Manhattanhenge

Once a year the sun sets perfectly in line with the the street grid in Manhattan. If nothing else, it was fun to drag the Starlet and a skeptical Thinky Face out to the Shake Shack at Madison Square Park and catch the sunset from the East Side. Thinky Face came around when she saw the event and the resulting awesome photos. These were shot with my iPhone, and make me ashamed that I no longer carry a better camera around with me.





kyle the girl
(on iPhone)

Trying out BlogPress iPhone app...

Test test? Do I like this thing? I paid $2 and change, so it'd be really nice if I liked it.

That's Peanut eating my glasses, by the way. He likes eating glasses.

kyle the girl
(on iPhone)

This pretty much sums up my weekend.

Exhausted and cuddling with Peanut. That's how I spent this weekend in Ohio, and I couldn't have asked for a better time. I love that little dude so much! He's, like, the cutest, most amazingly fun, most super awesome thing that ever happened to this planet.

It's weird to me that people kept asking me, "so what do you think of him?" Duh. He's my sister's kid. What do you think I think of him?

Given my long history of not wanting children of my own, it felt almost accusatory when this was said to me. As if the real meaning of the question was "Don't you want to have kids now? See? Didn't you change your mind just like we told you a thousand times?"

I hate when people tell me I'll change my mind about this. As if they know better than me what is good and right for me. As if there is something wrong with a woman who doesn't want to be pregnant. As if my life cannot be complete without a man/baby/domestic lifestlye/"real" job/suburban home/what-have-you. My family is really quite excellent at getting that idea across to me in the subtext of every conversation we have.

The awesomely ironic part is that my sister, who is now a stay-at-home suburban wife and mom, taught me the core principles and values that made me feel okay with being different and not wanting those things for myself. I thank my lucky stars every day that I had a role model for that--those same core principles are why I refuse to settle for a life that doesn't make me happy! I'm really proud of Salty for dumping her stupid corpo lawyer job when it didn't make her happy...she's stay-at-home-momming for all the right reasons. Hopefully she'll find the right kind of job that allows her to better balance motherhood and lawyerladyism and championing.

And sure, maybe someday I'll change, but that day is not today, nor is it in the forseeable future. So the answer to the question is no: I still love kids, but still don't want one. In fact, Peanut makes me want to have kids even less - it's so much work just to keep him entertained! Not that I wasn't up to the challenge, but now at the end of my visit I am one tired auntie!

That's not to say I'd complain if Salty had another one...or two...

Whoa!

Ooooooh damn, girl! You one fine-ass piece-a belly dancer!

Seriously, I just found this on Flickr, and had no idea I have ever looked like this. I'm pretty impressed with myself. In fact, I think you just got served by looking at me.

Crustacean sidewalk art at 45th and Vanderbilt Ave.

Who knew that bar behind Grand Central was so popular at happy hour? Or that I'd find a crawdaddy under my feet?

The visual metaphor was accidental but laughably conspicuous

I found that necklace. Then I belly danced in it.

Thanks to Thinky Face and Poetic Fondue for the pictures.

I drew this on my Bamboo.

I have one of these. :)

Today I drew this:



Not terrible for my very first effort at computerized artistications. Also not terrible since I can't draw people worth a damn. It was lots of fun too! Of course I thought about my friend who is an aerialist when I started drawing, although I don't think she ever wears tutus.

Superhero: A video just for you.

Sadly, Superhero is not quite as exciting as its name makes it out to be, but please enjoy it nonetheless.


Superhero from kyle the girl on Vimeo.


Here's the link to that guest post at Schmult. Also, as I promise in the video, I give to thee the after and after pictures of my haircut. The first one is after the girl at the salon did it. The second one is after I did it. Seriously, why would I ever want to look like this:



When I could look like this?

Unemployment adventures continue: I went to Wall Street today!

After a brief meeting with Payroll to develop a script idea I decided I would head to Ikea (yes again) to explore my storage options since I have way more stuff than closets now. I had read about a free water taxi and looked it up with my iPhone for details, since it sounded way cooler than the stupid bus at Borough Hall in Brooklyn. When I realized it left from Pier 11 at Wall Street I was even more interested, thinking maybe I'd see the current economic climate written all over the faces of the bankers and brokers. Woohoo!

I actually did sort of feel tangible stress in the air. Classy restaurants were notably empty at lunchtime. No one was smiling (but maybe that's normal? Finance seems like an awfully boring profession to me). I was impressed by the monolithic feeling of it all, passing Trump and Schwab. Then I noticed somewhere the bull of Merrill Lynch. I remembered that Bank of America ate Merrill on Monday. I thought about Lehman and looked up as the icon of banker suicide flickered through my brain.

The scene was a lot different when I crossed South Street and hit the pier. The retardedly expensive waterfalls cascaded below the Brooklyn Bridge. Flags everywhere whipped around their flagpoles on the blustering wind. I breathed salty air and giggled at a duck wiggling his tail at me. Seagulls roosted or stood serenely atop wooden poles (what are those things called?), belying their pesty, scavenging nature.

And then the taxi came, bouncing side to side in the wavy water. I sat on the top of course, letting the wind bluster my braids around and snapping photos like a cheesy tourist. It was so much fun bobbing around in the New York Harbor while the other passengers got nervous and the guy with the pronouncedly Jewish accent behind me gave a play by play of all the stuff we passed. While the hipster roommates scoffed at those of us taking photos. While the token annoying guy-on-cell-phone shouted in German over the airwaves. While the big, hyper-industrial boat passed us and the condemned Red Hook warehouses loomed abandoned and Governor's Island twinkled in all its pretty uselessness. It was beautiful!

I can't think of a better way to go to the store, and I'm glad I spent my afternoon doing it!

In the basement of The Frying Pan

Me and the Art Shrew in The Frying Pan

Laying in bed on Sunday morning

Soft sunshine peeks through my curtains as they billow and fall in
time with the cool breeze. I love my new apartment!

Every time I see the Be Kanye billboard there's a white dude in front of it looking mopey.

So which is better? A secret identity or shameless self promotion?

I'm going for the latter, I think. I'm going public. I think.

I have some really fun awesome photos from LMNOP's visit. Should I give up my anonymity and post them up? I mean, it's not like it's that hard to figure out what I look like. And it's not like it's that hard to figure out who I am.

I dunno. What do you think?

Here's a tasty tidbit:

Fire Hydrant Cool Down in Lefferts

Some dude opened up the hydrant on Lincoln Rd by the Prospect Park
subway station and soaked these poor passers by! It didn't look like
they minded too much, and in the 95 degree heat I was starting to
consider jumping in myself!

"Maybe if I lay real still she won't see me."

Lu tries to camouflage himself so he doesn't have to help rearrange furniture. Yes, I'm rearranging my furniture again.

New York took me on a date.

Remember nights on the beach when you were a kid? It was like being on a deserted island. Like Lord of the Flies, except fun. Maybe it's because I spent my first twelve summers on the beach next to Lake Erie, but the combination of a quiet, breezy night and the smooth sound of water always make me feel like a little girl again.

I am sitting on the ledge of a fountain in midtown, staring at the tourists and the traffic as they pass the Rock and Radio City Music Hall. I just left a couple of friends after seeing a movie together; they went on their respective ways home but I could not bring myself to leave. It was ten o'clock on a breezy, warm night and New York was whispering in my ear,"stay, darling. Stay with me just a little longer."

Here, on this breezy, beachy night by the fountain, a couple is impressed that I can use their digital camera with ease. "I used to do this for a living," I mumble sheepishly. The combined roars of the water behind and the traffic ahead cannot stop this overwhelming feeling of quiet in me. I stroll up to the Mr. Softee truck, purchase a vanilla cone, and nibble at it as I leisurely breathe in the soul of Midtown on a Saturday night. There are clusters of kids walking around, like they had broken from the rest of their class trip for the evening. Gaggles of girls and boys with chaperones, staring up in awe or giggling to each other the way kids do. "I could live here," I think. It's so pleasant, so quiet. I choose not to think about what it's like at five on a Wednesday.

I saunter down W. 50th street and pass the Rainbow Room. I think of my grandmother's picture with her college classmates atop the Empire State Building, all those young women in trenchcoat and heels. I wish I had on a trenchcoat and heels, and a gorgeous dress and a handsome fellow on my arm, like my grandfather, so handsome in that photo on the night they were engaged. I want someone to treat me like a trenchcoat and heels kind of girl. I want someone to just...treat me. I wonder for a moment if my dad would take me out to the Rainbow Room if he were alive. Just the two of us, dining fancy. Dad and his baby. The tourists don't mind the couple of wistful tears trickling down my cheek; they're too busy watching a limousine pull up to the carpet. I don't even bother glancing to see who gets out.

The plaza behind the Rock is like a boardwalk, rife with families and the soft clanging of the hardware on the flags. A few parties dine in the rink restaurant below, but it is mostly empty, watched over by golden Prometheus. A girl somewhere behind me says, "I wish I could ice skate." For just a moment I mistake her voice for my inner monologue.

I curl around the corner at 5th Avenue and nearly miss St. Patrick's Cathedral because of the scaffolding that spans its facade. When I was fourteen I took my first plane ride and visited my sister here for Easter. We made sure to take a picture of St. Patrick's so Mom would think we went to church on Easter Sunday. Tears well up under my lids again; I am overwhelmed with the joy that I live here. I live here. I did it. This place that has awed and inspired me since I was a child is now my home.... New York is my home.

Fifth is like a ghost town; only the occasional group of window shoppers here and there and a few lone pedestrians. The stores are all closed and dark, with the exception of the neon lights in the window at Louis Vuitton, all lit up like a spaceship. Then, like a second brightly lit beacon from another world, I see the cube of the Apple store. It's open twenty-four hours a day and I lost part of my case for my phone... It figures, on a gorgeous night like this, a night that reminds me of the beach on Lake Erie and being a little girl, a night that whispers sweet nothings into my ear... I would wind up in what is for me the adult equivalent of a candy store.

Thanks, New York. I had a great time.

I am at the New York Dance Parade. The rest of y'all suckers oughtta be jealous.

Let's say that you and three of your friends are in a bar one night in the East Village. Let's say that you hear a song you like...for kicks, we'll say it's "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey (you may be a little drunk in this scenario). So you get up and start dancing, right? Right!? Wooo! Then your friends all get up and dance! Wooo! Guess what? IT'S ILLEGAL.

Seriously, it's illegal. The cops can come in and shut the bar down for it. No joke. New York has a thing called a Cabaret Law (AKA the Lamest Law I've Ever Heard Of) Have you heard of this thing? It's insane. It requires bars and restaurants to either have a license or to prohibit dancing by more than three people at a time.

Enter the New York Dance Parade, an event designed to raise awareness (and hopefully funding) about this ridiculous law and try to get it changed. I encourage you to speak up, because it's really just one more way that annoying rich people are going to destroy New York's cool factor. Scenario #2: Club X is super fun for all of us poor slobs who can't afford to dine at the Rainbow Room every night and shop at Bendel's for our entertainment. Annoying Rich Resident of Manhattan Y doesn't like all the noise at 3 a.m. and complains to the cops. The cops come in to Club X and shut it down...not for underage drinkers, not for drugs, no no... They are well within their rights to shut it down just for giving people like you and me a place to dance.

That sucks, because dancing is fun! And now that I am done with my public service announcement I will share with you some of the fun had at the NYDP:

The style of belly dance I study is called American Tribal Style. For frame of reference, it's not like this:



That's Caberet belly dance. One chick, doin' her thing. Sometimes more than one chick, but then it's always choreographed. They touch their hair a lot. They do the sexy dance thing a lot. That's all well and good, but it's not what I do.

Here is my teacher and her troupe, known to my blog as the Squirrel Girls:



This is the style of dance I do. Several chicks together, dancing with each other and interacting with each other. It looks kind of like a school of fish...one leads, the rest follow. Sometimes another one takes the lead, the rest follow. Sometimes everyone dances in a circle and then you just hope everyone's following the right chick!

The Squirrels are dancing in the intersection at Broadway and 23rd, right near Madison Square Park. We were lucky to be joined by live musicians today! A drummer and an oud player. Neato!



Down by 8th street...Check out those gorgeous fluffy skirts! Each one is made from 25 yards of fabric. Today the Squirrels were each wearing 2 skirts over pantaloons for that nifty layered look. Add on the weight of the belts and tassles and hip scarves, (not to mention the coin bras and the intense amount of jewelry and hair dangles) and that's one heavy outfit.



On St. Mark's Place...getting close to the finish line...



Here's a great shot of the fluffy skirts in action as the Squirrels do a few spins!



Oh, and there were some other dancers there too. (:

Dancing is not only freedom of expression, it's a great way to remind yourself that you're free! And it feels good! So everybody go out tonight and dance in a bar! I know I will...I'm off to a birthday party!