Lost in History vol. 83: MASSTRANSISCOPE MYSTERY REMATERIALIZES!

Imagine you're a precocious, loudmouthed 10 year old, enamored with the city that you live in and its myriad mysteries. The never-ending speed of its citizens, the spray-painted scarred walls of the subway (this was in 1990 mind you), and the subway itself, with its electronic beeps and boops and its tunnel hugging, bridge chugging path from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Now imagine that in the middle of a routine trip to Grandma's apartment, taking the Q Diamond (RIP) from Ditmas Park, Flatbush to the Upper West Side (with a transfer at Herald Square to the D) all of a sudden there's a flash of light, a burst of imagination, and a brightly colored cartoon strip, coming out of nowhere, bursts onto the walls of a subway station that isn't even there. You're enamored, even though it last less than 30 seconds before it disappears and you're climbing the Manhattan Bridge towards the original burst of imagination that is New York City.
You're 10 years old, you just saw an awesome animated cartoon-strip thing while on the subway and then its over, and gone again. You look for it on next month's trip to Gramma's apartment, but its gone. You can't even remember which windows it showed up on - the left or the right side - or between which stops on the train. Years go by, you wonder if it ever really existed, or was just a catnap-powered dream while holding Mom's hand on the subway. A decade goes by and you can't even describe it successfully, further removing this phantom vision from the possibility of reality.
Well guess what Virginia. It existed, and exists again, and has a name. Its called the Masstransiscope and is the genius of an artist named Bill Brand. And last night, at the NY Transit Museum, Mr. Brand gave an enthralling lecture about the inspiration, creation, scientific explanation, destruction, and re-installation of one of the most whimsical, energetic, free pieces of public artwork in New York City. Free if you have an unlimited Metrocard, that is.
Bill Brand, an experimental filmmaker and archivist, as well as professor of Film and Photography at Hampshire College was just another young, creative soul in New York City during the deep dark 1970s and early 80s. He became enamored with cartoons at an early age (Woody Woodpecker with Walter Lantz) and how all films are "simply individual pictures that change from frame to frame". We're learning this as Mr. Brand lectures in the screening room of the NY Transit Museum, and hands out small pieces of 35 mm film, to explain the notion of how film works. Next up, a VHS tape, which Mr. Brand violently smashes against the corner of the podium, in order to rip up the tape and pass it over our heads in the audience. Then Mr. Brand kills all the lights and illuminates himself with a high-powered camera flash. We watch as the ghostly retina image of Bill hovers in the air for a second, then floats away - persistence of vision. Its all visceral, and slightly loopy, and does a good job of explaining early films, notably the zoetrope.
We go on learn how Mr. Brand approached Creative Time, the arts organization, with this wacky idea of installing a slow-motion stop-animation cartoon in the abandoned Myrtle Avenue subway stop on the (nowadays) B & Q trains. To his amazement, they were on board from the get-go. In order to create this interactive film projection, a 300 foot installation, kind of a narrow square hallway had to be installed on the platform of the disused station, with narrow vertical slits in the wall closest to the trains rushing by, and with the painted panels on the back wall. Silkscreened panels, 228 in all, with each one showing a different stage of the animation. Protective graffiti-proof sheer coverings on top of each painting (more on this later). Two vertical fluorescent bulbs framing each of the slits, to light the art as the subway rushes by. Installed and "opened" to the public in 1980, and lasted for 5 years. It looks likes this:



Then Mr. Brand had a family, moved away. Couldn't keep up the upkeep. "Public Funding for 'permanent art' in this country generally means five years" Mr Brand shrugged at us during the lecture. It briefly resurfaced for a few months in 1990, which is when I saw it on my way to Gramma's and it blew my mind. Again, covered in graffiti, vandalized, left for trash.
Until 2008, when construction work on Flatbush Avenue at Myrtle unlocked a gate in the sidewalk which lead to the Myrtle Avenue station, and direct access to the installation. With help from MTA Arts for Transit, and other organizations, including ShelterExpress/MetroClean which helped strip away the years of accumulated paint that coated the panels (but thanks to the sheer coverings, left the animated paint works largely intact), the Masstransiscope was reinstalled.
After Q&A with the artist, the audience of 40 left the museum as a group, and went on a "ride-by" the Masstransiscope. Present in the tour group, Thersea DeSalvio, the artist who painted the original pieces in 1980, and her daughter. Ms. DeSalvio had left the country in 1985, missed the resurfacing of the piece in 1990, and returned to live in NJ. Therefore she hadn't seen her own artist creation since it was first installed in 1980. What a trip! We boarded the R train at Lawrence, rode into Brooklyn one stop and transferred across the platform for a city-bound B. In no time at all we were watching (and applauding) the piece as we whizzed by it (at 7 mph). You too can check out the Masstransiscope. Just swipe your card on a Manhattan-bound B or Q train, sit tight, and wait for the dream to begin. It'll be on your right, after Dekalb Avenue station and before the bridge.

Photographs and Youtube video thanks to Masstransiscope website and artist Bill Brand.

Lost in History vol. 80: A Very HALy Memorial at the City Reliquary

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!

Lost in History vol. 77: 3way Bro-date Bike ride to Flushing; Farewell Shea Stadium.

Every forecast we checked promised a perfect weather weekend, considering this was still February. Saturday's bright sunshine, clear blue skies, slight breeze and mid-to-high-50s meant one thing: bicycling! And where better to ride our trusty two wheelers to, but a far-off land of outer-borough exoticism and tongue-numbing food, Flushing! Rounding out the adventure team were our buddies Josh Bernstein, food writer extraordinaire, and Jean Barberis, a dapper and delightful Frenchman of extraordinary abilities.
First Josh biked from his place in Crown Heights to mine in Bushwick, a total of 3.5 miles. Together, Josh and I then hustled up to Jean's pad in Woodside, another 4.3 miles. Once we pickedup the Frenchman, we all boogied our way to Flushing, tallying another 4.5 miles, but we got turned around in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and ended up in the Queens Botanical Garden before hitting the magical land of East Asian delicacies along Main street, Queens, USA.
Flushing started out its lengthy history as a Dutch trading village called Vlissingen. Always a center for ethnic diversity and religious tolerance, proved as such way back in 1657 with the Flushing Remonstrance, which allowed Quakers and others to worship freely, against the wishes of the New Netherlands Governor (and mean son-of-a-bitch) Peter Stuyvesant. The Remonstrance is widely considered a birthplace of religious freedom in the new world.
A few hundred years have gone by since, and the diversity (both ethnic and religious - there are over 200 houses of worship within 2.5 sq miles!) of Flushing pulses up and down the streets. Before Flushing became NY's largest Chinatown, it was mostly Italian and Greek. They left during Great White Flight in the 70s, and the immigrants from SE Asia started pouring in. Nowadays Flushing is crammed with Koreans, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, and Chinese from the Sichuan, Fujian and Hunan provinces.
Our aim was the Flushing Mall on 39th avenue. On our way in, we were greeted by a very friendly Chinese dragon, a remnant from the Year of the Ox celebration last weekend. The Flushing Mall is a split-level, split-personality spot, with clothing stores, tailors and two small cafes on the ground floor surrounded by plain decor and uninspired mall decor. Turn a corner and go down some stairs and one enters a subterranean food court and electronics shops surrounded by multi-colored flooring and walls, with a space-age modern Asian design scheme. We went ground level for Korean-Chinese dumplings, and underground for spicy Dandan noodles, spicy hot and sour soup with rice noodles and lamb, and spicy fried chicken over sticky rice with salad. Needles to say, we weren't in it for the bland or boring. Everything was cheap, delicious, and spicy, but unfortunately not the face-melting-off spicy we were looking for, just the caught-in-the-back-of-the-throat-type-cough spicy. Next time . . .
Filled to the gills with szechuan foods and fantastically happy, we went two separate ways - Josh for some food shopping and Jean and I towards the Queens Museum. En route we passed the almost-entirely-gone Shea stadium, formerly home to the NY Mets, the lovable/hateable underdogs of MLB's National League. Its not that they suck, the way the Knicks suck, its that they try really hard but never make it to the finals. (Don't ask me, I don't do sports.) However, I DO do NY's iconography, and the vision of the classic Shea Stadium, all but its Western Wall pulled down to make way for a parking lot for the new Citi Field (which should be named the Citi / Taxpayer Field, but don't get us started) was heavy on the heart.
Off to the QMA, for short films on Queens and a Q&A at the QMA with the filmmakers. Following, we had a fantastic bike ride back to Bushwick, (6 miles), first stopping & dropping Jean in Woodside. Magical, marvelous mouthfuls of Queens on a beautiful bizarrely blue-sky Saturday in February should be on everybody's life list. Next up, the Bronx!

Lost in the ArtChurch vol. 1: Awakenings, Asleepenings, Adreamenings, Aschemenings

A few weekends back, we attended the sanctification of an an antinomian church, located deep along the border between Bushwick and Ridgewood. We'd been to the Christian Center Sanctuary of Hope before & had participated and written about the experience and art-exorcism of Gordon Matta-Clark. So we were excited about returning and reviewing the latest event slash artattack to take place far away from the well-trod artist paths of Williamsburg and the LES. The Christian Center Sanctuary of Hope (for simplicity's sake, CCSH) is a former storefront-turned-Latino-Roman-Catholic-church-turned-vacant-room-turned-artist-haunt-slash-performance-space, run by three friends of ours: Matthew Blair, Lech Szporer and Andrew Wingert.
The playbill promised a lot: performances, photography, hot liquored drinks, theater, mime, noise band, and possibly the sacrificing of a live chicken named Lucy. When we arrived at the CCSH we were impressed by the full house of young creative peoples jamming the floor, drinking hot toddies and exploring the decor, which included: tree branches rising out of dirt mounds on the wooden floor; two enormous church pews built on risers facing the stage; a ceiling-suspended rope web large enough to climb into, laden with dangling church organ pipes; candles spinning on a Victrola player; vintage radio microphones and more. The carefully constructed aesthetic of slow but beautiful decay contributed to the atmosphere.

Someone in the audience shouted "Cold as hell tonight" and the burbling laughter belied the fact that CCSH is a church, but instead of religion, it offers experience. The experience, like regular churches, is to pull the church-goers out of their expected levels of comfort, to shift their mode of intake and let that shift permeate other processes of life. To enter the building one way and leave changed. Such is the process of Artaudian theater, named after the great pervert of French theatrical aesthetics, Antonin Artaud. Not an easy accomplishment, especially with today's jaded and ironic youth. However it wasn't for CCSH's want of trying.
The opening act consisted of a not-quite-goth girl playing some plaintive songs on guitar, with good intention. Following the music, Becky the Burlesque performer as Neurotic Jewish Mother Necrophiliac. The stand-up routine that followed would've given Woody Allen a hard-on and material for his analyst. The act subsited of both a comic monologue and a live example of teabagging corpses set to Celine Dion. Subtlety it wasn't, and life-shifting it absolutely aint. Then the third act.

A stocky, not unattractive but not particularly engaging actress in a blond wig took the stage and started to do a Tammy Faye Bakker self-help shtick. The southern accent, the "Yes, you can do it too!" power attitude, the 80s music, all of it, a little tiring and expected. Until she stripped down naked in the middle of this unheated church, and proceeded to give a hygiene and sex-ed course on the proper way to insert objects into one's anus and vagina. It was astonishing - by the gaping mouths and wide-eyed shock it seemed that no-one in the audience had seen anything like it. The performer, Ann Liv Young, was using her own splayed legs as the easel and her cunt and asshole as the anatomy chart. Eventually Ms. Young got up, butt-ass naked and all, and thrashed her way around the church, grinding against audience members as 80s house music thumped. Her aggressively sexual dance piece would have been at place in a megaclub in Chelsea, but performed by a naked woman in a blond wig in the middle of an Art-Awakening truly blew this church-goers mind.
Then Lucy the chicken came into the picture. Lucy was supposedly due to meet the chopping block right on the floor of CCSH, but an unnamed woman in tears (who according to Mr. Blair, wasnt part of the show) rushed the stage and made a plea to spare the chicken's life. Another shifting moment, bringing an audience member to interrupt the show. Lucy, along with Ann-Liv Young eventually escaped, courtesy of Ms. Young, her videographer Michael, and a getaway car waiting outside.

The next act started when an argument exploded between two audience members, who moved down to the central staging area and expounded, in Shakespearean English, the accurate process to live a passionate life. It was entertaining, if a bit too pretentious. My lady and I liked the part where both gentlemen chomped down on raw cow heart, only at the insistence of each other. After the argument, it started to rain inside the church, and a group photograph was called for, so the crowd reassembled themselves outside and all posed, shiveringly.

There was still the noise band and mimery to follow the intermission, but we had experienced enough moments of suspended comfort, and besides, I had worked all day while fighting a cold. It was a fast, long walk to our apartment where a warm bed and hot tea were waiting to soothe our souls. Following burlesque necrohiliac stand-up and naked lessons in sexual physionomy, after the almost-slaughter of a chicken and consumed raw cow hearts, tea and sleep will do just fine.

Lost in History vows 1-4: the Wedding Blitz

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!

Lost in History vol. 72: Exit Poll Cocktail Toll

What goes best with politics? Blue-in-the-face arguing? Solipsistic grandstanding? Memorabilia collecting? Sure, those are always a hoot, but what truly makes political discussions oh so fun is booze! The addition of liquor to our political conversations allows us hard-working, hard-drinking Americans to surge forward, secure in the knowledge that our treasured opinions on personal, cultural, communal and national matters make so much more sense when they’re powered by liquor. That’s the beauty of America: when the BAC level coursing through our bloodstreams makes red and blue states meet in the middle, liberal arms around redneck necks, and we sing the national anthem (not really, but we all have a dream).
Dean Baldwin also has a dream: one that involves free booze and the documenting of ever-shifting social dynamics. Not an American but a bona fide Canadian, Mr. Baldwin was in Chelsea last Thursday for the opening of his interactive vodka-fueled exhibit, titled Exit Poll Cocktail Toll, which runs through today at the White Box Gallery. For Exit Poll Cocktail Toll, one of six weeklong exhibits shown as part of White Box’s Six Feet Under series, Mr. Baldwin brought a bunch of vodka, shelves, and curious questions to the American fashion-forward, art-going, booze-drinking public. Picture, if you will, a fancy Chelsea gallery with a bar at the center. Free vodka drinks handily dispensed by cheerless galleristas — vodka and cranberryl vodka, pineapple and blue curacao; vodka and nothing else — to happy-go-lucky hipsters and the standard gallery-hopping crowd. Surrounding the bar, mounted to the walls, are a bunch of shelves with empty plastic cocktail glasses stacked on either side of a demarcated line. Sharpied on each shelf is a question, and under each shelf is a option of two answers.
“If the election were to take place today who would you vote for?” has an overwhelming stack of empty cups — 30 or more — on the Obama side, and a half dozen for McCain. “Does Capitalism control democracy?” (pictured) also has a stack of empty cups on the YES side, and a handful (but not many) on the NO side. Another query has a shelf perched high above the heads and reachable arms of all boozers in the gallery and a ladder placed squarely underneath leading to the inquiry “Are poor people lazy?”
Chen Tamir, a NY resident and guest curator who invited Mr. Baldwin and his spirited installation of spirits, describes his art as “creating social scenarios and sparking conversation through the argument of art and the lubrication of booze.” White Box’s theme of Six Feet Under was developed to take a humorous yet interactive approach towards the election season. Chen and Dean interviewed friends as well as strangers on the street to come up with 30 questions, which were then whittled down to 13 and displayed prominently on the walls. It seemed as if patrons had a good time boozing it up and making their decisions known. If the answers to the questions surprised n -one, well, neither did the crowd of young urbanites on hand for the opening. Neither did the stack of empties on the positive side of the shelf labeled “Did you come for the free booze?”

Lost in History vol. 70: All Boro Bonanza

Damn you Flux Factory. Are you really that good? Can you truly tell the secret whims and desires, the wants, needs and must haves of a bunch of New York City artists / adventurers / self-proclaimed geeks / cheese-bus aficionados / travelers / cheapskates / and those in the know? It seems that way – and 54 people can prove it.
Two weekends back, Flux hosted another one of their fantastically popular, terrifically peculiar, all-day extravaganzas titled Going Places, Doing Stuff. The premise behind GP, DS is that there’s a whole lot of awesome to see in our city. And yet, people generally take this city for granted. Since Flux lost its lease on their gallery-cum-home in Long Island City (they have to move by October,) lead curator Jean Barberis (full disclosure – a fine friend of mine) realized that one doesn’t need a static indoor gallery to display the art or performance of New Yorkers – one can do just as well in the city itself. So Flux asked a half-dozen writers, artists, historians, and so forth to create an adventure-slash-tour, on board a yellow cheese bus, in which participants would have no idea of where they were headed, just a title, a list of supplies to bring and a departure time and place. Get on the bus and take off to points unknown.

I was asked to lead the first Going Places, Doing Stuff, and we delved, mind, body and soul into weird religious spots in Staten Island. The second GP, DS took us into the wilds of Pennsyltucky, courtesy of artist Douglas Paulson. Two more adventures were led – one by Fluxer Annie Reichert, in which she brought a busload of explorers to her native suburban New Jersey and accompanied her Dad on everyday Dad stuff; another journey called Wandering Restaurant, where Portland, OR artist Gary Wiseman brought people to edible areas in Queens. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend either of those two escapades. But nothing was stopping me from attending the Flux-curated expedition on July 19th. What’s more, it was the only one in which I truly had no clue where we were going.

We went All Boro. Five boroughs in one day. Ambitious? Insane? Brilliant? Check, check, triple check. Flux Factory Senior Team: Jean Barberis, Stefany A. Golberg, Morgan Meis, Jason D. Brown, Chen Tamir & Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria compiled the days’ events as personal favorite of theirs. We met at the Staten Island Ferry terminal at 9am, in order to knock off the most estranged borough first. Also, the SI Ferry is one of the only places in NY where you can drink in public (I’ve done extensive research on the subject.) Once we disembarked at St. George, we boarded our cheese bus (54 adults on a machine that should only hold 40) and the journey began. First stop was a private gallery in the backyard of a home in St. George. Some Chilean sculptor who was related to another, more famous Chilean painter. I had had a few rum and iced coffees by then, so I didn’t quite catch the guy’s name. Following the sculpture gallery we made our way down onto the North Shore, immediately across from Sailors Snug Harbor to discover the coolest spot of the day – a DIY BMX bike track hidden in the overgrowth on the shoreline of Richmond Terrace.
After running around like maniacs on this totally badass BMX track, we returned to the cheese bus to discover – our very own Staten Island cocktail! It was 10:30am, we had 4 more boroughs to tackle, and people were getting nice and soused. All cocktails coutesy of Chen Tamir. Staten Island Cocktail

6 parts coffee vodka

1 part dry vermouth

2 parts fresh lime juice

Maraschino cherry
Combine liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice and shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with maraschino cherry.Over the VZ bridge to Brooklyn and to our next stop – Floyd Bennett Field, NY’s first municipal airport. Opened in 1931 at the southeastern tip of Brooklyn, FB Field was home to a number of daredevil pilots just as aviation was cruising from the airplane age to the jet engine age. Wiley Post, Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes and more all made Floyd Bennett Field a space-age wonder in a pre-World-War-II New York. After a quick tour of Hangar B – home to dozens of out-of-commission Army, Navy & Government aircrafts, complete with septuagenarian Brooklyn boys building a replica of a Jenny bomber out of wood,

we went to the Aviator indoor stall for a picnic lunch and more Brooklyn booze.
Brooklyn Cocktail

2 ounces rye or blended whiskey
1 ounce dry vermouth
Dash of maraschino liqueur
Dash of Amer Picon
Shake all ingredients well with ice; then strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Onto Queens! Way up north in Queens – the neighborhood of College Point, and the art gallery and brilliant loft-garage-home of local artist John Norwood, a friend to Flux. Again, more art here, some of which was wonderful and some of which was just weird. I took off to explore College Point Boulevard and score some scrumptious Columbian fresh-fruit drinks called Cholada. The day was long, hot, and brains were addled with liquor and other, more illicit substances, so a nice long respite in Mr. Norwood’s air conditioned home was just the ticket. We watched airplanes take off from LaGuardia Airport, just across from Flushing Bay. We drank a special Queens cocktail that was just as nauseous as the first two.

Queen's Cocktail

1 chunk of Pineapple
I slice of Orange, in the shaker.
Ice
1/3 Italian Vermouth
1/3 French Vermouth
1/3 Booth's Dry Gin
Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.

We soaked in the A/C and tried to ignore the fact that eventually all 54 of us would have to reboard that 40 pax bus, in 92 degree humidity, in the northern-ass-end of Queens, and depart for the only borough that attached to the mainland of America. Which we did. Evetually.

The Bronx. Fort Apache. Burning tenements. Yankee Stadium. Yachts. Lobster shacks . . . quiet, serene, Maine-like fishing villages?!? Welcome to City Island, population 4500. Commonly referred to as New England in New York, this impossibly picturesque spit of land off Pelham Bay is famous for seeming completely outside of NYC, yet within the five boroughs. We parked the cheese bus and wandered around the Pelham Cemetery, purportedly the only final resting place in New York City right next to a body of water. We hiked our way down the 1.5 mile City Island Avenue to the southernmost point which was when we split for dinner. Some went the fried and greasy route, some went the burgers and fries route, I went the whole lobster & clam bake route. It was a well-earned crustacean.
There’s only so much All Boro a New Yorker can handle – so after yet another impossible to swallow cocktail, this one named for the Boogie-Down Bronx, we piled onto that magical cheese bus and slept our way back to the city. They said it couldn’t be done – All Boro in one day. Clearly "they" never messed with Flux Factory.

Lost in History vol. 65: Staten Island Adventures!

We here at Lost in History delight in adventures within the outer boroughs. Especially when said adventures take us to places we haven’t been before; little known secret gardens and hardly-visited museums that revel in the urban idiosyncrasies that make NYC such a marvelous place to live and work. What better excuse to forge such an excursion then being asked to do exactly that: run an all-day adventure to parts unknown, courtesy of Flux Factory! Which is exactly what happened this past Saturday.
Flux Factory is an arts space with a sense of humor located in Long Island City, Queens. Previous installations have included Grizzly Proof – a multimedia show involving various artists’ interpretations of a Grizzly-Bear-Proof suit; and NY NY NY – another multimedia show in which artists recreated the Queens Panorama of the City of New York, and which your author engaged the masses in a psycho-geographical trivia. For their current show, Going Places (Doing Stuff), Flux was taking the project outside, by asking various artist-performers to invent their own adventure, stuff a buncha people onto a cheese bus without revealing too much of the ensuing journey, and take off. Flux asked yours truly to kick the summer-long series off, and informed the participants that the tour would a) stay within the five boroughs, b) last all day, and c) be led by a native New Yorker and licensed NYC tour guide with “knowledge of New York City and a rambunctious personality (that) make him the greatest guide you could wish for.” Aw shucks.
25 people met up at the City Reliquary Museum and Civic Organization in Williamsburg at half-past 11am, to peruse the museums holdings before the adventure began. Flux had been smart enough to ensure that our cheese bus had A/C so we wouldn’t swelter, and our driver was a very friendly Haitian gentleman named Marcus. As soon as we hit the BQE westbound, it was pretty clear where we were going – not to the Bronx or Manhattan or Queens. And although we were driving through Brooklyn, we sure weren’t going to spend our time there. We were headed to NY’s smallest borough in population (less than half-a-mil) but the 6th largest island off the coast of the country; the one, the only, the 40% Italian – Staten Island!
First stop on our magical mystery tour was the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Grotto, in Rosebank, right near the VZ Bridge. Built in 1937 by the local fraternal order, the Grotto is a handmade collaged and stucco’d outdoor sculpture built from concrete, seashells, bicycle reflectors, religious statues and ceramic chips, dedicated to their namesake saint. Open year-round, the Grotto in Rosebank is quite powerful, and as a work of handmade, devoted, religious art, it is also the first Traditional Cultural Property listed in NY State.
Second stop was the Castleton Hill Moravian Church Labyrinth, farther inland on Victory Boulevard. Contrary to what many people think, a labyrinth is not a giant three-dimensional walled-in maze designed to lose its travelers. Instead, a labyrinth is a flattened two-dimensional path that, through it many twists and turns, will always present a way out. This particular one was laid out on the courtyard of the Church, and acts as a meditation tool; as one walks the labyrinth, one should experience peace and spiritual enlightenment. While various members of our adventuresome group strove for those lofty goals, by taking their turns in the 90-degree heat, assisted by the very friendly Pastor Lynnette Delbridge, other intrepid SI explorers marched down the block to order a half-dozen pies from the legendary Joe and Pats Pizzeria. Ricotta with broccoli rabe; Pepperoni; Scungilli with fresh garlic; cheese-free with arugula with cherry tomatoes and onions; plain; those Staten Islanders sure know how to craft heaven into eight slices loaded with fresh toppings.
We voraciously attacked our pizza back on the bus and headed off to adventure number three, deep in the heart of the island atop Lighthouse Hill – arguably the highest natural point on the Eastern Seaboard (although this is a long-running argument between the residents of Lighthouse Hill and the residents of Todt Hill). Amidst the opulent mansions and private driveways snaking up and down the gorgeous land lies the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art. A publicly funded institution with as idiosyncratic a history as its location, the entire place deserves its own Lost in History column, and will receive one, in due time. However, there’s more adventure to our Staten Island, so after a 45 minute docent-led tour of the tiered gardens and art & antiquities collection, we headed off.
Rumor has it that there is a privately designed, privately owned Frank Lloyd Wright house atop Lighthouse Hill. I had never heard of such a thing until Moe, another tour guide and New-York-ophile, inquired of Jessica, the docent. She obliges and gives walking directions, so off we march through the lush SI forest to find the thing. In the midst of the hunt it begins to downpour, but Marcus, ever-ready at the helm of the cheese bus, picks us up and we manage to find the home. It looks like a Maine summer house at the edge of a lake, but one that got left in a medieval stretcher a bit too long.
We also discover the Victorian lighthouse that gives the Hill its moniker – the towering monstrosity is just chilling in another privately owned backyard.
The adventure is almost over – adventurers are getting Staten-Islanded-out. We attempt to find the Conference House, which is in Tottenville at the absolutely southern-most point of NY State. On Sept 11th, 1776, this country estate, the only surviving pre-Revolutionary manor house, acted as the final meeting place between the American and British Forces in a futile attempt to call off the War. Unfortunately, thanks to a series of dead-ends, and a busload of hungry, sun-stroked, tired, cranky, non-islanders, we said screw it, and made our way to Killmeyers Bavarian Beer Hall and Garden – the oldest beer hall cum restaurant in the borough. It was there that we feasted on schnitzel, bratwurst, hefeweizen, German Chocolate Cake, and raised a collective toast to the amazing, underappreciated, overlooked and friggin enormous Staten Island. And it only took two hours to get back to Brooklyn. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but not for aother couple of years. I love you Staten Island!
more pictures can be found here on my Flickr page.