Archive for the ‘new york life’ tag
Fuck You, New York Times Real Estate Section
I watched this happen ten years ago to my old neighborhood, Fort Greene. It’s the beginning of the end for the neighborhood. Now will come the weekends of people wandering the streets “getting a feel for the area” and then the one of the big realtors will swoop in and then comes the pricing escalation until there is no choice but to leave.. The formula these articles follow also nauseates me: “never thought I’d leave Manhattan, now I’ve got a kid, got so much more for our Million than we would have gotten in Park Slope,” feh.
I know I should think of myself as the leading edge of the encroaching buzzards of gentrification rather than as some one distinct from them. I’ve only lived here eight years after all. But I can’t escape the feeling that the I’m being chased from neighborhood to neighborhood by the Times.
Tags: anger, my neighborhood, new york life, Real Estate, The TimesRelated posts
Tearing up the plaza…
The plaza around work is going. and because of the new barrier wall, we only get glimpses of any attractive construction workers, not that I need such distractions in my life.
All my resolve about not running the air conditioner too much this year is vanishing in the face of the swampy solar onslaught. My apartment is a surprisingly efficient heat trap, leaving me gasping when I arrive home in the evening. I’m pretty sure that next year will be the time to upgrade the front unit, since I’ve had it for about five years and cleaning the filter has produced some improvement but not all that much.
I always say that I love steamy New York Summer Streets, but that’s the catch – I like it out on the streets where we can sit around drink Ballantine Ale and chat, not in my bed with me where I spend the evening wringing out my pillows and wishing that I had more layers of covers so that I could toss them off of me to get some relief.
Tags: daily photo, new york life, weatherRelated posts
Hug like you mean it…
Leather Pride Night last night and Folsom Street East today. It’s the one time of the year when I feel most like I did living in San Francisco: part of a community of affection. In the past few years, the number of people I’ve gotten to know around the New York scene is such that both of these events are like extended reunions. I get to see hot friends, have a little fun and at least this year, head out before I get too overwhelmed by the crowds.
Folsom East can’t really compare with the Folsom fair in SF, but that’s a blessing: That event has become so overwhelming I couldn’t take spending much time there. It doesn’t attract many gawkers or much trashy food vendors, and there’s a lot of gorgeous eyecandy walking around. Things felt a lot less pressured this year than they have in the past.I got in a lot of hug time and bit of cigar play.
Tags: daily photo, Folsom Street east, friends, kink, new york lifeRelated posts
We are embarrassed again…
Big drawing day yesterday, most of it accomplished while R, the savvy intern, was sitting at the computer scanning slides from decades ago. While I usually like solitude for working, I was surprised to see how much I was able to focus with the right person there. There was something comforting in knowing that a project was moving along without me having to do every little bit of it. Suddenly felt like a real artist. (and just a note to my pals here on LJ: I’m sure the drawings will be visible at some point, but they weren’t of the “self daily” cartoon variety)
After working for a bit, I went on into Manhattan to have a a chat and a chew with Ryan Roman at the Reggio. I took the above picture there and then put my camera away, which meant that I didn’t return the compliment of taking his picture as he did mine. A lapse of photo/blog courtesy, but it was an engrossing conversation.
I wandered up and crosstown and suddenly remembered that I still had money left on the gift certificate that I’d gotten for Christmas to New York Central Art Supply. I went crazy in the paint and dowel departments. So, sculptures on the way.
From there it was Union Square for a salad, and finally I gobbled a Salty Pimp from The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. I’ll admit it – I’m getting crushed out on the ice cream man. The evidence was all over my mustache and beard as I stood there with soft serve and chocolate dripping off of me.
Today I’ll be working at Leather Pride Night, doing the volunteer thing.
Tags: food, making art, new york life, shoppingRelated posts
It’s all fun ’til the mop breaks…
It’s been a big week for going out with friends, and reconnecting with the past. On Tuesday I saw Chris play, and while there ran into Sarah Schulman, Joe, who produced my project at BAM a dozen years ago, and CW, one of the members of my high school art nerd pack. Wednesday and Thursday I went to TES meetings (later I’ll post a picture of how good my boots look after Thursday’s class). Yesterday I went with Dominic to the Marina Abramović show at MoMA. I wasn’t as moved by it as I was by the Picasso print show that is also up there. But there, in the middle of the throng of oddly (or perhaps typically) behaving New Yorkers I saw Ben, one of my oldest friends, and one of the ringleaders of the aforementioned pack. As D remarked, he had a full shaman/priestly outfit thing going. Since it’s been a good 20 years since we last saw each other, I had to introduce myself. There was something fitting about hooking him up with Dom,given many of their overlapping interests.
After a bit more art viewing and a burger at the Parker Meridian, I scooted downtown for a quick interview with someone I’m going to be working with for a future class. And then I bought a new mop at the hardware store, so I could finish up the job I started on my kitchen floor. I should have checked the package to see if it said single use, because seconds after I got done with my first pass on the linoleum, the metal handle came apart in my hands. I’m strong, but not that strong. In fact, I’m not even strong. My privileged consumer heart is outraged by the shoddiness of the thing.
Today I’m off to see a group of young artists perform a kind of anti retrospective of Abramović works at 25CPW. I suppose I’ll be the one standing around with a broken mop in my hands.
Tags: art, cleaning, friends, irritation, new york life, performanceRelated posts
Just now at 42nd and 6th…
Here’s what the sign says:
“Crowd/Atmosphere Notice
This area is being used for filming the motion picture tentatively entitled “The Smurfs Movie”. If you enter this area it is possible you will appear recognizably in the film. Therefore it is understood and agreed that all persons entering the area thereby grant permission to Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. to photograph them and use their likenesses in connection with the exhibition and advertising of this film throughout the world.”
I didn’t see Papa Smurf anywhere in crowd of business suited extras.
Tags: daily photo, movies, new york lifeRelated posts
I left before the jump and Big Link Friday….
Jeff offered me a ticket to go and see the new Tosca at the Met. I caught most of the “controversial” moments that led to the opening night crowd booing the director, but was nodding out despite the lovely, stirring singing and so I made my exit at the second intermission. The production? There were definitely weird bits, but it was a pretty run of the mill “updating” in opera sense: sets were pared back and symbolic rather than illusionistic costumes the same, and there seemed to be little faith in a line of the libretto or the presence of a singer being able to tell us about the character or even hold our attention by just, you know, singing. So everyone has to act out their emotions which might be OK if it wasn’t also coupled with a strange directorial idea that people should wander back and forth across the stage at all times. Nobody seemed to have a direct idea of why they were going to a particular spot on stage or why they should stay there once they got there (unless they got killed. Then they stayed put). The parts that freaked out the Met’s audience? A guy embraces a statue of the virgin. The same guy has three chicks at his house and fondles them a bit (not even second base here). Pretty thin broth, if you ask me especially after seeing things like this, but maybe people are hungry for something to angry about.
One other little oddity about the performance: the singer playing (or the player singing?) Scarpia (statue groper), was suffering from a cold. Before the first curtain someone came out from the wings and asked us to indulge the iffy performance he anticipated giving. Then at the second curtain the same guy came out and announced that while the same person would be providing the action of the character, a second singer would be providing the voice. No understudies for the role? It was a system that actually worked fine, with the relief baritone discreetly placed stage right at a music stand. Of course this is what happens with puppet opera, which leads me to think, why not spare opera singers the trouble of having to trundle all over the stage, wrangle horses and jump off of parapets, swim in chilly polluted German Rivers, or descend into hell entirely? They could sit snugly in the pit with the rest of the orchestra, and stunt people could engage in all the arduous action, or have chimps do it. Everyone likes that, except Peta, and I’m pretty sure they already hate opera.
Instead of worrying about fictional villains engaging in mild petting, or elephants having to do eight shows weekly, maybe we should think back to a time when people were worried about Big jerks from outside of our solar system having non-consensual tentacle sex with Gaia. That’s a link to Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine, one of my other new loves. I’m finding that now that I check in with feedly so much, I’ve got a window onto all of these other amazing caches of drawing and design. I’m going to try to take some time on Fridays to point you towards them.
Like today I stumbled across this:
Which is part of a flickr set of book covers by Romek Marber. A great use of two color printing. I’m easily seduced by this sort of design. Here’s an article on his role in the redesign of Penguin’s line of paperbacks in the early Sixties.
Just typing the word “controversy” above made me unable to proceed further without listening to some early Prince. The world was better when everything was purple.
At some point the Term “Bag Lady” morphed into “Homeless Person” (“Bag Man” never had the same traction as a catchphrase, maybe because of its previous meaning as the guy who carries the loot in a heist. “Squeegee Man”, however, had the same sort of life) but if the term hadn’t fallen out of fashion the bag ladies’ union might have been interested in this invention. Insane unitasker? or ergonomic gift to the disadvantaged?
Speaking of street life: tomorrow is the Vendy Awards out in Flushing, but don’t bother going because they’re sold out. I’ll be interested to see if my current local fave The Biryani Cart can capture their second consecutive win (you can tell their energy is being put into street cooking and not web design).
Maybe you’re feeling angry and anxious and want to put hurt on somebody in general. Don’t do it! Most people don’t deserve a sock on the kisser. Except for the few that do, and I’ve found that looking over those few getting their just desserts is enough to tide me over until I calm down again so you might want to bookmark Hitler getting punched for your bit of vicarious violence.
And that’s enough for now.
Tags: big link friday, comics, daily photo, design, friends, links, music, new york in black and white, new york life, operaRelated posts
I remember certain postcards suddenly became valuable…
El Rey Gnomo is snoring on the bed. My sinuses seem to be pushing snot into each other with a cast iron plunger. George McCrae is singing “Rock Your Baby”, which is a “disco song” but well, I just don’t know.
The art season started last night. Thousands thronged the streets of Chelsea to go to the first openings.
After another year of frustration, wrangling and empty holes in the ground, America should designate this as the national day of thinking about unfinished business. Leave the hole unfilled, the wound open. Let it be the place where we can all come annually to throw our abandoned good intentions and unfinished projects. The repository of unhealed hurt. Of unredeemed loss.
I like to think people can bridge any division. I’m a good American like that. But there are things no monument or office tower can paper over. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Easy resolutions mean we can go back to not paying attention.
Here are two drawings I made today, without “thinking about it”:
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New York to Kinksters: Don’t Be It, Damn It…
At last night’s TES meeting someone who has been around New York’s leather life for a long time talked about the “scene getting bland” in the midst of reminiscing about the Hellfire Club. Their observation was not dissimilar to those made many times in my circles, and for the most part everyone seems content to let it pass as a truism and move on. I was in a crabby mood however, and lobbed the observation that the the blanding of the scene is no accident, and that from where I stood, there has been a systematic attempt regulate non-conformist sexuality into invisibility in New York over the last twenty years. And then this afternoon a friend drew my attention to this article.
In terms of this specific case I should be honest: I haven’t been the hugest admirer of the way the previous Leather Weekend Street Festivals have been managed, but this story neatly encapsulates the issues at stake in New York right now. We are faced with a city administration that will do anything to make sure that the preening self regard of international consumption continues without disruption. Having “improved” the meat packing district and Chelsea by making it a safe haven for the overpriced inanities of Stella McCartney, hoteliers can dictate the terms under which their guests can be protected from the horrid prospect of encountering the people who populated the area for decades previous. Shopping must continue smoothly. Elegance and ease above all. Their response to the possibility of public sexuality? “Get a room. Hopefully one of our over priced ones.”
Why is this a big deal? After all, people can fire up their laptops and pickup a willing play partner on Recon or Fetlife. In some ways more people know about Kink than ever before. We have Folsom Street East every year. Private parties still happen around New York, and let’s face it, it’s more fun if it’s a little dirty and underground, right?
It’s a big deal because of the utter quietism that greeted this rollback of opportunity. New York currently has one and a half leather bars in a city of some eight million. One SM club that periodically issues cries for help. And no one is talking about it in a larger sense. Gay and Lesbian political groups have abandoned any attempts to talk about sexual behavior, in a bid to argue for gay people’s rights to replicate the nuclear family with the blessing of the state. NCSF, which we all should be a member and supporter of, has too few resources to do much more than put out fires, like last years rash of raids and closings of pro-dom houses and the attendant media frenzy.
Sex and urban life are places where we put our bodies on the line. There is a power to be gained from going outside away from the computer and seeing people do something you hadn’t thought of before, watching people in the exultation of endorphins and endurance, or witnessing the formal elegance of certain D/s couples, or being part of the antic fun of doing fucked up shit, that feels far different from having the “permission” to “do what we want behind closed doors”. When I am confronted by other people’s difference, when it’s inconvenient for me, when it disrupts my somnambulism, I am grateful. That’s what being a city dweller means. It does not mean being a mall shopping gated community denizen with better views and an account at “Design Within Reach”.
Shortly after moving back to New York in 1996, I was involved in the early days of something called Sex Panic!. As an organization it didn’t sustain itself, in part because (in my view) much of its activist stance was pitched at fighting a battle in academic queer studies circles, and it lacked a sense of how to really negotiate the ins and outs of community board politics, which would be the only way to address the development issues in New York. At least it had the will to argue for the sorts of things that few kinky people ever speak out for these days: the right to inhabit our own skin in public without shame or apology. It also was willing to draw the connections between the erosion of sexual freedoms with the erosion of public space. Guiliani presented the thuggish bullying face of that trend. Bloomberg presents the nannyish. Both of them agree that what is paramount good for the city is business, that development and displacement are somehow natural processes that only the irrational would think to question, and that making it all the same is making it all better. In every pot a CVS and every man a hedge fund manager and all that.
Commerce is one thing that makes cities great. Confusion is another. So the next time you’re thinking that you aren’t having as much fun as you used to, don’t blame it on the young folks who don’t know how to do things right or the Stand and Model crowd. Look instead at the shills in city hall who have been working so hard to make us all so much safer and saner. Did they do it with your consent? And if not when will you work up the nerve to tell them?
Tags: activism, anger, dissapointment, kink, new york life, politics, sexRelated posts
The wings used to be Cambodian…
A day out and about the city. Met
One more point: in the midst of writing this entry I’m seeing the way that linking to something absolves me of the responsibility of rendering it in description. Just grunt, point at it and move on. There’s something to be said for celebrating the splaying branches of online knowledge, but something else to say for the hard work of ordering thought, retrieving impressions and fashioning them into sentences.
Tags: daily photo, Fort Greene, friends, memory, new york life, tattooing
