Scenes from a Summer

Patwig 

Aja

Merrie Cherry

Brooklyn drag queens are known for doing whatever the hell they want, pretty much. They'll arrive onstage with hairy legs and chests, they'll paint their entire faces as if they were applying warpaint, they'll have ripped tights, they'll throw off their wigs in fits of fabulousness. As famed drag king Murray Hill once said, they're a hot mess, but on purpose; the punks of the drag world, one might say. And they're glorious. I had never seen a Brooklyn drag show before but I made my way out to one recently. The annual festival of drag in Bushwick is known as Bushwig and it's held in September, where the borough's queens all come out to play; but the summer version of it is called Patwig. It was a day-long festival at Union Pool in Williamsburg, where ferocious queens like Merrie Cherry, Horrorchata, the delightfully named [untitled queen], Aja, and many others all came out to play in their own brand of drag. As if to say no, there's not one way to do drag, and anything I want to do, any choice I make will be beautiful. For the rest of my life, I will never forget seeing Merrie Cherry lip-synch Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," spinning on a pole, running across the stage and jumping onto a picnic table in giant red platform heels. It was sheer genderfuck perfection. I will without a doubt be going back.

Photos are from my iPhone. Incidentally, I am also on Instagram (@MissManhattanNY)!

 

Part of Merrie Cherry's "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Punk in Drublic
When it comes to drinking, I am a terrible lightweight. One drink, of any kind, makes me loopy, so when JW came to visit last week and we had a cocktail--yes A cocktail-- with dinner, I was done. And after dinner, around 11pm, we went grocery shopping because I had no food and it's New York so everything is open late (my grocery store is open til 1am. God, I love this town). So we were in this grocery store, giggling and wobbling through the aisles to find strawberries and yogurt and cookie dough on two different nights, and it was a completely wacky experience. JW accidentally made jokes about the phallic shape of cookie dough as we tromped through a crowd of people in the pasta aisle, my giant shopping basket filled with cottage cheese and yogurt for me, kombucha for her. They turned and stared and we burst out laughing in each other's faces. And I have to say, it was one of my greatest moments of last week.

I've probably written this before, but one of the things about living in New York is that you have to remember that it's just like living everywhere else. Yes, there are clubs open til 4am every night--trust me, I've been to them--but you know you're a real New Yorker, or at least on your way to becoming one, when you don't have to do those things or be chasing those things to have an amazing time. Sometimes you can just be punk in drublic in your local grocery store, shopping for cookie dough at 10pm with a friend. You'll simultaneously laugh and eat the dough on the way home with her, like you're still in college, as if nearly nine years have not passed since you first met. And it'll be awesome.

Nocturne Blues
It was rather toasty last weekend--easily in the 90s for a day or two, definitely. And over the weekend was the annual Nocturne Blues dance weekend here in the city (read more about what blues dancing is here). Blues dancers from all over the country and the world came to dance to DJs and live music, enter dance competitions, take blues classes, and much more. I had the pleasure of attending for two nights, both where I danced from about 10:30pm until about 3am. Hips swirl and grind, people are kind and considerate, and you leave with a warm body and a warm heart. (Not to mention you get to hang out and dance with two friends you never get to see and it's wonderful! Shoutout to the phenomenal JB and DL).

There is nothing like leaving a building having danced out your stresses and entering the dark, quiet streets of New York in the summertime, where a heated, humid breeze hangs in the air. That's the thing I've always felt about very hot weather--while it's unpleasant on the surface, on a deeper level it makes you feel alive.

Jazz on a Summer's Day
In 1959, the photographer Bert Stern arrived in Newport, Rhode Island to direct a feature film, but luckily he decided to abandon it and focus instead on the Newport Jazz Festival. The result is a documentary of a single day of the festival, featuring Stern's gorgeous cinematography and astounding jazz performances from the likes of Louis Armstrong, Big Maybelle, Mahalia Jackson, George Shearing, and many more. I hadn't seen the film previously, but what I heard about it was that each scene from the film itself was a gorgeous photograph, reflective of Stern's still work. Seeing it on Tuesday, this was without a doubt completely true. I had been invited to the beautiful Explorer's Club on the Upper East Side for a viewing of the film in one of the club's great rooms (to get to it I had to walk past a giant taxidermy polar bear!) and was utterly blown away. When you look at the film, you feel Stern looking at each of these images and understanding why he wanted to capture them, what story he was trying to tell. And it was, frankly, the perfect movie for a summer evening. As I left, I walked into the evening, dark but still well lit in the way that all New York evenings are, inspired to listen to jazz all the way home.

Check out the trailer here, but I highly recommend watching it in its entirety!

Next Time, Flirt With The Cops

I will preface this story by admitting to the following:

1) Yes, it was perhaps dumb of me to not be aware of open container laws in New York. We are, unfortunately, not living in Paris after all.

2) I am occasionally completely oblivious to the power of being female.

Now we begin.

This past Saturday was a warm but slightly cloudy day at Brighton Beach, where I met up with my ladies, EH and TDS, both of whom I hadn’t seen in some months. EH is usually off being an awesome med student, and TDS was finishing school and being all theatre-y this summer. But we managed to convene for a day of leisure and booze at the beach. Yes, we would imbibe wine—red, because it didn’t need to be refrigerated—and sit in the sand and sun and surf and it would be glorious lady time.

No sooner had we opened our bottle of wine and sipped from our tiny, clear tumblers, roll up two police officers in their police officer golf cart. “Hi ladies,” they said. “You’re drinking wine, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice weighted with attitude and an inherent distrust of the authorities.

“Are you from here?” they asked, smiling.

“Here?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, the five boroughs,” said the one behind the wheel, leaning forward and giving me attitude right back. “Sometimes we get visitors drinking on the beach.”

“Well, I’m not from here, but I live here,” I said. Which is clearly not something I would have said if I thought I was doing something wrong.

“Oh, you’re just taking the out,” said the one behind the wheel, as if I was lying.

“Uh, I’ll show you my ID. I’m not from here.” I whipped out my Florida driver’s license when cops asked for all of them.

“We weren’t going to give you a ticket,” they said. “Now we have to.” They took our licenses and wheeled their stupid little cart around to the back of our towels. I sat and looked at them.

“Is there a problem, miss?”

“Uh, yeah, I’d love to know what you’re doing with our IDs.”

“We have to call in and see if there are any warrants for your arrest.” The three of us girls laughed, as if we three were somehow wild bandits who, after escaping all of the possible crimes we had yet to be captured for, had decided to finally get caught by the law by having a goddamned glass or four of Montepulciano on the beach. “And then we’re going to give you a ticket.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “You just said you weren’t going to. Why can’t you not do that?”

He explained something about doing us a courtesy by only giving us a $25 citation because technically we were in the NYC Parks Administration jurisdiction and not NYPD territory. Normally tickets would be $150. Rather intelligently, EH chimed in, “Wouldn’t it be more of a courtesy to not give us the ticket at all, like you said you weren’t going to?” But they had already beeped into headquarters or whatever the crap they did and it wasn’t possible anymore. Meanwhile, I was wondering where they were this past week when that crazed shooter opened fire at the Empire State Building. It’s a rough life being a Brighton Beach cop, strolling around the beach in your golf cart all day, wearing shorts, and confiscating alcohol.

“Look,” I said. “I really don’t understand. I’m just trying to have a good time out here with my girls, we never get to see each other, we’re not hurting anyone, and we really didn’t know this was an issue.” I wanted to say, we all have college degrees, we’re not so dumb to so blatantly violate the law like that, but I didn’t want to take the chance and offend them into giving us the $150 tickets.

“We understand, Miss M,”—my skin crawled; I hate it when people I am clearly displeased with call me by my name. I much prefer “ma’am” or “miss” coming from jerks I can’t be bothered with.—“so we’re not going to confiscate your wine. You can keep drinking it. If another officer comes, just politely show them the ticket and they won’t bother you.” What the fuck? JUST DON’T GIVE ME THE TICKET, ASSHOLE.

Pubic Consumption

But they did. And thankfully it didn’t go on our permanent records, it’s just a citation for—as so beautifully, incorrectly printed on the back of the ticket—“pubic consumption.” The cops drove away in their stupid little cart. I felt bad for how small their penises probably were.

This all happened, of course, while we were surrounded by people drinking beer directly from bottles. I should have lied about where I was from, I said.

“I think he wanted you to flirt with him,” EH said.

“He what?”

“The one in the driver’s seat, the cute one.”

Christ. So if I had just giggled and pushed my boobs together the three of us would be $25 richer? This really didn’t even occur to me.

“You gave the cop attitude and you didn’t flirt with him?” my mother said. “You got what you deserved. Stop with the feminist bullshit because it’s only going to get you tickets. Welcome to the real world.” Because, really, why else would two fit cops roll up to three pretty girls (not to toot our own horns, just being real) when there was a beach full of flabby older folks also drinking from open containers all around them?

To be fair, the feminist angle didn’t even register at the time—it was more of the ‘get out of my face, cop’ angle that I was pursuing and, apparently, it was not a good color on me.

New life lesson: acknowledge you are an object and get yourself out of anything with your boobs and your smile. Three cheers for feminism, a woman’s rising place in the world, career goals, and a sense of general decorum. Also, no drinking on the beach. Well, at least not from so blatant a container.