What's This?
no really, wtf is this??? *gestures around country*
I’m writing this on Wednesday November 6, 2024 and the vibes are not great. On Monday I lost my job, on Tuesday I ate a sleeve of pepto bismol to settle my stomach, and Wednesday it seems like our country just inched a bit closer to fascism. Things are certainly not ideal at the moment…
As a person who has now found themselves with lots of free time, I anticipated needing some self-care plans today so I grabbed an egg cream and latkes for breakfast at S&P, booked myself a day at NYC Drawing Room (they’re offering free open hours and donation based art library Nov 7-8), and reserved a movie ticket for We Live In Time so that I could cry in a structured environment. I have been laid off 2 times before so you might say I’m a pro at this point. That said, I’ll definitely be ballin’ on a budget over here for a bit, so please bear with me.
Last week I mentioned that I’ll be running a little giveaway through the end of the year and this couldn’t have come at a better time. While I truly appreciate all of my subscribers (really, thank you), I want to show some extra gratitude to the folks who pay to read this every week by sending out some holiday gifts! I grabbed a stack of envelopes and all of the stamps left in my office as severance so here’s what we’re gonna do:
From now through the end of the year, I’ll send new and existing paid subscribers a little card and a polaroid from one of my NYC adventures 🎁 📸
You can choose to receive a photo from an existing adventure, or challenge me to find something new for you!
Send me your address via this form and wait patiently to receive a fun surprise in your mailbox 📝 📬
I promise I am not a weirdo who will go to your home, I genuinely just want to send you a gift.
I would be honored to share some of your fridge space with all of the other photos and holiday cards you receive around this time of the year, so once again a huge thank you to everyone who reads my little newsletter each week. Y’all are the best 🥺
Over the weekend I took not one, but two trips up to The Bronx with friends to explore some corners of the borough. My first trip took me to the NY Botanical Garden to visit the Nightmare Before Christmas Light Trail (stay tuned for trip #2 next week). The website promised that I would see my “favorite characters, scenes, and songs from the immortal film come to life amongst the foliage of New York’s most treasured garden.” As someone who once made this movie their personality, I was absolutely in for the $50+ ticket.
Your first hurdle upon arriving will be actually getting to the light trail. We entered at the NYBG ticket counter entrance near the Botanical Garden Metro-North stop. The email I received told me to enter here and warned that it would be a 10 minute walk to the trail, but walking within a crowd of children and strollers made it feel much longer. If you can, plan to enter near the Leon Levy Visitor Center; that’s where they’ll actually scan your tickets and the trail entrance is nearby.
The email I received also promised that there would be apple cider available and I’m such a little slut for cider so I immediately went about finding a cup of that delectable nectar. It is not available at the Visitor Center - it’s at a tent right before the trail actually starts. $6 for a cup of apple cider is definitely steep, but I pretty much expected to be upcharged for snacks here. However, I will say that $9 for a single empanada should be illegal. Lorenzo was somehow hungry after eating a whole ass meal at Ho Foods beforehand, so he splurged for a beef empanada. While he said it was good, he didn’t think it was $9 good. But a long walk and expensive drinks weren’t going to put a damper on our night! We saw lights in the distance and made our way to the trail.
Friends, immediately upon entering the trail I knew something was wrong. The first song I heard playing over the speakers was not This is Halloween, which would have made sense since it’s the first song we hear in the movie. No - it was the Finale/Reprise score which, if it wasn’t obvious by the name, plays at the end of the movie. But ok, I told myself that the trail is essentially a circle so perhaps the trail end music was bleeding over to the beginning (I should note that once your ticket is scanned, you can literally keep walking the trail over and over again since it’s a circle). I gave them the benefit of the doubt!
But as I continued along the trail I noticed more things that just felt wrong. There was no apparent order to the statues that flanked the trail. A random statue of Jack and Zero was followed by a statue of the town vampire and that was followed by a statue of Sally and Dr. Finklestein and before we even made it to Christmastown a snowman Jack greeted me. Chronologically, this made no sense. When I happened upon Oogie Boogie in the middle of the trail (completely out of order plot-wise) I was surprised to hear What’s This playing over the speakers. This song never plays when Oogie is onscreen! What the fuck was going on??
On top of the chronology of the trail making no sense whatsoever, it was also quite difficult to enjoy it due to the crowds. I feel like I hear about large crowds ruining experiences more and more lately and I unfortunately felt that here. In order to get the pictures above, I had to swoop in quickly after one family took a picture and before another one stepped into frame (as evidenced by the foot walking away from Snowman Jack). I understand wanting to get a photo with your family or friends, but all this entire trail was was photo ops. My ticket said I could expect to spend 45-60 min on the trail, but we finished walking it in about 25 minutes because we didn’t wait in any of the lines to take photos. I am truly so tired of things billing themselves as “experiences” when the only thing to experience is lining up to take photos with objects.
I was also a bit confused as to how this qualified as a “light trail.” When I heard those words, I imagined I’d be seeing a cool light show, like lights projecting on surfaces or making cool illusions. Sure statues and decor would be involved, but I imagined this being very light-forward. And sure, you can see in the photos I shared that there are obviously cool colored lights, but they were all pretty static. There was only one section where the lights projected a changing image on the ground and that was pretty cool. This is what I expected to see and while maybe it was my fault for setting those expectations for myself, I also feel like calling this a “light trail” was a misnomer.
I hate to bash the NYBG because I am a big fan of their Train Show coming up soon (Nov 16), but this light trail just wasn’t it. Whoever made this has clearly never actually watched The Nightmare Before Christmas or stepped foot into a Hot Topic. I guarantee that I could reenact this entire movie from memory and provide a more entertaining experience than this trail did. The trail is open thru Dec 1, but you should save your money and wait for the Train Show to open and go see that instead. Since I am unemployed, I am also available for movie reenactments for a small fee if you’re interested in that, too.
NYC is home to over 800 monuments, about 250 of which are sculptures, according to NYC Parks. But the city also has a bunch of less official monuments scattered about. Case in point - a statue of Lenin atop a building in Alphabet City. To understand how (and why) Lenin got here, we’ve gotta take a look at the neighborhood’s past.
Alphabet City covers a big chunk of land on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and is named such because it’s comprised of Avenues A, B, C, and D. The area contains a pretty diverse population now, but in the 80s it was not a very nice place to be at all. In fact, there’s a fun little mnemonic that folks used to describe the area:
Avenue A - you’re alright! Avenue B - you’re brave 😬 Avenue C - you’re crazy 🥴 Avenue D - you’re dead ☠️
So yeah, like a lot of NYC in the 80s, Alphabet City was not the safest place to be. However, in 1989 a new apartment building opened at 250 East Houston St called Red Square. It was so named because it was a big red boxy ass building and folks point to it as the beginning of gentrification in that area. The building’s name was also a nod to the “edginess” and danger of the area (red=scary), which the developers hoped would attract young hip newcomers (because, like Aerosmith, young people like to live on the edge).
That said, the building’s brochure touted the following amenities: “doorman, steel clad apartment doors, and an up to date video intercom system for screening visitors. The tenant can go out in this dangerous neighborhood and return to their safe, clean, private haven." Does this not sound like every new building that has gone up in Bed-Stuy in the last decade or so? Red Square was an early example of developers recognizing that people wanted to live in a “cool” neighborhood, but that they also wanted to pay to live “separately and safely” away from the preexisting population. And, much like what is happening in Bed-Stuy now, this eventually drove up the prices of real estate so that the people who grew up there can no longer afford to stay. Tale as old as time.
So this new building goes up in Alphabet City and in 1994 the developers decide to add a little pizazz to the rooftop in the form of a statue of Vladimir Lenin. The statue was originally commissioned by the U.S.S.R., but when the socialist state was dismantled in 1989 it never went on display. The Red Square developers allegedly found it trashed in a backyard near Moscow at some point and thought it would make a great addition to their building. So it was placed atop the building, arm outstretched and gesturing cheekily towards Wall St to make a nod to Wall Street’s capitalism, as well as the Lower East Side’s relation to the socialist movement. So the Red Square Building, and the Lenin statue on top of it, were all the result of some rich developers who loved some real estate irony.
But eagle-eyed readers may notice that that the first picture I shared doesn’t quite match this one and that’s because Lenin is no longer at Red Square. In 2016, the building was sold and the original owners scrambled to take down the statue and move it somewhere safe. In the end, the statue only really moved across the street to where it now stands - 178 Norfolk St.
A few years ago, the statue was illuminated with the colors of the Ukrainian flag. But nowadays, it just stands on the roof waving at folks as they walk through the now much safer Alphabet City. I had heard about this statue years ago and it was truly coincidence that I happened to be enjoying some pastries from Supermoon Bakehouse at a park across the street when I saw an arm outstretched from a rooftop. And I’d like to thank Lorenzo and my sweet friend Jina for indulging me and being willing to walk around the block to see if we could find a good vantage point to get a photo. I told you guys I’d write about this!
So like I always tell you: when in NYC, look down and look up because you never know what you’ll see. But most importantly, just don’t stop walking in the middle of the sidewalk because if you do that in front of me I’m going to be really mad.
I am really looking forward to the Luna Luna exhibition opening at The Shed on Nov 20. In 1987, a bunch of artists including Keith Haring, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, and Kenny Scharf created an avant-garde amusement park named Luna Luna in Hamburg, Germany. The park was supposed to tour the world, but instead became entangled in legal disputes and was stored in shipping containers. It looks cool AF and I can’t wait to visit.
Studio 45 in Bushwick is having a Bake Fair this Saturday Nov 9! Tons of local bakers will have treats for sale and there will also be some free goodies for you to grab.
If you can’t make it to Studio 45 this weekend, stop by Lazy Suzy next Saturday for their popup with Kubra on Nov 16. They haven’t released a menu yet, but if you scroll through that Instagram post I dare your mouth to not water.
The NYT Tech Workers Union is on strike. You know we support unions here at BCLF and one simple way you can support the strike is by refusing to play NYT Games. I know right now is a tough time to give up comforts like the NYT Crossword or Wordle, but the good people of the NYT Tech Guild have got you covered! They’ve created a Guild Builds page that has 5 games for you to play in the meantime ✊
Rule of Thirds has a new popup bar coming to the restaurant every Friday from 6-10pm through the end of 2024 - Bar Boozy Cat. I don’t drink, but I 100% support this cat-themed bar. Boozy Cat is inspired by Sunakku - small, cozy ‘snack bars’ that have been fixtures in Japanese nightlife since the 1960s. A host will be there to curate the guest experience and they’ll be serving s selection of highballs, hot toddies, shochu, and sake with bar snacks and ramen only available at Boozy Cat.
I miss Canstruction every year and this year I’m behind once again. The annual design competition challenges teams of architects, engineers, and contractors to build sculptures made entirely out of unopened cans of food. The sculptures will be on display in Brookfield Place through Nov 11 and after that all of the canned food will be donated to City Harvest.
I wanted to go to the Nightmare Before Christmas thing but decided to ~save money~ and you made me feel less bad about that decision!
Also: the youth are like Aerosmith in so many ways.
I saw Luna Luna in LA and LOVED IT