A brief overview of my weekend thus far:

Went to Coney Island on Saturday. Ate food, sat on the beach, rode the Wonder Wheel in the cars that slide back and forth, closing my eyes on the first spin 'round and keeping them open on the second (at Miss Clap's insistance). Which was good, as the sun set just as we came around and we saw it dip into the clouds behind the housing developments and the minor league ballpark. Walked on the pier in the closing dark and listened to a bunch of folks playing around with percussion and unaccompanied vocalisations and then watched other folks pull their crab traps up with twine onto the uneven boards. Later, someone came by with fishcakes fresh off the grill, free to whoever wanted them, cooked right there on the pier. Looked over the rail for a while at the ocean and the cruise ships. Settled on a bench halfway down the pier, a little ways down from a French hipster couple (the girl was wearing cowboy boots) and an older man playing music from a stereo, nothing but 70s dance music, and there in the cool air the girl got up and danced to it, a cigarette hanging from her mouth. Somehow the music sounded better, maybe best of all, coming from a boombox on a grocery cart, and while normally I wouldn't really even like something you'd describe as "funk/soul/disco" very much, in the context of Coney Island and a casette mix of "Can't Get Enough of Your Love Babe" and "Don't Rock the Boat" it was perfect. The older man said things like "I had all of these on 45" and "I was working down in Dallas, drunk when I got in, drunk when I got out" and in general regaled the french hipster couple. Got up and walked back to the beach and as we passed the percussion people an lady was standing on a bench and dancing. That's maybe my definition of good music: whatever makes awesome old ladies dance on benches.

On Sunday, was riding the train and saw a dude wearing an army jacket with a patch that said, no lie, "I [heart] Rasta." It was awesome. It was the ultimate anti-trustafasarian move, because it was so insistently inauthentic, like an "I Brake For Crips" bumper sticker or an "Amish 4-Eva" notebook doodle.

Later on Sunday, ended up in the apartment of an older lady "in high fashion" who'd been on the cover of the Metro section of the Times because a bunch of orthodox Jes were trying to kick her out of her rent-controlled building and she wouldn't let them. Old New York, or at least Old Rich New York, always unnerves me in the few times I've come in contact with it--the lady had a tiny kitchen and a huge bedroom and 100 pairs of shoes in individual plastic boxes and black and white pictures in her immaculate bathroom and Anne Coulter and Bergdorf Blondes in her living room. Maybe I'm limiting myself with the Old or the Rich--I've been freaked out by the movie exec's place apart from the Natural History Museum with all the modern art, too--but Old and Rich without fail.

posted by Mike B. at 11:23 PM 0 comments