Manhattan Offender

MO Musts - Sights and Sounds from the New Island Festival on Governors Island

"Go to Governors Island" had been on the personal checklist for all of summer.  With summer coming to a close and clouds and rain filling the sky, it seemed that it would remain unchecked.  With the convincing of a friend, the trip was made yesterday to check out the New Island Festival.  The festival, part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Dutch arrival in New York, brings installations and performance to the former military base in the harbor.

Favorite bits include four houses transformed into performance installations, a collection of 400 paintings filling a field, and the beer and food served on a 400-foot catwalk/stage/table.  The executions of every piece just blew away expectations for the art festival and the island setting added to the ethereal, eclectic, and energizing atmosphere.

Below is a scattershot of images and videos, which make the whole thing seem a bit like a mild acid trip.  The festival runs this weekend and next and is a fantastic time.

More photos are here. More videos after the jump.

This weekend you need to feel it, so I don't have to.

Heathens to Betsey, it's Fashion Week!  Rachel Zoe My God!  There are just so many people in town that you just do not want to meet and about fifteen or so that you do.  Everybody is bizzy bizzy bizzy.  Everyone wants to see it and live it and feel it.  Well, not everyone.

 

After a really nice time last weekend, my otolaryngologist is advising me to not to be in loud venues full of dance-ready music or squealing fashionistas.  Actually?  My total hearing loss is only five per cent (which is good news), but recent bout of labyrinthitis is best served resting up a bit.  Thus there was the live-blogging from the grocery store yesterday evening as I was putting together the ingredients for an apple-blueberry crisp.  So, yes, I missed Friday night.  Again.  As for the rest of the weekend, I refer you of course to he who knows.  (I'll be at one event listed.  Hint?  It's the daytime one.)  

For the fashion-addicted and fashion-avoidant and (like me) fashion-fallow there are plenty of options.  It's like Miss Washington of 1981 ("who is currently on tour throughout the Mid-West at various venues and Pride Festivals") always tells me, "Feel What You Want."*

* - I did consider posting the Kristine W, but I'm not, heh, "feeling it", and all the remixes I found on YouTube were just too much high-hat or that "UHN-cha UHN-cha UHN-cha" sound. 

Have a Divine weekend

What?  I missed Friday night?  No.  Not really.  I slept in which was much more luxurious and avant garde than anything else in the offerings.  (Or not.  Check with Duane to be sure.)

Waking up to the ringing that has been going in my left ear (the right stopped on Thursday!), I was reminded that whatever this mystery ailment is (bonus?  losing weight!), it is to be ignored as there is sunlight to see.  First though, as one does before one goes out into "nature", Facebook had to be checked.  One of those people that I know but don't know (Kenny Kenny) posted some obscure Divine clips.  Thus I've decided to make it a Divine weekend myself.  I'm off to enjoy nature, or sex, or whatever comes my way.

More Divine clips after the jump ...

A weekend of smart cookies

Every weekend Duane (whom everybody knows, including, sort of, me) posts a flawless list for what to do during said weekend.  After trying to get him to write for MO (for free (ha! rewd)), I now accept that he's too smart of a cookie for that type of flimflammery.  (Speaking of cookies?  That's what your author is preparing tonight, for a brunch and other events this weekend.  I mean, why bring booze when you hardly drink?  Bring cookies!  Blueberry almond lemon cookies!  And make them "special"!)

Oh, anyway,this was about going "out".  If that's what you would like to do, then here's where you should go about doing that.  

With the economy in freefall, no one is leaving town for their share house in Bridgefiretauk so we'll all just pile on top of each other this summer.

Seriously. Some random's blanket is totally abutting mine. Like, ack, random. And his Zip-Loc of sunblocks is partially in my space, too.

Location:  Christopher Street Pier

Like, spring?

One of the victims of my recent ailments has been the apartment.  My little abode is a little mess, so I did the logical thing:  placed a craigslist ad for a helper.

Unfortunately, all the responses sort of missed the mark, from the overly chummy ("Meeting more people in the neighborhood is always great.") to the overly scary ("I am a straight guy, and I do not play games.")  Left to my own devices, a concise plan was made to hit the kitchen.  Surfaces, floors, windows (inside and out), nooks, crannies, refrigerator.

With this completed, a self-treat was in order.  Feeling people-deprived, the plan was to walk down the piers, then up Christopher, have one beer, go to the Eagle, eat one burger, have one beer and return home.   Among the three locales, there were bound to be known quantities.  This theory held as true:The following were seen (in order of appearance): 
    Starting at the Dugout:  Dustin, Bryce, Neil, Nello, Tom, Dan, Scott, Ed, Paul, Joe, Peter
    Then after a ride to the Eagle with three of the above:  The majority of the above plus Paul, Vasco, Eric, Alex, Tony, Chris.
Yes, an incredibly dull listing of generic male names and not my usual style. 

The point of this scattershot post being that after a too-long hibernation, the city is back.  Or, as the most common greeting was "I haven't seen you in forever," maybe I am.  Or maybe it is a bit of both.

Things I probably will end up not doing, but might

• Seeing a big muscle bear scream like a little bitch?  Cool.  On a rollercoaster?  Awesome. 
• It's the last weekend with frequent ferry service to Fire Island.
• The charity carwash at the Eagle on Sunday gives you a reason to go buy a car, get it dirty, and then get it cleaned by the New York Boys of Leather. 
• The Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park opens Sunday.  It's a great bike trip up the East River!
• You missed out on Fashion House?  Catch the recap show. 
• There's about 50 days left until Gay Christmas.  Start your preparations.

SoPoPa: secret spot

There are several books about places in the city that offer solitude and quiet, yet few mention one spot that offers not only isolation and a separation from the rest of the city but amazing views as well.  One reason may be the difficulty getting to the spot, situated directly between the United Nations building and the Pepsi sign in Long Island City.  It is a bit of a complex destination, but by bike it is easily found.

Starting under the Williamsburg Bridge, we started up through Willsburg on Berry (as Kent is an unpaved mess at the moment).  Just past McCarren Park we turned onto Manhattan Avenue through Greenpoint and headed for the Pulaski Bridge.  Stopping by the beach at Water Taxi Beach, the lure of a beer was countered by the blare of The Black Crows on the soundsystem.  Heading upstream on Vernon Avenue, we eventually stopped at the Socrates Sculpture Park and checked out the new exhibition, Interstate:  the American Road Trip.  Opting not to smell up the Noguchi Museum, we instead headed to Costco, attemption to dine on samples and stocking up on five-gallon tubs of beauty cream fifty-cent bottles of Poland Spring. 

Finally, we headed for our true destination.  Crossing the drawbridge that leads to RoosIsle we decided to first find a spot to grab some food to take along with us.  As our choices on the island's central section seemed to be Gristede's, Chinese, or Gristede's, we asked one elderly woman if she knew where we might find pizza.  (Not that we wanted pizza, but we assumed that maybe there were more restaurants hidden away in the Stockholm-y seventies architecture.)  Her reply was a befuddled, "Pizza?  Pizza?  Pizza.  The train station is just down the road on the left."  Assuming restaraunts were nearby, we headed in the prescribed direction, but found that her intention was that we leave the island for this strange thing, pizza.

Abandoning our search for food, we passed a man zooming in the opposite direction, rolling a hospital bed bedecked with a Puerto Rican flag.  RooIsle is home to two hospitals, one of which specializes in amputees, so this is not an uncommon sight.  (Oh, the detail that hospital-bed-speed-racer had no legs should be included.) 

Finally we arrived at the gate that leads to the gravel path past the former smallpox hospital (no, it's not a former insane asylum, although RoLand did house one at one time) and eventually arrived at our destination:  South Point Park (finally).

SoPoPa offers a panorama of Manhattan from the Queensboro Bridge down to the Williamsburg Bridge as well as the diverse industrial/neoresidential waterfront of Long Island City and a bit of Brooklyn.  The Park is really no more than a fenced in grassy area, with no seating or other frills.  What it offers more than anything though is a separation from the city while truly immersed within it.  The cars of the FDR and music from Water Taxi City occasionally will come in with the right breeze but otherwise the soundtrack is water and wind.  It's a secret spot.  So don't tell anyone.

(Photos coming soon here.)

La Fabulosa de la Playa

You choose a city beach because the ex of a friend is spinning at P.S.1.  You find a lady-friend to handbag along with you.  You arrive in Brighton Beach amazed at how quickly you arrived compared to what you usually endure in attending your usual bourgeois beaches.  You choose a spot away from the crowd of blankets, each with a radio tuned to a different latin station.  You leave enough space so that your friends can join you later. 

Within a half hour your friend arrives with his lady-friend as well.  Within 45 minutes you are no longer at a distance from the masses, but instead are part of the mass.  To your front, a Russian couple, apparently very much in love.  To your right, two gays (because you are apparently a magnet), and a quiet older latin couple.  To your other right, a grouping of eight:  one older man with radio surrounded by 4 children dancing, three others listening to other music via headphones.  Behind you a woman with her child with an amazingly loud radio playing a different station to the man to your side whose music you have decided, must be superior to the radio station you are now yelling over.  You consider getting up to turn the offending radio off as madre and hija have left it blaring and are now in the water.  And then she arrives.

La Fabulosa struts through the crowd like a pint-size Iman, arriving at a spot just large enough for her to spread her yellow king-size sheet with a navy towel perfectly centered.  From the size of the sheet, you anticipate that others will be joining her, yet they don't.  The sheet is a frame for this piece of urban art in a emerald bikini.  For the most part, she is not there to fool around or trifle with the riff-raff (which includes you and your mutually gawky friend).  She is there to rub in the baby oil to her deep blackened tan, luxuriating in a supine, yet alert position.  Her only real activity of the day is the smoking of Newport 100's and the answering of her pink RAZR phone, with her elbow held at a dramatic perpendicular angle to her phone.  She is simple, yet striking, drawing in the attention of everyone around her in the precision of her movements.  She is La Fabulosa.

On the train ride home, she is the main topic of conversation and you create a backstory for her.  At P.S.1 you don't talk about the music, you and your friend tell more friends of her.  You've agreed that she is in her early to mid 30's.  Her three children are not allowed to come with her to the beach as they clash with her outfit.  The oldest, eleven, has to act as a second mother for her two younger siblings, the eight year old sister, and the someday-gay three year old brother.  The pink RAZR phone was a gift, and she doesn't talk to him anymore.  The calls were from friends asking where she was, to which she answered, "the Hamptons".  (One call from her sister with the same query was answered, "in the park with the kids".)  She has cobbled together an existence that keeps a shiny veneer, and always will.  She is La Fabulosa and you had better recognize.