Mariinsky in Brooklyn, Shopping

If you're in the city these days, you're probably aware we've had a string of stunning sunny, cold days.  I've suppressed my desire to leave the laptop well alone and fuck around the city for the last few days, but today I couldn't. It's too nice, and I won't quarantine myself under ghastly fluorescence for hours and hours in the middle of winter when the fates give us a bit of beauty, so I spent a few hours shopping: Gramercy Park and the excellent thrift stores in the area, Rivington and Streit's Matzo (CLOSED on Friday, I forgot!) and Ludlow, and then took a look at the Chrysler Building and the Reservoir...it was the perfect day to play hooky in Manhattan. Even Brooklyn looked passable.

I've been in despair, as I didn't obtain seats for the Mariinsky performances of Swan Lake at BAM in time--like Azealia Banks, I'm Broke With Expensive Taste. So on the way back to the apartment, I decided to drop by BAM and see if anyone might have an extra ticket. There were unpleasant protestors out front, but no extra tickets. I went inside, asked around, and was polite--never underestimate the power of politeness--I managed to score a single press seat in center orchestra: right-o! Chance and luck, my favorite golden calves to venerate. I sat behind Alastair Macaulay, in fact (as it should be really).

The performance was exquisite; beautifully textured, precise, evocative. Impressive was the resplendent Viktoria Tereshkina as Odile (pas de deux was breathtaking, but Siegfried was unremarkable), the jester, and Von Rothbart, who was like lightening. Tchaikovsky's beautiful, heart-breaking score was wonderfully illustrated in Gergiev's consummate choreography. The Justice was right.

I sat next to an older Jewish couple, ballet experts and aficionados (it seemed the man had danced in his youth), who recommended I next see David Hallberg, now a principal with the Bolshoi, whom they believe is the best. I would like to befriend some members of the ballet world, to talk art, life, performance, dumplings, Austen. If you're reading this and are such a person, feel free to contact me. I'm only anonymous as far as the fifth wall remains intact.  

Tonight I believe Kim and I might have a real night out. I'm out of the scene--meaning it's been years since I've actively been a club kid. The bouncers who recall seventeen-year-old Marcel and his troublesome friends, the majority have in all likelihood moved on, and I'm not even near thirty. However, such is life. I wonder if I'll still be able to pull it off? We might go to boom boom room, as I have no idea where we should go, what we should do. I believe speakeasies are still relatively of the moment, but I just don't enjoy them--it's silly. Al Capone ran a speakeasy in the cupola of a Chicago skyscraper in the thirties. That's a speakeasy. I can make an adequate martini, negroni, and enjoy a plain grapefruit and gin. I know much more about mescal than say, someone from Minnesota who aspires to be the next Taylor Swift. Kim is the friend that went corporate, who has sought professional help for her "gossip" problem, whose mother is wont to make remarks such as "these people with 'mental illness'--when will they get over themselves?" Kim is a dear friend, and has begun what I've termed a "blue collar romance" with a Brooklyn construction worker. What would her mother say?

I'll include this for those of you who might be seventeen, beautiful and fresh. Now is your time, and these sorts of skills will come in handy when you develop a taste for Tchaikovsky but forget to buy a ticket--press seats exist:

Some Advice When It Comes to Getting In:

1. Go During The Week
Get to know the doormen, someone at the bar; make friends, meet the regulars. Once you get in with the club kids, all the doors open up, almost immediately. Be polite, be witty, be fun. With politeness and a nice smile, the world is your oyster to slurp. But because you can't always make it out during the week (though you should be able to swing twenty-four hour days at seventeen), here is-

2. Never Ever Wear Work Clothes To The Club
This applies to men more than women. If you look corporate, then be sure you have the money to spend. You'll be asked to pay a cover. You want to exude an air of "I don't give a fuck about anything, but I'm socially adept."

3. Once a Club Has Died, Avoid It
When the promoters, bridge and tunnelers, and eurotrash take over, it's over.

4. Have Attractive, Confident Friends--Choose Wisely
If you've followed rule one, you'll have met regulars--smart and self-aware, these young men and women know what they want and how to get it, and know how not to get it, too. They'll know what rules can be broken, when to push it, and when (and how) to make a graceful exit. Male or female, doesn't matter; what you're looking for is a savvy nonchalance. Watch any 1960s Godard if you don't immediately know what I mean.

5. Walk Right In Like You Own The Place; Know What Is Going On That Night 
Some of you are thinking, "what the fuck? Is he serious?" You won't immediately master this skill, but after a few months it's second nature. If you've ever watched Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, you might remember Michael Caine teaching Steve Martin how to move? It's worth watching for many reasons, the film, a smutty bit of nostalgia, but conning anyone--because that's what you're doing--is all about body language and how you carry yourself.

Never ever blow up at the doorman, throw a scene, or try to pull a "do you know who I am?" bit--first of all, this will never work if you're a man. Don't drink too much before you go. If you don't get in, don't attempt to talk your way in until you observe someone do this (and do it successfully) and have the concept down, especially if you're underage, though this generally works in your favor. It isn't a big deal, getting turned away from a nightclub in New York--it's happened to me, it's happened to most people, and it may very well happen to you. One last thing: if a club ever has a blanket cover, it's over and to be avoided. That means promoters run the place, and you don't want to be seen there. Avoid promoters, especially if you're a young woman who has recently moved to the city.

Have fun!

I'll record what Kim and I get up to tonight. I may see if Dean wants to come along, and we'll hipster it up at some bullshit somewhere. I wish the Stork Club were still around.

All for now,

Marcel

PS. Desintation restaurant: Kao Soy in Red Hook. Just as good as Queens.

PPS. très Velvet. Miss you, Lou.

Happy 68th David

Julie San Juan and I met for drinks in Greenpoint tonight. I met Julie in Puerto Rico, when Brooklyn and J Way and I visited in May of 2014. San Juan was my step back into the United States; prior to this visit, I had lived comfortably in the Yucatan for some time. J Way met Julie, and introduced Brooklyn and I; we were unimpressed. Julie has a valley girl style with new acquaintances, and we're judgmental. We were to be proven wrong, a fact that J Way has brought to my attention several times since. J Way is a delight, a savant full of general naïveté, a real miss who isn't afraid to tap ones knuckles with the ruler when one has stepped out of line. She's become more and more fun as she's aged, and will occasionally make rather colorful comments with an eye to Brooklyn or I, which we adore, of course.

Julie has an uncommon energy and wonderful zest for life. She's a skilled photographer, and entirely a product of good breeding. Though after a few drinks in Greenpoint one might hear her remark: "For some reason Asian people love my photos." Tonight ended with pierogi and borscht; Julie San Juan departs for San Juan tomorrow, and there she will likely be seduced by a mature boriqua of certain standing.

Sidenote: Bryncess and her man were up all night on coke in an attempt to summon Satan. They wound up taking the train to Rockaway Beach around six in the morning and swam in the Atlantic Ocean. It's January. Bryncess is rapidly becoming one of my more exciting friends. Meanwhile, la Chilean has arrived in Thailand, Kim is in the Dominican Republic, and I am in New York, where it is approximately 11 degrees.

The last time I saw Julie San Juan was just a few nights before la Chilena had the furry party. We met for drinks in Grandmother's living room, or Night of Joy, a few blocks from the BQE in $skid row. I rode into Brooklyn on an F train full of unusually attractive passengers, and I'd had time to have a nice look-see, as I'd boarded at 2nd Ave, where that V train to Queens was wont to lurk. We caught up, as people do, and shared tales of life on the edge of many things--we're both almost happy, almost in love, almost famous, and too painfully alive. People say New York has changed, New York has lost its soul, New York is gone. And they're right: New York has changed, because the world has changed. Each day we see more and more the twentieth century fading into the past--after all, we're fifteen years into the twenty-first--and there isn't a thing to be done about it. We mourn it, we tug at our hair and beat our breast, but it fades only further away. In the last century there was witnessed an explosion of culture for the ages, especially in music, and a birth of an urban underclass identity that proved polyvocal, multiethnic, and highly destabilizing and revolutionary.

Our culture--and here I return to New York, for New York is the United States in miniature and to an extent the world--has diminished. The world is simply a far less interesting place than it once was--it is smaller, more homogenous, populated less and less with the idiosyncratic and the useless, the beautiful and the damned. Cities are less the swampy mire of crime, vice, and creation which they once were. And this is the case with New York.

However, rest assured, so long as people like Julie and I are around, there will be a struggle to achieve something beautiful, something worth communicating even in the most rudimentary language or form, which this blog aspires to be. We try, we people born just several years too late, we struggle. I do, Julie does.

I'll record what Julie reports from Puerto Rico.

For now:

I'm delighted and grateful to be alive.

I can hardly wait to see the Mariinsky perform Swan Lake at BAM. I had dinner with a Justice (one of the women) on Monday, who described her experience of the Mariinsky as "absolutely one of the highlights of [her] life."

Now, to the point of this entry: Happy 68th, Bowie!

When I think of the gods of popular music, I think of David Bowie. There are others, of course, but Bowie has enjoyed remarkable longevity and remains relevant at 68. He is one of only two or three people I would like to meet whom I haven't yet.

I may, one day, list representative tracks from each of Bowie's albums, along with additional songs I consider to be related, to share similar motifs, to have influenced Bowie (e.g., for the self-titled 1967 debut, we could try Happy Land, and then hear and see the inimitable Marlene Dietrich, who beyond any doubt had a fantastic influence on Bowie). That's rather an enormous undertaking, however, so tonight I'll restrict myself to a few favorites:

Memory of a free festival

Teenage Wildlife

Station to Station

Sound and Vision (Low)

Starman

I'd Rather Be High

Golden Years on Soul Train

and

Heroes


Adieu,

Marcel