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It had been quite the 3 week jaunt. First up, the American Bus Association Marketplace, held this year in Charlotte, NC. A full week of schmoozing, boozing, bad luncheon eating, business card swapping, small talk with big people from all over America & Canada, and the slow but sad realization that Charlotte, although pretty and pleasant, is as dull as its former cotton fields turned into financial skyscrapers. Although Gideon and I did come across the World's Largest Duncan Phyfe Chair, in Thomasville, NC.
That, and we took a few spins around the NASCAR racetrack.
Nextup, Gid goes to Miami and Matt makes a lovely little visit to old college friends in Athens, GA. Indie rock noise and beer before noon, Golden Corral Buffets and lots and lots of coffee. Scott, small-time author and music-romantic drove me around Athens on a personalized tour of the old stomping grounds of Elephant 6. 
E6 was a legendary lo-fi recording collective who's members made the greatest indie-pop album of all time, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea among other albums by other bands including Elf Power, Olivia Tremor Control and Of Montreal. Drove like a maniac across South Carolina, stopping to visit the World's Largest Fire Hydrant;
as well as check out fragments of an Atom Bomb that was accidentally dropped on Mars Bluff, SC in 1932.
Picked up the girlfriend in Wilmington, NC and headed to the Outer Banks to meet her entire family as well as consume outrageous amounts of oysters at Aunt Susan & Uncle Richard's yearly OYSTER FEST!! Everything good was here: hand-built stove, five bushels of the aphrodisiac, chowder, beer, wine, salad, more food, good vibes, great music and homegrown people. Our Brooklyn 'tude went great with the gf's fam and so on so forth. We'll be back for more oysters. Until then, these pictures will have to do.
However all these personal and familial experiences can't compete with the events in our Nation's Capital on January 20th, every four years (give or take). After the oysters (and after a pitstop for BBQ with the GF's Dadster in northern NC) we went to DC for the crowning of President Obama. With our HQ in McLean, VA - 6 miles from the Capital; a sturdy group of 5, prepared for everything including the bone-shivering chills we told the Inauguration to bring it on; crack a dawn; with our friend Pokemon; bring it on!
Wokeup 3:30am on the 20th. Layered up like it was Himalaya-stompin time. Piled into the minivan (muchas gracias Mama Goldblatt, la princessa de McLean y mi corazon!) and jumped out on the side of the highway, west of the Potomac and the Great Mall.
Walked a mile over the bridge and towards the Lincoln memorial, then past it, past the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Memorial, onto the Mall itself.
Closer and closer to the Capital building. Close enough to see the thing, but far enough away to need the jumbotron positioned right over our patriotic heads. And we waited.
And waited. And shivered. And puppy-piled. And used up all our hand- and foot-warmers. And shuddered. And watched the sun rise. And chillied.
And watched the concert from the day before. And tried to think about anything other than the toes-numbing, nose-running, skin-burning, finger-churning, soul-stabbing cold. And finally, finally, the party started. And the energy rose. The flags waves, the voices shouted out, the chants tumbled in their polysyllabic glory OH- BAM- AH! OH- BAM- AH! We saw Hillary, we cheered a bunch. There was W, and we politely kept out bad-ass mouths shut. But nothing compared with the man of the hour, our confidant and commander, our superhero and superstar, Mr. Personality himself, the 44th Prez of the U. S. of A. We holla'd for the world to hear, which they promptly did, and holla'd right back. It was glory itself. You shoulda been there. If you were, good job. If not, our pictures are here.
We wont recount the hellhole of trying to escape the streets of DC, of taking 3 hours to walk 2 miles because of the seething mass of humanity all trying to do the same thing, namely, get the hell outta there. We didn't take any pictures of the aftermath because we were trying to forget it even as it was happening. Lets all just remember the moment of magic: that hand on Lincoln's bible, that calm and steadfast demeanor, that hopeful upward glance towards a brighter future. And lets hope he gets to work quickly.
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.
34 seconds. That's all it took for the Hindenburg, the greatest airship in the history of Hydrogen-fueled aviation to explode into flame, sink to the ground and change the world. 34 seconds from the first fire on the tail to the epic crash-landing. What's more, it all happened next door - at the Lakehurst, New Jersey Naval Airforce Station, about 90 minutes from NYC. The good volunteers at the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society provides tours free of charge to interested citizens, only on the second Saturday of the month, only at 9:30 in the morning, and only if all attendees provide their home address and social security numbers two weeks in advance. It is an active Naval Airbase after all.
We couldn't possibly pass up such a geek-a-licious historical adventure, even if, two weekends ago, it was pissing rain like Heaven's plumbing had gone haywire. Off to Joisey! Three cars from three different parts of Brooklyn took off for Lakehurst - the Levy boys plus Alisa car; the Eggplant Xpress carrying yours truly, friends Josh & Jenene, and yours' trulys' lovely new girlfriend Emily; and the roommate car with Steve and GF Zan. After swimming our way south on the Garden State Pkway we arrived at the Airbase and on our way into disaster-history!
The Hindenburg was built between 1931 and 1936 in Friedrichshafen, Germany. 803.8 feet long and 135.1 feet wide in diameter - which is roughly the length of an 80 story building. When fully inflated, she carried approx. 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen in 16 separate cells; this allowed for easier inflation. The German government paid for the Hindenburg's construction; therefore, enormous swastikas painted onto her tail and fin. Her cabins included a piano room, a reading room, a dining room and a smoking room (which utilized pressurized gases, neutralizing the hydrogen.) Her trip to the States on May 6th, 1937 was the first of 10 scheduled trips kicking off the '37 airship season.
Our guide, a well informed volunteer and former navy man Donald Adams, led our caravan onto the wide open field where the Hindenburg went down; we approached a somber airship-shaped memorial complete with historical bronze plaque. There was also a rough hand-painted little Hindenburg on a post, flapping in the tough winds. Donald gave us hard facts - the Hindenburg hovered approx 300 feet in the air, mooring lines out and down and waiting for mooring. This was when (most reports claim) the static electricity in the atmosphere (or a lightning strike) coupled with the wet weather made a deadly combo for the airship, which was venting hydrogen in order to land. Oxygen + Hydrogen = extremely combustible; within 34 seconds, it was all over.
We also learned that the legendary Oh the Humanity! newscast with Herbert Morrison was recorded at a slightly slower speed, so in the sped-up real-time version, his naturally sonorous voice seems high-pitched & charged with extra emotion. What's more, the newsreel wasn't broadcast until the next day out of Chicago, and no-one heard it live unless they were present at the crash. Out of 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew members died, plus one ground crewman. Two survivors are still alive, including then-14-year-old cabin boy Werner Franz.
Following a lot of snapshots, we made our way into the hangar and airship museum. Along with scale models of the Hindenburg there were relics and pieces from the wreckage. We bought some souvenirs (Hindenburg coffee mug! Naval Air force Base jacket patch!) and made our way into the hangar, large enough to fit two Hindenburg airships side-by-side with 12 feet of clearance. This double-airship hangar is the largest in the country and one of only two in the world. Hidden within the hangar was another museum, filled with model airplanes, ships and jets as well as walls upon walls of Navy, Air force and Army patches, all of which were supremely awesome.
All of this disaster and naval history and air force patches and old men flying model airplanes made us pretty hungry, so off to a Joisey diner we went! Although most of us had our hearts set on a classic stainless steel, Formica counter, burgers / grilled cheese / meatloaf style joint, but instead we settled at a quaint, cute little cafe in downtown Lakehurst. Good food, but the attitude and atmosphere was top notch thanks to the owner, a former local Bronx boy (he and Dad Levy both attended the same high school!) After some homemade ice cream from the parlor next door, we piled back into our vehicles and called it a historical disastery day.
For those of you who weren't previous aware, Matt Levy had been issued a challenge: 6 weddings in 6 consecutive weekends. In 4 different states, in 2 different times zones (east & west coasts.) We've already detailed the joys and thrills of the first 4 weddings here. We now bring you part 5 in this 6 part series.
Wedding Number Five: Benjamin Inwood & Erin Bublitz, West Point NY, Oct. 12th.
It was a wonderful Sunday for a Wedding. Saturday had been busy: biking around Farmingdale NY with good pals and total strangers in search of cemetaries, oktoberfests, and accidentally, a super skanky stripclub. But Sunday is the Lord's day and I was booking it up the Hudson River Parkway in the trusty Eggplant Xpress, my 2-week old 1998 Hyundai Elantra Stationwagon. West Point in October is beautiful and oozes propriety as the premier Military Academy on the Eastern Seabord. I park Eggy, grab the camera and head to the Hotel. The ceremony's running late, which is good because i was slightly rushing.
Benjamin Inwood, aka Ben-wah, was my best friend in highschool. We lived a few blocks from each other, and for a good two years we were inseparable, although as different as rose gardens and cement mixers. Ben was the conservative, I was the whack-job. His folks still call me Rusty after my traffic-cone-orange early-junior-year hair. Our first travel adventure was a 20-day Greyhound cross-country road trip in the summer '98, between high school and college.
Ben went to college in Alaska; this is where he met his beautiful bride Erin. I went to the final frontier to visit Ben twice. The first trip was due to a bet I lost when, in Junior year, I loudly proclaimed to all our friends there was no way Ben would go to college in Alaska! Up I went, in January '99. The second visit occured in June '02 and came of the need to drive his car and unwanted stuff from Alaska to Brooklyn. 9 days, 10 hours of driving each day, me and Ben-wah. After the AK > BK road trip Ben and I fell out of touch; the last we spoke was his older sister's wedding party two years back. Between the two road trips Ben and Erin moved to Anchorage and had a child. Knowing my far-away best friend was a Dad at 22 was a shocker, but last I saw the kid, in '02, he was brand new and not speaking yet.
He looked good. Pleased and surprised to see me. Much stockier than in the past, but it looked good, solid, like he was a real man ready for his family's future; moving into all those scary adult stages. The wedding was outdoors on the Hudson, and the ceremony, as well as the festivities to follow, were the most conservatively Jewish wedding yet attended. There was the chuppah (the canopy under which the bride and groom stand,) the smashing of the wine glass, and yarmulkes on everyone's head. Nothing in Hebrew or Yiddish, but a heavily mystic Jewishness pervaded the whole day, much to everyone's delight. Especially the massive bowl of jumbo cocktail shrimp. Definitely delightful.
The ceremony was short and sweet, the party slightly longer and better tasting. Ben's darling family, like my own surrogate fam, the most marvelous surrogate family a Brooklyn boy could have. There was dancing, mostly haphazard. And the groom & bride did NOT want to go up on the chairs. However, without a doubt, Ari took the spotlight. A fine looking little man in a dapper suit, he walked with Ben and Erin down the aisle and stood underneath their clasped hands. He walked them back to the hall after the ceremony, and as Ben and Erin took their first dance, he yelled ME TOO! and jumped into their arms. That kid's going to be a real mensch someday.
After taking my fill; after chatting it up with Oren and Truzman - Brooklyn boys of my child- and teen-age years; after unsuccessfully trying to flirt it up with each of my boys' platonic dates; after Mediterranean salads and a take-home tin full of cocktail jumbo shrimp (which made their way into a pesto for that evening's date); after delivering the gifts (Ben, Erin & Ari live in Shaker Heights, Ohio, so this former New Yorker & his fam get: an NYC Subway Curtain Shower Map, two subway oven mitts, and a pair of subway socks for Ari); after hugs, kisses and misses with the Inwood clan, after complements paid to the bride & her family; and after much soul-searching and private joke-making with the mighty Ben-wah; after all those activities it was time to get back in the Eggplant and bring it all home. The rest of the pics are here.
This past weekend was the 6th annual Open House New York (OHNY), the city's ginormously adventurous exploration of the insides of often-closed structures throughout all five boroughs. OHNY covers many bases for many peoples - from the antiquatedly awesome Highbridge Water Tower; to the luxuriously lethargic Sutton Place apartment tour. From the industrial subterranean Substation #22 in Crown Heights to the open all the time yupster pedestrian Brooklyn Academy of Music building. OHNY is cool shit. CAVEAT! There are tricks of the trade to tackling OHNY. First off - avoid downtown and midtown Manhattan at all costs. Due to the architectural and explorable density of the island, most of the tours/reserved sites are chock-a-block fullup weeks in advance; for those open houses with no reserve, lines get interminably long. Also the insufferable haughtiness of seen it all New Yorkers in their prime habitat - a genuinely cool thing they haven't seen before but play it off like Clara Bow past her prime.
HOWEVER it is possible to enjoy the fruits of OHNY. First and most critical: get far away from the expected spots. Leave Ft. Greene and Astoria to the birds and hipsters. The outer rings of the outer boroughs is fab. Second: own a car (!!!!!) which can take you to said outer rings of outer boroughs. Third: don't make plans with people who get lost on the subway (thank you Larissa!) and take 3 hours to get from Brooklyn to Brooklyn via Manhattan, which would cause you to miss a geektastical walking tour of a neighborhood most New Yorkers would have trouble finding on a subway map. Fourth: Be flexible. With all those points in mind, aforementioned late friend Larissa and I zipped over to Flushing Meadows Corona Park IN MY NEW CAR!!!!! for a walking tour of the Worlds Fairgrounds, inside and around the Queens Museum of Art.
John Kriskiewicz, a visually and audibly excited architectural historian led a group of 40+ for two marvelous hours in the historical shadow of the two Worlds Fairs - 1939-40 & 1964-65. We started inside the QMA's theater and enjoyed a slideshow filled with images and wonders of the two fairs, but focusing mostly on the second one, the first Billion Dollar Fair and the last Great World's Fair. John asked us all to "look back and remember the future" in a tone half reverential and half good-naturedly cynical. The Worlds Fair 64-65 straddled two very different epochs - planning started in 1958, Eisenhower's America, highways and suburbanization. Robert Moses (boo! hiss!) came on board in 60, and nothing was left to decide by 62, so by the time the Fair opened, it was already behind the times. By the mid-60s America was dealing with civil rights, flower power, Vietnam and disillusionment. From consensus to conflict, and the World's Fair split these two eras.
From the neato slideshow we went out into the park to marvel at the always magnificent Unisphere. 13 stories tall, 700,000 lbs, the world's largest global structure and built out of stainless steel by US Steel, it is the only remnant of the World's Fair that is landmarked by the NYC Landmarks Preservations Committee. The three rings that orbit the Unisphere are supposed to represent the first two men in orbit - Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn and the first telecommunications satellite, Telstar. This giant hunk of metal had always intended to be permanent, while the rest of the Fair was temporary.
As John walked us on top of some etched-in-granite murals depicting various scenes from the Worlds Fairs around the globe, he pointed out the importance of the Worlds Fair to the people of America, especially as it opened six months after JFK's assassination. It brought people together to celebrate and enjoy themselves, just as the technology of entertainment (movies, t.v.) separated and privatized people from others. The reason we don't have Worlds Fairs anymore is that with flight, and eventually internet, we can visit the world on our own, and hardly need the world to come to us.
Other points of interest included the exterior of the Queens Hall of Science, designed by Wallace Harrison, in an ethereal style that reminds one of mitosis, undulating forms and shapes inside our bodies; a geodesic dome leftover from the Fair that is now the Queens' Zoo's Aviary; the Port Authority building, a ghastly T-shaped monstrosity now home to a banquet hall; an original Carousel from the Fair, still in use and hardly known by its users to be vintage from Coney Island, circa the early 20th century; and the crumbling NY State Pavilion buildings, designed by Phillip Johnson, massive urban detritus that once stood for utopian visions of tomorrow. All in all a simply spectacular tour, led by a passionate man with a personal connection - Mr. Kriskiewicz showed a slide of a chubby youngster at the Fair. The best part about this Open House? The bright sun, the cool breeze, the laughing children and the tangible history.
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!
It couldn't have been a more perfect day. A wide-open Saturday in the slowly closing August, replete with wide blue skies, beautiful breezes, a temperature floating in the low 80s, and a yellow school bus just aching to take off with its cargo of 30+ New Yorkers to places unknown. This was it: the final Going Places, Doing Stuff adventure of the summer, and as a former GP, DS leader (of the very first one, no less!) and a participant in 6 out of 8 there was no way I'd miss the final blowout. In addition, Jeff Stark, the organizer of today's spectacular, is a friend, colleague and role model, and his knowledge of the hidden, urban, rural, & superb New York is unmatched. I trust this man with my life, and throughout the course of 16 hour day there were many opportunities for those words to sing true, if not always with my life, then instead with my sanity, poise, calm, and the life of my new $700 digital camera.
We met in Queens Plaza, where Jeff introduced himself with a welcome and a warning: the Places we were Going and the Stuff we were Doing was, in some cases, highly illegal and certainly arrestable. There was to be no peer pressure on anybody in case they wouldn't or couldn't participate, IE even the coolest adventure wasn't worth the revoking of a green card and the booting out of a country. That having been said, the day was going to be awesome, occupied by 4 different artists and their 4 wildly disparate projects, all to do with the Hudson River and water and Jeff couldn't wait any longer. So we piled onto our trusty yellow Bucephalus, with the omnipresent, multi-talented, infinitely patient Marcus behind the wheel, and we were off!
First stop - a short fence hop in Long Island City and onto a pier to meet and listen to Marie Lorenz, a New York based artist who builds and sails her own canoes under the title Tide and Current Taxi. She had docked briefly in LIC with her canoe and two passengers on their way to Roosevelt Island and Renwick's Ruin, in order to give an impromptu talk on the power of currents and how she uses them in her project. She told us about how the East River is one of the largest collection of tidal currents in the hemisphere, and by using those streams to propel her boat, she harnesses nature to get where she wants to go.
Next up, a lengthy bus ride to somewhere upstate - nearby Beacon NY - where we crawled through a strategically cut hole in a chain link fence and scampered off to a swimming nook. This nook boasted a couple jump-off points, between 20 and 40 feet up, a picnic area (just a bunch of flattened-off rocks) and most excitingly, another handmade boat, painted tomato-red. This boat came courtesy of Paula Zaslavsky and her partner Dylan Gauthier, two sharp young Brooklynites who used to run the Empty Vessel Project but now work on an ongoing DIY boat building project, Mare Liberum. In between homemade peach cocktails and lunch; before and after trips in their lovely boat and a brief talk about how anybody can build their own pond-worthy sailing vessel; once intrepid venturers had had their fill of divebombing off the rocky steps into the swimming hole, Jeff announced it was time to move on. Farewell gorgeous swimming hole! We had 2 more art-water projects to hit.
After an ice cream and coffee hit in downtown Beacon, we drove until we came to a clearing in the road, and crossing through some bushes and over some very active Amtrak rail lines, until we were standing on the banks of the Hudson. Off in the distance was a crumbling shell of what seemed to be a castle. This was the big exploration - Bannerman's Castle, on Pollopel Island. And Jeff, in all his rational, madcap determination, was going to get us over there.
After a few back and forth trips via one leaky canoe, one tippy kayak and two rockin' zephyr motorboats, the majority of us were on the island, and free to wander around and take magnificent pictures of this unbelievable ruin. Really. Click ahead and see the slideshow.
The story to Bannerman is as eccentric as the building itself. Frank Bannerman VI, born in 1851 and grew up in Brooklyn, was the Father of Army-Navy stores. Inheriting a flag & rope business from his father, he realized the inherrent value of purchasing surplus ammunition, uniforms, heavy artillery, and other goods from post-war governments, and sold them to other nations, at peace or at war. At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, Bannerman purchased 90% of the captured goods in a sealed bid, and needed a remote location to stockpile his collection. His block-long storeroom / showroom at 501 Broadway was no place for such weapons of destruction, so Bannerman purchased Pollopel Island in 1900 and built himself a castle to store his goods. The construction of the buildings took 17 years, not the least of which because Bannerman did most of the loyout & construction himself, without the use of professional architects or engineers. He designed most of it in an outrageous stylized Scottish castle style. The place is magnificent, with little flourishes tucked in the labels and signposts, as well as in the wall sconces and turrets.
Bannerman died in 1918, and his family continued to sell army supplies up through the 70s, but they sold the island and the building to NY State in 1967. Unfortunately, two years later a tremendous fire ripped through the building, which damaged most of the walls, incinerated the ceiling and made the grounds unstable for long-term visitors or tours. We were certainly trespassing, but were doing so with utmost care. (The Friends of Bannerman Island would probably have called the cops on us.) The pictures show the story better than these words can ever do. After an hour or so, after we had a few go-rounds the island, after a near-death experience in which Jean busted his head open via a too-shallow dive, it was time to return to the mainland.
Which we did. Went into town, had some pizza and beer. Visited Swoon's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, which had been docked up in Beacon for the night, but it really was just an afterthought. Then we piled back onto the bus and returned to New York, getting back to Queens Plaza by 2 in the morning. It was simply splendid - the entire day. Kudos to Flux, to Jeff Stark, to Marcus the driver and to all participants of Going Places, Doing Stuff.
It had been quite the 3 week jaunt. First up, the American Bus Association Marketplace, held this year in Charlotte, NC. A full week of schmoozing, boozing, bad luncheon eating, business card swapping, small talk with big people from all over America & Canada, and the slow but sad realization that Charlotte, although pretty and pleasant, is as dull as its former cotton fields turned into financial skyscrapers. Although Gideon and I did come across the World's Largest Duncan Phyfe Chair, in Thomasville, NC.
That, and we took a few spins around the NASCAR racetrack.
Nextup, Gid goes to Miami and Matt makes a lovely little visit to old college friends in Athens, GA. Indie rock noise and beer before noon, Golden Corral Buffets and lots and lots of coffee. Scott, small-time author and music-romantic drove me around Athens on a personalized tour of the old stomping grounds of Elephant 6. 
E6 was a legendary lo-fi recording collective who's members made the greatest indie-pop album of all time, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea among other albums by other bands including Elf Power, Olivia Tremor Control and Of Montreal. Drove like a maniac across South Carolina, stopping to visit the World's Largest Fire Hydrant;
as well as check out fragments of an Atom Bomb that was accidentally dropped on Mars Bluff, SC in 1932.
Picked up the girlfriend in Wilmington, NC and headed to the Outer Banks to meet her entire family as well as consume outrageous amounts of oysters at Aunt Susan & Uncle Richard's yearly OYSTER FEST!! Everything good was here: hand-built stove, five bushels of the aphrodisiac, chowder, beer, wine, salad, more food, good vibes, great music and homegrown people. Our Brooklyn 'tude went great with the gf's fam and so on so forth. We'll be back for more oysters. Until then, these pictures will have to do.
However all these personal and familial experiences can't compete with the events in our Nation's Capital on January 20th, every four years (give or take). After the oysters (and after a pitstop for BBQ with the GF's Dadster in northern NC) we went to DC for the crowning of President Obama. With our HQ in McLean, VA - 6 miles from the Capital; a sturdy group of 5, prepared for everything including the bone-shivering chills we told the Inauguration to bring it on; crack a dawn; with our friend Pokemon; bring it on!
Wokeup 3:30am on the 20th. Layered up like it was Himalaya-stompin time. Piled into the minivan (muchas gracias Mama Goldblatt, la princessa de McLean y mi corazon!) and jumped out on the side of the highway, west of the Potomac and the Great Mall.
Walked a mile over the bridge and towards the Lincoln memorial, then past it, past the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Memorial, onto the Mall itself.
And watched the concert from the day before. And tried to think about anything other than the toes-numbing, nose-running, skin-burning, finger-churning, soul-stabbing cold. And finally, finally, the party started. And the energy rose. The flags waves, the voices shouted out, the chants tumbled in their polysyllabic glory OH- BAM- AH! OH- BAM- AH! We saw Hillary, we cheered a bunch. There was W, and we politely kept out bad-ass mouths shut. But nothing compared with the man of the hour, our confidant and commander, our superhero and superstar, Mr. Personality himself, the 44th Prez of the U. S. of A. We holla'd for the world to hear, which they promptly did, and holla'd right back. It was glory itself. You shoulda been there. If you were, good job. If not, our pictures are here.
We wont recount the hellhole of trying to escape the streets of DC, of taking 3 hours to walk 2 miles because of the seething mass of humanity all trying to do the same thing, namely, get the hell outta there. We didn't take any pictures of the aftermath because we were trying to forget it even as it was happening. Lets all just remember the moment of magic: that hand on Lincoln's bible, that calm and steadfast demeanor, that hopeful upward glance towards a brighter future. And lets hope he gets to work quickly.
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