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Hal was a coyote. Possibly the most famous coyote to scamper the grounds of Central Park, score cover shots on both the Post and the Daily News, and pass from these terrestrial plains in two days' time; Hal had snuck his way into our hearts. Named after the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, where he was discovered on March 20th 2006, Hal enjoyed a short but exciting hustle before the NYPD shot him with a tranquilizer dart and ended his adventurous romp. While en route to the New York Zoo in the Bronx, Hal passed away unceremoniously, due to complications of heart worms and the digesting of a poisoned rat. So ended the saga of Hal . . .
. . . until a few Sundays ago when Brooklyn-based artist Dillon de Give hosted a memorial to this fallen figure of mystery. Dillon got it into his head that Hal never saw a proper send-off, and intended to do so with help from his friends at the City Reliquary. Dillon's intention was to create a reciprocal human trip by recreating Hal's 60-some-odd mile journey, from upstate New York to Central Park, but backwards, starting here and ending there. Dillon also planned on leaving impromptu memorials to Hal along the way. He wanted a proper send-off for his own journey, and we sent out the word and got a few speakers together for a late-afternoon lecture in our rotating exhibit gallery.
Audience members enjoyed Wile E Coyote cartoons and mingled around while waiting for the event to start. Dillon went first, explaining his childhood association with coyotes, growing up in New Mexico where there are a helluva lot of them, as opposed to here in NYC. He spoke about the evolution of the coyote and their predilection for living with humans as scavengers, much like pigeons, how the two are almost spirit animals, surviving on the cast-offs of us. We watched some live coyote footage and enjoyed the explanation for Dillon's impending journey.
I went next, explaining how Central Park was the first man-made creation of nature in the world to resemble nature itself. Prior to Central Park, parks in the world looked as if they were designed by humans - the National Mall in DC is a giant rectangle, with all the trees in a straight line, all the landscaping done very consciously. Ditto Versailles in Paris, but to the nth degree. With Central Park, Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux had the opportunity to make a obviously landscaped park in the middle of the most urbanized city to date, but they went the opposite direction, hiding the city from the park-goers.
Following the Central Park talk we had a sculptural artist, Nao Matsumoto show a slide of his sculpture hanging in the Pratt Sculpture Gardens in Brooklyn, and discuss the mythology of Wile E Coyote and the never-ending chase for the Roadrunner. It was completely impromptu, as Nao had just been contacted the day before the lecture and wasn't sure if he was going to make it. Nevertheless, his talk was brief and beautiful, discussing the experience of soul-searching and always hunting, and allowing the process of the hunt to be part of the discovery.
After Nao, Kay Turer, Resident Folklorist of the Brooklyn Arts Council spoke about the coyote as trickster in Native American folklore. "Coyote went along" was her gift to Dillon, in which she explained that at the start of every tale, these magical talismanic words impart the knowledge that Coyote the explorer, Coyote the adventurer, Coyote the unknown will always go "along" in his ways, no matter what obstacles or interruptions he might face.
Following the speakers our collected group of 60 audience members went to our spacious backyard and participated in a group howl, for all the dogs and coyotes of Williamsburg to share in. It was a wonderful event, and Dillon de Give took off the next morning on his 66 mile journey. We miss you Hal!
For those of you who haven't been up to speed with the stories and subjects of my whirlwind life, there's a whole lotta marriage going on. From the middle of September to the middle of October I have been invited to, and plan on attending, 6 weddings over 6 consecutive weekends, taking place in 4 different states - NJ, NY, CA & MA. The last wedding I attended was a long time ago, possibly 6 or 8 years back. And now we have 6 weddings in 6 weekends. When it rains, it absolutely deluges. Some of my friends have remarked that this must be a sign of growing up; some have mentioned that maybe I might hear the jangling of bells in my own immediate future (not just yet, thankyouverymuch); some have exquisitely pointed out that I should be getting very drunk and hopefully very laid over 6 separate wedding weekends; and to quote my darling brother Gideon: "Wow. 6 weddings in 6 weekends. 30's coming up soon, bitch." So what follows is a blow-by-blow wedding blitz breakdown extravaganza - complete with pictures, descriptions, social breakdowns, stories and comments of the first four weddings.
Wedding Number One: Jordan Hoffman & Anne Farrell, Seabright NJ, Sept. 13th
Jordan Hoffman is a former tour guide for the Levys' Unique New York, but moved on to bigger and better things (or so he claims) working for UGO entertainment as well as making films on the side. More importantly, Jordan has been loving and living with his wonderful, wondrous girlfriend / fiance / life-partner Ann Farrell for many years now, 5 out of their 7 in coupleship. The sweethearts live in Astoria, Queens, in an apartment crammed with geekitude of the highest order - graphic novels, Star Trek figurines, a million Jazz albums, '50s retro kitschware in the kitchen, and a fatso catso named Goober. Jordan and Ann are lovers of life - fun loving fun having people. I would certainly and sincerely call them jolly, as well as funny-as-all-get-out.
The wedding was held on the beach (yes, those are random bathers in the background) and in a catering hall in Seabright New Jersey, about 2 1/2 hours from the city. It was a packed car all the way down there as the entire Levy clan attended. The short, delightful festivities were held on the beach, so that as Jordan and Ann yukked their way through the vows (Kerry, the officiator: "To have and to hold for better or for worse, in richer or in poorer, til death do us part." Jordan: "Can you repeat that last part again?" Ba-dum dum bum,) there were total strangers in bathing suits and with boogie boards strolling past the event. Made for great pictures. After the vows, after the huzzahs and the hoorays, after the cheers and whoop-tahs, we all went inside to get drunk and fed and danced and romanced. On the whole, a wedding filled with laughter and joy, humor and irreverence. Also a 30's style radio mic, and a killer DJ. Good interaction between the various friends, family and associates of the Hoffman / Farrell crews. More pictures of the Hoffman/Farrell funtimez are here.
Wedding Number Three: Jonathan Tull and Nina Isaacson, Mendocino Woodlands Park, California, Sept. 20-21
This wedding was clear on the other side of the country, but Jonah and I had been planning a vacation away from the city for a while - it had been the busiest summer Ive ever had, with non-stop work weeks gunning all the way through July & August, then two back-to-back tourism conferences in September - one in San Antonio Texas, the other in downtown Brooklyn. After all that tour guiding and biz building it was time for a well deserved get-away, to visit friends in San Fransisco and chockup another wedding on the calendar. Off to California, and the Jon Tull - Nina Issacson freak flag wedding in the woods! Jon Tull was the bookkeeper for LUNY and fronted a funny kind of bipolar humor, vacillating between a laid back California stoner dude 'tude to an anal retentive number-crunching Brooklyn busybody - well suited for his bookkeeping facilities. He met his not too blushing bride here in Brooklyn and although I had never met her before the wedding itself, she and I are both babies of 1980, and grewup in relatively relational Brooklyn hoods - Flatbush and Park Slope, attending Murrow and Stuyvesant High Schools respectively. I should've known this chick, probably slept with her in another life, but our paths never crossed.
Their wedding was held in the breathtakingly beautiful redwood forest campground about 3 hours north of San Francisco, 4 1/2 if you get lost getting out of SF and again if you get lost in the campground. Which we did. And therefore missed the vows, exchanging of the rings, promises, cheers, jeers and humors. But we made it on time for the festivities, and boy howdy were there enough of those. We rolled in just after the I Dos (missed by 20 minutes! 20 effing minutes!!!) and stuck around through Monday morning. There was eating, drinking, magnificent speechifying, (no fewer than 4 peeps broke down in tears describing the love and trust of the married couple) and dancing. The food was killer - garlic sausages, grilled asparagus, freshly baked rolls with jalapeno butter. And cupcakes! We imbibed local California keg beer, top notch wine, bourbon, vodka and gin, as well as some of the more illicit California produce.
This particular wedding celebration was operating on its own kind of communal CA attitude - most of the attendees in their 20s and 30s had arrived at the camp on Wednesday, partied through the festivities on Saturday, and returned to the real world Sunday. Us lucky Levy boys got to stay til Monday AM, which meant we closed the party down, along with Nina and Jon, Jon's folks & older brother, Mom's friend and Nina' gal pal; therefore from the Sat night attendance high of 80+, the Sunday night's BBQ had just 9. It was a marvelous everybody-project, where the food, the booze, the illicits, the fun was brought for and consumed by everyone. And with too much food leftover, Jonah and I did our civic duties and brought back to our host in SF all sorts of goodies, including an uncooked pork loin, a case of beer, cheeses, juices, a tray of the aforementioned sausages, and the crowning achievement, a box of cupcakes. Further effects of the wedding in the woods can be discovered here.
Wedding Number Four: Bill Scanga and Sarah Frank, Aboard the Jewel, Up and Down the East & Hudson Rivers, NYC, Sept. 27th
God please, make the weddings stop. Well, maybe not until I've completed my wedding blitz. After a week-long vacation in San Francisco, I took the red-eye back to NYC, arriving 6:30am Saturday. This left enough time to get home, crash out for a few, shake myself awake, shower, shave, suit-up and head out for wedding number four, the glorious union of Bill Scanga and Sarah Frank on board a boat traversing the rivers of our city. Bill is the older brother I never had, a fellow member of the City Reliquary, an avid cyclist and the Vice President of collections at the DR, including but not limited to: pencil sharpeners, marbles, vintage bicycles, exonumia, postcards of the Williamsburg Bridge and more. Bill is also a hysterical human being with an unmatched love for life. The guy is a 12 year old trapped in the body of a 38 year old. And up until Saturday, all I knew about Sarah was that she put up with Bill's shit. But as of Saturday I learned a lot more about Sarah. That she's patient, calm, and has wonderful eyes. That she's on top of her game. That her folks are supercool. And that she's gorgeous, dressed up or down, the girl is a total babe. Bill is luckier than I ever imagined.
What more could one ask for other than a wedding aboard a boat around the East River? Maybe some clear weather, which we didn't receive. All fog and gloom. But nevertheless, the procession was awesome, parked under the Brooklyn Bridge with a very special speech delivered by the Best Man and Officiator of the ceremonies, Dave Herman, President of the Reliquary and Bill's best friend. A live soul band swung the dance floor and the bar kept the partygoers sufficiently tipsy enough, although that could have also been the boat itself. Although the food took forever to get to the buffet tables, the cupcakes as wedding cake (cupcakes are in this season) made up for the delay. As did all that booze and soulful tunes. There was an afterparty at a hip downtown dance club, but the truth is that after numerous bottles of Prosecco and gallons of sweat dumped on the dance floor, there isn't much more to tell about the afterparty, except that the only thing I brought home was my hangover. Other parties might have different stories regarding the afterparty, as well as the tequila shots that were consumed, but don't trust them. Splish Splash more pix!
4 down, 2 more to go.
The Wedding Blitz of 08 is Great!
Hooray for Bicycle Fetish Day! Hooray for the City Reliquary! Boo for 5 stitches over two lacerations in one's right (that is to say: typing & writing) hand. Boo for a suspension of posts on ActionDirection blog. Lets show some pretty pictures and briefly explain a) Bike Fetish Day and b) how I ended up with abovementioned stitches.
A) Bike Fetish Day is the single largest community event the City Reliquary hosts all year. It's a day long celebration of bike culture and events, and we have a block party, where local bike gangs ride their tricked-out and bedecked two wheelers:
Where we have a blazin Bar-B-Que:
Where I acted as the MC for a bunch of great and goofy bike awards, like Ugliest Bike, Smallest Two Wheeler, Most Tricked Out Bike, Best in Show, etc etc.
We also had the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, a politico-radical-marching-band perform, as well as a Brazilian Drum Core group.
It was an overall blast. Maybe 250-300 people showed up, ate watermelon, rode their bikes, boogied to the DJs Stacher and Dirtyfinger, and it is generally surmised that everyone had a glorious time. I also agreed to host and manage the after-party, in the CR's backyard. Most of the other Reliquarians wanted no part in the party, but BFU Marin Tockman agreed to bartend. Here's where disaster strikes.
B) As I'm stocking an ice cooler with beer for the party, I shove a bottle into the cooler with too much force and it explodes in my hand. Blood everywhere. Dave, CR Prez wraps a gauze pad around the gaping slashes in my palm and we call the ambulance. The EMTs determine I need stitches and its best to get them done now. Here's my bloody claw in the ambulance. Note the arrow indicating the damage.
I might be all smiles in this picture (and the snazziest dressed mofo at Woodhull hospital),
but the ensuing evening, in which I missed the party I was supposed to host, was spectacularly depressing. 2 hours in the ER, another 2 in the Triage Unit, watching a mounting battle of empty threats between two alkies (druggies? possiblys.) who were screaming in their respective English and Spanish, that they were going to fucking kill each other. No matter that the one speaking English didnt understand a word of Spanish; no matter that the one speaking Spanish couldnt comprehend a word of English; regardless, these two screwshits were hollering muerte y puta de madre and all sorts of angry mania directly from the mouths of two men, knocked clear out of the ballpark I dont even think they came to the hospital together. All I wanted was for my hand to get stitched and to crawl into a cab, back to my pad.
Which, 4 hours after strolling into the joint, finally occured. 3 stitches in the top gash, two smaller in the lower, and frustrated, angered, infuriated and depressed, i got the holy hell out of there. Marin and other reliable sources say the party was lowkey but cool, and i didnt miss much. What I missed was the whole thing - the party I was hosting for my museum. But now I can tell people I got into a bar fight with a beer bottle, however it wasnt a bar, but a Community Museum, and it wasnt a fight with another patron, but a battle with the bottle.
The hand's all better now (you can see the scar right under the index finger if you squint),
but for the last few weeks it was too stressful to type or write, as too much flexing of the index and mid fingers have caused pain and frustration. Thanks to all who helped me through the night and ensuing weeks.
For those of you in the know, another role we are proud to fill is that of Events Coordinator and Official Tour Guide for the City Reliquary Community Museum and Civic Organization in Williamsburg. We’re essentially a collection of collections of NYC stuff, from vintage Brooklyn seltzer bottles to the “2nd Ave” sign from the original 2nd Avenue Deli. The founders of the home-grown museum, Dave Herman and Bill Scanga, are two collecting-obsessed NYC nerds (god bless ‘em) who wanted to share their personal collections with the rest of the world. It started as a window-front museum on the corner of Grand and Havemeyer streets in 2003 and has since moved into a storefront space just around the corner, at 370 Metropolitan Avenue. Every so often, another city organization learns about the CR, and has Dave and Bill out to give a mini-lecture about the stuff in our museum. So it was that we found ourselves in Bay Ridge last Wednesday night, giving a talk to the Bay Ridge Historical Society.
The talk went smoothly, as it generally does, in a room full of senior citizens who were eager to hear anything about their New York of old. We talked about the Croton Reservoir while showing off a brick from pipelines; we told the story of the Brooklyn Bridge, and passed around some U-bolts from the underside of the walkway; we related the history of the Statue of Liberty and displayed a book of vintage SOL postcards. Afterwards, VP of Collections Bill Scanga and I took off by bike for old-school red sauce Italian joint the New Corners Restaurant (open since 1936). 
But we were sidetracked, fortuitously enough, by the massive art installation of the island of Crete, by local artist George Kortsolakis, on 79th St between Ridge Blvd and Third Ave.
For the past twenty years, Kortsolakis, an immigrant from Greece, has been living and working on his dream: rebuilding a miniature version of his homeland in the front yard of his Bay Ridge home. Sheltered in an ornate gold-painted shack, Mr. Kortsolakis’s Crete is a majestic, multi-hued thing, with cobalt blue pebbles making up the ocean, broken chunks of cement for the roads, plants for trees, little Lego men and toy ships in the harbor, even a miniature Icarus, with wax and feather wings, lounging on the beach. His island of Crete is just seven feet long, but within it lives an exhaustive universe of houses, cars, and creatures, including the krikri, a wild goat-type creature that is said to leap from sheer mountainside to mountainside.
Although it was nearing 10pm on a weeknight, we walked up to Mr. Kortsolakis’ front door and rang the bell. A tiny, stoop-shouldered old man, complete with glasses, thinning hair and a bushy white moustache came to the door. We inquired if it was his artistic creation, and he resoundingly replied “Yes! Is mine! You want to see? Wait, I turn on the lights for you!” Five minutes later, the installation was awash in blinking Christmas lights. Mr. Kortsolakis proceeded to give a history, in his thick Greek accent, of his ever-evolving obsession. We tried to tell him that we run a museum in Williamsburg where this would be a perfect fit, but there was no getting a side word in between his excited life-and-art story and explanation the incomparable model below. Just as well — to remove the model from the man’s front yard would be as foolish as a certain mythical figure flying too close to the sun.
More pictures from the evenings events can be viewed here.(originally published on www.thelmagazine.com on 4/23/08)
Hal was a coyote. Possibly the most famous coyote to scamper the grounds of Central Park, score cover shots on both the Post and the Daily News, and pass from these terrestrial plains in two days' time; Hal had snuck his way into our hearts. Named after the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, where he was discovered on March 20th 2006, Hal enjoyed a short but exciting hustle before the NYPD shot him with a tranquilizer dart and ended his adventurous romp. While en route to the New York Zoo in the Bronx, Hal passed away unceremoniously, due to complications of heart worms and the digesting of a poisoned rat. So ended the saga of Hal . . .
. . . until a few Sundays ago when Brooklyn-based artist Dillon de Give hosted a memorial to this fallen figure of mystery. Dillon got it into his head that Hal never saw a proper send-off, and intended to do so with help from his friends at the City Reliquary. Dillon's intention was to create a reciprocal human trip by recreating Hal's 60-some-odd mile journey, from upstate New York to Central Park, but backwards, starting here and ending there. Dillon also planned on leaving impromptu memorials to Hal along the way. He wanted a proper send-off for his own journey, and we sent out the word and got a few speakers together for a late-afternoon lecture in our rotating exhibit gallery.
Audience members enjoyed Wile E Coyote cartoons and mingled around while waiting for the event to start. Dillon went first, explaining his childhood association with coyotes, growing up in New Mexico where there are a helluva lot of them, as opposed to here in NYC. He spoke about the evolution of the coyote and their predilection for living with humans as scavengers, much like pigeons, how the two are almost spirit animals, surviving on the cast-offs of us. We watched some live coyote footage and enjoyed the explanation for Dillon's impending journey.
I went next, explaining how Central Park was the first man-made creation of nature in the world to resemble nature itself. Prior to Central Park, parks in the world looked as if they were designed by humans - the National Mall in DC is a giant rectangle, with all the trees in a straight line, all the landscaping done very consciously. Ditto Versailles in Paris, but to the nth degree. With Central Park, Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux had the opportunity to make a obviously landscaped park in the middle of the most urbanized city to date, but they went the opposite direction, hiding the city from the park-goers.
Following the Central Park talk we had a sculptural artist, Nao Matsumoto show a slide of his sculpture hanging in the Pratt Sculpture Gardens in Brooklyn, and discuss the mythology of Wile E Coyote and the never-ending chase for the Roadrunner. It was completely impromptu, as Nao had just been contacted the day before the lecture and wasn't sure if he was going to make it. Nevertheless, his talk was brief and beautiful, discussing the experience of soul-searching and always hunting, and allowing the process of the hunt to be part of the discovery.
After Nao, Kay Turer, Resident Folklorist of the Brooklyn Arts Council spoke about the coyote as trickster in Native American folklore. "Coyote went along" was her gift to Dillon, in which she explained that at the start of every tale, these magical talismanic words impart the knowledge that Coyote the explorer, Coyote the adventurer, Coyote the unknown will always go "along" in his ways, no matter what obstacles or interruptions he might face.
Following the speakers our collected group of 60 audience members went to our spacious backyard and participated in a group howl, for all the dogs and coyotes of Williamsburg to share in. It was a wonderful event, and Dillon de Give took off the next morning on his 66 mile journey. We miss you Hal!
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