Brooktopia: A native reflects Pt. 2- Out to Bay Ridge
"Yeah. This definetely qualifies as 'way-the-Christ-out-in-Bay-Ridge." My brother Matt says to me as we convene on 68th st. ad Fort Hamilton Pkwy, using his prefered replacement of explatives.
There was this event posted in Nonsense, which is the first and foremost of a collection of 'net athourities for underground and unconventional events in New York City, the kind that don't exactly fit into a Time Out NY category, nor would attract the TONY crowd. Things like subway parties, head-phone dance parties, pirate parades, condiment wars, and so forth. This one caught our eye: Futurist Vegan Dinner-Party. And it's way the Christ out in Bay Ridge.
How'd that happen? Nonsense is occassionally Manhattan, but mostly Williamsburg, sometimes Greenpoint, DUMBO, or LIC, (particularly in the Queens pioneering art-house The Flux Factory) but with the occassional mass bike ride to/from Coney Island, there's never anything down here, and especially ot out in The Belly.
It was o some obscurely named street which tend to pop up and unexpected intervals, breakig up the monotony of consistently numbered streets and avenues, and Matt knew it was around the 60's and late teens. Ovington's the name, and as we found out, it comes in two flavors: Ave and Court. It also disappears for a little while and then reappears after the Gowaus Canal. I know it sounds horrible, but we were able to gague the neighborhood borders through a little racial profiling.
Heading West from Flatbush it was easy: First came the Pakistanis along Coney Island Avenue, complete with kebab shops and Baliwood video stores. after Ditmas ave became 18th, I was booking through Borough Park. Suits and Hats, one and all. Swirls of Payes flowing from the front of all the mens and boys ears. They relief themselves from summer heat by shaving the tops of their heads instead. Almost as if preparing the young ones for male patter baldness sure to come later in life.
Out of Borough Park, into Sunset Park, Brooklyn's own personal Chinatown, except the elevation is lower and the real estate wider, like everything has been squished down and stretched out. buildings, of course, but it feels like streets as well. The sky's much wider here, and it doesn't feel like everyone and everything is reaching toward it. Lotsa double-parking and big fruit and vegitable stands, and Mexicans.
And soon, Bay Ridge came. Ah, the Italians. Muscle T's over Biceps so big that the arms dangled a good four inches removed from the torso and hair greased down and slicked with a fine-toothed comb. Hey, cliches are cliches for a reason. I found myself envisioning a big art-infused courtyard party with a wide table full of delicious animal-product free food, music, varied forms of lighting and various homages to the machine-sex-and-death obsessed Italian futurists. A striking blow to the North-Brooklyn centrists to prove that all the other 'hoods down here got something to prove to!
It was a stupid presumption. The party ended up being a dozen vegans sitting around an apartment with no furniture eating peanut butter-banana-raisin&nut concoctions before the main course of plain rice and vegitables. We discussed the futurists briefly between courses before my brother and I gave each other a nod that it was time to go. There was a long bike-ride home ahead of us.
No offense to all the vegans out there, but I've rarely been to a vegan-hosted party that wasn't mellow and dull.
Maybe it was because it was way the Christ out in Bay Ridge that did it.
There was this event posted in Nonsense, which is the first and foremost of a collection of 'net athourities for underground and unconventional events in New York City, the kind that don't exactly fit into a Time Out NY category, nor would attract the TONY crowd. Things like subway parties, head-phone dance parties, pirate parades, condiment wars, and so forth. This one caught our eye: Futurist Vegan Dinner-Party. And it's way the Christ out in Bay Ridge.
How'd that happen? Nonsense is occassionally Manhattan, but mostly Williamsburg, sometimes Greenpoint, DUMBO, or LIC, (particularly in the Queens pioneering art-house The Flux Factory) but with the occassional mass bike ride to/from Coney Island, there's never anything down here, and especially ot out in The Belly.
It was o some obscurely named street which tend to pop up and unexpected intervals, breakig up the monotony of consistently numbered streets and avenues, and Matt knew it was around the 60's and late teens. Ovington's the name, and as we found out, it comes in two flavors: Ave and Court. It also disappears for a little while and then reappears after the Gowaus Canal. I know it sounds horrible, but we were able to gague the neighborhood borders through a little racial profiling.
Heading West from Flatbush it was easy: First came the Pakistanis along Coney Island Avenue, complete with kebab shops and Baliwood video stores. after Ditmas ave became 18th, I was booking through Borough Park. Suits and Hats, one and all. Swirls of Payes flowing from the front of all the mens and boys ears. They relief themselves from summer heat by shaving the tops of their heads instead. Almost as if preparing the young ones for male patter baldness sure to come later in life.
Out of Borough Park, into Sunset Park, Brooklyn's own personal Chinatown, except the elevation is lower and the real estate wider, like everything has been squished down and stretched out. buildings, of course, but it feels like streets as well. The sky's much wider here, and it doesn't feel like everyone and everything is reaching toward it. Lotsa double-parking and big fruit and vegitable stands, and Mexicans.
And soon, Bay Ridge came. Ah, the Italians. Muscle T's over Biceps so big that the arms dangled a good four inches removed from the torso and hair greased down and slicked with a fine-toothed comb. Hey, cliches are cliches for a reason. I found myself envisioning a big art-infused courtyard party with a wide table full of delicious animal-product free food, music, varied forms of lighting and various homages to the machine-sex-and-death obsessed Italian futurists. A striking blow to the North-Brooklyn centrists to prove that all the other 'hoods down here got something to prove to!
It was a stupid presumption. The party ended up being a dozen vegans sitting around an apartment with no furniture eating peanut butter-banana-raisin&nut concoctions before the main course of plain rice and vegitables. We discussed the futurists briefly between courses before my brother and I gave each other a nod that it was time to go. There was a long bike-ride home ahead of us.
No offense to all the vegans out there, but I've rarely been to a vegan-hosted party that wasn't mellow and dull.
Maybe it was because it was way the Christ out in Bay Ridge that did it.
posted by GideonLevy | 4:35 AM
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