Why Scowl, Nu?

Scowl (?&#41, v. i.
[imp. & p. p. Scowled (?) p. pr. & vb. n. Scowling.]

1. To wrinkle the brows, as in frowning or displeasure; to put on a frowning look; to look sour, sullen, severe, or angry.
"She scowled and frowned with froward countenance." Spenser.

2. Hence, to look gloomy, dark, or threatening; to lower.
"The scowling heavens." Thomson.

Nu?, i.
[Yiddish slang]

Loosely Translated: "Why don't you?"

Scowl, Nu?
A new website where it is OK to feel a little bitter about things. "So scowl, why don't you!"

Scowl, Nu? is a refuge for those of us who see both the dark cloud and the silver lining. This isn't a dark and gloomy place, but it is a place where you don't have to feel bad about feeling bitter.

Over the last year, we certainly had a lot to scowl about. We were living in one of the last few distinct neighborhoods in San Francisco… the Lower Haight. When we first moved to the Lower Haight in 1994, it was a unique little neighborhood filled with neighborhood bars and shops. By the time we started up Scowl, Nu? in June 1998, the place was becoming a yuppie slum.

By the time we left, the neighborhood was on the verge of becoming like every other homogeneous neighborhood in San Francisco, filled with conglomerate-owned bars, condos and chain stores. Mom and pop restaurants were being replaced by chains like Pasta Pomodoro and World Wrapps.

Damnit if we didn't get out while the getting was good.

In May 1999, we relocated to our ancestral home of Hartford, Connecticut, after bouncing around the country for the last ten years. Our lives haven't changed that much since we left San Francisco: we're a block away from the best beer bar in the area, we've scoped out our favorite delivery restaurants, and we settled in a neighborhood with some character: The West End. In Hartford, the grocery stores are better, the highways are better, and life just seems a little bit nicer here. Heck, now we're living in a two bedroom apartment that costs less than our one-room San Francisco shoebox of a studio!

So pardon us if we tend wax idyllic about our new lives.

But regardless of our feelings about our new community, there will still be tons of things that get our goats (which reminds us of the Jamaican Restaurant with the We Deliver Goat on Wheels sign in Downtown Hartford&#41 and with the new redesign of the Scowl, Nu?, there will be more than enough things going on in our lives to write about.

Scowl is 100% non-fiction, completely autobiographical, personal, and updated regularly… so in that way, it is a journal. However, Scowl, Nu? is also an online publication. Though we are completely truthful in what we write on the site, we aren't completely open with you, our readers. This isn't the sort of site where you'll get our deepest, darkest secrets… or where we'll beat our breasts as we wail at the gods for the fate that they have dealt us. Sorry, we just don't know all of you that well… and what little of a private life we have is, well, private. Scowl, Nu? is our personal online publication that talks about that quirky thing called Our Life in Hartford.

Like we said on the first day that we started this site:

So, why do we call this Scowl, Nu?
Because sometimes there is nothing better to do in life than scowl.

So, come on, Scowl, why don't you?

— and
us@scowl.nu