New York soirees, kids in tow!

Oh what a weekend nights!

I'm looking at the pile of laundry begging to be thrown out of the hamper and in some water and soap. Contemplating the growing list of other housework stuff to be urgently taken care of, I realize that I have failed to clean this place. I usually like to put off most hardcore cleaning-related matters till the weekend. When overwhelmed and grossed out I hastily spray, scrub and mop, enforcing law and order in our ever-cluttering Brooklyn apartment.

It’s true, I have turned up my nose at the list of mundane things I would normally deal with on the weekends but there’s a good reason for that and it’s called: partayyy! Hey, no shame in getting your groove on every so often.

Friday, I was asked to partake in social fun at a small event held at the Gansevoort Plunge Rooftop Bar where champagne flowed and dresses glittered in celebration of two lovebirds' engagement party.  

The night was young as the guests of honor made their splashy entrance; The bride-to-be in her designer tulle minidress, the future groom in his smoking, James Bond-like elaborately coiffed hair. The tone was pretty much set right then and there. They totally reminded me of Model Gisele and husband Tom Brady only spicier! But just as un-relatable as far as "combined hotness level as a couple" go.   

Fame DJs behind the turntables added some extra pizzazz to the chic soiree. Needless to say I hit the dance-floor on more occasions than one and grooved my way to the wee hours of a new day.

When I took my kid-diva to her ballet lesson the next morning, I had but a couple of hours sleep in and a mean muscle stretch in parts I didn’t even suspect had or were muscles. [But then again I never really scored too well in Biology to start with]. 
I swore I’d be in bed early enough by day end in order to make up for the lack of sleep, but I clearly lied (at least unintentionally this time). 
Later that day, while hanging out with my family at an Art Gallery in Bushwick, I get a call from Lucinda, a fellow mom and a fabulous woman who insists on including me in the +3 next to her name printed on the guest list her good friend’s birthday celebration. That same night. Temptation is hard to resist as I picture one occasion worthy of strutting-in-low-rate-not-real-designer sequins dresses. Actually I was still hesitant until she mentioned our tot heads were welcome to tag along. 
The party host, a savory Jazz musician though not a parent himself, was accommodating enough to let his guests and their offsprings enjoy a special quality time at night. One that didn’t involve bathtub feud, pajama drama or bedtime story fury! 
I must say we all had loads of fun, even if that meant cutting off a conversation mid-sentence to save a couple of musical instruments and material, a giant-screen TV or glass windows from a certain doom at the hands of our kid-mpossibles! You can trust that things were touched, pushed, yanked and shoved by exploratory, fun-seeking children running havoc in the spacious loft apartment.

I certainly was happy to let my child experience a non kid-centric celebration, as memories of my own childhood fun-filled late-night outings with the parents, on a couple of occasions delightfully came to mind. What’s your fondest memory of a late-night outing with the parents as a child?    

Grown Ups Interrupted...

Don’t you just love it whenever you can make fun of someone older trying hard to keep up with the younger crowd? Either by making ludicrous age inappropriate fashion statements or adopting ways and attitudes generally associated to High school or College age kids? I don’t know about you, but I always cringe at the sight of a maturing woman’s exposed mid-section as a result of poor fashion choices. Oh and what’s more rebuking: the infamous belly covering mommy jeans or the unnecessary G-string displaying low-rider jeans? I’ll let you decide, but I personally, am over the latter. By the way, the fear of spotting any more of those middle age butts in public gave birth to designers stripping their brand names to “not your daughter jeans”!

Amongst my age peers which I like to characterize as people in their thirties, there’s this widespread phenomenon of trying to delay “acting like one’s age” as much as possible.  Unlike other time periods, modern society has pushed youth front and center as THE only attribute worthy of awe and admiration. Being young, acting young and looking young have driven people who are no longer teens, to seek validation in adopting or never parting with some juvenile behaviors and postures.

Apparently some of the things that belonged in the formative years to experience and be done with, still seem to stick into adulthood for a growing number of people. There’s a marketing denomination coined for it: kidult. I mean is this whole adult refusing to grow up really okay or just pitiful? I just have to look at my own ways to answer that one. To be fair though, I like to think that I manage to maintain a certain balance. I most certainly have my moments where I’ll dress like a I've been fawning over too many Rihana or M.I.A' s music videos, but for the most part, I like to think I undertake responsibility and make myself take serious things, seriously enough... if that makes any sense.

In past generations or more traditional societies, coming of age meant or still means becoming a mature, coherent and responsible individual. Today, the temptation to remain hip and in touch with our inner youth might become the convention.

Some good friends of mine strike me as totally absorbed in their “kidults” persona. They won’t read, listen to or watch anything remotely close to sounding like it is current news information, but instead they’ll get briefs at the coffee machine from more concerned co-workers who will even spare some time in explaining what in a healthcare bill (link to my article). However, the same friends, you won’t catch dead missing a rerun of their favorite reality TV shows as they follow and later discuss pointless plots and developments closely. My kidult friends stick to cable networks programs who make teens their prime audience. At times, they’ll express false outrage over the dumbing-down of certain programs and their obvious attempt at garnering a larger crop of viewers. Well, to these networks’ credit, they make no secret about the demographics they’re going after. Their programs are tailored to lull a developing mind into spending valuable hours watching them. It’s part of the reason why as we grow older, some things that couldn’t appear more fun or exciting at some point, just lose their appeal. And on the other hand, the amount of programs meant to appeal our age-groups are infinite and just as dumb, no arguing about that.

What’s more, if pressed, the same friends would not hesitate to list things like: watching Mangas, playing their Wii, hanging out at the skateboard ramps, shopping or even window-shopping for clothes, make-up, kidrobot collectibles as their number one favorite thing to do. Same statements come out of teenagers’ mouths all the time but for a 34 year old to say it without even thinking twice? Way to make an impression!

What is it with parades and the 911 folks?

Last Wednesday, March 17, the annual celebration of St Patrick's day took place and gathered hundreds of thousands of participants and possibly a million more sidewalk gawkers. For the first time in my 8 years stint as a New-Yorker, I got to see the most famous St Patrick's Day Parade in the country!

Something immediately caught my eye: the throngs of Police and Fire Departments marchers. What's with the 911 people and parades anyways?

It didn't seem like the smartest move,  but I obliged to a meeting with clients located right smack in that area of  Manhattan. Stretching from 44th to 86th streets along Fifth ave. on the Upper East Side, the parade painted the city green as shamrocks sprouted on every other person's shirts, hats or nail polish.  I anticipated  the 5 blocks and 3 avenues walk from the subway station would have to be slower than the usual day-worker prance. I was prepared, I squeezed my way out of the overcrowded subway car and was looking ahead to apologetically elbow some more until final destination 65th str and 5th ave... 

Although it felt like quasi-immobility, progress was made, I was nearing the meeting spot which also had the most concentrated amount of bystanders.  

My eyes caught the jubilant groups marching in the flow-y parade. The pattern of groups and bands were for the most part what I imagined an Irish parade would have, although I wondered about others. "So let's see...bagpipes, kilts other highlander-style accoutrements check, jig dancers, celtic maybe gaelic culture traditional symbols, check, religious or politics figures, check, firefighters, police and veterans, check-check-check!" A bit confusing... Not so much according to the official page for this year's St Paddy's day Parade in the city, the parade at first had military roots:

The first official parade in the City was held in 1766 by Irishmen in a military unit recruited to serve in the American colonies. For the first few years of its existence, the parade was organized by military units until after the war of 1811. At that point in time, Irish fraternal and beneficial societies took over the duties of hosting and sponsoring the event.


If you happen to have more stories about the parade, please share them with us in the comment section. Do you also find it funny that every other marching group seems to belong to either the firefighters, the police or the military?

Hipsters are just a bunch of conformists!

Last night, I had a great time hanging out in the infamous Hipsters Central of Brooklyn also known (for administrative purposes anyways) as Williamsburg. Everyone else prefers to use the less neutral appellations of doucheoisie quarters, fauxhemian section or the likes. --You may even have your own hilarious designations to share with us in the comments box.

Not so long ago, living on the Morgan avenue stop of the New York City Transit's L line, I had daily access to the pool of counter-mass-culture-minded crowd populating the few couple of stops before hitting Manhattan.  One could say that boarding the subway was equivalent to sitting on the first row of some of the most creative, quirky, unpretentious, spontaneous anti-establishment fashion shows. 

As a then twenty something transplant ingénue, who identified clothing through brand names and the chain stores that carried them only, I would get quite a kick out of observing the crowd of creatively decked out and carefree cool urban gypsies. 

These guys were unlike most young people I knew. They didn’t care about sporting the neatest pair of kicks, they didn’t seem to mind wearing stuff with no ostensible brand name stitched across it. Let’s not even mention ironing their jeans or anything. Hell, these guys probably even shopped for clothes in thrift stores and wore them right at the register too! -Yeah, back then in my world, the whole thrift store thing was this big no-no! Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I liked these kids’ sense of style which didn’t seem to follow any “self-conscious” rules usually dictated by the runways and the billboards. Same stuff dumped to the streets, accepted and unquestioned by the masses. 

Those boarding at the Bedford Avenue stop of the L train weren’t total radicals or wannabe staunch fashion anarchists either.  They were hip and subsequently honed the “hipster” term.  They certainly weren’t the pack of obvious trend-followers the term would have you think. Not then. 

Something must have happened since that time (less than a decade ago). Because now, the hipster has become a branding in itself, and as such it has turned into one of the funniest target for mockery and joke the blogosphere over. Not just on blogs or NY Times articles, would you find pieces to standardize the fauhemians. Catch them in real life and they seem to have been caught up by the very conformism from which they once were fast running away. Yes, I’m saying the vintage-clad, roaming hearts and minds, now have chain boutiques to pick ridiculously priced wrinkled and “homeless layered” type of items from; the most recognizable of them all being what some have called the glorified clothing landfill: Urban Outfitters. 

Talk about pretense and conforming in the same way American Eagle khaki pants-wearing drones are. Yesterday, sitting at Fada, a French bistrot on the corner of Driggs ave. and North 6, the thirty something amused transplant that I am couldn’t help but see in the Williamsburg hipsters cohort, a bunch of total posers! Must be the cred I gained from only being able to afford buying almost everything I own in Goodwill stores…