concerts in Bushwick that Jacob’s friends and neighbors went to, but he doesn’t like the music.
Jacob’s friend Ari Phillips realized just what kind of music Jacob prefers when they were driving from New York to New Mexico two summers ago along the southern route. “I had brought my entire CD collection for the road trip and all Jacob wanted to listen to was pop-country radio stations,” Ari says. “I memorized ‘Live Like You Were Dying’ by Tim McGraw.”
When I ask Jacob if he likes his father’s music, he says, “No,” then quickly backpedals, laughing. “I mean, I don’t dislike it, but I’m certainly not actively interested in it.” Nor is he interested in composing music at all, preferring to collaborate with others as a musician or producer. Like most of his friends in New Mexico, Jacob learned guitar and played in indie rock bands on and off throughout high school and college. His high school band was called “Jacob’s Room,” inspired by their choice of practice space – and the poster in the room for the avant garde opera of the same name that Jacob’s parents premiered in 1985.
So what does his father think about his son doing music? “He’s never really said much about it,” Jacob says, flipping the lighter between his fingers. “He does keep saying it would be neat if there was a lawyer in the family.”
In September, Jacob had his first experience being paid to record and produce in a professional studio when a musician friend flew him out to San Francisco. “The final day we decided to try to do like a rough mix of everything. We went from noon ‘til eight in the morning the next day. From what I hear from my parents you just have days that are like 24 hours straight. Which is somehow appealing to me,” he says. “I just enjoy recording. But as far as like a job it’s pretty sweet. Like, everything is so laid back.” At that, he drops the lighter under the table and groans, and, with what seems an infinite amount of energy, leans down, grabs it and places it on the far corner of the table.
Aside from recording marathons, Jacob’s life is relatively laid back and sweet itself. When I ask what a typical day is like for him, his eyes glaze over and he taps his cheek with his finger. “I don’t know if there is a typical day…” he trails off. “I just sort of do whatever seems to happen.”

Art and Susan Zuckerman feel their way around the dark corners of the Gould Memorial Library. As the building’s historical directors, the Zuckermans know most of what there is to know about the library, but there’s always room for surprises. “It’s kind of like a treasure hunt coming up here,” Art says, walking past the once-grand stacks now filled with discarded newspapers and Gatorade bottles instead of books. He points out where the Tiffany glass windows have been broken, where the pigeons roosted, and where a glass tile is missing in the floor, leaving a square foot gap. “Watch out for that,” he says, indicating the hole. “That’s,” he pauses, “pretty unusual.” But not entirely.
From its cracked tiles to exposed wires, flaking paint to graffiti, the Gould Memorial Library has come a long way since the 1890s, when it was designed by renowned architect Stanford White to resemble the Pantheon in Rome. The Gould was the main library at New York University’s Bronx campus until the campus was sold to the city university in 1973. The library was made a historical landmark in 1981, but has been mostly out of use for several years.

But that could soon change. In 2004, Bronx Community College won a $228,000 Campus Heritage Grant from the Getty Foundation to develop a plan to rehabilitate the Gould and its surrounding complex of buildings, including the Hall of Fame, a collonade filled with bronze busts of “great Americans,” the first of its kind in the country.

But as the planning stage comes to a close, the college is faced with the blessing and burden of the grant and the library: where will it get the money necessary to rehabilitate the building? And if they rebuild it, will anyone come? Or care?
“We asked 80 local history teachers if they knew about it. One knew,” said Art Zuckerman, shaking his head. “If this place was in Manhattan, it would be a mob scene. I don’t think there’s anything else like it in New York.”

“I think it’s Stanford White’s best work,” said Mark Anderson, an architect and the director of historic preservation at Facade Maintenance Design, which fixed some problems at the Gould in the mid 1990s. “Just making it a landmark doesn’t save it. It needs to give back to the college and community too, so they will mutually benefit from its existence.”

But as for the issue of funding, Anderson was less than optimistic. “The price of the work goes up exponentially the longer maintenance items are deferred,” he said. “It’s such a great building. They’re constantly, constantly trying to get funding. But I really don’t know.”

Some officials at the college were reluctant to speculate about what the next step will be. “We’re still figuring that out, it’s inconclusive so far. But if you ask me, I think it will take a lot,” said one official who asked not to be named.

“It would take millions and millions,” said Susan. “Slowly and surely, we’ve gotten some funding. But it’ll take a long time. And, really, we’re not sure it’ll come from anywhere.”

“I can’t believe the potential in this place,” said Art Zuckerman. “I think it’s all a matter of budget.”

The first things to be fixed at the Gould would be the elevator, to make the building handicap-accessible, and to build another exit, as only 75 people can currently be in the building at one time according to safety codes.

“Those are the major things. If they could get that done, maybe they could have fundraising events. It could be self-sustaining,” Susan said.

For now the school is looking toward more unusual sources of income, starting with the film industry. Two months ago, Robert De Niro and Angelina Jolie shot parts of the upcoming film “The Good Shepard” at the library, and other films such as “Sophie’s Choice,” “Kinsey,” and “A Beautiful Mind” have also been shot at the Gould. The Zuckermans are now seeking out photographers who might use the library for photo shoots, and cable networks such as the History and Learning Channel to donate.

“We’re going to start up the Friends of the Library again, and ask NYU alumni,” said Susan.

“They cannot let this place go,” Art added. “Everyone can see the potential value of this building. Every person who comes in reacts the same way: ‘Oh my god,’ they say.”

dan piraro, clinton hill, chocolate

November, 2005. profile.

Last week was San Francisco, next is Los Angeles, but today, Sunday, syndicated cartoonist Dan Piraro is at home in Brooklyn, and that means football: the Dallas Cowboys versus the New York Giants.
“I’m watching this in hopes that the Dallas Cowboys lose,” he says with a wry smile. “I always root against any Texas team for any reason.”
Dan’s deadline is Monday, so he spends Sunday watching the game while drawing all of the week’s Bizarro cartoons, sitting on the couch with his stocking feet on the wood coffee table, gaze alternating between the television and the cardboard and cartoon balanced on a pillow in his lap. He has short, dark hair, with sideburns that flare out below his earlobes and tiny silver hoop earrings. Black Clark Kent glasses balance on a large nose. A tiny burst of facial hair about an inch long sprouts out from under his bottom lip, and he twirls it and narrows his eyes when he’s anxious or concentrating or both.
“I get done a lot faster if I just listen to music and don’t watch TV. But…” he looks back at the television. When he misses a good play, there’s a minor battle with the remote control before he finagles the TiVo into replaying the segment. The TiVo console stands on its side next to the television and the hundreds of compact discs set in tall, precarious towers. The living room is bright and overwhelming, with lime green walls and chairs carved from hunks of wood, throw pillows shaped like pigeons and gorillas, and nearly every useable surface occupied by a mess of papers, a little sculpture or a stack of hardcover comic books.
“How cool would it be to send all those rednecks home angry.” It’s not a question. Dan’s bitterness toward Texas is born from a combination of liberal politics and personal experience: he lived in Dallas for 22 years, pining for a move but feeling obligated to stay and support his family, until he discovered that his wife was cheating on him. After they divorced, he moved to New York, a city he’d often fantasized about since childhood.
When he’s drawing, Dan keeps the sound down on the TV to avoid the commentators. He mimics their accents and mocks the players’ names, often laughing at these imitations, a high-pitched giggle that makes him seem much younger than 47. He pencils each panel on letter-sized paper, then inks over the lines, finishing the bulk of the week’s work in a few hours, mostly while watching football. Drawing has always been Dan’s favorite thing to do, but he credits his sense of humor for getting him out of commercial illustration and into cartooning. “I was always class clown. Occasionally I would get in trouble for it, but I usually knew when to stop, where to draw the line.”
Nearly twenty years after it first appeared in print, Bizarro is syndicated by King Features and is printed in over 250 newspapers, and Dan has published ten different collections of the cartoon. Despite his success, or perhaps because of it, he is acutely aware of how he measures up to other cartoonists, many of whom outsource some work to save time. Dan, however, likes to maintain complete creative control. “Reason #423 of why I am not rich and probably never will be. Reason #422 is I’m a lousy businessman and I hate marketing. #421, I can’t keep my mouth shut about the things I believe.” Dan, an animal-rights activist and vegan, started criticizing animal cruelty in Bizarro only a few years ago, but most of his more partisan political commentaries didn’t appear until before the election last fall. Those cartoons are often the targets of fiery hate mail, some of which he uses in his stand-up comedy routines. He reads them aloud in an impassioned performance for me and the television. The first letter rambles about Dan’s liberal leanings and atheist tendencies before a warning: when Jesus returns for the last judgment, “you will be sorry.” Dan’s response: “When Santa Claus returns and feeds conservatives to his magic reindeer, you’ll be sorry.” Another letter tells him that Bizarro is not his political pulpit.
“There’s always the people who say I am not Doonesbury,’” he says, and launches into a sneering imitation of his critics. “‘Does the first amendment give you the right to desecrate other people’s beliefs? Yes, yes it does. That’s exactly what it means!” He sighs. “This country’s so screwed up.”
Dan muses about finishing his Bizarro run and devoting more time to “other projects,” presumably more cross-country jaunts and oil painting. “I’ve always planned to retire and produce paintings and drawings and have gallery representation and sell some work,” he says. “I think I’ll be remembered as one of the better gag cartoonists of the late 20th century.” He giggles, then spins around and opens a drawer on a brushed metal cabinet, takes out a dark chocolate candy bar and breaks off a small chunk. “I eat tiny amounts all day. It’s good for you.” He pops the piece in his mouth. I mention the mood-enhancing qualities of chocolate and he laughs. “I need all the mood-enhancing I can get.”