A Flâneur in South Jersey

A summer of Walter Benjamin, karaoke, and obscure Iberian varieties.

I swear, I started off my summer with serious intellectual ambitions. I intended to hole up on a dry island with no bars and read big books. But restlessness, the wanderlust gene, or whatever impulse always drives people like me to travel quickly kicked in. And so I went wandering.

I would find myself at, say, a South Jersey local karaoke night, drinking root beer liqueur with two women who just finishing singing the dad-rock classic “Lips of an Angel.” Or sipping Surfsides, chatting with a photographer whom people hire to take (rather graphic) photos of their children’s births, or with someone who works as a cheerleading coach, or with a former quarterback who may need to go to rehab. Or taking green tea shots with people coming home from a Phillies game or heading out to a rave, including an unemployed pastry chef who hit me up a few weeks later for Fall Out Boy tickets.

Had I spent my summer in Paris, we might have called me a flâneur, the ambivalent, idling, urban explorer, the keen observer of people, a connoisseur of human behavior. But I was in South Jersey, and we don’t use French words like that.

For my beach reading, I intended to plow through the 900 or so pages of Walter Benjamin’s ode to the flâneur, The Arcades Project. Many believe that Benjamin’s unfinished masterwork might have been one of the great texts of 20th century cultural criticism. But it was never completed due to Benjamin’s suicide on the French-Spanish border in 1940 as he fled the Nazis.

What we have instead are Benjamin’s enormous collection of writings, notes, and fragments, meditations on Paris’ 19th century covered arcades (the predecessor of malls), the rise of bourgeoisie, and the emergence of modern, commercial city life. Initially begun in 1927, Benjamin saw The Arcades Project as a small article he would finish within a few weeks.

Thirteen years, and hundreds of pages, later…well, even in the absence of Nazis, any writer (ahem) who’s been seized by an idea they can’t wrap their hands or head around, who’s been haunted for years by their unfinished masterpiece, can empathize with Benjamin. As old T.S. Eliot says in The Waste Land: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”

The Arcades Project is an incredibly dense, and quite possibly insane, text. Benjamin spends hundreds of pages on the milieu of the flâneur: that ambivalent figure of affluence and modernity, the “alientated man” detached from society with no other purpose than to be an observer of contemporary life.

“The flâneur plays the role of scout in the marketplace. As such, he is also the explorer of the crowd. Within the man who abandons himself to it, the crowd inspires a sort of drunkenness, one accompanied by very specific illusions.”

My favorite fragment in The Arcades Project is this note: “In 1839 it was considered elegant to take a tortoise out walking. This gives us an idea of the tempo of flânerie in the arcades.”

For Benjamin, ever the Marxist critic, the flâneur is merely a tool of bourgeois capitalism, a “spy for the capitalists.” “In the person of the flâneur,” he writes, “the intelligentsia becomes acquainted with the marketplace. It surrenders itself to the market, thinking merely to look around; but in fact it is already seeking a buyer.” So many years later, the arcades have been replaced by social media, and the flâneur supplanted by the influencer.

It’s when I drift into my own flâneur periods that I know I need to get back to serious work. I love Benjamin, but I find him a tragic figure. He once wrote, “I would like to write something that comes straight out of things like wine from grapes.” I believe Benjamin wrote that while he was high on hashish, so perhaps I misunderstand him, but I want to do the same.

In any case, as I get back to the work, my first impulse is to do whatever is the opposite of being an influencer. Which means, of course, geekily focusing on obscure grape varieties. I’ve tried some fascinating wines from Spain and Portugal this summer.

You may or may not have heard of grapes such as baga, caíño, merseguera, or viosinho, but I believe you’ll be seeing more native Iberian varieties in the near future—future being the key word. Right now, I’m not gonna lie, these wines are hard to find. I’ve linked to their importers sites to help

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Moraima Caíño 2017

Rias Baixas is mostly known for albariño, but I’ve been seeing more and more delicious reds made from the local caíño grape. This is a textbook example of Spain’s so-called “Atlantic” red. I love the bright red fruit and layers of pepper that’s so drinkable and pairs great with food. I especially loved the 2014, which also suggests caíño’s ageability. Distributed by Elevation Wine Partners.

D. Graça Viosinho Douro Reserva 2021

We are living in a time of amazing Portuguese wines. Viosinho is a new-to-me white grape, and this is a thrilling wine full of tension—chewy, pithy, salty, balanced by aromas and flavors of gorgeous ripe stone fruit. In a few weeks, this will be available directly from Nossa Imports.

Quinta da Confeiteira ‘Oxalá' Calcario Reserva 2020

Oxalá means “I hope so” in Portuguese slang—I really hope to find this white more widely in the U.S. A field blend of arinto, antão vaz, and roupeiro, it’s flinty, smokey, with rich, ripe fruit. In a few weeks, this will be available directly from Nossa Imports.

Giz by Luis Gomes

I also really like the Portuguese portfolio of Grossberg/Kopman Selections. One of my favorites of the summer is this sparkling wine, from Bairrada, made from the baga grape (which by the way, ahem, I predicted would have success back in Godforsaken Grapes). Pronounced “jhEEz” (thank god), this has a gorgeous floral nose, tart and fruity, with great acidity, with the underlying heft and meatiness of baga.

Baldovar 923 Rascaña 2020

This blend of old-vine 70% merseguera and 30% macabeu is an orange wine from the lesser-known Valencia DO, grown at 1000 meters above sea level. One of the most enjoyable skin-contact wines I’ve tasted lately, with great acidity balanced by a surprising creaminess. Pour this for the orange-wine skeptic in your life.