What It Is

So I went to take a look at today’s headlines when I noticed an item on the T Magazine Style Blog titled Notes from the Velvet Underground. “Oh, goody,” I said to myself. “I wonder what the style news is on the great VU.” I thought it might be a guide on where to buy great striped sailor shirts- I saw a girl looking hot in one on the street in the freezing cold last night in Soho. But I was horrified by what I read. Horrified!

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So in March a colleague of mine approached me about doing a window display for Sustainable NYC, a lovely eco-boutique on Avenue A. On April 23rd, it was unveiled:

Basically, we decided to crochet flowers out of plastic bags and attach them to  motors hooked up to little solar panels. In the morning, when sunshine falls on the panels, the flowers spin around. If you block them with your shadow, they stop.

Many people have been asking about purchasing the flowers, and I’m making some more and putting pins on them. The ones in  the window were made by me and an amazing crew of volunteers. The window display itself was made and installed with the indispensable help of Desiree Lee.

I’m looking at some other patterns and will be making more flowers in the coming months. Maybe this will even develop into something TuraLura? Stay tuned…

I was suspected of being a potential bank robber the other day.

I was in the bank waiting on a very long line when the bank manager walked up to me and said:
Would you please take off your sunglasses and your hood?

I was wearing sunglasses and a hood because it was
a. sunny
b. cold
although I also like to wear sunglasses in the rain. And snow.

This is what I looked like:

I was not excited to do so but I complied with his request, perplexed, until he said:
There have been a lot of bank robberies. Nearby.

And I felt a welling up inside me, of pain as my weak eyes blinked in the fluorescent light, and of outrage on account of the assault on my Cultural Privilege, one of the most glaring features of which is the presumption of innocence. Because I am a white, middle class, heterosexual female with acceptable gender expression.

A typically passive feminine power, this power of presumed innocence, perhaps, but powerful nonetheless. I have long been fascinated by the power of helplessness, the power that panicky, unreasonable or psychotic people have over everyone around them. I believe a lot of the cultural power invested in femininity is the same: the power of being unpowerful, of being the last suspect. I have gotten away with a lot because of this sex-class-and-race-based privilege. And I kind of enjoy being reminded that that’s what I’m enjoying- Cultural Privilege, not just the fruits of my sparkling, warm personality, when people are nice or make allowances for me for no reason.

So I very quickly got over my (unexpressed) outrage; after all, the man was just doing his job. Although baseball caps seem to be the disguise of choice for the modern-day bank robber.

But what about getaway cars? I am not a bank robber, and I don’t ever intend to become one, but if I ever have to have a getaway car, I hope it looks like this:

I remember the guy who gave me my first Birthday Party tape in 1988, a guy who liked me and hung around the disreputable biker bar where I worked, hoping I would sleep with him, which I didn’t. He made a bunch of great tapes that were later stolen from me; the Birthday Party tapes were among them. I remember his face, his taste in music (Violent Femmes, Soft Boys, Stooges) and his curly hair. I don’t remember his name. He wasn’t quite grandiose or dangerous enough for me at the time.

My loved one & I went to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds a couple of weekends ago, because we love his new direction in both the Bad Seeds and Grinderman. I think his collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis is genius. While it was great to see them do classics like Mercy Seat, Red Right Hand and Stagger Lee, I really like the new sh*t even better. Nick Cave, to my taste, is triumphing in his 50s, just like Lucinda Williams and Alejandro Escovedo, making hardcore literate rock music that’s perfect for my sensibility. Dig Lazarus Dig is an album that makes my stomach ache with joy.

That said, I was massively disappointed by the crappiness of the Theater at Madison Square Garden, and I swear I’ll never see another show there. Although the performance was exciting and the light show was well done, I’m super-jealous of DC fans who got 2 shows at the 9:30 Club. Also, the audience was so dressed-down that the LO proclaimed them “post-rock”. Not a compliment. I played a game of spotting the rock crowd (people who looked like those you would have seen at a show in 1994), like scoping out VW Bugs on the highway on a long road trip with my parents. No lie, people used to dress up to go out. Sharpen up, people, life’s too short.

And, last criticism, bad swag. The Tshirts were just flat-out ugly. And the album cover and videos are so stylish. Nick, honey, what happened?

I will have to make a shirt and send it to you somehow.

The NY Post is apparently chuffed* that Warhol collaborator and part-time Superstar Brigid Berlin (also know as Polk for her amusing habit of poking shots of speed into her hapless cohorts in the 60s, and daughter of Hearst magnate Richard Berlin and his society wife Honey- only in NYC, my dears) is having an exhibit of her needlepoint recreations of hilarious tabloid front pages. They (the Post) might also be a bit miffed that the coolest one- pictured above- is sporting the masthead of their rival the Daily News.

Papermag’s lovely Kim Hastreiter wrote a nice pithy review you can read here (and see pix of some of the other pillows- the Anna Nicole one is my 2nd favorite).

The pillows are being shown at the Glenn Horowitz Bookstore and Art Gallery at 50 1/2 E. 64th St in Manhattan starting Oct 21. Afterwards you can go to Serendipity3 on 60th Street, splurge on Frozen Hot Chocolate and make snarky glamorous wishes. I’ll see you there.

*Chuffed is Brit-slang for pleased. In case you didn’t know.