Fran Magazine, Issue #58

Catching up with Fran of Fran Magazine issue

Thank you for reading Fran Magazine, a weekly blog slash magazine slash confessional slash index of what I am up to. This issue is for paid subscribers because it is not about the zeitgeist; instead it is just about “whatever.” That said, upgrading your subscription gets you access to the Sunday Dispatch long with occasion locked posts, so why wait to upgrade?

Vibe check

It was sunny yesterday when I left to go teach, and then sometime over the course of the three hours I was in Union Square, there was a sweep of cloud coverage and the wind picked up. I walked an (responsibly, professionally, appropriately for teaching) under-dressed eight blocks back to the subway where I commuted over to the co-working space. I set up my laptop surrounded by people I didn’t know, wrote half a movie review, then got annoyed to be out of my house where all my books are and left. It was cloudy and windy and I was still under-dressed when I commuted back home. A few blocks away from the apartment, there was a Mr. Softee truck parked on my side of the street with a girl yelling on the phone trying to get the order of what I could only assume was a younger friend or smaller sibling who did not understand there was no option for “just green sprinkles.” I sympathize. It was still too cold, but I got my cone (“just brown sprinkles”) and ate it walking the rest of the way home, where I thought I might read for a few hours to perk up my brain and then go back to work. I didn’t: I fell asleep, hit snooze four times, and by the time I woke up, it was sunny again.

Back in the late summer of 2020, when everything mattered slightly more for good reason, we had a regular Mr. Softee guy who would stop on the corner across from our house. Sydney and I would dip out, and usually Spencer came too — the little jingle is hard to ignore when you live on an otherwise quiet street — and we’d wait in line behind the four kids who lived kitty-corner from us and then talk with the vaguely Eastern European man inside the truck who, like a few of us, was also a teacher biding time on his summers off. Since then, it has been considered Fran Magazine company policy™ to stop for a Mr. Softee cone if the truck is “right there,” a real “you know it when you see it,” because come June it’ll always be right there and spending four bucks is kind of the same as spending six bucks on a cold brew (wonderful, but unsustainable, though at least you eat the cone at the end of the treat).