Oh, and I went to Jersey today. Things that I can tell you about Jersey
- they have funny accents
- it's surburbia to the extreme. I was half expecting to see the Desperate Housewives van
- Bon Jovi was born in Rutherford (the suburb I hung out in)
- William Carlos Williams, the poet, was too and there's a theatre in the main street in his name
- Joey Ramone is burried here
- they leave their front doors unlocked
- they consider a graduating class of 200 a 'small' school
- they hang out in Dunkin' Donuts
- they have a giant stadium that the Giants play in that's called the Giant. It's giant, really
- they have good bagels
That's about it.
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
The antithesis of tattoos and cupcakes
Imagine waking up a year older, but actually feeling 2 years younger. That was a little of my first impression on 19. It wasn't 21.
When I woke up on my birthday, I had already felt like I had celebrated. The festivities of the night before had felt like a party, and I thus had the opportunity to re live my day again. Not to mention we receiving birthday well wishes over the course of nearly 2 days due to time differences around the world.
The day began slowly with a phone call from dearest Blair (the only friend who called) and opening my fedex parcel that had arrived on my stoop a few days earlier. In it weren't the typical birthday presents. In the place of bath bombs, there were frankie, Yen and Russh. Instead of Borders vouchers, there was the A2. And in lieu of incense holders, there was vegemite.
I rolled out of the house and headed towards little Australia, where I had a 'long black' (yes!!! Finally understood!!! When a Yankee asked the Aussie waitress for 'just a normal coffee', the customer got pissed off when the waitress came back with a latte. "But that's not a normal coffee!!" she cried. To which she was met sharply with "Sweetie, you're in Australia now. That's normal"). I dwelled over the Sunday magazines from The Age, Australian and Herald Sun for as long as I could to deter the nerves of what I knew was coming once I saw the bottom of my endless bowl of granola.
A tattoo.
The 10 minute walk from Mulberry to the start of 2nd Avenue was exhilarating. My feet propelled me forwards, yet my left wrist seemed to be wanting to head back to the known confines of Little Australia. But I got to the tattoo parlour without any amputations.
And surprisingly, the tat didn't feel like an amputation either! People go ON and ON about how much they hurt. And yes, it did hurt. I will say that it smarted considerably. For the first 2 or 3 minutes, I felt like someone was dragging a shard of jaggered glass across my skin. Then it just turned into something more akin to scratching your lover's name in the sandstone.
And in 6 minutes it was done. It was over. I was permanently inked.
But! You can't see the results of something that you have waited so long for for 3 hours due to the bandage. And this bandage was most suspiciously placed over my wrist. I felt like a self-abuser, wandering around with a whopping great white pad wrapped around my left wrist. I wanted to write on it with texta 'THIS IS A TATTOO' but I couldn't put any pressure on it - coincidentally, I think that it began to hurt more AFTER than before!
I was meeting Danii (the girl I met at the Death Cab For Cutie concert) for cupcakes on Rivington, but not for 2 hours. So I did what I would normally do on a spare Saturday. Vintage shopping! But I didn't buy anything. In fact, instead of buying a houndstooth coat, I met Jerry - an obesely fat and obesely camp man with hair so red that I was surprised planes weren't landing on his head. He was certainly big enough to be a beacon!
So who would have known that he taught me how to swing dance?? MAN that guy could move! I couldn't hold his shoulder because of the proximity due to his belly, but by the end we had gathered a little audience in the store!
Cupcakes with Danii were perfect. When you have a bakery called 'Super Sweet Sunshine Cupcakes', you can normally guarantee a super sweet sunshine experience... We went classic with vanilla cupcakes with multicoloured frosting and matching candles. However, I could have had flavours like 'Red Sex Vixen' or 'Pumpkin Squirrel'. The cupcake store itself was were Animal Collective used to film too! Fact!
We were wandering around after cupcakes, needing a toilet. That and I was desperate to take off my bandage and have a gander at my new ink. So I walked into a dive bar. If you don't know what the NYC definition of a dive bar is, imagine hell. That is, if hell wasn't flooded by the number if dripping, graffitied pipes. Maybe they were punctured by the lady behind the counter, who is not only so pierced that I'm surprised she doesn't disarm magnets, but also seems to rubbing the grim further into the glasses with the hem of her tartan skirt. Not have I feared so much for my health since India. 2 and a half minutes in that confinement was enough to make me consider a Hep C test. Naturally, I didn't take the bandage off then.
In a serious of random, serendipitous events, I found myself being pushed onto a train bound for Brooklyn. I thought it would take and hour. It took less than 10 minutes. And hey! Miranda lies of Sex and the City - Brooklyn's cool! It's like a more laid-out version of Manhattan. The streets are wider, you can see trees, hell, the people even smile (sometimes. This is still New York).
A bowl of chilli-fries later, and I'm underground in a venue called 'Sputnik'. It's adorned with communistic style symbols and giant wall murals of Lenin. Suitable for a few high-school bands to play! I won't lie. They weren't very good. I hadn't realised until this night how lucky I was to live in Melbourne. The level of our unsigned music scene is floating somewhere above the Empire State Building compared to NY. They have some huge big names, yes. But they all start in their garage, are shit, and then appear to 'suddenly' learn how to play their instruments and read a crowd, and start playing in Terminal 5 or Radio City... Vampire Weekend is the prime example of this.
But I amused myself more by watching everyone dance. Imagine this. Mid 80s punk style of dancing.If they were fairies. On crack. And they'd just come out of the spin cycle in the dryer.
After wandering the burbs of Brook for awhile, a group of us ended back in the East Village. More wandering, and then Danii and I found ourselves back at my apartment drinking wine, introducing her to vegemite, and watching SNL. A little bit of a bathotic anticlimax, but I felt like I had lived and partied enough the night before! I had done what I had set out to do to celebrate my birthday in New York, and has thus happy:
Tattoos and cupcakes.
By the way, the tattoo looks RAD.
When I woke up on my birthday, I had already felt like I had celebrated. The festivities of the night before had felt like a party, and I thus had the opportunity to re live my day again. Not to mention we receiving birthday well wishes over the course of nearly 2 days due to time differences around the world.
The day began slowly with a phone call from dearest Blair (the only friend who called) and opening my fedex parcel that had arrived on my stoop a few days earlier. In it weren't the typical birthday presents. In the place of bath bombs, there were frankie, Yen and Russh. Instead of Borders vouchers, there was the A2. And in lieu of incense holders, there was vegemite.
I rolled out of the house and headed towards little Australia, where I had a 'long black' (yes!!! Finally understood!!! When a Yankee asked the Aussie waitress for 'just a normal coffee', the customer got pissed off when the waitress came back with a latte. "But that's not a normal coffee!!" she cried. To which she was met sharply with "Sweetie, you're in Australia now. That's normal"). I dwelled over the Sunday magazines from The Age, Australian and Herald Sun for as long as I could to deter the nerves of what I knew was coming once I saw the bottom of my endless bowl of granola.
A tattoo.
The 10 minute walk from Mulberry to the start of 2nd Avenue was exhilarating. My feet propelled me forwards, yet my left wrist seemed to be wanting to head back to the known confines of Little Australia. But I got to the tattoo parlour without any amputations.
And surprisingly, the tat didn't feel like an amputation either! People go ON and ON about how much they hurt. And yes, it did hurt. I will say that it smarted considerably. For the first 2 or 3 minutes, I felt like someone was dragging a shard of jaggered glass across my skin. Then it just turned into something more akin to scratching your lover's name in the sandstone.
And in 6 minutes it was done. It was over. I was permanently inked.
But! You can't see the results of something that you have waited so long for for 3 hours due to the bandage. And this bandage was most suspiciously placed over my wrist. I felt like a self-abuser, wandering around with a whopping great white pad wrapped around my left wrist. I wanted to write on it with texta 'THIS IS A TATTOO' but I couldn't put any pressure on it - coincidentally, I think that it began to hurt more AFTER than before!
I was meeting Danii (the girl I met at the Death Cab For Cutie concert) for cupcakes on Rivington, but not for 2 hours. So I did what I would normally do on a spare Saturday. Vintage shopping! But I didn't buy anything. In fact, instead of buying a houndstooth coat, I met Jerry - an obesely fat and obesely camp man with hair so red that I was surprised planes weren't landing on his head. He was certainly big enough to be a beacon!
So who would have known that he taught me how to swing dance?? MAN that guy could move! I couldn't hold his shoulder because of the proximity due to his belly, but by the end we had gathered a little audience in the store!
Cupcakes with Danii were perfect. When you have a bakery called 'Super Sweet Sunshine Cupcakes', you can normally guarantee a super sweet sunshine experience... We went classic with vanilla cupcakes with multicoloured frosting and matching candles. However, I could have had flavours like 'Red Sex Vixen' or 'Pumpkin Squirrel'. The cupcake store itself was were Animal Collective used to film too! Fact!
We were wandering around after cupcakes, needing a toilet. That and I was desperate to take off my bandage and have a gander at my new ink. So I walked into a dive bar. If you don't know what the NYC definition of a dive bar is, imagine hell. That is, if hell wasn't flooded by the number if dripping, graffitied pipes. Maybe they were punctured by the lady behind the counter, who is not only so pierced that I'm surprised she doesn't disarm magnets, but also seems to rubbing the grim further into the glasses with the hem of her tartan skirt. Not have I feared so much for my health since India. 2 and a half minutes in that confinement was enough to make me consider a Hep C test. Naturally, I didn't take the bandage off then.
In a serious of random, serendipitous events, I found myself being pushed onto a train bound for Brooklyn. I thought it would take and hour. It took less than 10 minutes. And hey! Miranda lies of Sex and the City - Brooklyn's cool! It's like a more laid-out version of Manhattan. The streets are wider, you can see trees, hell, the people even smile (sometimes. This is still New York).
A bowl of chilli-fries later, and I'm underground in a venue called 'Sputnik'. It's adorned with communistic style symbols and giant wall murals of Lenin. Suitable for a few high-school bands to play! I won't lie. They weren't very good. I hadn't realised until this night how lucky I was to live in Melbourne. The level of our unsigned music scene is floating somewhere above the Empire State Building compared to NY. They have some huge big names, yes. But they all start in their garage, are shit, and then appear to 'suddenly' learn how to play their instruments and read a crowd, and start playing in Terminal 5 or Radio City... Vampire Weekend is the prime example of this.
But I amused myself more by watching everyone dance. Imagine this. Mid 80s punk style of dancing.If they were fairies. On crack. And they'd just come out of the spin cycle in the dryer.
After wandering the burbs of Brook for awhile, a group of us ended back in the East Village. More wandering, and then Danii and I found ourselves back at my apartment drinking wine, introducing her to vegemite, and watching SNL. A little bit of a bathotic anticlimax, but I felt like I had lived and partied enough the night before! I had done what I had set out to do to celebrate my birthday in New York, and has thus happy:
Tattoos and cupcakes.
By the way, the tattoo looks RAD.
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