Deboin’s edit of Burbank’s ‘Sorry I Like You’. High school freshman year (2019ish), I got recommended for this video by the YouTube algorithm and was immediately spellbound. While I’m not really a hardcore anime fan, the way the music and visuals were stitched together: the wavering brush, the raindrops, the way shadows shift as you walk, the indirect gazes: searching for that one fragment just beyond your reach, the gleam of the railtops, the momentum of your footfalls, the downwards force of the train, the city pigeons curving by the skyline, and the tangible connection/camaraderie across time, across physical distance: laughing, slogging, charging forth: arms open wide or ready to spar, sitting in a cheap rooming house and watching another’s eyes flicker, return from behind a chipped teapot—sums up everything I hope the world within the Asphalt, Steel and Stories canon encapsulates.

Additional tunes of note:

A Traveling Wilburys track for that classic, hoboesque vibe.
Tony, Toni, Tone's Waiting For You for that 1990s road trip feel.

It's been such a long road, but I'm glad we've have arrived into another jungle just in time for nightfall. The world now has a proper hub! Thank you so much to meltedbee for the critique of CSS/formatting before sending it out, and to my friend A.A, also known as D. Vega for graciously pouring his time to create such gorgeous pieces of art for the page.

Photo assets: (1) Seamless graffiti texture, lightened and further made seamless, (2) Compass rose header logo, made gold, (3) Header image, upscaled, brightened and more-pressing image blemishes smoothed over.

The torn page CSS bit is from AnActualCrow's author page.