Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Raydene Salinas

There’s a clay pot resting on top of a cable box just outside of BKLYN Clay when I arrive as if it’s drying in the sun. It’s a hot-but-not-too-hot summery day, and I am happy to meet Raydene Salinas inside the cool (temperature and awesomeness-wise) clay studio where she is already working.

Most people get to have one life where they’re passionate about something they do, but Raydene is lucky: she has five. When she is not at the clay studio, she is a freelance photographer, Photo Editor at New York Magazine’s The Cut, the founder of the site Lady Guns Global which recognizes women's achievements around the world, and a certified yoga instructor. She also enjoys acro yoga and will later head to an acro yoga practice for an upcoming performance.

I met Raydene when I interviewed her about being a photo editor and it was a funny experience—within minutes I found myself speaking to her as if I had known her for years. She has a bubbly, welcoming aura that makes people feel at ease, whether they’re chatting at a Tribeca coffee shop or hanging out at a ceramics studio.

She just finished a little clay pot that's resting on a table in front of the pottery wheel where she sits. It will be a centerpiece for her upcoming wedding, and she has a few more to make before the big day. Today she will try for two more.

But first, a tour of the studio, a place she’s been coming to work on ceramics since the beginning of the year. Raydene tells me that for herself she tends to make items she specifically needs at home, like a juicer she recently finished. If not she worries her home will just fill up with ceramics because she loves working with clay so much. She has turned this passion into her own, newly-launched ceramics collection, sprig + arrow, for which she makes elegantly rustic yet modern mugs, bowls, plates, and more.

Downstairs, there are shelves upon shelves of ceramics made by studio members, Raydene included. I am terrified of swinging the wrong way and destroying everything. Luckily I don’t and everyone’s work stays intact. Raydene shows me more of her work, teeny pots and bowls in white and red and gray clay. Then we go upstairs, she ties up her beige apron printed with tiny horses and hits the wheel again, a bag of clay in front of her. She wets her hands and as if by magic forms gray lumps of clay into newer, slim, curved shapes and soon her hands, her legs, the apron, are covered in clay. She laughs and keeps spinning, making her way through a bag of four balls of clay before calling it a day.

To my untrained eye, everything is astounding because another human created something from nothing with their hands, but Raydene has higher standards. “Some days you only get one,” she says with a soft smile, packing up the clay.

Follow Raydene on Instagram and Twitter.
Follow Lady Guns Global on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Follow sprig + arrow on Instagram and Facebook. 

Mermaids V

As ever, some sights and scenes from the annual Mermaid Parade on Coney Island.

Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Katy Pyle

“It’s important to laugh,” says Katy Pyle. “Today I want to laugh.” 

Katy is the founder and Artistic Director of Ballez, a dance company and technique that rewrites traditionally gendered ballet narratives to include previously shut out gender expressions and non-gendered movements. It promotes inclusivity, diversity, positivity. As Pyle eloquently writes, it “invites everyone to witness and celebrate the history and performances of lesbian, queer, and transgender people,” and “the virtuosity of complexly gendered embodiment, energetic eloquence, queer coding, and the magical adaptability of expression that Ballez dancers have cultivated through their lives as a way to survive and thrive.” 

Since 2011, Katy has been teaching the original “Adult Ballez Class” at Brooklyn Arts Exchange in Park Slope. Katy and her co-teachers have now taught all over the country, from their regular weekly classes at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (or BAX) to Yale University, Bennington College, NYU, Sarah Lawrence College, and many other institutions. They have also been featured in The New York Times, Teen Vogue, and Dance Magazine, among others. 

In a cafe, Katy discusses feeling artistically stuck and blocked in relation to the country’s current political climate. For a long time, she danced only in her hallway, in natural, improvisational movement she would film and put on her Instagram, and with the Ballez classes she would teach every week. But she is feeling herself unravel a bit more these days, and has begun a series of “channels” as she calls them, in which she performs alternative versions of classic choreographers’ work in drag—most recently, she tackled George Balanchine. 

Every time Katy tells me something new she’s thinking about or experimenting with or creating, my jaw drops in awe and “You’re a genius!” spills from my mouth. But I really believe it. I think it takes a special kind of person to see a void in the art world then expertly fill it in a way that only they ever can. Since I first photographed Ballez in 2013, it’s been delightful and staggeringly wonderful to see it grow. 

Today, we are heading back to Katy’s roots. After the cafe, we make our way to BAX where she meets up with Madison Krekel, a Ballez company member who will be co-teaching Adult Ballez that day. They make notes for what they want to accomplish, like partner and barre work, and a laughing exercise Katy is especially invested in. In these times, she tells me, she needs a laugh and a Ballez class to keep her spirits up. 

Students file in and class starts. Everyone shares their name and pronoun of choice, then the laughter exercise begins, everyone leaning on each other’s stomachs and just starting to laugh and laugh. The lightness and the happiness that comes from it radiates through the length of the class, from barre work set to 4 Non-Blondes and Prince to original Ballez choreography set to Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. At first some people are hesitant, but slowly they begin to open up—they watch, they smile, they dance. 

Follow Katy on Instagram. 

Follow Ballez on Instagram and Facebook. 

The World is My Oyster(s)

On Tuesday night, SJT and I find ourselves in the tunnels of Grand Central Station, below the walkways leading to the street, for a trip to an iconic New York landmark, perhaps as iconic as the building that houses it. The Grand Central Oyster Bar has been just below street level for over 100 years, its curved archways, countertops, and dark wooden bars delightfully from an era not our own. Though in 1974 it had become simply a rundown coffee shop, it was taken over that year by Jerome Brody, a restaurateur who transformed the space back to its former glory. It's now owned by an Employee Stock Ownership Program, and continues to be one of the city's most beloved spots--even if you'd never been there, you knew about it. You may even recognize it from previous years' cast introductions to Saturday Night Live, and it recently won the Design Icon James Beard Award.

And yet, SJT and I were among the group who knew about the legendary restaurant but had never gone. We resolved to remedy this with their new(ish) happy hour, which is held Monday-Wednesday from 4:30-7pm, and Saturdays from 1-5pm in their Lounge and Saloon spaces. The Lounge, with its modern white tables and chairs and banquette seating, gave us a view of the entire restaurant, so we waited patiently for one to open (they're first-come, first-serve). It felt vulture-like to prey upon the tables of people slowly putting on their jackets and leaving their empty wine glasses behind, but we knew it had to be done. He watched over one entrance and I the other and with a combined magic of occasional nods and eyebrow arches we wound up with a table vacated by four older, athleisure-clad women.

We sat, observing the three curved lunch counters to our left, with another one in the back, resolving to sit at one of them next time for the sandwiches that are only served there. I love sitting at lunch counters, with their spinning stools and handwritten menus overhead, for that feeling of being in another time.

From the happy hour menu, we chose Bluepoint Oysters and wine, a rose for SJT and a chardonnay for me. Normally, the Oyster List at the Oyster Bar is about five pages long, including not just the oyster name, but the geographic origin, size, and flavor profile. I have since learned that Bluepoints are regular sized, of mild flavor, and hail from New York's Long Island and Connecticut's Copps Island.

More older women in athleisure commandeered spaces around us, as did men in suits and women in neutral work attire. Grand Central Station is smack in the middle of midtown, of course, so it draws both tourists and businesspeople in great abundance. And yet here we were, two freelancers awaiting their giant plate of oysters.

I did not eat oysters until after I moved to New York, fearful from a young age of what might happen if one eats a bad one based on a story my mother had told me of her own experiences many moons ago. But after I ate one oyster and didn't die or end up in the hospital, I figured for a while I would continue trying them. I find them less fishy, less slimy than clams, with a meat that's just the right amount of slippery and chewy. I notice that I don't order them of my own volition (I wonder if this is a side effect of that original deep-seated fear), but if someone wants to eat oysters, I am happy to tag along. And since SJT has been on an oyster kick for the last few months, I have been happy to tag along. The Oyster Bar was his latest selection, and what would not be fun about testing out a New York icon?

I realized after coming back from L.A. that what most interested me about the city was what was left over from what I'm going to call its golden age, the '40s, '50s, and '60s. Restaurants like Musso & Frank with their famous steaks and Dal Rae with Cherries Jubilee prepared tableside are legendary spots I would have been excited to check out had there been time. But what about in my own city? There were so many incredible, historic places I had yet to visit and perhaps it was time to start digging in, to not take them for granted and try them while I was able.

It is a delight that the Oyster Bar was one of the first places I visited in this new view of the city I'm trying to have. Cracked open and laid on ice, the oysters arrived with tangy cocktail sauce, mignonette (a tangy, almost mauve sauce made of vinegar and shallots), lemons, and a big container of horseradish. We squeezed lemons and dipped sauces, but the oysters were perfectly lovely on their own, too--mild indeed, almost pillowy, and chilly. It was like being in another era for a while, so much that I imagined fixing my imaginary pillbox hat and rushing out to catch a train in my kitten heels. But alas, I was wearing cowboy boots which, I think, part of me still ultimately prefers.