"Ladiez" Who Breakfast

Breakfast, I find, is underrated. Breakfast food is not, with its cult following for dinner and Ron Swanson's penchant for the stuff alongside pretty, dark-haired women. But getting up to go meet someone for breakfast, on a weekday, before 11am is hardly a social thing people do--at least in New York, where sleeping in often feels second only in luxury to cocktails at The Carlyle. This is mostly because people have these "job" things I keep hearing about where they have to go into "offices" at a "certain hour," whatever that means. But as full-time freelancers SJT and I do not have those, so Thursday morning we met for a meal that was solidly, decidedly breakfast: 9am at Buvette in the West Village (they do open at 7am Mondays through Fridays, now but my initial thought upon hearing that was, "Well, let's not get crazy.") Once we confirm our plans SJT texts me, "Ladiez who breakfast!" It does feel quite glamorous, doesn't it? Like we have membership in some exclusive club only a rich husband can buy.

I've written about Buvette briefly before, the petite small-plates French restaurant in the West Village, but neither of us had ever been for breakfast. The place is a madhouse for brunch on weekends with a mob of people waiting out front, and neither of us wanted to chance that. So we chose an early hour, early enough where we could have a leisurely breakfast and still have plenty of time for a work day afterward. I was happy to wake up at 7-ish to get there in time, too; excited even. It was a far cry from my forcible mattress detachment that happens when I'm in the midst of Fashion Week. Or, interestingly, what would also happen when I first moved to New York and had a 9-5 job; it was often punctuated with the whine "I DON'T WANT TO GO TO WORK!!!!" ripping itself almost involuntarily from my lips every morning. I want to hover above that girl groaning her way out of bed like the blue fairy in Pinocchio, wings a-twinkling, eyelashes a-batting: "Shhhh, my child. There is another way life can be lived! You can actually love what you do for a living!" And, magically, here we are now (I love shooting Fashion Week, it just makes me batty and tired, as it does everyone).

The morning commute, though I've done it of course since becoming a freelancer, still boggles me and my thought process is regularly How do people do this every day? May RuPaul bless and keep your hearts and souls on this train that is practically exploding with people.

I walk across Washington Square Park to Grove Street, and find SJT waiting in front for me. Even at 9am, the place is packed and we have to wait a few minutes for a table. It's enough to acknowledge that fall is finally upon us, a brisk chill of wind running through my clothes as if to say, "Nah girl, it's not summer anymore. Try a leather jacket over that asymmetrical cardigan tomorrow." It's invigorating nonetheless, and shortly we have our seats at a little marble-top bistro table in the corner. The lights are bright, the counter is bustling, and our little paper menus are stamped with today's date. I decide on a poached egg with lentils and kale. Fun fact: I am a slut for a poached egg. I find them to be the most glamorous of eggs, the way they sit neatly in a little cloud before you slice into their soft white flesh and shiny, runny yolk falls everywhere. I will order them whenever they are available, and sometimes when they're not. SJT chooses the Frits a la Americane, sunnyside eggs with bacon and sage.

Our selections arrive in the teeny manner I have come to adore from Buvette--a petite plate for he and bowl for me, but both brimming with food. My poached egg, in all its glamour, rests atop a stew of kale and lentils, all sprinkled with a light dusting of grated cheese, accompanied with two thin slices of grilled French bread gently glossed with olive oil. I slice into my egg with the corner of the spoon I have been given, scooping up yolk and kale and lentils and cheese all in one bite, and it is divine. A pop of salt from the cheese, a chewiness of kale, a softness of egg, and I am in love. I alternate between spoonfuls into my mouth and onto the magically crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside slices of French bread. There is salt and crunch and smoothness and I wish I had the words of a proper food writer to describe it all.

We linger over breakfast, taking our time and making our way through our small plates, chit-chatting about travel and work and travel again. It makes me realize that I don't know the last time I truly went to a place and ate capital-B Breakfast like this. I often can't force myself out of the house before noon on the weekends and a weekday breakfast is usually me huddled in front of a bowl of cottage cheese or oatmeal with my computer open, still in my pajamas, glasses perched on my face--it is a sight  significantly less glamorous than a poached egg, specifically the poached egg I had at Buvette. This one was an inspiring enough meal to make me want to do breakfast again, not just there but anywhere, this simple luxury for which it is without a doubt worth getting out of bed.

Backstage Beauty: New York Fashion Week, Spring/Summer 2017

Some of my favorite shots from behind the scenes at this past NYFW.

 

And this picture, which I really only love as
documentation of how fabulous this person is. Amen.

Dollypalooza

I wouldn't have said that I had little to no feelings about Dolly Parton, but I wouldn't have said she was at the top of my mind like the man standing next to me at Dollypalooza. This gentleman's head was adorned with a trucker hat airbrushed with the curvaceous country singer's figure and a swirl of her signature. He wore a western-style button down embroidered with flowers, and a big silver belt buckle held up his slim-cut jeans stuffed into a pair of black cowboy boots. Was I still in Manhattan?

I was, in fact, and I was in the basement of Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street for Dollypalooza, an annual fan tribute to the blonde bombshell singer/songwriter herself. Intrigued by the lineup that evening of burlesque performers and drag queens--featuring performance legends World Famous *BOB*, Darlinda Just Darlinda, and Sweetie--and the possibility of even more wigs, glitter, rhinestones, and camp than usual at one of these kinds of shows, I decided to go. SJT was my willing companion that evening, and we arrived at the venue tipsy on Georgian wine from Old Tblisi Garden next door. Neither SJT or myself have a particularly Dolly-infused background, but we do love glitter and kitsch, and I think that was the biggest draw for both of us. What would a celebration of the woman who once said with a smile "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap" actually look like?

Coming down the stairs of the venue, we were immediately greeted by an explosion of spangles and sequins on performers milling about in front of the silent auction. To say we figured we were in the right place was perhaps an understatement. But shortly we were hootin' and hollerin' along with a crowd of New Yorkers decked out in their favorite Dolly or Dolly-inspired gear. Wigs and cowboy boots peppered the crowd, as did concert t-shirts from her tour that recently passed through Forest Hills. We sang along and danced to the sounds of Doll Parts, a Dolly Parton tribute band fronted by burlesque performer Corvette Le Face, shimmying to classics like "9 to 5" and "Light of a Clear Blue Morning."

I expected to love the performers I knew, but for whatever reason I didn't expect to come away with a burning desire to listen to Ms. Parton...which I did, incidentally, end up doing for a decent chunk of the day today. As with many of the sparkly icons we celebrate today--be they Stevie Nicks, Cher, Patti LaBelle, or whoever else--Dolly inspires an entire subculture of people, people who would love her enough not just to go see her concert but to go to a fan tribute show where their queen herself would not even be present. It seems like a no-brainer, of course, but as a person whose country music background is light at best, it was both eye-opening and reaffirming. Well, of course, Dolly Parton would inspire a tribute band, would be beloved by burlesque performers and drag queens, would be celebrated in an epic fan evening like Dollypalooza. The woman has 46 Grammy nominations and eight wins, 110 singles that have charted, and is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Not to mention she has her own theme park, for crying out loud. What's not bright, sparkly, and boob tassle-worthy about that?

Take a look below to see some of my shots from the evening.

We All Scream for Drag Queens

New York is wonderful because on a random Tuesday in August you can get free ice cream from a drag queen.

B sent me a text yesterday morning, a screenshot of a news story saying that queens from RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars would be giving out ice cream on the corner of University Place and 14th Street by Union Square to promote the show's second season premier on Thursday night (okay, so it wasn't exactly "random"). I didn't really want the ice cream, but I'm always game for a fantastic queen.

I'm happy to say this was what I found there, snapping away with my camera at Alyssa Edwards, Katya, and Ginger Minj while they were standing inside an ice cream truck printed with the RuPaul's Drag Race logo, handing out ice cream from New York cult favorite Big Gay Ice Cream. Alaska 5000 and Roxxxy Andrews were also in sight, doing interviews with local New York news stations. I couldn't tell who was there to just get free ice cream, to see the queens, or both, but the corner was exploding with people, even a few in drag themselves, and the line snaked all the way down 14th Street. People held up their phones to take pictures with queens as they doled out the frozen treats, some lining up to take photos with Katya while she stepped aside to have a cigarette. I watched Roxxxy Andrews shamelessly flirt with one of the staffers, saying something like, "Give me your number, I want to run my fingers through your curls later," gesturing to the top of his head with a flick of her long peach fingernails. Alaska purred into a microphone offered to her by one of the news crews while Ginger Minj bubbled and batted her eyelashes inside of the truck.

It was hot as I ran around the tiny area bursting with bodies to get pictures, but it was a perfect way to spend an hour on a Tuesday. Take a look at some of the images below!

Whiskey-upon-Hudson

At 9:30 am this past Saturday, a white Mini Cooper rolled up to my apartment building. In the driver's seat was SE, Ray-Bans perched on his face, one hand perched confidently on the wheel. In the mere moments I was outside the steaming humidity swallowed me whole and I was relieved to plop myself in the rush of air conditioning inside the car. We plugged in our tunes--which would evolve throughout the day from The Black Keys Pandora radio station to a medley of Ben Folds and No Doubt anthems to yelping pop punk songs from our pseudo-emo youth--and made our way to upstate New York for the day.

Though we had to pass through the corporate suburban wasteland of New Jersey first, where Targets and Kohl's and Houlihan's and, yes, even TGI Friday's peppered the landscape instead of...anything else, we eventually arrived back in New York. Outside of the city by probably a little under an hour, New York is a curling highway running through mountains and rock and forest. It is green and spread through with country roads, the occasional log cabin, and the occasional Donald Trump sign. At one point, though, as if we turned some magical corner, the Trump signs evolved into gay pride flags and  I felt like we were back in Manhattan, but with far more trees and Grateful Dead paraphernalia.

We had gone upstate, to the New Paltz area, to visit the Hudson Whiskey Distillery at Tuthilltown Spirits. We were to arrive and take a tour of the facility, have a whiskey tasting, then lunch at the former Tuthilltown Grist Mill turned restaurant next door. But we arrived to the area a bit early and instead poked around an antiques store. Musty toys (like Barbie Paper Dolls from the 1960s and even an NSYNC marionette) and glassware and jewelry ran through the store, chaotically shelved together to fit as much as possible in the tiny space. I ended up with a copy of James Thurber's The Thurber Carnival from the 1940s and a Lake Placid Olympics pin with a tiny athletic raccoon printed on it, courtesy of SE, who also did not leave empty-handed, by way of a petite American flag pin.

Outside of the antiques store were signs for something called the Sunflower Arts Festival, which happened once a year. We resolved to check it out after our tour, but upon pulling up to the distillery we realized it was in the field mere steps away from the distillery's front door. We were still early when we arrived, though, so we decided to poke around. Tall, circular metal structures at the distillery were painted over in a splash of bold, colorful designs, and around the corner at the fair there was a music tent, an array of standalone "ghost" doors painted in an explosion of bright colors as if they were canvases. 

Next to those, artists spraypainted murals onto canvas (one of them later turned out to be the famed (Meres One, founder of the dearly departed 5 Pointz aerosol art project in Long Island City, Queens). In some tents nearby, local artists and children painted still lives of sunflowers, people sold handcrafted jewelry, baked goods, home-bottled hot sauces, dried lavender, and a host of other goodies. People sat on a sloping hill dotted with planted sunflowers and listened to the band, some young women hula-hooped to the strum of their guitars, running for shelter when a rather heavy sunshower reared its head. There were more piercings and tattoos and tie dye than I expected for upstate New York (I was more prepared for the Trump signs, quite frankly), but SE told me the area is known for its crunchy, granola spirit. Who knew?

Shortly after we went into the distillery for our tour, led by a man named Lion with a skull tattoo and several ear piercings. He walked us through the whiskey's development, from its history as a distillery to its beginnings as grain to a fermenting mash, to a boiling liquid to a cooled liquid to a barreled liquid to a labeled and sent off liquid. I marveled at the structures and containers used for everything and I felt like I was in a sort of steampunk factory fairyland, everything a hooting and churning or pumping brown or silver metal. My favorite part was seeing all the barrels used for the stuff, how each one is filled up with a gas station-like pump labeled with a date and was from a different cooperage in the country.

Post-tour, it was time for our tasting, where we were able to sample all the beverages produced at the distillery, whiskeys and ryes as well as a delectable cacao liqueur, blackberry cassis, and bourbon maple syrup. I slurped the latter out of a tiny plastic cup as if I were coaxing cough syrup onto my aching throat. I can still taste it.

Post-distillery, we made our way to the adjacent Tuthill House restaurant. As I mentioned, it's a former grist mill, so it was perched on top of a gorgeous waterfall flowing over shiny rocks. Inside I had one of the best cocktails I have ever had, called the "Beet Poet." It featured, I quote, "Walnut & Pistachio Infused Indigenous Empire Wheat Vodka, Beet, Black Peppercorn, Fresh Lemon, Ginger." Praise be to our lordess and savoir RuPaul, did that make the simmering heat outside feel like it had disappeared (the buzz it brought on was not unwelcome, either). We dove into burgers afterward and had another gander at the Sunflower Festival before driving home.

Well, not entirely "home" home, though we did head back to the five boroughs. We realized that since we had purchased the car for the entire day, we should really make use of it and go to a place for dinner we wouldn't normally be able to get to as easily without a car. We chose Arthur Avenue in the Bronx for Italian food, specifically the restaurant Mario's. My father had grown up going to eat Italian food with his family there and parts of The Godfather were filmed there. We dove into an herbed carrot salad and seeded bread and olive oil and caprese salad and chicken scarpariello and tiramisu and all of it was simply heavenly. Dessert still on our lips, we walked back to the car, lolling and sated, a day of whiskey and sun behind us.