Hot shows: March 1
Time out for something real
I’m moving. In a week. It wasn’t planned at all, but I’m incredibly excited about it.
After the painful process of leaving my one-bedroom in Florida, I vowed to keep my life more mobile. This will be the payoff. Seven boxes and three suitcases should do the trick. Wouldn’t even need a van if it weren’t for my beloved desk.
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Because I’m paying rent on both places this month, I’m able to take my time setting things up and thinking about how I’ll design the space. I’ll have my own real room, and I want it to feel that way. MINE.
So I’m back to hitting up design blogs and scoping out palettes via sites like ColourLovers. And I have to say, I’m surprisingly uninspired.
Everything feels a little … tired. Birds and branches? Played. Victorian patterns? Eh (though I’ll prob always have weak spot for them). Even my favorite color feels old.
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Not long after the new year, Matthew and I had a similar discussion about music. Neither of us feels quite happy with what’s coming out. Very rarely does something feel genuinely fresh. His insightful conclusion was that we’re moving toward a new decade, and the music world is a little slow swinging that way. In short, shit needs to start feeling way more 2010.
Which is what?
I’d say: Characterized by carefully planned disorder. That is the state of our new reality. It needs to look and sound accordingly.
When I think of what might come close to that in my current world, the first two to come to mind are the IAC building and Black Dice.
They don’t seem terribly related, but they each have a quality of distortion coupled with a high level of organization. Inherent in both is a sense of pain.
I’m well aware that this is a contentious claim. Why a Gehry building and not, say, this brand of netart? Especially if you’re going to mention a band like Black Dice.
Because I’m thinking of things that could eventually appeal to the masses. And, I’m sorry, but there is not going to be a day when large groups of people feel that they identify with some animated gifs of a fucked-up-looking dog. Or I should more honestly say that, despite what you may have seen posted on this very blog, I’m fearful of a future in which they do.
There’s an anxiety that the IAC building arouses, especially when it appears from behind more traditional buildings. A feeling more intense than the fear that New Museum might topple onto you. It’s big and it’s real and it means something.
Black Dice doesn’t sound mainstream now, but we may be surprised to find more noise creeping into pop. The other night I was hanging out at a rather large coffee shop and a barista put on Load Blown. Played the entire album all the way through. I got the sense that it distressed some patrons, but still everyone carried on with their studying and chatting and computering as usual. I don’t think half of those people would have been able to stand it even a couple of years ago. That means something, too.
[via design crack + pitchfork]
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When considering what to live with, it’s a little different. Take this shelf:
It corresponds with my ideas about distortion and organization. But it blatantly ignores the need for economy of space. And, ultimately, it’s boring.
Of the things I’ve seen in my past few days of hunting, I like these chairs the most:
Only the pattern adheres to the aesthetic I’ve been talking about, but the rest coincides with my personal style, which favors the elegant and comfortable.
[both via design milk (thanks, New Gina)]
There’s still so much more that needs mentioning. Feel free to disagree and show me things. Especially those of you with design backgrounds.
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I’d also like to take a second to thank the people in my life who care about my happiness and believe in my ability to someday do something notable. As someone who is incredibly, incredibly impatient, I hate to hear words like “someday,” but it is so much better than “never.” I am grateful to you all for having the kind of confidence in my abilities that doesn’t always come easy to me. You’re amazing and produce great work. I’m honored to have friends and associates who are role models, too.
Hipster Housing Scare
Apparently, there have been more than a few incidents of unfair, if not unlawful, evictions seemingly aimed at loft-dwelling hipsters as real estate on the periphery of posh is coveted more and more by developers. The most recent happened just a few blocks away from my place in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
And I have to say, it’s making me a little nervous.
While my roommates and I are responsible and relatively quiet, there’s still a chance for trouble because, technically, our building is zoned for commercial occupancy only — just like the home of the kids at 17-17 Troutman. This paranoia is made worse by the fact that certain friends of mine still consider me to be a hipster, misguided as that assumption/accusation may be.
We aren’t the only ones living there full-time, and that practice is by no means a secret to our landlord. There are also far too many units in our building with too many truly commercial occupants to fear a building-wide eviction. But there is always the possibility that our landlord will decide that she isn’t so blind, after all. So she sends out some notes and ten hours later there we are, living on couches but somehow finding the time to paint a mural about our plight.
Guess the best I can do is continue to be a good tenant and hope that people like the insane couple across the hall don’t ruin it for all of us. For all the shit I might talk about my place and the surrounding area, it has plenty of amenities that I will be increasingly thankful for as the temperature drops.
DFA/Ghostly International Halloween Bash @ Studio B, Brooklyn
After passing on far too many fantastic shows at Studio B, I finally went out for the DFA/Ghostly International Halloween Bash last night. It was my first show since being in New York for nearly three months.
The original plan for the evening was to do homework, but when I walked over to ‘wichcraft for a coffee break, I was taken by the Halloween spirit, thanks to the wonderfully energetic costumed wackos making their way down Broadway for the parade and other fetes. I didn’t wear a costume (never do — not my style), but took great pleasure later that evening dancing with Brooklyn hipsters out in their holiday best.
I went by myself and met up semi-serendipitously with some other ITP students, most of whom I didn’t know that well. Nice to see them out having a good time, as I’d been kind of down on the party scene there.
Most of my time was spent being a voyeur through the lens of my newly re-purchased Canon EOS 10D. I would have loved to have been able to take some solid shots of some of the costumes there, but the blurry, colorful shots capture the mood of the evening nicely, I think.
As for the DJs and the show, I was a little disappointed. Matthew Dear was… how should I put this? A complete snob. I could have sworn I was at a Fischerspooner show when he and his live band, Big Hands, took to the stage. I can’t stand that kind of attitude in performers and would have been really unhappy if there hadn’t been some decent spinning beforehand, a la Juan McLean and crew. But as the night went on, he almost seemed to settle into being a real human, and the music got better right along with him. Star track that made us all go crazy: Don and Sherri. I was delighted by Deserter, too, even if it is a bit slow for a show like this.
Definitely a fun night, overall. I regret that my batteries died at about 1:30 a.m., ’cause that’s about when the people in really great costumes came out. Though this one’s pretty spectacular…
Other highlights include: free Absolut vodka for early comers (me!), hilariously awkward come-ons, and a revitalizing egg sandwich from the bodega that totally saved the evening. Thanks for the suggestion, Mitch and lady friend!
Cat Compliments
I never officially announced it here, but I live in Bushwick now. Remember that 7×9 room with a curtain for a wall that I mentioned before? The fourth-floor walkup for $730/month? Yeah, that’s it. That’s home.
I posted some pics of the neighborhood to my Flickr account today, after finally getting my camera to work again. Judging by these photos, you might think that moving here was an absolutely terrible idea. True, there is a solid waste disposal warehouse directly across the street from the entrance to my building (not pictured — yet). And, yes, it does make the air smell distinctly like rusty spoons and ginger kombucha for a good couple of blocks. But there are some great things about living here. Like the cat calls.
First, a little history on the subject…. Where I’m from in Florida, there’s a great deal of construction going on. In fact, the lot across the street from my apartment was being developed during the entire nine months that I lived there. Logically, with construction comes construction workers. And with construction workers comes a whole lot of broadcast perversion.
Almost every day, during the 60-foot walk from the door of my building to my car, I would get a whistle. Elsewhere around town I would get more whistles, or little clicking sounds or “pssts” or honks. If ever an actual word was spoken, it was usually yelled, and it was seldom more creative than “HEY!!” Being the polite young lady that I am, I would thank the sender of these verbal gifts with a treat of my own: the bird. Clean and classic.
In Bushwick, cat calling is a slightly different game, and I have to say it’s one that I vastly prefer. Here’s a list of the cat calls that have been uttered my way during the month that I’ve lived here:
- Mamacita
- Gorgeous (twice)
- Beautiful
- Hey! Beautiful!
- Most beautiful girl in the world
Now, I know that the intent is still the same. Which is to say that it’s still completely repulsive and gross. But I also have to admit that the ol’ ego is having no problem at all with this new brand of sidewalk come-ons. Most boyfriends I’ve had haven’t said as many nice things in a single month. Hey! Maybe I don’t even need mine anymore! Why deal with the entanglement of a relationship when you’ve got strange men telling you that you’re the most beautiful girl in the world?
Oh yeah, ’cause he’s a big part of what actually makes this neighborhood worth it.
Dear God, WTF? Love, Heather
And now our protaganist finds herself crossing her fingers that she lands either the room for $680 on the block with the Picnic Table Killer or a “room” in a loft space shared with two other people. The boundaries that make up this “room” are: one wall, one plywood divider that separates the space from the kitchen, one bookshelf, and one curtain. For $730 a month.
Also, my laptop and my camera are broken.
And it’s 50-something degrees in August.
Getting to know the neighbors
On the way to the seventeenth apartment I’ve looked at since my arrival, I passed a small, fenced-in plot full of junk. There are lots of these around Brooklyn, and in that area in particular, so it wasn’t of any special interest. But as I neared the corner, I spotted a man sitting legs-out on the floor of a broken-down minivan parked inside, shampooing his closely cropped hair with water from a bucket at his feet.
There was something about the simplicity and mundaneness of this scene that struck me as “inspiring” and even “endearing.” But only a person in a position of great privilege can romanticize situations like that, so I quickly switched over to feeling lucky and open-hearted, as befits my status as a middle-class white girl with time and energy to help others if she so chose.
It was then that I spotted this hand-painted message scrawled across the underside of a broken picnic table, which was propped up against the fence next to some worn, stained couches:
DON’T BRING THIS UPSTAIRS AGAIN
OR YOU WILL DIE
The implication being, “Bring this upstairs again and I personally will kill you.”
There’s no way of knowing whether that man was or had any connection to the author of those inordinately violent words, but all feelings of pity and self-loathing quickly vanished after I realized that it could be he who was fully prepared to bring an end to another human’s life for bringing rotting furniture “upstairs,” wherever that may be.
Despite all of that, I’d still take the place I saw just down the street. Because New York levels all expectations — for everything.
I have less than two weeks to put a payment down and move into a permanent place, so anything that meets the most basic of requirements for comfortable living is now fair game. In fact, I think I have a new housing motto: “If it’s gunshot free, it’s the place for me.”
