Rocking, Biking, Hanging and Shopping: Another Delicious NYC Weekend!

It has officially been a NYC weekend for me.

My weekend has featured everything from seeing of Montreal (with an opener by the fabulous Janelle Monáe) on Friday to partaking in a wonderful housewarming party in Park Slope Saturday, to catching up over cocktails and shopping in the L.E.S. today.

Janelle Monáe, as always, was a soulful, sci-fi diva with mesmerizing dance moves ranging from skat to seizure-like break dancing moves. And Of Montreal put on a top-notch, trippy performance, with lead singer Kevin Barnes in a buttless skirt for the first half of their show. Alien-like creatures abounded, and though, unlike a prior performance I had seen, there was no live horse on stage, they did bring out a horse-muppet-dragon creature with Barnes striding on top.


Of Montreal's show featured a heady mix of classic songs and tracks from the newest album: it was definitely a hyped up dance party at Terminal 5. Though I have to say I prefer the intimacy of smaller venues, it was incredible to be a part of the massive energy at Terminal 5 on Friday.

Friday's show ended with several covers of Michael Jackson songs, with Barnes on vocal, and a crew of dancers onstage, including Janelle Monáe.

The funny thing is that the next night, at around the same time as the previous evening, the house party I was at featured a slew of old school Michael Jackson songs. MJ time, apparently. My 45-minute bike ride to Park Slope was well-worth it for the experience of mingling to MJ music at my friend's gorgeous new apartment. When people ask me my line of work these days, I am beginning to add "writer" to my list; hopefully I will shortly be not just a writer but a published one! I am finding conversations with new acquaintances and social networking to be more meaningful now that I am seriously pursuing my writing. I love meeting friends of friends in this city.

So I definitely had apartment-envy on Saturday. My friend's Park Slope apartment features two balconies and the master bedroom has its own bathroom. Meanwhile, I am sharing a bathroom with two guys, in my run-down apartment building in Williamsburg! But, now I know I am a 45-minute bike-ride away from my friend's Park Slope place... It's a small world, NYC, especially on bike.

And today I spent the morning writing, then met up for my weekly writing workshop with my new friend (who I met at the mediabistro personal essay class I attended!). Spending the afternoon over a cocktail at Schiller's Liquor Bar in the L.E.S., discussing writing and life, I felt like a true New Yorker. And of course, I ended my afternoon jaunt in the L.E.S. with a splurge at Steven by Steve Madden! Hello, sale! Funny, and the writing piece of mine that we discussed this afternoon is about how I am learning to balance being thrifty with indulging.

And, in thriftiness, I returned to Williamsburg the way I had arrived into Manhattan earlier today: by bike. And there was my NYC weekend.

New York Times article apologizes to Williamsburg: "You are not as cool as you think"!

Take that, oh blog of mine.

The New York Times article, "Mapping the Cultural Buzz: How Cool Is That?", discusses a new study whose research has sought to locate and measure "the geography of buzz."

The study was performed by the Association of American Geographers, which has located culture more around Times Square, Rockefeller Center, SoHo and so forth as much more heavily concentrated than in the so-called hipper neighborhoods of the Lower East Side and, yes, Williamsburg.

OK, but what kind of cultural "buzz" are they talking about? The article discusses the perspective of Ms. Currid, an assistant professor in the School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who discusses "an economy of scale" in terms of the so-called significance and size of the cultural activity. Enough said.

I am not generally seeking a buzz from pop culture or mass media; culture to me is precisely largely located in what is independent, emergent, under the larger cultural radar, and so on. Yes, I like to keep my cultural activity local when I can. How can a study purport to delegitimize and dismiss this type of culture? This is not to say I didn't enjoy seeing Madonna or purposely try to avoid the MoMa or the Met; but smaller-scale cultural activity is significant in its own way! NYTimes writer Melena Ryzk agrees with me; as she said, the study did not in the end give the researchers a better idea of where to find culture. To quote her: "Rather, like pornography, you know it when you see it."

Tuesday Night Adventures...

I think I am 22 going on 27. I definitely had more of a 22-year-old kind of night than the average night of a 27-year-old yesterday...

So I began the night meeting my sister, her co-workers and a friend of mine at Rodeo Bar, which calls itself "NYC's Longest Running Honky Tonk" as well as "NYC's Premier Southern Roadhouse." Located at 27th St and 3rd Ave in Manhattan, the bar is a fun venue and apparently features live music performances every evening beginning at 9. After enjoying out $4 ($6?) margaritas, delicious quesadillas, and mediocre service, my friend and I said our good-byes to make it to a mediabistro networking party on the L.E.S.

Full of quesadillas and each of us with a margarita buzz, we shared a taxi to the bar, Katra, arriving around 7:45, a little more then half way into the scheduled networking event (advertised as happening from 6:30-8:30). My friend, who works at Condé Nast, and I were nervous about networking ourselves effectively and successfully, and we entered the bar to find ourselves surrounded by a very tightly-packed crowd. A note about my professional history: I have never worked in media. My professional background is primarily in teaching, and I am looking to get into editorial and/or publishing work. The creation of this blog was, actually, inspired by a piece of advice made at a mediabistro workshop I had attended, to write blogs and to write in general. So, with my badge falsely declaring "Editorial Assistant" as my title, my friend and I worked our way through this tangled mass of media people.

Though Katra is a beautiful bar, as evidenced by its website, it is narrow for a large networking party; immediately after making our way further back in the bar, we realized it wasn't really especially full at all, just packed like a can of sardines towards the entrance. And it was rapidly clearing out. It soon became rather clear to my friend and me, at least in our experience of the evening there, that this event was really more for the teachers to network themselves; and indeed, huge discounts for registration (and free premium membership to mediabistro) to classes were offered if we registered that night. While the two workshops I took with mediabistro were very well-organized and informative, in terms of ongoing classes, I decided to take some Publishing courses at NYU instead. The credentials of the latter seem a little more notable, no? But this is not to diss mediabistro; it is an invaluable source for media connections that I hope to utilize in the future.

My networking, as well as my friend's, proved to be haphazard and not that fruitful. Ironically, one of the girls I chatted a lot with also went to Oberlin. Oh, Oberlin! If only all networks always immediately provided such a sense of connection and built-in networking. So... happily saying our goodbyes to our ill-fated networking plans, we continued our explorations of L.E.S. nightlife.

Making our first stop at Home Sweet Home, a very middle-America, rural-themed hipster dive bar (with both chandeliers and several pieces of taxidermy), we continued the night at Happy Ending: and this is where the party started. (see flyers below). I'll let the flyers speak for themselves. It was dancing, drinking madness, a crazy party for any day of the week, no less a Tuesday.