Sprang

As fitting for one of the world’s most impatient people, I do not like to wait for things. There are times when I wish the microwave would hurry the hell up, and I wonder why it takes SO LONG for the subway doors to open. So at the beginning of April I still had to bundle myself up in tights and boots, I was not a happy Manhattanite.

To be fair, I have long had trouble adjusting to weather in the Northeast, as in Florida by the beginning of March we are back at the beach. But this year it just seemed absurd. The days of simultaneous sunshine and warmth were too few and far between to make any sense. Where was this famed springtime New York was known for? Yes, there were few days when I thought to myself, ah yes, here it is! I could walk through Central Park on the way home from work, getting some of that sweet sunshine Vitamin D I had gone without for far too long. On those days, all seemed right with the world. And then I would be balled up in a coat for the next week, hiding under my little red umbrella, wishing New York would be less bipolar and just be spring already goddammit!

Now, though, New York’s bipolarity seems to have faded. A cardigan and a light jacket are enough to keep me warm. My sandals and high heels have reappeared from under my bed, as I am no longer fearful of losing my feet to frostbite. I have replaced my café au laits with iced coffees. Now, on May 1, I am not at all hesitant to say that it finally feels like spring.

With that in mind, and knowing this weekend would be a warm and sunny one, NP and I made plans to get some of that much needed Vitamin D. I had been appalled at my paleness, and it finally occurred to me that my Florida skintone would not appear even a smidgen as often as it had back in the day. The time to fix the paleness, however, was happily upon us. We walked to Central Park and had ourselves a mini-picnic in the sun, complete with blanket, iced tea, and pasta salad. Toy sailboats floated across the manmade pond nearby, families played kickball with their children, a group of older folks popped bottles of champagne. After all, who said springtime wasn’t a time for celebration? I thought it would be funny if this group of older folks got busted for having booze in the park, but NP rightly said that, hey, this is New York, and nobody probably cares. It’s a beautiful day—live and let live. Amen, sister.

I had forgotten how much I loved the warmth of the sun on my face. Science has told us time and again that sunshine is necessary for happiness, and after days like this I understand why. I kind of took it for granted when living in Florida—you just have sunshine all the time. It’s basically our greatest contribution as a state. In New York, though, I’m starting to realize that the fantastically beautiful, cool/warm sunny days are to be enjoyed in the biggest gulps. Dare I say I will make an effort to be outside whenever there’s sunshine, just in case it goes away in an instant.

Which it did today. We had a nice 45 minutes to an hour of sunshine before a strange haze set across the sky and a slight chill swept through. NP and I split ways, and I wrapped myself in my headscarf  and put on my big sunglasses a la an incognito 1950s movie star and headed home (what is spring, also, if not a time for semi-surreal fabulousness?). On the way, I passed a Mister Softee ice cream truck and, in a burst of childlike enthusiasm, got myself a soft serve vanilla ice cream cone covered in rainbow sprinkles. Years from now, I think this is the vision I will have of myself as a young New Yorker—glamorous, absurd, and excited about rainbow sprinkles outside of Central Park on a spring day. Some stuff you can’t make up even if you try.

There is Nothing Like a Drag Queen

“Aaaaaaand wheeeeeeeere isssssss the bodyyyy?”

The electric Miss Noxeema Jackson elegantly beats powder into her face as the soundtrack of Salt N Pepa’s “I Am Body Beautiful” deliciously pulsates behind her. The makeup flies up into her face like slow motion seaspray.

This image has been engrained in my memory from a young age, six or seven maybe, an age most parents would say is far too young for a child to be exposed to drag queens. In the film To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, Wesley Snipes plays the sassy Miss Noxeema, a drag queen on the road with Miss Vita Boheme (Patrick Swayze) and Miss ChiChi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo). I have been in love with this film since second grade, when I watched Noxeema, Vita, and ChiChi toss scarves about their drab living quarters in Snydersville and make it into a fabulous home away from home. From this movie, I learned early on that drag queens meant glitter and beauty and wigs and color and style and flair and attitude. They were better than supermodels, better than beauty queens, better than movie stars. They were real people, they walked among us and got fabulous no matter what. They had guts in the face of adversity. They were my heroes.

The movie, where straight actors played gay men in drag, was not enough though. As a young person living in South Florida, I had some access to drag culture and I gobbled it up whenever I could. I went to drag shows with my parents (the divine Cashetta’s magic show, among others), ate at drag restaurants, watched drag documentaries (the ultimate is Paris is Burning, about the drag scene in the late 1980s). To me and to my family, drag queens were just beautiful. And what person in their right mind is not constantly in search of beauty?

This brings us to New York, which I would venture to say is one of the drag capitals of the world. Where in places like South Florida a drag queen might go unnoticed, in New York they are legends—Sherry Vine, Coco Peru, Lady Bunny, and countless others—who make New York in all of its flashing nightlife disco fashion extravaganza glittery sex appeal the place they call home.

There are the haunts like District 36 in Midtown, a gay club where I recently found out “anybody who’s anybody” goes—recent sightings include downtown celebrity Amanda Lepore, The Village Voice’s Michael Musto, and RuPaul’s Drag Race goddess Raja Gemini; there’s also La Escuelita where another RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Carmen Carrera performs; there’s the Sunday night Vandam party at Greenhouse (no cover!), hosted by even more downtown celebrities, Suzanne Bartsch and Kenny Kenny; and of course there’s Boxers, a gay sports bar in Chelsea where the delightful Manila Luzon (and occasionally her girlfriend Sahara Davenport) host a RuPaul’s Drag Race viewing party, among many, many other places.

I must first address the RuPaul’s Drag Race theme that has now fully appeared. The incredible show, in case you are not familiar with it, is one which the second grader in me consistently drools over, a reality show hosted by the supreme drag diva RuPaul that is part America’s Next Top Model, part Project Runway, part drag show. Contestants compete to become “America’s Next Drag Superstar.” Raja Gemini, Carmen Carrera and Manila Luzon are all contestants from this season, Season 3.

And every Monday, AS and now TL and I make our way to Chelsea to attend the RuPaul’s Drag Race viewing party and see Miss Manila. She is a tall, statuesque glass of water elegantly perched atop industrial-strength stilettos, with light waves of black hair, false eyelashes that could knock you over and the brightest, prettiest pink Barbie lips you’ve ever seen. Brash and sassy, Manila works the crowd as emcee, flirting with the gay boys and occasionally their girl friends, revealing behind the scenes gossip from the show, offering up Drag Race swag to anyone willing to disrobe. Because everyone loves the show so much (and who doesn’t love free stuff?) she is constantly surrounded by shirtless men. What more could a lady want?

For the crowd at Boxers, Manila is our hometown heroine, a glittering beacon of fabulousness we have the incredible honor to see live. She does New York proud, glamming her way down the Drag Race runway as only a New Yorker could. They just don’t have swag like that anywhere else.

But we root for her not only because she’s representing the Big Apple, but because she’s insanely talented. A graphic designer by day, Manila pieces together each look as a complete visual, not a detail out of place. She is inspired by high fashion and smart culture, giving her ensembles a sophisticated edge I have yet to see duplicated on the show (at one point she wears a black sequined ensemble with a  hood she says gives “Thierry Mugler Evil Henchwoman realness.” I died. If only all ensembles everywhere in the world were so informed!) And her lip-synch to “Macarthur Park” is still without a doubt the most ferocious lip-sync I have ever, EVER seen.

I thank New York every day for the proximity it affords me to drag queens like Manila. Where in South Florida they’re not always as close as I would like, in New York, if I really want to, I can go out at any time and see me some queens. Of course, I could always throw in my To Wong Foo DVD, but nothing beats waltzing into a random bar and seeing a pair of twinkling, rhinestone-encrusted false eyelashes staring back at me.



Manila Luzon emcees at Boxers.



Miss Manhattan at The Met

I had an aunt who once gave me a child’s introduction to the Metropolitan Opera in the form of cassette tapes. I must have been about seven or eight, and though I knew absolutely nothing of opera, I thought it was such a glamorous present. After all, this aunt was from New York and if anyone knew what was glamorous, it had to be her. “People get all dressed up, in evening gowns and tuxedos,” she said. “The women wear beautiful jewelry and furs and there’s even a restaurant inside the opera house.”

My grandmother confirmed this. She was a woman who almost exclusively listened to opera as she prepared her face each morning—porcelain skin, not a wrinkle, with bright red lipstick that never smudged and curled cherry cola hair she kept in place with a satin ribbon— on a tiny tape recorder that sat next to her false eyelashes on the sink in the bathroom with the green wallpaper. She had lived part of her life as a great society belle, once attending a party wearing the same dress, but in a different color, as famed Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, only to waltz up to Graham and purr, “You have excellent taste.” She liked the operas Madame Butterfly and Die Fledermaus, and always chided me for not listening to it. “This is the greatest music in the world!” she’d admonish me. I didn’t disagree; I just preferred listening to The Beatles.

Even so, receiving these cassettes made my seven-or-eight year-old mind swirl. In my thoughts, gold lights danced overhead, women in long velvet gowns sauntered elegantly up and down stairs, their white-gloved hands draped over the arm of a dapper, refined gentleman, as my grandmother almost certainly had. As much as I thought this, though, I never listened to the tapes and remained almost completely bereft of classical music knowledge. Recently, however, the spirited SJT offered me an education in the opera, one I will not soon forget.

A well-mannered musicologist who uses the phrases “gentleman friend” and “adult film” without any trace of irony, SJT is happy to take even the most classically clueless under his tutelage, should they of course want to be taken. I did, in fact, want to be taken, to finally expose myself to a world my grandmother had always asked me to see. A few weeks ago it was my distinct pleasure to accompany SJT to the Metropolitan Opera to see Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. “It’s good to start with an opera where you already know the story,” he said knowingly. I was fully in his hands.

At 7:30 I arrived at the opera house at the Lincoln Center of Performing Arts, made up of the buildings for The Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, The New York City Ballet, and more, located between West 62^nd and 66^th Streets at Columbus Avenue. The Metropolitan Opera has been housed in this plaza since 1966 (before that it was a series of housing projects, in which the opening scenes for West Side Story were filmed). The Metropolitan Opera itself actually began in 1883, located at West 39^th Street and Broadway until its 1960s departure. Each season the Met, as it is called, stages over 200 performances of a variety of operas, all featuring stars of the opera world and the Met’s own repertory company.

While waiting for SJT, I wandered inside the sumptuous building, its lush red carpets smooth under my feet, spiraling staircases curling up to a balcony on the second and third floors. Dressed in cocktail attire, I finally felt that the glamour I imagined upon receiving those cassette tapes was real. I heard my grandmother saying, “See, cupcake? I told you so. And you haven’t even seen the show yet!”

SJT arrived and I took his arm—“Well, doesn’t this complete the picture?” he smiled. We found our seats, wonderfully placed in the orchestra section courtesy of a student lottery. The stage was encrusted with gold tiles and spunky 1960s-style chandeliers hung above the orchestra seating. In front of us were the Met Titles, what SJT told me were quite the controversial addition to the opera house in 1995. A method of simultaneous translation for operas that are almost all in a foreign language, be it French, German, Russian, Italian, or what have you, the titles help audiences understand what the actors are singing. It was controversial because before this, people simply read the opera’s libretto; opera purists felt this was the only way to experience the opera and didn’t like having their eyes forced about. But, on the whole it’s said that the Met Titles make an opera experience more accessible. I know it certainly was for me.

I was a little nervous. I knew there were three hours of opera ahead of me, and didn’t really know how I would react. I only prayed that I wouldn’t be horribly rude and fall asleep. Though Roméo et Juliette was a bit slow at the beginning—“You know the French,” SJT tsked, “it takes them forever to get going”—but for the most part I was enthralled. The singers made sounds with their voices I don’t think I’ve ever heard before, beautiful notes cascading out of their mouths and wrapping around us like a cashmere scarf on a fall day. I knew I was in the presence of beauty.

At intermission, SJT and I walked about the opera house, seeing on the lower level headshots of all the great stars that had performed in the space, on the upper level the elegant restaurant with beige tablecloths and gold chairs where people dined before the show. Gorgeous crystal chandeliers hung suspended in space, twinkling the room with soft yellow light. It was just as much a feast for the eyes as the opera itself was for the ears. I should have listened to my grandmother earlier.

We continued inside to see the rest of the opera. No theatre or opera critic, I can only say I thought the show was beautiful, from the music and the singing to the minimalist sets and luxurious costumes. I was in the midst of high art, unlike that of any I had previously experienced. As I sat, entranced, with SJT on my left, I could only help but notice the seat on my right was empty. I know my grandmother was there, finally happy that I was listening.  

PILLOW FIGHT!

New York is full of surprises. Anywhere, at any time, there is something absurd, inventive, or magical happening. Like on Saturday, April 2, when there was an enormous pillow fight in the middle of Union Square.

This pillow fight was a part of International Pillow Fight Day, organized by the Urban Playground Movement, a collective dedicated to making unique happenings in public spaces a larger part of popular culture and "replacing passive, non-social consumption experiences like watching television, and consciously celebrating public spaces in our cities as our 'urban living rooms.'" Basically, get up off your butts and interact with other human beings, world. This particular pillow fight was organized by Newmindspace, the brain child of Toronto-based artists Lori Kufner and Kevin Bracken, known for putting on large-scale, free public events such as this one. The New York Pillow Fight is one of their largest events, in three hours drawing as many as 5,000 people.

People began lining up around barricades in Union Square more than an hour before the event, congregating with their pillows (no feathers allowed, though a few did slip by), warpaint, and even battle costumes (one kid dressed as William Wallace in Braveheart). It was all a friendly, silly atmosphere of that happy, crazy energy adults normally use to do things like play kickball, channeled into pillow fighting absurdity. People of all ages counted down the ten seconds before 3 o'clock, then went insane on each other, smiling and smacking with delight. It's rough stuff, though--after 15 minutes, we had taken quite a fluffy beating.

When ALiCo told me about the event, I was instantly on board, if for the potential photographs alone. I was not disappointed. Take a look for some of my favorite scenes from the fight.

Jazz

Rich, chaotic swirls of notes pulsate in a darkened room. I am blissfully lost, spinning and twirling with a happiness usually reserved for drunken strolls downtown at two or three in the morning, but tonight the music is my only intoxicant. Until now I had forgotten how the blue hum of a clarinet ties my heart in beautifully mournful knots, how the upright bass moves my blood, how a trumpet tickles my feet into motion. It was like I had fallen into some fantastic combination of The Thin Man movies (made in the 1930s, when people went to clubs only to dance and listen to jazz jazz jazz) and Woody Allen’s Manhattan (that opening sequence where he uses George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” to begin the story of his love for New York City), condensed into a little dive bar called Mona’s on Avenue B near 14th Street.

Neon Brooklyn Brewery and Miller Lite signs burned in the window. Atop the dark wooden bar sat a series of chalkboards listing beer prices and drink specials. The room’s only light came from the fluorescent bulbs behind the bar, shining the faces of its patrons—a crowd of scruffy older gentlemen with longish, graying hair and mustaches; their ladies with reddish hair and leather vests; young people wearing black or plaid—with a haze of white light.

At the end of the bar sat a group of musicians including a pianist, a bass player, a guitarist, and a clarinetist, among others. They wore suits or dress shirts and ties with porkpie hats, almost anachronistic to their location, a small space between the bar’s two rooms, people squeezing past them to move from one room to the other. Even so, they filled the entire bar with music so luxurious I felt like I could pick the notes out of the air and hold them in my hand. I wanted to steal a few to have a personal soundtrack as I walked around New York, but the notes bounced deliciously around the room, too difficult to catch. The memory would have to do.

There was a woozy but crystalline rendition of “Sweet Lorraine.” An energetic “Honeysuckle Rose,” for which the musicians were joined by three singers, young women in high-waisted skirts and cardigans who looked like American Apparel but sounded like the Andrews Sisters. Each musician made room for one another’s solos, improvised with skill and electricity. The whole room fell silent with appreciation, save for applause at the end of each song. This was not music one ignored or talked over: it demanded respect, and rightly so.

I closed my eyes often to just listen. Since I had been in New York I had not heard proper jazz like this, strange since I always believed it was what the city sounded like. Deafening silence and heartbreaking noise, togetherness and solitude, pain and love, organization and chaos. It is a crystal clear yet incomprehensible twisted beauty that somehow energizes us and makes us beg for more. Jazz is New York.

I thought I heard my pulse in my ears, floating on the sheet music of my own soundwaves, but I was wrong. I was dancing to a heartbeat that so clearly belonged to the city. Merely being in its presence electrified me anew.

This is what I love about New York. Even in times of uncertainty or faithlessness, there is a moment that will completely reinvigorate us and make us realize what “it”—this living here, this hustle and bustle, this ambition, this occasional lack of sanity—is for. It is for late-night walks down 14th Street to dive bars seeping with jazz, for the plucking of that bass and the whine of that trumpet, for hearing the city’s heartbeat in one room, in one night when there is only light and silence and jazz.

Bill Cunningham

Every day, Bill Cunningham gets on his bicycle and snaps away at the streets of Manhattan, from society fetes to SoHo streetcorners. Clad in his blue work smock, the 80+ photographer has devoted his life to documenting not only New York fashion, but fashion around the world. He works at The New York Times, and has produced two photographic standbys—“On the Street,” where he photographs New York street style, and “Evening Hours,” a society column—every week for forty or so years. Cunningham has photographed everyone from Greta Garbo to Anna Wintour, and millions of mere mortals in between. His work is a historical record of fashion. But his humility never lets any of that show.

Perhaps this is why director and cinematographer Richard Press took on the project of making Bill’s life and work in to a documentary. “Bill Cunningham New York” was released this month for exclusive engagements in New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles before finding its way to theatres all across the country at the beginning of summer.

I was fortunate enough to attend one of the screenings (they’re almost all sold out up until the last screening day on March 29) at Film Forum, a landmark non-profit independent movie house in the West Village. With just four small theatres, Film Forum plays the movies film lovers love, from older films like Taxi Driver to the latest avant-garde Italian cinema releases.

Every seat in the theatre was filled. Honestly, it wasn’t too much of a surprise considering the number of people in New York alone who read the Times, love fashion, love New York and, of course, love Bill’s work. Though I grew up far from New York, every Sunday morning meant reading the SundayStyles section of the New York Times. I ceremoniously spread the paper out over the carpet in my family’s den and took in every detail of the Style section, especially Bill Cunningham’s “On the Street.” New York was always the dream and when I was able to see Bill’s photographs, I felt that much closer to achieving it. What were they wearing in New York, an epicenter of the cultural universe? Bright colors, bold furs, beautiful shoes—Bill saw it, and he showed me. I never felt too far away.

The film gave a world of insight to the life of this man, who is humble beyond comprehension (he even snapped away at his own award ceremony, when the French Ministry of Culture honored him with the title chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres). He has literally donated his life to his work, sleeping amongst filing cabinets filled with his photographs, and in the process has become one of the most revered fashion documentarians in the world. Even Harold Koda, head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, thinks so. And in the film, everyone from Anna Wintour to Brooke Astor sing his praises. One of my favorite scenes shows a group of photographers asking Anna to pause for a picture, but the only one she pauses for is Bill.

He is a creature of habit, shooting color film on his manual camera, eating four-dollar breakfast sandwiches at corner greasy spoons, riding around town on his bicycle. He is consumed by his work and knows no other life, really. What the film shows, though, is his humanity. That he is not just a Times photographer responsible for documenting however many decades of fashion history, but rather a man whose career successes outweigh his personal life entirely. The film brings up the question of Bill’s sexuality, if he has ever been in a relationship, and what his active role in his religion—he goes to church every Sunday—means to him in the face of that. Bill answers, saying no, he’s never been in a relationship, and his religious family didn’t think of fashion as a manly pursuit so it was difficult for them to understand. A few seconds pass and he starts to cry. Watching the film, I felt Bill almost forces himself to live this way, suppressing and even punishing himself to live without what he calls “urges.” That particular scene was heartbreaking, but it made me understand what I was watching that much more. Bill could not find beauty in himself, so he devoted his life to finding beauty elsewhere.

“Bill Cunningham New York” is wonderful, though, because it shows Bill loving the world. Seeing him being inspired is inspiring in itself. It reminds us that yes, of course Bill Cunningham’s work is important, but the artist himself is also important. He is a staple to fashion and to New York, but he is also a kindred spirit to anyone who has found passion and love in their work. In the end, we are happy there is beauty in the world for him to love, and hope to catch a glimpse of him on his bicycle.



Loved it so much I bought the poster.

For more about Bill Cunningham, you can check the movie site here and read a really great article by Bill himself about his work here.

Meatballs Are The Best Balls

Let me begin this by saying I am not an especially carnivorous person. I do not enthusiastically shout “Go Meat!” like the happy bratwurst people on the Hillshire Farm commercials. But I do have a love for a tasty meal, and any restaurant that supplies said tastiness is one that I will hold in high regard. I’ve written about a few restaurants here, but most of them do not have a to-go stand where you can order naked balls.

A single meatball slider

I am, of course, talking about meatballs. At The Meatball Shop in the Lower East Side, you can order your balls naked, meaning not on bread of any kind, or you can order them on a baguette as a hero, as sliders or as a ‘smash’ on a brioche bun. There are also numerous kinds of meatballs— including the classic beef but also spicy pork, chicken, vegetable, and meatball du jour—and sauces—classic tomato, spicy meat, mushroom, parmesan cream, pesto, etc.

Though the restaurant is primarily known for its meatballs, you will also have your choice of risotto, a number of sides, desserts (homemade ice cream sandwiches on specialty cookies!). And don’t forget a drink because, as the restaurant says, “you’ll get thirsty eating our balls”.

When TDS and I arrived at 84 Stanton Street, a giant maroon sign indicated to us that we were, in fact, at The Meatball Shop. It was a tiny little restaurant, whose small outdoor tables were filled with customers, even on a somewhat cloudy, 50 degree day. Upon entering the restaurant, we found there was an hour and a half wait, perhaps applicable to the restaurant’s small size and current hotspot status. After schlepping from Brooklyn, however (it was the same day we had gone to Williamsburg), we were not to be deterred. The restaurant had a takeout stand that was only a 20-minute wait. We had seen a park nearby, so decided to grab our balls and sit on a bench with them instead.

We'll have our balls to go, please.

We both ordered the ‘smash’ sandwich, which consisted of two meatballs “smashed on a toasted brioche bun with choice of sauce + mozzarella or provolone cheese served with a small side salad” for eight dollars. I got my beef balls with classic tomato and provolone. Usually one for exotic tastes, I decided to keep it simple since I was trying their balls for the first time. Upon receiving our balls in a minimalist brown kraft paper bag, we quickly skittered outside like little squirrels, super-hungry and so excited to try them. In the park we saw people before us had a similar idea, as a lone Meatball Shop bag flitted across the concrete when a gust of wind rolled past.

My da-lee-shiz sond-weesh.

Then, the sandwiches happened. Rather, they did not so much happen as they were “a happening.” An event. A happy wave of tastes cresting through my mouth. The sweetness of the brioche, the friendly tang of the tomato sauce, the saltiness of the beef and the smoothness of the provolone all pressed together in my mouth and I wished it would not end. I had meatball sandwiches before, but they were nothing like this—the meatballs were tough, the sauce made the bread fall apart; generally a disaster. But this sandwich was mushy in a good way, and the bread gave it just enough thickness so it didn’t fall apart. Happiness.

Beyond just the fantastic flavors happening in my mouth, though, what I really liked about the sandwich is that it was so well thought out. You could really tell that everything had been planned, from the bread used to the way the sandwich was assembled. It wasn’t just slapped together randomly—it was a thoughtful slap, and the thoughtfulness made it even more delicious, somehow.

Founders Michael Chernow and Daniel Holzman say the restaurant is dedicated to simplicity and deliciousness, and I can tell you without hesitation that this is certainly the case. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either. Though the restaurant opened in February 2010, it has already been featured in publications all across the country, including but not limited to Details magazine, New York magazine, and many more. What’s even better is that the restaurant is thoroughly accessible—there may be long lines, but the takeout is relatively fast and the restaurant is open until 4am Thursday through Saturday, and 2am Sunday through Wednesday. They also don’t take reservations. All of this, I think, adds even more to the simplicity. Come in whenever, eat delicious food, the end. Well, Meatball Shop, if your doors are open, I’ll be there. The end.