Top of the red line is where I live, bottom is where I tried to go. An hour and 20 minutes travel time alloted (in the rain) and I took a cab to the subway and still got screwed trying to get there in any decent amount of time.
Ok, so I made a screw up with the transfer, I was on the R not the M. By the time I was on track, I would have been 10 to 20 minutes late for the event and I don't do late ever (I'm always early, occasionally on time), unless people are waiting and then I rush even more and am stressed and apologetic and also psychologically wrecked. We don't do late in NYC, or at least I don't - once again, ever. So I knew I was defeated so just transferred and headed home on the D or Q train (standing for 'Dumb Queen ' i.e. me).
I took this (pardon the focus on all of these, shooting from the hip can be hard) first picture before my impending lateness closed in on me, but later realized that taking some pics of outer-borough realness fashions would be the only saving grace I could salvage from this crummy wet trip through these rat holes. This handsome 6'3" gloriously pitch black & handsome (albeit booger-crack) man had it all together with making fashion work on any budget. He had shorts on with electric blue long johns that tapered into his North Face down stuffed puff high top sneakers, a coat made of a thick flecked upholstery carpet style fabric large enough to wall to wall carpet an entire hotel room, flat brimmed baseball cap (of course) with 'Brooklyn' embroidered in hip hop script and expensive headphones. He was Gay, and not closeted. The children are out there right now.
'Sagging' is still very much alive and well and the boxers exhibited are always very visible in white or flashy patterns. Why flash your underwear if it's dark or matching your pants? Buttless (a word I think that should be in spellcheck - ooh 'spellcheck' is in spellcheck... that's not a word! WORD.) ... sorry... Buttless people are not encouraged to sag and you won't see a lot of the flat boys even entertaining the idea of sagging their jeans. Having a butt is a form of exerting your masculinity?
You can still be butch as ever and wear tight jeans, so long as they are low and end in high tops. Every guy had tight jeans, a lot of grey. Peoples shoes are getting crusty in this economy, so the main item people have invested some cash in is their jacket, either down or small leather disco with a hoodie. The jacket presence was very visible.
Speaking of crust, at this one outdoor station in the middle of nowhere there was this beautiful algae panning down the metal wall. I could only get a small part of it, but I thought it had a Monet water lily quality. Maybe not. I was tired.
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Now let me address the T.M. short films screening I REALLY wanted to go to and Brooklyn in general. I know he's dead, but he lived on 5th avenue and all his work took place and was about the East Village in the 80's and 90's. WHY was the whole wonderful series of films being showed in an area of Brooklyn that was pretty remote and a serious pain in the everything to get to?!?! I mean how miserable is that? Also Brooklynites: You are always moaning that you are 1 stop away and that it's closer than most other parts of Manhattan. No its not. The timing never works properly and you loose an entire spontaneous aspect to your living if you have to go and (forbid) live in the Hobbit inhabited get-your-food-before-dark Brooklyn. I'm sorry I can't sugar coat this any longer. If you are from there and love the life there, then fine, but those of you who moved there from Manhattan are a fragile bunch we all do this dance around in order to not be too brutal about your (I'm sorry) ...failure. There I said it. Let me also add that when we come out there we already begin to feel a little dirty during the trip, are never warmed enough (or let's face it, at all) by any Brooklyn hospitality and feel a little battered and happy to return to our island the second we see the subway stop is in Manhattan or see our glistening home shining at us as we cross the bridge.
3 comments:
Well, that sucks. When I lived in Brooklyn I had two friends visit. One was Tobie and the other was Bunny, but that's because she helped me move back to Manhattan!
The plus was that I had two marble fireplaces and a cute backyard. The minuses? Everything else, getting followed home by a vagrant when I was carrying a week's worth of laundry, waking up with a DEA helicopter light in my face becuse they were trying to catch the dealer who was almost successful in breaking in through my roof door, and coming home from Norway with half my belongings stolen.
Good times.
You're not the only DQ I can't make head nor tail of those bloody underground train maps. Whilst on a holiday in Sitges we decided to visit Barcelona we've been hundreds of times before and it's only a 20 min train ride, but on our return journey back to Sitges we realised we had caught the wrong train when we ended up at Perpignan, France!
The last time I was in NY I was accosted by an old tramp who was walking beside me, he was wearing a plastic rain mac with day-glo wrist bands, and carrying a transister radio with Vanessa Williams singing Save The Best For Last. He cadged a ciggy off me and told me his name was cyril.
So rue....it takes me less time to get to Philly than most of Brooklyn....
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