Won't You Be My Neighbor?

A bespectacled, mustachioed man exited my neighbor’s apartment as I left mine, his hands filled with some kind of tray covered in a knotted pink sheet. He turned to his right toward the elevator, then looked back at me.

“You might want to take the stairs,” he said. “We’re bringing her down now.”

At first I didn’t understand. Had she had some kind of accident? I must have looked confused because he sympathetically offered, “She passed away.”

“Oh,” I said, as the corners of my mouth drooped and turned into sadness. How sad that she had passed away. In the next instant, though, I realized I had no idea who he was talking about.

I only knew that the Korean newspaper was delivered to the door next to mine once a week, that the sound of a duo or trio of Korean ladies yelling at each other carried through to my apartment every so often, and that sometimes the cooking smells coming out of their apartment made me hover with delight at my own door, just so I could smell them a little bit longer. Beyond that, I had little idea who my neighbors were. My guess is there was one elderly woman being cared for by her daughters, and this was the woman who passed away.

I know we tried to meet them (her?) once because we were having a party in our apartment and wanted to apologize in advance if it got noisy, but they (she?) never answered the door. We left a note, but it stuck to the door for three days before it was suddenly gone.

I felt a stillness in the hallway unusual for a Saturday morning. When the sun is bright, it seems to draw people out of their apartments, buzzing and excited like bees at a hive. There was none of that energy now, and I moved down the stairwell, conscious of and grateful for being able to tread in the hallway on the tired, dingy linoleum I always wished would look a little cleaner. I did not know this woman who passed away, but I still felt sad, sad for her family who would now have to empty her apartment, sad that a life that was so physically close to me had ended and I had never known the life at all.

I heard often that this was the nature of apartment living in New York. We all live so close together but don’t enter each others’ lives, choosing instead live in some kind of hermit-like bubble. It’s almost as if we say “This is MY LIFE and it is NOT YOURS,” to each other. “Just because we live so close doesn’t mean I want to know you.” So we never do know each other; not really anyway.

There was one especially cold weekend when NP was away and I needed change of $20 to do my laundry. Rather than go outside, I knocked on my neighbors’ doors and asked them for change. I met a few of them that way. Their apartments are much larger than mine, and they were on the whole very friendly. I like to think we bonded over our shared distaste for the laundry room. 

For the most part, though, I can identify the people who live in my apartment building, but I only know a few of their names. Last night Brad from downstairs came up to say that I was walking around my apartment too loud in my heels and had woken up his baby. I had never met him before, but I apologized and told him I liked his Beastie Boys t-shirt. We smiled and shook hands, and I took off my heels.

Mike lives two floors up. He has some kind of job that involves a suit and I always see him coming back in wearing athletic gear. The first night I arrived, he offered to help NP, my mother and I move allllll my stuff into the apartment. I think I have had three conversations with him ever, all in the elevator.

I recently met a lady who lives down the hall from me. I think her name is Norma and she has a white pixie haircut. She held the elevator door for me while I fumbled with my keys outside. “It’s nice to know your neighbors,” she said and smiled sweetly.

There’s also the lady with the llama dog. It’s not actually a llama, but it’s almost tall enough and hairy enough to be one. In the fall and winter it has luxurious flowing locks of tawny fur, but the lady recently trimmed its hair for the warm weather so it looks much less glamorous and more like a sad third grader with a generic haircut.

There’s the thin Russian lady with the black cherry hair, the mother who was dressed in bee costume for Halloween and her children, the kind of hipster looking tall man with clear-frame glasses, a ruffly, fifties-like pompadour and a charcoal-colored French bulldog dog named Rick James.

But I don’t really know any of them. After the Korean woman passed away, I realized that we tend to put a cap on the number of people in our lives, as if to say, “We’re no longer accepting friend applications, thank you.” When do we do this, and why do we stop? This is not to say that quantity beats quality as it certainly doesn’t, but after a while we tend to close ourselves off to the experience of meeting new people, as if we think there’s only a few times in our lives (college orientations, first days of work, etc.) when we’re supposed to do that, and that time has passed. But it hasn’t. My mother once told me that if you let someone into your life even for a little while, they can enrich it more than you would have thought possible.

So I’ve recently been trying to make an effort to meet my neighbors, to be a little friendlier in the elevator. I don’t think a smile and a little small talk ever hurt anyone.

Street Like That

Sprang in New York means street festivals everywhere. This includes but is not limited to the Union Square Farmer’s Market, the Hester Street Fair on Hester and Essex in Chinatown/Lower East Side and, most recently, the Festival of Ideas for the New City. I had the pleasure of attending all three yesterday, mostly without trying! All of the neighborhoods are so close together that it’s easy to forget where one ends and the next one begins. I ended up pleasantly surprised when I would see yet another row of tents urging me to peruse wares, projects, treats, and more.

The Union Square Farmer’s Market takes place on the perimeter of Union Square and features goods all produced by farmers in and around New York. Some deliciousness I particularly enjoyed: Pear Apple Wine from Eve’s Cidery in Van Etten, New York; homemade goat cheese from Lynnhaven Farm in Ulster County, New York; and lamb jerky from Catskill Merino in Sullivan County, New York. I’ve always felt that being around fresh produced and locally produced goods was a bit magical, so the Union Square Farmer’s Market is a constant delight. Plus, so many free samples. It’s open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 8am to 6pm.

The Hester Street Fair happens every Saturday when it’s warm. Opening day was actually this past Saturday and apparently over 11,000 people swept in and out of the somewhat small fair space. One-of-a-kind food vendors selling everything from bahn mi to brownies dotted the fair, along with some crafty ladies and gentlemen selling wares like decoupaged coasters and knit caps. A Zydeco band supplied the soundtrack. The fair has actually been around since 1895, and was home to one of the largest pushcart markets back in the day. Today it’s thankfully more modern. I mean, how did they live without shaved ice machines, anyway?

Last but certainly not least is the Festival of Ideas for the New City. The first year of what I imagine will be a once-a-year event, the Festival of Ideas is a collaborative initiative of downtown organizations harnessing their creative energy to affect positive change in the arts and the way we live in New York.  One of the ways the creative energy was shared was through a StreetFest along the Bowery, where local and grassroots organizations displayed products and plans for a better future. It was a nice idea, but I enjoyed the unplanned sights more than anything. A festival like this draws people from all walks of life, from dance studio directors wearing fairy wings without a hint of irony to uptown goddesses strutting about in their high heels. Here are some highlights.

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.