this will be the third alternating tuesday on which i've taken the train out to meet a friend at the beach, the freelance writer's amorphous schedule at its best. on the friday before last i took another train north to meet amorphophallus titanum, the new york botanic garden's stinking corpse flower (the first bloomer they've had since the late '30s, just after they had the first-ever blooming corpse flower in the western hemisphere; a. titanum's a native of borneo). staffers noticed the bud on the 15th, moved the flower to the enid a. haupt conservatory for exotic specimens on the 18th, and braced themselves for hordes of visitors (an estimated 25,000 turned up for a whiff). the gal at the ticket counter already had a haunted look in her eye when i arrived around noon; the garden had been open since half past eight, she said, and crowds had already tripled a typical friday's count. a television news anchor performed showy jaw-limbering exercises behind her as his cameraman fired up his equipment. a kid wandered around with a whole box of pizza, as if the flower had had it delivered to its waiting fans like a generous star at shakespeare in the park.
to my delight, i ended up queuing for the conservatory itself near the four twentysomething goths* who wandered into the garden just before i did (they were a few scores of visitors behind me, as they paused at the entrance to exchange corpse-flower-related exclamations with a few daywalking friends who were on the way out). this quartet had made the most of recent athleisure advances and were wearing lovely striped running tights under their lace-up boots and whisper-thin joy division shirts. and the tattoos, you guys, the tattoos! one woman's ink actually looked like tatting, a delicate layer of lace that gathered like epaulets at her shoulders, shadow at her clavicle, cobwebs at her temples. the fact that i need my tattoos to be on lines of symmetry has kept me pretty honest, but it can be hard to ignore the freelancer's amorphous dress code, sometimes. pagoda umbrella or no, the sun was too much for most of the goths, who took turns tag-teaming a place in line from beneath a shade tree. this was a popular strategy: "i'll go have a look at the peonies and you can call me when you start moving," one guy behind me suggested to another. "it'll be like the line for easter kielbasa at martin rosol's." "it'll smell like a weekend's worth of sewage. sewage on a monday," another guy said. the woman in front of me quietly caught a low-level rattata.
*one with a pagoda-shaped umbrella i must acquire immediately.
Showing posts with label local tourism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label local tourism. Show all posts
06.16.16
another film festival, another evening walk home in an official tee i probably should have washed at some point. i bartended at this one, sort of! i mean, i bar-backed for the guy in charge of the beer and wine. i took a social-darwinism liking to him, as i was otherwise the oldest person associated with the festival, at least as far as i could tell. when i asked him what he did when he wasn't bartending, he told me he'd retired in december, and that he'd lived in malaysia for 15 years before that. what did he do there? "i like to tell people i helped men have more sex," he said. "that...could mean almost anything, really," i said, busying myself with the pilsners. "i manufactured fine jewelry," said he. "think of the last time your husband bought you a really nice pair of earrings, or a necklace, or a ring. you had sex that night, right?" "i would never let my husband buy me jewelry," i replied.
it was a scrappy festival, a loose festival, a festival that felt a bit like zork; direction was minimal, but the work was there if i could find it.
You are at the top of an apparently four-story spiral staircase. To the west someone with a heavy Brooklyn accent mutters about shiraz. Your old friends, three dozen bottles of tepid pink lemonade, are at your feet.
>i
You are carrying:
A comically large iPhone
A dusty white Tic Tac
>get ice cubes
There is no concession stand here.
and so on. when the lounge emptied out for screenings, the staffers danced for each other. i met a delightful 22-year-old who introduced me to his boyfriend and asked if he could friend me on facebook and ask me for writing advice. i thought about wearing my chandelier-print skirt for closing night and chickened out at the last minute. to be fair, it's too hot for tights.
it was a scrappy festival, a loose festival, a festival that felt a bit like zork; direction was minimal, but the work was there if i could find it.
You are at the top of an apparently four-story spiral staircase. To the west someone with a heavy Brooklyn accent mutters about shiraz. Your old friends, three dozen bottles of tepid pink lemonade, are at your feet.
>i
You are carrying:
A comically large iPhone
A dusty white Tic Tac
>get ice cubes
There is no concession stand here.
and so on. when the lounge emptied out for screenings, the staffers danced for each other. i met a delightful 22-year-old who introduced me to his boyfriend and asked if he could friend me on facebook and ask me for writing advice. i thought about wearing my chandelier-print skirt for closing night and chickened out at the last minute. to be fair, it's too hot for tights.
04.21.16
one of my film festivals, the one where i wonder if i can get away with wearing a black tee four times before washing it and barrel around the city arguing with twenty-year-olds about terrence malick, is almost over. this year i bowed out of the front-of-the-house crew and joined a smaller, lonelier team of rats; i've been clambering up into theater bowels all over town. it's a hurry-up-and-wait job, and i spent half of my first shift suspecting i'd made a terrible mistake; then i got to crawl up to the projectionist's booth at the beacon, a week to the day after liz phair and billy corgan sang me back to high school there. the humbler venues are somehow even better: the velvety dust! the ankle-mangling stairs! in a dark tech corridor in chelsea i turned from photographing a strip of old celluloid to see a senior staffer wrinkling her mouth at me. "it just looked really cool," i said. "it is a crumpled piece of film," she replied.
the other film festival, the one where i'm a moviegoer who exchanges an occasional secret wink with ushers and security staff, picks up this afternoon. i'm considering a late thriller tonight, meeting an old front-of-house friend tomorrow afternoon, and dragging joe to a collection of horror shorts tomorrow night. horror shorts! i tried them for the first time last year; the ebb and flow of brain chemicals is a bit like when joe handed me a nominally roasted scotch bonnet pepper in the dominican republic in march. "hey, you want to do something really stupid?" we each ate one whole and felt our eardrums vibrate for the next half hour. i had to sit down. a documentary saturday afternoon, and one last documentary, maybe two, on sunday.
the other film festival, the one where i'm a moviegoer who exchanges an occasional secret wink with ushers and security staff, picks up this afternoon. i'm considering a late thriller tonight, meeting an old front-of-house friend tomorrow afternoon, and dragging joe to a collection of horror shorts tomorrow night. horror shorts! i tried them for the first time last year; the ebb and flow of brain chemicals is a bit like when joe handed me a nominally roasted scotch bonnet pepper in the dominican republic in march. "hey, you want to do something really stupid?" we each ate one whole and felt our eardrums vibrate for the next half hour. i had to sit down. a documentary saturday afternoon, and one last documentary, maybe two, on sunday.
04.15.16
on my first afternoon at the film festival, i arrived at an office bristling with reporters and photographers and silently cursed robert de niro for making asinine comments about vaccines 24 hours before i had to spend two weeks wearing a tee with his insignia. i flashed my badge and shouldered past security to a tiny elevator bank, where jane fonda and lily tomlin beamed at me like a three-dimensional ad for their netflix series. ah. really good hair. i stepped between them and into the elevator.
"i've seen your trailers all over soho today," said the kid at the drugstore who sold me a can of tile cleaner six hours later. "i took some acting classes a few years ago, myself." i told him the story of jane and lily and the elevator. "i think i'm more familiar with...lily...but not the other guy," he said. i gazed across an aisle of old easter candy. "jane fonda was..." (against vietnam?) "...barbarella?" he blinked. i tucked my receipt into my messenger bag and slunk away.
"i've seen your trailers all over soho today," said the kid at the drugstore who sold me a can of tile cleaner six hours later. "i took some acting classes a few years ago, myself." i told him the story of jane and lily and the elevator. "i think i'm more familiar with...lily...but not the other guy," he said. i gazed across an aisle of old easter candy. "jane fonda was..." (against vietnam?) "...barbarella?" he blinked. i tucked my receipt into my messenger bag and slunk away.
01.22.16
on recumbent bikes at our soviet-era gym, my septuagenarian neighbors discuss winter storm jonas and storms of yore
1: on that snow day—it must have been when i was working, i never got snow days when i was going to college—i went to central park and i saw leonard bernstein, wearing a fur coat, it was the first time i ever saw that, a man wearing a fur coat.
previous discussion here.
1: on that snow day—it must have been when i was working, i never got snow days when i was going to college—i went to central park and i saw leonard bernstein, wearing a fur coat, it was the first time i ever saw that, a man wearing a fur coat.
previous discussion here.
01.02.16
2016: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
i watched five minutes of the rose bowl halftime show.
i finished a crossword puzzle on the subway.
i ate a vegetarian sloppy joe.
i ran into the ocean in a skeleton suit and wool socks.
i ordered a mermaid pilsner while a cover band performed "the final countdown."
i finally saw the shining's man-bear-pig at a midnight screening (other versions i'd seen had edited him out?).
i drank the rest of my sister's holiday kombucha.
i put new sheets on the bed.
i watched five minutes of the rose bowl halftime show.
i finished a crossword puzzle on the subway.
i ate a vegetarian sloppy joe.
i ran into the ocean in a skeleton suit and wool socks.
i ordered a mermaid pilsner while a cover band performed "the final countdown."
i finally saw the shining's man-bear-pig at a midnight screening (other versions i'd seen had edited him out?).
i drank the rest of my sister's holiday kombucha.
i put new sheets on the bed.
10.28.15
a girl i didn't know approached me at the glass case beside the front door to ye olde charity bookstore cafe this afternoon. she introduced herself as a fellow volunteer and said that she had to venture out into the rain for a job interview; could she perhaps borrow one of the umbrellas on the floor behind me? i asked her if she would be coming back—i'd promised to meet someone at a press event in midtown after my shift—and she said yes. i warned her that my umbrella—minty, the feral kid—was a bit ratty.
a man in a blazer then paused at the counter between the register and an old computer. this was his first time in this corner of the world ("not the center of the world, this corner of the world") and he had a week's worth of time to spend. he had explored a bit and concluded that we were in a place in which he could spend a lot of time, even though our cafe tables lacked chess boards. he was from oslo. where were our books on chess?
the volunteer returned a few hours later, her hair wild from the last of the storm, and thanked me for minty. the interview had gone well, she said.
a man in a blazer then paused at the counter between the register and an old computer. this was his first time in this corner of the world ("not the center of the world, this corner of the world") and he had a week's worth of time to spend. he had explored a bit and concluded that we were in a place in which he could spend a lot of time, even though our cafe tables lacked chess boards. he was from oslo. where were our books on chess?
the volunteer returned a few hours later, her hair wild from the last of the storm, and thanked me for minty. the interview had gone well, she said.
10.12.15
in the closest brush with the methods of marie "life-changing magic of tidying up" kondo i'll likely ever have,* i've been reading and divesting myself of books i brought home from the office and shelved years ago. one, a jack nicholson biography, gets rolling with some bleak notes about his love life:
speaking of head colds, i ran a half marathon with one yesterday! that was alright when we were scrambling to get up, out of the house, and down to the staten island ferry before the sun came up; as when i worked in an office and had to train in the morning before heading there, i was so sleepy and groggy that i barely registered the inelegance of the hour. coughing my way across staten island was less of a treat, but i can blame my unimpressive time on illness instead of the late nights i spent writing and concertgoing last week, and that's something. either way, i have a medal and the reptilian contentment that accompanies it. i don't think less is more, as warhol said; more is better.****
*unless you count when my thoughtful friend lesley konmari'ed the living daylights out of her place in brooklyn and i inherited a bunch of her clothes, which was indeed magical.
**(the year in which nicholson learned that the woman he'd believed to be his sister was actually his mother, and that his "mother" was in fact his grandmother)
***as in as good as it gets, for which he won one of his three oscars.
****..."big paintings cost more than little paintings, and magazines pay by the word."
After 1974,** with one or two exceptions,*** [Nicholson] never played a purely romantic lead. And in real life, while women continued to be a source of both pleasure and pain for him, true love was something he could never fully accept, believe, or trust from them. His seventeen-year relationship with Anjelica Huston, the woman able to get closest to him, was a series of hellos and good-byes, angers, frustrations, and, on both their parts, infidelities strewn throughout their time together. It is significant that in the end they both wound up alone.i just finished anjelica huston's second memoir, is the thing; she was widowed in 2008 when her husband of 16 years (the sculptor robert graham) died of a horrible blood disease. in the absence of this weird month-spanning head cold i'd yell about bad biographers here for awhile; instead i will but say that it's a shame i can't leave books unfinished, and that i'll try to spark joy in you by following up with additional sins as i read them.
speaking of head colds, i ran a half marathon with one yesterday! that was alright when we were scrambling to get up, out of the house, and down to the staten island ferry before the sun came up; as when i worked in an office and had to train in the morning before heading there, i was so sleepy and groggy that i barely registered the inelegance of the hour. coughing my way across staten island was less of a treat, but i can blame my unimpressive time on illness instead of the late nights i spent writing and concertgoing last week, and that's something. either way, i have a medal and the reptilian contentment that accompanies it. i don't think less is more, as warhol said; more is better.****
*unless you count when my thoughtful friend lesley konmari'ed the living daylights out of her place in brooklyn and i inherited a bunch of her clothes, which was indeed magical.
**(the year in which nicholson learned that the woman he'd believed to be his sister was actually his mother, and that his "mother" was in fact his grandmother)
***as in as good as it gets, for which he won one of his three oscars.
****..."big paintings cost more than little paintings, and magazines pay by the word."
10.06.15
i'm working on a photo piece about the joys of "bad" weather. it doesn't include this leaf and beach.
03.17.15
one of the six dozen public-address systems along the half marathon route began to thump with the piano notes at the top of "empire state of mind" as i made the turn from seventh avenue to forty-second street. i'm guessing it played once every ten minutes for three or four hours sunday morning, but there was something undeniably inspirational about how jay z kicked in just as my metrocard completed its intimate migration down my running shorts (when i am a second-time half-marathoner i shall wear pockets). last week i speculated that i became a real new yorker when a fancy pigeon pooped in my armpit; i now know that the magic happens when one runs through times square with a metrocard in one's ass. excelsior!
11.04.14
NYC STREET INTERACTIONS: A HIERARCHY
“want to sample our new smoothie?” who doesn’t want to sample smoothies? monsters, that’s who. let’s do this.
“have you voted yet?” yep, but i like this democracy-in-action business. carry on.
“have you heard the good news?” frequently and vehemently, as i grew up in megachurch country in southern california; since you’re unlikely to chase me down the block to hand me that pamphlet, whatever.
“do you like to laugh?” yes, though i’m not sure what that has to do with times-square-adjacent standup. moving on.
“do you have a moment for the oceans / gay rights / homeless children?” i rarely carry cash and i’m not going to give my credit card info to some undergrad with a clipboard on the sidewalk. DISCONTINUE THIS, NONPROFITS.
“why don’t you smile?” because facial expressions are my signifiers, not your wallpaper.
“can’t you acknowledge a compliment? [crickets]
“you wanna – ?” wow, the dude i married hasn’t ever asked me that, and we’ve been together for fifteen years! points for novelty, you psychopath.
“want to sample our new smoothie?” who doesn’t want to sample smoothies? monsters, that’s who. let’s do this.
“have you voted yet?” yep, but i like this democracy-in-action business. carry on.
“have you heard the good news?” frequently and vehemently, as i grew up in megachurch country in southern california; since you’re unlikely to chase me down the block to hand me that pamphlet, whatever.
“do you like to laugh?” yes, though i’m not sure what that has to do with times-square-adjacent standup. moving on.
“do you have a moment for the oceans / gay rights / homeless children?” i rarely carry cash and i’m not going to give my credit card info to some undergrad with a clipboard on the sidewalk. DISCONTINUE THIS, NONPROFITS.
“why don’t you smile?” because facial expressions are my signifiers, not your wallpaper.
“can’t you acknowledge a compliment? [crickets]
“you wanna – ?” wow, the dude i married hasn’t ever asked me that, and we’ve been together for fifteen years! points for novelty, you psychopath.
05.13.12
administrative note: blogger swallowed this post a few years ago and regurgitated it this week. insofar as it's ever 2014 on kidchamp dot net, rest assured that it's 2014 on kidchamp dot net.
the unrelenting onslaught of wisdom and beauty you know as kidchamp dot net has been stemmed this month for administrative reasons; after ten-plus years of assembling the site as a narcoleptic would a scrapbook or a swallow would a nest (dozily, that is, and with unsightly mud), i finally handed the whole thing over to a professional to be reassembled as a killer robot from the future. the good news is that once the fine-tuning is complete, the shambolic horror that is the current commenting platform will be no more; the bad news is that i haven't been able to keep you abreast of the latest developments at headquarters (as new posts would obviously spawn hordes of comments which would then have to be painstakingly exported, reformatted, plunked into the hole where the robot's heart will never be, and so on). that said, construction is on hold for the time being, so i'm free to tell you that joe's nose recently went on a tiki tour of new jersey and staten island.
the nose began its tour at lani kai, an artisanal cocktail lounge near the holland tunnel in manhattan. this was more heroic than it sounds, for the nose concluded its evening at the campbell apartment after the manhattan cocktail classic opening gala mere hours earlier. ironically, the hideous limo-van that would ferry the tiki tourists from manhattan to jersey and staten island (for tropical cocktails and the operation of heavy machinery are a terrible blend) was pulled over for inspection and ran an hour late; the tour guides pacified their already-mellow charges* with dark and stormys and bar snacks. yes, short pants and long fuses in that crowd - which turned out to be a good thing, as (more irony) the freshly-inspected limo-van lacked air conditioning and we spent an hour inching up broadway in swampy, ninety-degree car-fug. this the guides battled with party cups of premium rum for everyone and tiki trash talk ("that guy's so tiki he takes a shit and garnishes it with a pineapple slice and a little umbrella." "that guy's so tiki he takes a piss and tops it with a float of 151.") morale remained high.
the nose's first port of call was chan's dragon inn, a c. 1962 polynesian-chinese joint in ridgefield, new jersey. i believe the nose tucked into a mai tai and i had a zombie, or was it the other way around? the menu was limited, but the towelettes were moist, the mustard was sinus-rejuvenating, and the (non-vegetarian) pupu was on fire. (we made ourselves a fairly substantial lunch before embarking on the tiki tour, which is why i'm here to tell you about it today.)
after a round of dead bastards (served with a jovial "see you in hell, motherfuckers") and another hour on the bus, we reached staten island and our second far-flung stop: jade island (est. 1972), shaolin's only tiki bar, once host to anthony bourdain (there on a visit with buster poindexter on an outer-borough episode of no reservations). weirdly, it was just across the strip mall from the pathmark of the damned, where, a few years ago, i spent ten minutes in line behind a woman trying to return a half-empty bag of dog food (without a receipt, naturally) because her dog "didn't like it." but that's neither here nor there; the nose called for an epic pineapple drink, i acquired a tiny umbrella which eventually migrated to my ear, and we wandered into what i imagine will end up being the most in-depth discussion of fruit juice our civilian radar will ever map.
on its third hour-long bus ride of the day (abandon all hope, ye who enter the holland tunnel), the nose was presented with a rum old-fashioned, and straight rum, and a handful of mel torme singalongs; the sun fled to western new jersey and disappeared, and assorted drink accessories crept into updos. lani kai was regained after dark, and the sleep of the just was eventually slept.
*fellow tiki tourists, i salute you and your unassailably good moods. the setbacks on our outer-borough slog could have been irritating or even alarming, but to a man, you kept it together (in flowered polyester).
the unrelenting onslaught of wisdom and beauty you know as kidchamp dot net has been stemmed this month for administrative reasons; after ten-plus years of assembling the site as a narcoleptic would a scrapbook or a swallow would a nest (dozily, that is, and with unsightly mud), i finally handed the whole thing over to a professional to be reassembled as a killer robot from the future. the good news is that once the fine-tuning is complete, the shambolic horror that is the current commenting platform will be no more; the bad news is that i haven't been able to keep you abreast of the latest developments at headquarters (as new posts would obviously spawn hordes of comments which would then have to be painstakingly exported, reformatted, plunked into the hole where the robot's heart will never be, and so on). that said, construction is on hold for the time being, so i'm free to tell you that joe's nose recently went on a tiki tour of new jersey and staten island.
the nose began its tour at lani kai, an artisanal cocktail lounge near the holland tunnel in manhattan. this was more heroic than it sounds, for the nose concluded its evening at the campbell apartment after the manhattan cocktail classic opening gala mere hours earlier. ironically, the hideous limo-van that would ferry the tiki tourists from manhattan to jersey and staten island (for tropical cocktails and the operation of heavy machinery are a terrible blend) was pulled over for inspection and ran an hour late; the tour guides pacified their already-mellow charges* with dark and stormys and bar snacks. yes, short pants and long fuses in that crowd - which turned out to be a good thing, as (more irony) the freshly-inspected limo-van lacked air conditioning and we spent an hour inching up broadway in swampy, ninety-degree car-fug. this the guides battled with party cups of premium rum for everyone and tiki trash talk ("that guy's so tiki he takes a shit and garnishes it with a pineapple slice and a little umbrella." "that guy's so tiki he takes a piss and tops it with a float of 151.") morale remained high.
the nose's first port of call was chan's dragon inn, a c. 1962 polynesian-chinese joint in ridgefield, new jersey. i believe the nose tucked into a mai tai and i had a zombie, or was it the other way around? the menu was limited, but the towelettes were moist, the mustard was sinus-rejuvenating, and the (non-vegetarian) pupu was on fire. (we made ourselves a fairly substantial lunch before embarking on the tiki tour, which is why i'm here to tell you about it today.)
after a round of dead bastards (served with a jovial "see you in hell, motherfuckers") and another hour on the bus, we reached staten island and our second far-flung stop: jade island (est. 1972), shaolin's only tiki bar, once host to anthony bourdain (there on a visit with buster poindexter on an outer-borough episode of no reservations). weirdly, it was just across the strip mall from the pathmark of the damned, where, a few years ago, i spent ten minutes in line behind a woman trying to return a half-empty bag of dog food (without a receipt, naturally) because her dog "didn't like it." but that's neither here nor there; the nose called for an epic pineapple drink, i acquired a tiny umbrella which eventually migrated to my ear, and we wandered into what i imagine will end up being the most in-depth discussion of fruit juice our civilian radar will ever map.
on its third hour-long bus ride of the day (abandon all hope, ye who enter the holland tunnel), the nose was presented with a rum old-fashioned, and straight rum, and a handful of mel torme singalongs; the sun fled to western new jersey and disappeared, and assorted drink accessories crept into updos. lani kai was regained after dark, and the sleep of the just was eventually slept.
*fellow tiki tourists, i salute you and your unassailably good moods. the setbacks on our outer-borough slog could have been irritating or even alarming, but to a man, you kept it together (in flowered polyester).
06.11.14
culture blotter {kara walker's "a subtlety" at the domino sugar plant}
i've always appreciated the derelict domino sugar plant's silhouette across the river, and have followed developers' plans to erect fifty-story residences in its place with a bit of sadness; the city needs more affordable housing, and nasty old buildings shouldn't live on the river because i find them interesting, and i'll be sorry to see them go all the same. kara walker's "a subtlety" ("or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant"), a massive installation in the plant's largest storage room, is the farewell i didn't know i wanted, and i jumped at the opportunity to have a look inside. i've seen and appreciated walker's stuff at the whitney and the brooklyn museum—she's fantastic at repulsing her viewers, her silhouettes will drive you right out of the room—but i've never really known what i'm supposed to do at that point.
"a subtlety" (here meaning, among other things, an extra-fancy illusion dish prepared for a medieval feast; this sphinx is a 75-foot-long, 35-foot-tall foam sculpture covered with sugar) is her first large-scale public work, her first literally huge piece, and like all nyc-area installation art, it's attracted all sorts of attention. artnet noted a week or two ago that it's spawned an ongoing series of lewd instagrams, an outcome she surely anticipated (visitors are encouraged to use a site-specific hashtag and told that they are part of the exhibition). hyperallergic wondered how the exhibitors were keeping vermin away from those forty tons of sugar (answer: rat traps, but most pests seem to be leaving the site alone*). little clumps of hipsters and art-world types trooped in and out of the building like ants. what i didn't expect, even in brooklyn, were the strollers: mothers were wheeling their children right up to the sticky little sugar babies, whispering in their ears. a sunshower pattered on the roof, the sickly-sweet crystals on the walls smelled of molasses, and we processed around walker's queen like the mourners we were.
[full set here.]
*"According to Ed McLaughlin, service manager for Regal Pests Management, which [the exhibitors] called in to deliver estimates for preventative services last winter, ants are a cause for greater worry than rats. 'Rats as a rule probably would not be attracted to a big amount of sugar, especially in an urban area,” McLaughlin said. “A rat can’t live on sugar alone. They’re going to need more palatable foods … basically anything they’ll find in the garbage. Things that are attracted to sugar are obviously ants, depending on the specific colony, roaches … bees.'"
i've always appreciated the derelict domino sugar plant's silhouette across the river, and have followed developers' plans to erect fifty-story residences in its place with a bit of sadness; the city needs more affordable housing, and nasty old buildings shouldn't live on the river because i find them interesting, and i'll be sorry to see them go all the same. kara walker's "a subtlety" ("or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant"), a massive installation in the plant's largest storage room, is the farewell i didn't know i wanted, and i jumped at the opportunity to have a look inside. i've seen and appreciated walker's stuff at the whitney and the brooklyn museum—she's fantastic at repulsing her viewers, her silhouettes will drive you right out of the room—but i've never really known what i'm supposed to do at that point.
"a subtlety" (here meaning, among other things, an extra-fancy illusion dish prepared for a medieval feast; this sphinx is a 75-foot-long, 35-foot-tall foam sculpture covered with sugar) is her first large-scale public work, her first literally huge piece, and like all nyc-area installation art, it's attracted all sorts of attention. artnet noted a week or two ago that it's spawned an ongoing series of lewd instagrams, an outcome she surely anticipated (visitors are encouraged to use a site-specific hashtag and told that they are part of the exhibition). hyperallergic wondered how the exhibitors were keeping vermin away from those forty tons of sugar (answer: rat traps, but most pests seem to be leaving the site alone*). little clumps of hipsters and art-world types trooped in and out of the building like ants. what i didn't expect, even in brooklyn, were the strollers: mothers were wheeling their children right up to the sticky little sugar babies, whispering in their ears. a sunshower pattered on the roof, the sickly-sweet crystals on the walls smelled of molasses, and we processed around walker's queen like the mourners we were.
[full set here.]
*"According to Ed McLaughlin, service manager for Regal Pests Management, which [the exhibitors] called in to deliver estimates for preventative services last winter, ants are a cause for greater worry than rats. 'Rats as a rule probably would not be attracted to a big amount of sugar, especially in an urban area,” McLaughlin said. “A rat can’t live on sugar alone. They’re going to need more palatable foods … basically anything they’ll find in the garbage. Things that are attracted to sugar are obviously ants, depending on the specific colony, roaches … bees.'"
11.06.13
it's That Week in central park when every third pedestrian has some sort of musical instrument and it feels reasonable to rent a bike for $30 an hour. as i headed for bethesda fountain yesterday afternoon i saw a couple waltzing slowly beneath the elms. forget you, hollywood! i bet they were both in perfect health.
10.25.13
say what you will about the conservative groups claiming that bill de blasio will be soft on crime and drag new york city back to the seventies, but you can't pretend the british-graffiti epidemic that's swept the city since he won the democratic primary last month isn't real.
why people deface banksy's work; the banksy v. robbo war in pictures.
09.16.13
101 in 1001 {III}: 027 go to the bronx zoo [completed 09.15.13]
i spend a lot of time thinking about animal parks, which is unsurprising, given the rigors of maintaining ye olde birthday cakes for animals tumblr (it is no picnic: the panda photos really start to bleed together after the third or fourth month, and the internet still seems to lack interest in fêting reptiles*). ethics of anthropomorphism aside, we have a complicated history: when i was growing up in southern california, local heavies included a drive-through safari at which an african elephant broke free, killed one of her trainers, and forced the closure of two freeways; the san diego zoo (linked in the early '90s to hunting farms); and sea world (enough said). irresponsible animal parks are nightmarish, but conscientious ones are invaluable to conservationists. the bronx zoo is the flagship urban animal park of the wildlife conservation society, a nonprofit which receives excellent ratings from groups like charity navigator and kicks ass when it comes to, say, taking care of little snow leopards. we made a point of visiting the zoo this weekend because they've just started letting the public have a look at this five-month-old fellow, asleep with his mum five feet away from us in my photo; he's the firstborn son of leo, a leopard cub who was orphaned in the mountains of pakistan back in 2005 and rescued and hand-fed by a shepherd (seriously). thank you, bronx zoo, for being the sort of animal park that spearheads worldwide leopard-saving efforts and not the sort of animal park that plunks its big-cat exhibits right next to a shrieking merry-go-round (i'm looking at you, national zoo). the zoo's extensive grounds seemed to suit all of the animals we visited, actually, and once i have figured out how to hang out with tigers without weeping openly i will probably start making a point of going there on a regular basis. oh, tigers.
*with the notable exception of the late krakatoa, a komodo dragon who has been appreciated by like 27,000 people thus far. you fascinate me, internet, but i will probably never understand you.
i spend a lot of time thinking about animal parks, which is unsurprising, given the rigors of maintaining ye olde birthday cakes for animals tumblr (it is no picnic: the panda photos really start to bleed together after the third or fourth month, and the internet still seems to lack interest in fêting reptiles*). ethics of anthropomorphism aside, we have a complicated history: when i was growing up in southern california, local heavies included a drive-through safari at which an african elephant broke free, killed one of her trainers, and forced the closure of two freeways; the san diego zoo (linked in the early '90s to hunting farms); and sea world (enough said). irresponsible animal parks are nightmarish, but conscientious ones are invaluable to conservationists. the bronx zoo is the flagship urban animal park of the wildlife conservation society, a nonprofit which receives excellent ratings from groups like charity navigator and kicks ass when it comes to, say, taking care of little snow leopards. we made a point of visiting the zoo this weekend because they've just started letting the public have a look at this five-month-old fellow, asleep with his mum five feet away from us in my photo; he's the firstborn son of leo, a leopard cub who was orphaned in the mountains of pakistan back in 2005 and rescued and hand-fed by a shepherd (seriously). thank you, bronx zoo, for being the sort of animal park that spearheads worldwide leopard-saving efforts and not the sort of animal park that plunks its big-cat exhibits right next to a shrieking merry-go-round (i'm looking at you, national zoo). the zoo's extensive grounds seemed to suit all of the animals we visited, actually, and once i have figured out how to hang out with tigers without weeping openly i will probably start making a point of going there on a regular basis. oh, tigers.
*with the notable exception of the late krakatoa, a komodo dragon who has been appreciated by like 27,000 people thus far. you fascinate me, internet, but i will probably never understand you.
05.29.13
my sisters and i joined the line for moma's rain room (a temporary installation in which fancy tech creates the experience of walking through a downpour without getting wet; it's dazzling, and it's been wildly popular) at something like half past noon this past friday. it was (old-fashioned) raining (on the outdoor line) at the time, and a staffer with an umbrella and an impeccably-cut mackintosh approached me. "just so you know," he said, "the wait is about three hours right now." i grimaced. "no, you don't understand," he whispered. "that's the best it's been for a week." we ended up waiting a bit less than that, in fact, and it was...quite nice, all things considered? as kidchamp dot net is obviously above all things a destination for practical data, allow me to share some strategic information. if you intend to rain-room,
bring pals, three if you can; that way two of you can peel off to explore the rest of the museum (or forage for provisions, or use the bathroom) while the other two perform feats of strength for each other, or play cards, or argue about the new daft punk album* in line. the line must include one member of your group at all times, but beyond that you're free to come and go as you please, provided that you hang on to your ticket.
bring layers. i wore a short-sleeved silk shirt and suffered. misty, late-spring rain gets into your bones when you're standing in it for a long time, even if you've got an umbrella.
bring booze. i'm not saying you should whip a bottle of wild turkey out of your purse, but if, say, you jog up to the columbus circle american apparel in search of a cheap cardigan and pass both a liquor store and a starbucks on the way back, you should bring your sisters fortified coffee.
bring a real camera. it's pretty dark in the rain room, and most cameraphones aren't fast enough to take decent photos. unless you're deft with baggies or a wild kingdom-style photographer's tent, moreover, you've probably never shot in the rain with good equipment; do it now. speaking of,
bring a crossword puzzle, or some origami projects, or the sunday times book review. dancers in the rain are nice and all, but they can get wet; it rains in every dance movie ever made. if you just want to be cinematic, like, recite roy batty's speech from the end of blade runner. i say use the special circumstances to make something new.
*meh.
04.01.13
on thursday night we stopped by vanderbilt hall to visit artist and fabric sculptor nick cave's* HEARD NY, a collection of handsome pantomime-horse-haystacks which was in town for the week as part of the station's centennial celebration. i tucked an itinerant little piece of crepe-hay in my pocket before we left, and i chewed it thoughtfully as we walked past the moon-luminous empire state building; i was up until three with terrible indigestion that night and was pretty sure i deserved it. we returned in the morning to watch the herd come alive with bellyfuls of dancers, each beast bending its glorious neck for the little hands at the edges of the crowd. i could tell you i stopped being sorry i'd eaten the bit of hay then, but you and i both know i'd never regretted it.
*not to be confused with nick "release the bats" cave, though i certainly did (he writes novels and collaborates with kylie minogue; why shouldn't he build pantomime horses?). the mixup was lucky, really: it led to my initial visit.
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