The Transplant Draft is an interview series with the newest team picks in the greater Bushwick, Ridgewood, and Williamsburg area. Read the last one here.
I wasn’t exactly having a fun time here, sitting on my couch and watching the Vikings take belt to ass last week. Wasn’t having a fun time before that, either, after a mirage win against the L**ns before another handful of Ls. And before that, Carson Wentz getting nailed to a cross for nothing. Or before that inside all of North Brooklyn’s finest Getty Images dive bars. So many coarse notions. Get me to Gowanus, get me a real team to believe in.
Football’s an idea, not a place. I root for a team from a city I’ve only visited once, 1,200 miles away from my incoming 9% rent increase offset by my 1% raise offset by 2.9% YoY inflation offset by every cafe these days having a loyalty program—integrated into my Apple Wallet with push email notifications—that I’m not leveraging. There’s so much potential!
When you choose distant things, you obliterate what home is. So I’ll keep going to Key Food and claiming I don’t mind not having a T Joe’s, and I’ll stay watching my dogass team (worse than dogshit: this is the shit that keeps on giving), feeling something like a local: the Giants are past their glory days and currently failing to find a future that doesn’t involve laundering Jameis Winston into some hokey sprite that only sits on his hands. And the Jets—anyway, around here you can root for Buffalo. I’ll stay where I’m at because suffering feels so much more glamorous here.
Amid our complaints, are we secretly rooting for somewhere else? 35 is when it gets too sad to have roommates. That’s when Philly will seem quaint, and not like a city with its entrails hanging out like that part of Where the Red Fern Grows that made us all cry a lot. That’s when I’ll start say, “Go Birds,” as if the eagle were the only fucking bird mascot to’ve ever existed.
Maybe it’s better to stay inside with the TV off. That’s how I first saw Giliann—Ridgewood’s #1 2023 draft pick (I’m keeping count, starting now). Back then, I liked her tweets only because I wish I’d thought of them first, even after she had the gall to ratio me when I was at my most correct. Then one day, she retired her account and moved on to a different one.
Maybe Gowanus won’t fix me. Maybe Ridgewood will, so I sat down with Giliann at the newest Variety Coffee location to discuss what’s been going before, since and around her rebirth.
Going in, I felt that, with J.J. McCarthy as the starter again, even the depleted Commanders would do to the Vikings what happened to the city of Philadelphia. Something inside Minneapolis would permanently break. I imagine that happening in North Brooklyn and Ridgewood, though rent prices will still go up as it falls down into hell. Hopefully I die by trampling (run club blasting through the morning J train cars) before those days come.
Aaron Tomey: What’s Team Giliann’s mascot?
Giliann: [Motions to her sunglasses]: The Cynthia Rowleys. They’re my mom’s from the early 2000s. I thought I’ve lost them multiple times, and I crash out every single time.
AT: What’s your pocket presence like? What do you do when the pocket collapses?
G: Right now, I have wired headphones because I’m one of those [people]. I like them because they don’t die. [I show Giliann a drawing of a passing pocket.]
I would run off the field. I would run away.
AT: Walk me through your transfer history. How did you end up playing for Ridgewood? What kind of contract did they offer you?
G: I was raised in Cleveland, then moved to DC for school. I stayed there for three years after [college]. A lot of people who go to school in DC do end up staying, and that was going to be me for a while. But by 2022, I didn’t know if I wanted to stay forever. DC is more spread out, and my friends were all over, so even making weeknight plans was especially hard. If I’d stayed in DC longer, I would probably need to have a car. My brother lives there, and he has a car. I hate driving, because I can’t text. It’s been almost a year since I’ve been behind the wheel, and I hope that keeps up.
I was looking for independent venues and fun bars, something unpretentious, a place that I could stay in for a while. I started flirting with moving to Philly. I’d go for weekends, stay with friends and work remote. It was fun. My friends in Philly are wonderful, but a lot of them ended up here, so I started coming here. I was able to see the landscape. I came a few more times over the summer to look for places. I met with two girls from Facebook. One’s been my roommate for two years. She was chatting with another girl, so we all combined. I’ve been in the same place with those girls this whole time.
AT: How was the team-building experience on Facebook?
G: I was specific about moving to certain neighborhoods. I listed East Williamsburg, Ridgewood, Bed-Stuy, and Crown Heights—to be close to where friends live. People kind of self-selected from there. Meeting people online is different in a roommate context because I can’t really think of another reason anyone uses Facebook anymore. Except for that—and Marketplace and Shrimp Jesus—there’s not really much use for it.
Everyone seemed pretty nice there. The other girl I chatted with, but didn’t live with, she and I’ve gone out for drinks a handful of times.
AT: Thoughts on Vikings’ run game vis-a-vis the P*ck*rs and L**ns?
G: Can I phone a friend? My dad would be all over this. [Giliann calls her father Danny, Grime Square’s official Midwest Analyst.
‘D: You know, the Vikings have the tools to compete. They just have real problems at quarterback. And I don’t know for how much longer they’re gonna let J. J. McCarthy put them all through it. His mechanics are terrible. He can’t find the open receiver. Last week’s experiment [with Max Brosmer] was a complete disaster. And Darnold had a great season [last year]. He fell flat in the two Detroit games, and then they cut him loose? Terrible. Terrible. Now they’re paying for it. No difference with the Cleveland Browns. They can’t get a quarterback to save their lives either.’ We thank Danny for the analysis.]
AT: Where do you usually hold practice?
G: McCarren Park is the go-to because it’s the biggest park near where everyone lives. I wouldn’t say [Grover Cleveland] is a real park, but it does have a city view. TV Eye is one of my favorite bars. The shows there are so fun.
AT: I’m reading Renata Adler’s Speedboat right now and I’m amazed by the narrator’s roster: tight ends [artists], diva wide receivers [actors], cornerbacks [journalists], and journeymen QBs [diplomats]. That kind of talent seems hard to find these days. What’s the Ridgewood equivalent?
G: Something I love about my friends is we all have normal jobs. I like having a 9-to-5. I find routine really grounding. Especially here, it’s easy to say yes to everything and overexert yourself. It’s nice that others help put those limits up for me.
Two of my friends work in nonprofits—one in international development, the other in queer performing arts in the Bronx. Another has an admin job in the city. Another is a graphic designer. There’s also the journalist/musician contingent that I find myself with, but they’re only employed to varying degrees. There definitely is the, like, unemployed, nepo baby/creative director contingent, who I don’t really know well on purpose.
AT: What positions are sorely needed in Ridgewood?
G: Bagels. And I commented once [on r/ridgewood] when someone posted about what they wanna see in the neighborhood. I think I said bagels or Korean food. There’s not that much Korean food here.
AT: How has player turnover affected you?
G: It took about a year for me to find my crew, but now that I have, I’m really happy. It took time for me to figure out what I want out of the people I hang out with. I like having people to, like, to do things with during the week. Like, see a movie. Or, the other night, one of my friends came over and we went to Il Gigante for tiramisu.
AT: Assume you have Kwesi and KOC’s ears. Would you leverage Justin Jefferson as capital for a blockbuster QB trade, given that Jordan Addison and Jalen Nailor are also great wide receivers?
G: I’ve been thinking about that a lot, you know? I would do what’s best for the team. Whatever that means. We trade Justin Jefferson.
AT: What’s a missed foul call you’ve seen on the field?
G: I think it’s people who don’t really have a life outside themselves. It’s really easy to get caught up in internet culture—and personas—and treat that as its own scene. I feel very grounded and fulfilled by my life offline. I grew up on the internet—Vampire Weekend and Arctic Monkeys tumblr—and never really took time to pause and think if I really wanted this to become a part of my life. But at this point, I’ve gotten what I needed out of it. I have a great group of friends. I am always busy doing things I like. And I want to lean into that instead of my phone.
AT: What’re the differences in playing styles between Ridgewood and Bushwick?
G: I like that Ridgewood has more adults. It’s less transient. I see a lot of young families, which is a really good sign that people want to stay in a place they can afford. I’m really trying to find balance. I enjoy staying busy and going out, but I also don’t—Bushwick has a lot of 22 year olds. I love being more on the Queens side, with access to buses that go throughout Queens, like the Q58 to Flushing. Elmhurst is on that line, too.
Ridgewood was what I was going for. I would’ve loved Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights, but I was pretty set on Ridgewood because I’d gotten a vibe already through my friends and the internet, which is never fully accurate, but it gave me a top line idea of what I was getting into. Ridgewood feels like the nexus of everything I’m looking for. And I really hope it stays that way.
AT: Say you’re on r/ridgewood, and you see someone complaining about a person that didn’t break down and bag their cardboard. That person matches your exact description. What do you do?
G: I lurk, ignore it and wait for it to blow over.
AT: Have you ever zoned out and missed a play?
G: All the time. I recently downloaded this app Opal. You can configure it to block certain websites for certain times. Like, I have a block on Twitter and Instagram when I’m at work. My screentime used to be eight hours a day. Now it’s down to five or six, which I’m very proud of.
I block websites when I’m at dinner, so I’m more present with friends, or when I’m trying to go to bed, so I can fall asleep and not just scroll. I’m definitely trying to be a little more intentional with my phone. At least Pinterest feels a little more nourishing. You just look. I mean, it’s still basic consumption, but at least it feels more stimulating than [other] social media.
AT: How do you interact with your fanbase? How does one convert reply guys into paypigs?
G: It’s more of a character. It feels like acting, but I think both parties know that it’s acting too. One fan paid for my dinner last night. He seems nice. But I’ve stopped interacting with a lot of them and it’s been so much nicer. Being a teenager on the Internet in 2013 exposed me to a lot of things that I probably shouldn’t have seen. It was a lot of, like, eating disorder stuff. I didn’t suffer as badly as some.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve met most of the girls that I was Internet friends with, like at local shows and Pitchfork Festival [in Chicago]. Since we’re all adults now, it’s such a fun full circle moment.
AT: When will the Vikings return to the NFC Championship?
G: I can’t tell you that. I already used my phone a friend.
OUTRO:
Though aligned with North Brooklyn, Giliann frames Ridgewood as the ideal compromise between the city life and suburban qualities of family and community. “A lot of the establishments [in Ridgewood] kind of serve a purpose,” she says.
It starts with cheap rent, then cafes and bars that get pushback from the media elite and new locals like Giliann, who told me “People are really sick of wine bars. I think people like the existing pool and don’t want more of the same.”
Then the fancy amenities: dog groomers and yoga studios. It’s at this point when a sense of loss arrives, when locals feel “a profound sense of alienation” and the recent draft picks replace loss with a sense of nostalgia. “I always joke that I wish I was a man in his thirties during LCD Soundsystem’” says Giliann, “to come up in Obama’s first term.”
I still have trouble imagining the third step, probably because that’s where we’re already at. I see commissioned graffiti in daytime and hideous exterior lighting on newbuilds at night. I regularly seethe in front of horizontally-planked fences, behind which are dinner parties where people say, “Wow, Sabra hummus again!”
What comes next must be the end. Giliann thinks of Long Island City as “functionally Manhattan,” and, “Williamsburg as, like, post-gentrification, because I think for so long, it was the platonic ideal of hipsters—like, the finger mustache.”
Some neighborhoods figure out a way to slow the process. Giliann says: “People in Ridgewood are very defensive. I feel like in Bushwick, they don’t really give a fuck. They’ll open any kind of venue, you know, next to a train station. They don’t care.” For now, Ridgewood is trying to defend itself against gentrification’s ugliest acts.
“I hope Ridgewood doesn’t get the Williamsburg treatment and I feel like what it has right now is enough. Like, enough wine bars, enough small plates. I think if a new business were to take root, it would have to be something visibly different…I hope people don’t start selling that authenticity.”
She’s right about Ridgewood, at least in how it lacks some of the gauche imports that Bushwick’s known for. I hope it lasts.
The next day, I watch McCarthy and the rest of the team play like they were Super Bowl ready. Daniels was injured again. Ertz was crying at his career-ending injury. Marcus Marioa performed dad duty for grown men in a slaughterhouse where my team finally held the cleavers. Finally, some suffering other than my own to enjoy. Danny, Giliann and I were all so wrong.
I buy a ticket to see the Vikings play the Giants, it’s the Sunday before Christmas. I try to feel about the Vikings the way Giliann feels about Ridgewood: comfort, resilient hope. I can’t even imagine disappointment at this point.
Aaron Tomey is from Georgia, lived in St. Louis, and now lives in Brooklyn. His essays have previously appeared in Hobart, Bushwick Burner Phone, and Apocalypse Confidential. He can also be found on Twitter: @ecstatic_donut.
Photos taken by Andrew Karpan.
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