J’Adore a Vintage French Carnival: Fête Paradiso

After working ten days at the New York State Fair, I felt done with carnivals for at least a decade. I was all carnival-ed out. Then an event on Governor’s Island, the haven just 5 minutes from the coast of Manhattan, made me reconsider. Easily the best decision I’ve made since the one to go boating in Central Park.

“Fête Paradiso, the world’s first festival of vintage French carnival rides and carousels, makes its American debut on Governors Island.” I read this first sentence on the Governor’s Island calendar of events and it was all I needed to hear. That’s just the kind of girl I am: Amelie is the only legit movie I own, I adore macarons, and I rock a red beret with some frequency. J’adore. I invited two ladies who share my interests, my lovely friends Meg and Rose.

We ran off to Governor’s Island with such excitement, such joie d’vivre, I didn’t even look up where on the island the carnival was located! The island must have anticipated this because these jolie markers painted the way.
Pipe organ music wafted through the air, reaching our ears just as the scene became visible in the distance. I felt giddy, the way I had at age seven when going to a small town carnival with my cousin. I wasn’t exactly sure what was in store but my expectations were high.

C’est incroyable, my expectations were met, even exceeded.

Charm, whimsy, and delight permeated every sun-drenched pathway. In this Paradiso paradise, even cautionary signs are adorable.

I don’t think my smile once drifted from my face. There was happiness in the air. People were even content to wait in line- outrageous for New Yorkers! I didn’t see one person looking impatient or cross, heard no crying from frustrated children. Much credit to the employees. All outfitted in festive stripes and kerchiefs, they seemed genuinely happy to be working here. What a world of difference that makes, it enhanced the whole atmosphere!

All the rides and games were from the late 19th or early 20th centuries. This one is called the Music-Hall Ball Guzzler! The wood figures are caricatures of celebrities of the period. You can just make out Charlie Chaplin fourth from the left. The object is to get them to guzzle a ball, throw it in their mouths! Before even knowing the hilarious name of the game I found it quite amusing to watch.

The three of us decided we wanted to go on one ride. Just one, so we had to choose carefully.

This carousel was immediately out of the running as it was completely child-size! You must be this short to ride this ride!

We all agreed on the Velocipedes. Created in 1892, this carousel was designed to promote the new mode of transportation in Paris and encourage people to give bicycles a try! In 2013 everyone wanted to give it a try, even people who already had bicycles themselves!

Along with a motor, our pushing of the pedals propelled this ride. It was wacky to be on a bicycle that is 121 years old! Far superior to any modern-day spinning class, let me tell you.

Trés chic, non?
I had such a wonderful time, I am tempted to go back this weekend. Or the weekend after! Two more weekends to experience this wonderful event! Unfortunately, I’m afraid I don’t have the time to go again. But you should go and then I can live vicariously through you! Tit for tat, or as the French say, rendre la pareille!

The Time-Warp Haven on Governor’s Island

The hustle and bustle of Manhattan can be overwhelming. We run at a different pace than the rest of the civilized world. In a race against time, a New Yorker simply walking work would soundly beat most suburbanite joggers. Coffee orders are completed faster than it takes to patter venti-triple-two-percent-extra-foam-one-pump-pumpkin-latte-two-splendas-no-whip. The frantic whirl-wind of rush hour can be so break-neck it reduces you to tears; and don’t even get me started on New York City drivers. Everyone is busy. Should you make the mistake of hinting you aren’t, expect a level of disdain akin to sorority slut-shaming.

This time-warp shifts immediately when you set foot on the Governor’s Island Ferry. The world slows down. Around you people are smiling, the collective breathes easier. You’ve set sail to a new world. On the shores of this haven, it’s easier to find a lemonade than an espresso, and that speaks volumes. Just five minutes from the island of Manhattan, this island is devoted to recreation, art, and culture. You’ll be hard-pressed to find much else.

I love Governor’s Island for these reasons. I knew I had to make it out there before the season ends on September 29th. Goal accomplished yesterday! You never know quite what you’ll find on this island, but chances are it will delight you.

The trees are so green, the streets aren’t crowded, there are no cars! Instead people ride bicycles or bicycle buggies like this 6-seater here.

This is an island of picnics. You know there’s little I love more than a picnic, I considered myself a near-expert. Until I went to Governor’s Island and found the top-tier of picnic-goers in the north east. This gentleman had a lovely spread, the perfect wicker basket, a picnic table cloth, a jaunty hat, a pipe, even a parasol! When asked for his photograph he said, “Of course,” and then offered me an olive. Put my picnicking prowess to SHAME. He was like a Picnic Art Instillation.

Speaking of art installations, this fascinated from afar. What was it? I had to get a closer look.

Here we have a true art instillation, the City of Dreams Pavilion. It is made of all recycled materials. Would you ever guess what exactly? Milk gallons on the outside and water bottles filled with blue water on the inside!

Quite an execution on this size and scale. The use of materials was imaginative and masterful. The sunshine through the bottles really created a dreamy effect.First bottles, now flowers! There was certainly a trend for unconventional materials this Sunday. This portrait is of physicist Richard Feynman, constructed completely out of flowers. I’m not sure why a physicist was the subject, and I only know that much because a gentleman who helped assemble the flowers happened to pass by and pass on this information. It was created guerrilla style, which is so awesome. Smelled lovely to boot!

I’ll share the highlight of my trip with you tomorrow! It was almost better than the view!

September 13, 2013September 17, 2013

Bursting Bubbles on the Subway

Feature photo by Debbie Saslaw

Like millions (not an exaggeration) of New Yorkers, I take the subway every day. After five years in this city, being on a crowded subway car is akin to brushing my teeth or drawing the curtains on a sunny morning. It is routine. If I ever stop to think about it, I am overwhelmed by how bizarre and unique this experience we take for granted is.

It is common to find trains at rush hour so crowded you are physically crushed against fellow commuters. Your armpit is at eye level with the petit woman trying to read her Kindle, poor dear. The book bag of the hipster with the mustache jostles your right butt cheek every time the train lurches. Pressed against your left shoulder is the handsome business man, his wedding ring reflects in your eyes as his left hand grasps the pole inches from of your nose.

A subway car at rush hour is truly a remarkable experiment in personal space. After such a description, it sounds funny to even suggest, but personal space bubbles are rigidly maintained. As it is impossible to maintain physical personal space, the situation demands a mental bubble. We disconnect from other people, put up mental walls. The Unwritten Subway Code of Conduct: stay in your bubble and no one gets weirded out.

The minute someone invades this sacred bubble, you know. It’s a fascinating sensation, the change in energy. Anytime anyone has spoken to me on the subway, I’ve sensed the impetus before they even opened their mouths. I’ve been acutely aware of men agonizing for 10 minutes, trying to get up the courage to speak to me. How did I know? Just from the change in energy, the feeling of someone trying to get in my bubble.

One day my bubble was burst. It was mid day, not rush hour, and so I had myself a seat. I looked up from the book I was reading, Rachel Dratch’s A Girl Walks Into a Bar (which I actually like better than Bossypants, shh don’t tell Tina Fey) to see how far from 59th Street we were- several stops. When I looked up, I noticed the man seated across from me. He had his laptop out- iPhones are normal but a Macbook is still a strange on the MTA- and his eyes darted all about the car as his fingers rhythmically taped the keys. I saw what he was doing and smiled, thinking, “That looks like something I would do, if I didn’t fear for my Macbook’s life. He must be documenting the experience of a subway ride. I wonder if he has a blog.” The next moment his eyes stopped wandering and fixed on mine.

Our eyes connected and he began furiously typing. He stared at me, breaking his gaze briefly to glance at the computer screen. My personal space bubble burst. I felt frozen, drenched in scrutiny. I knew whatever he was writing on that screen was about me. I wanted to say something- witty, biting, clever. Something to at least acknowledge I knew what he was doing. Instead I sat silently, feeling intensely vulnerable, fighting a child-like urge to duck under the subway bench and hide. My mind working in slow-motion, I felt stupid. Before I could say anything, the train reached the next stop. Before I even processed it, the man jumped up from his seat, open laptop in arm, and swiftly exited the train.

I’ll never know who he was, I’ll always wonder what he wrote. This is my strangest subway story to date.

I wonder if that’s how people feel when I write about them here. Specifically, if that’s how a certain ex-boyfriend feels as I detail specific moments of our breakup.
No, I don’t actually know if he’s been reading my blog, to answer that FAQ. I haven’t communicated with him since he told me not to eat the food at the state fair. But I know he knows it exists. And I know I’d sure as hell read it if the roles were reversed.

My objective is not, and never has been, to make anyone feel uncomfortable. Nor is it to exact revenge, nor an attempt to speak with someone otherwise cut from my life. My aim is to express myself creatively, to entertain, maybe even inspire. Perhaps there’s a bit of wanting to analyze and heal as well these days. That’s all I want, I deserve it, and I refuse to censor myself to get it.

September 12, 2013October 23, 2014

Short & Sweet: Still Time for Summer Reading

Everyone is gleeful about Pumpkin Spice Lattes, but I’m thrilled I can still get a bit of millage out of my summer dresses. It may be post-Labor Day, but it is still very much summer here in NYC. It looks beautiful in pictures, but it’s down right sticky if you get stuck on a subway car sans air conditioning This just happened to me. As sweat started trickling down my neck, I closed my eyes, trying to save the memory for when it’s December and I’m freezing.

Chances are you have some reading to catch up on. I’m certainly done talking about my breakup- maybe just for the week, maybe forever. I’m starting to feel like I need to shut up about it. For now. Who knows how I’ll feel next week!

My most recent posts in case you missed them:

The Breakup Haircut I Never Saw Coming

The Breakup Haircut Cliché

Lower East Side Opening Date Night

New Design, Lots of Posts, Animal Pictures!

How to Avoid Emotional Eating at the New York State Fair

September 11, 2013May 26, 2016

The Break Up Haircut I Never Saw Coming

It was the last night of my summer theatre gig. The one I had accepted with excitement that my boyfriend and I would get to work and spend the whole summer together. The one that ended in heartbreak and having to see the newly ex-boyfriend everywhere I turned. Tomorrow, it would all be in the past. Tonight I would sit and laugh with friends, drink champagne straight out of the bottle, watch the sunset over Lake Ontario, and completely ignore the presence of my former love sure to be in attendance.

So far so good, for the most part. I couldn’t help but notice when he arrived, along with his typical cohorts. But he remained standing in the back of the group, while I sat on a blanket in the front. Ha ha, my view of the sunset is far superior to his! Oh right, I’m not supposed to be thinking about him. Someone passed me a spoon and a tub of mint chocolate ice cream. I took a heaping spoonful, feeling pleased with myself- I hadn’t had any appetite in weeks. There were days when I literally forced myself to eat, knowing if I fainted, it was his contractual obligation to take me to the hospital. Now here I was actually wanting some ice cream. Things were looking up!

LakeOntariosunset — From where we sat, this was the view of the sunset. Beautiful, no?

I was licking the ice cream off my spoon and staring at the horizon, when my mouthful was interrupted, “Cliché!” My friend Avis hissed my name and gave a meaningful look to the direction I was trying so desperately to ignore. I returned her look with one of dread and searched her face for a clue. What did she want me to see? Had he gotten some horrible new tattoo? Or even worse, a sexy one? Was the goatee he’d been cultivating for the past month finally gone? The one I had hated from the start but never said anything? Of course, my biggest fear was that I’d look and see him holding hands with some other woman. That was something I could not handle yet.
“Are you sure I should look?” I questioned Avis, pointedly.
“Yes. Just look,” she commanded.

I turned and looked. He was standing with the bandana he had previously been wearing now in his hand. His uncovered head now revealing his hair. Short hair. Oh My God, he had cut his hair! The ponytail he had held on to since age 12, the one he had been so emotionally attached to, the one he would death-stare you down if you even hinted that he cut it, was gone! I stared, shocked. Then realized I was staring and quickly looked away.

“Wow.” I said to Avis, “He fucking cut his fucking hair.” Pardon my french, but moments such as this require swearing like a sailor.
“Yep,” she scoffed. Avis is an intensely loyal friend.
“Shit. Did not see that one coming.” While in the anger stages of grief, I had entertained revenge fantasies about cutting that ponytail off. I knew such an act would inspire livid rage, that he would never forgive me. I knew I would never actually do it, but I never dreamed he actually would!
“Fuck. This is weird! I’m not sure how I feel about this.”
“I think it means you won.”

I certainly didn’t feel like I’d won. I didn’t know how I felt. The Harry I had known and loved was truly gone.

I didn’t end this relationship with the cliché Break Up Haircut. He did.

September 10, 2013May 26, 2016

The Break Up Haircut Cliché

Oh the Breakup Haircut, the crème de la crème of break up clichés.

I certainly felt the urge. I couldn’t control my emotions. I couldn’t control the man who was abusing them. Feeling helpless and out of control are two of my least favorite things in the entire galaxy. When I feel this way, I desperately flounder to grasp hold of something, anything that I can say, “See! I have control over something!” I was already metaphorically pulling out my hair in frustration, the next step- to literally cut it off- felt obvious. I could control that.

I’d done it before. My very first experience with heartache inspired an epic Break Up Haircut. I was 15 years old and my long blonde hair was a huge part of my identity. Since age seven I had refused to have it cut beyond a trim. But when I came back from summer vacation, the full realization hit me: Gabe P. and I were not getting back together. That his words, “I will always love you,” were truth only to a naive 14 year-old boy. I cried, took the PSATs, and went to Supercuts. I cut off 12 inches of hair and donated them to Locks of Love. Thus began my two-year androgynous, punk rock phase.

How do you top that? I’d have to shave my head to even come close and there is no way have the bone structure to pull off that look. I have always wondered if I could pull off a pixie cut. I considered posing the question to all you readers. “Break Up Haircut: should I embrace this cliché and go for a pixie?” Would you all have cheered me on or cautioned against rash, emotion driven decisions?

There was another reason I wanted to cut off all my hair. No surprise, it had to do with him.

“Harry”, my ex, was given this pseudonym for three reasons.

As an homage to character Harry Goldenblatt from Sex and the City.
Because he was. Hairy, I mean. Chest, back, arms, you name it, really. ~~Yeah, not missing that.~~
He had a lot of hair on his head. A ponytail reached far down his back, which he hadn’t cut more than a trim since age 12.

He was emotionally connected to it. I quickly learned better than to even hint he might consider cutting it. Which was funny, because that’s exactly how I used to be. When I was a fourteen year-old girl. It’s a strange thing to understand your boyfriend because he’s just like your teenaged self.

It was hard for me to accept someone had not changed his looks since he was a tween. It boggled my mind. Honestly, I judged him for it on some level. I even admitted this to him. When it was all over, this fueled my desire for the cliché even more. “Maybe I will get a pixie cut!” I proclaimed at a heated bitch-session-with-the-girls, “Maybe I’ll just do it. Because I, unlike some people, don’t have weird emotional attachments to my hair!”

My acting job kept me from cutting it all off in the heat of the moment. Now from the sane vantage of hindsight, I see how fortunate this was. I would adore having a pixie cut. For about a week. Then I’d miss my long hair and hate the long, awkward months of growing it back.

I don’t need a new identity, I don’t need a fresh physical start. I like myself just the way I am, thanks. I don’t need ye old Break Up Haircut. Unlike some people…. but more on that tomorrow.

September 9, 2013May 26, 2016

Lower East Side Opening Date Night

I returned to NYC after a summer of working upstate, a summer that ended in heartbreak, and ran straight into the arms of another man…

My gay boyfriend! Oh how I missed him. Nothing like your GBF to remind you how fabulous you are and that not all men suck.

A Sunday date night with the GBF exploring the Lower East Side. Yesterday was the second annual LES Opening Night. Manhattan’s trendiest neighborhood built the buzz with a block party, gallery openings, and a fashion show. We spent the glorious, sunny evening strolling around boutiques, sipping wine, and commenting on art.

Mayson Gallery exhibited a colorful collection from many different artists. All humanistic, some humorously and others painfully personal. A lovely space on Broome Street. This gallery won the “If I was actually in a place in life to buy art, I would purchase it from here” prize.

Castle Fitzjohns Gallery featured bold and whimsical art pieces. Artist Sam Tufnell’s sculptures of plastic and resin, like these three little gnomes, were a highlight. Many different mediums here and artists from emerging to world renown. On our way out GBF and I realized that we’d been so taken by the gnomes we’d completely missed two original Warhols on the opposite wall!

This being fashion week, a runway was constructed in the middle of the blocked-off street. We were treated to a fashion show featuring the designs from boutiques in the area.

Pale in comparison to the tents of Lincoln Center, but fun none the less.

Everyone was snapping pictures and there was a great community feeling with everyone crowding on the street. This fashion front row was a hot seat on the asphalt. The models were fairly normal people, my guess is connected to the local stores in some way.

My favorite gallery opening was at BOSI Contemporary. Unlike the other galleries, this showing was dedicated entirely to one artist, André Feliciano. Installations, photographs, and sculptures all complemented each other seamlessly throughout the space. Feliciano celebrates the camera, the medium, the history, the journey from past to present.

What looks like a flower blossom is really a tiny camera. A flower bed of hundreds of tiny cameras all begging the viewer to capture the likeness in a photograph.

When we had our fill of art and the crowds were starting to frustrate us, the GBF and I went to fill our stomachs. We hoped to find the block on the outskirts of Chinatown that features many Vietnamese establishments. Amazingly, we happened upon it without even trying. Our feast of summer rolls, peanut sauce, and shrimp vermicelli was the perfect final act to a stellar evening.

Gay men, art, fashion, white wine, and Asian cuisine; who could ask for anything more?