Hey Sars,

Now that you’ve opened the floodgates for ATR messages, I have one that I hope you’ll put out there.It involves LP furniture.

Yeah, I’m that old.I have about 300 LPs.When I was younger, they were in milk crates and then in W. 4th Street Bazaar plastic cubes and then for a little while in custom-built bookcases (I hated leaving that apartment), and then in a really cheesy and inappropriate piece of furniture that was probably intended as a computer table and that didn’t provide any support.Now I’m a grown-up in a grown-up apartment (at last!) and my LPs are still in the moving boxes in my dining room.

In the good old days, stores sold LP furniture — there were dividers every 8 inches or so in order to keep the albums standing and not cause stress on the rest of your collection.But those days are gone.

I’ve tried Craigslist, I’ve tried Froogle (industrial metal shelving intended for DJs), I’ve tried Gothic Cabinet Craft (they have something, but it’s hideous and only holds about 50 records while providing room for stereo equipment–so I’d need a bunch of them and they would cause me to have to figure out what to put in the cabinet-y part.The Door Store used to sell a great piece of furniture made of 8 13″-square cubes, but they’ve discontinued it (I saw it at a friend’s house where she used it to store her LPs…sigh).

If anyone has any notions for some stylish furniture — from stores in the NY area or online — that has potential for holding LPs, I would be forever in his or her debt.I would say that I would offer my firstborn but, as I mentioned, I’m pretty old and that ship has sailed.

Thanks for any advice,
Still Loves Her Vinyl

Dear Vinyl,

I take it you don’t own your current place; if you do, I would strongly suggest meeting with some contractors or carpenters and soliciting bids for built-ins (which, the minute I am able, is exactly what I’ll do for bookcases).

Beyond that, I’d say check West Elm, or the site that used to be holdeverything.com, to see if anything there looks workable.

Readers: hit it.Email subject line: “LP furniture.”

You and your readers kick some serious ass in the finding of obscure things.
This one is a little odd.

A few weeks ago I was reminded of a poem I read maybe a seven or ten years
ago. It wasn’t a big deal, as I thought I still had the book lying around the
disorganized chaos that are my bookshelves. …It’s gone. I have Googled and
Amazoned and Yahooed and shaken my fist at the sky. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I first read it in the’90s. I think it opened up with a few short lines
form an obituary about a woman who was accidentally struck by lightning in
an open field and died. Then the main body of the poem was about how it she
planed it as a deliberate suicide. Morbid, I know. I think it was written by
a woman.

I think it was in a collected book of poems, I’m pretty sure the collection
included Cynthia Macdonald’s “Stained Glass Woman.”I thought it was maybe
one of the Best American Poetry series form the ’90s but I’ve already checked
their indexes and no bells were rung.

It’s not so much that I am passionately in love with the poem or anything,
it’s just the fact I can’t find the damn thing that’s irritating me so much.
I hope you or your multitudes can help me out.

Please help me before I put on a black beret and start using bad french
accent.

M

Dear M,

I have absolutely no idea.

Readers, any ideas?Email subject line: “poem.”

Hi Sars,

I’m hoping you and/or the readers can help me out with this. I’ve
recently moved to a bicycle-friendly city and decided to buy a bike
after being bikeless for ten years or so. The question involves helmet
hair: is there any way to prevent it, or at least to remedy it quickly?

I have long, extremely fine hair that doesn’t have a lot of volume as it
is. I usually just leave it down because it looks better that way on me.
It’s also really good at keeping any kinks it may encounter (i.e., if I
put my hair in a ponytail in the morning for an hour, the kink is still
easily visible when I go to bed at night). Ordinarily, the only way to
give my hair some lift after it’s been flattened (either by having been
pulled back in any way or by having spent time under a helmet) is to wet
and dry it again. I’m really hoping to use my bike for regular commuting
to school, so wetting and drying after arriving isn’t really an option.
Most of my searching so far has only yielded pearls of wisdom such as,
“Helmet hair is nothing compared to a head injury!” I understand that
helmet hair is not the end of the world in the grand scheme of things,
and I do plan on wearing a helmet when biking, but isn’t there any way
that safety and good hair can co-exist? Please help!

Biker Chick

Dear Biker,

I have two suggestions, which may or may not work for you.First, keep some Aqua Net in your desk at work.When you arrive, flip your head over, spritz some AN around, and brush/comb it out straight.The Super Max Hold is not fucking around, and even if your hair has some helmet “clamp,” the hairspray should get rid of it.

The second is to find a semi-up-do that either you put in first, pre-helmet, or can do afterwards, at work.You could do some chunky tight French braids along your scalp and gather the rest of your hair into a ponytail in back, a la Heidi Klum on this season of Project Runway; that should resist the helmet pretty well and not require much fussing after the helmet is off.Or you could do a style like that, or some twists up and away from your face, after you get to work; just get a sheet full of those Scunci mini-clips and keep them in your desk.

Readers, help a sister out.Email subject line: “helmet hair.”

[9/15/06]

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