The galleries are closed Sunday and Monday. What? I once laughed at someone for telling me this (sorry, dude). Turns out to be the ugly, ugly truth. After the Whitney and eating amazing vegan sandwiches at S’nice’s kiddy table, Shanna, Rebecca and I made a mad dash to take in as much as we could before the End came. We made it to the Kitchen and a few other shows in Chelsea before all the doors of every gallery in the city simultaneously sealed themselves shut.

Shanna’s here. I met her for coffee at her favorite cafe. Bagel mania ensued.



We went to Soho, stopping by the Polaroid Studio where Shanna interned a year ago. Look at this camera. Holla, David Leventhal.

Keeping everyone together—be in on the subway, in the city, in a bar, in the lobby—is like nailing jello to a tree. We came back to the House of Leo and scattered, heads full. Rebecca, Jake and I found a french restaurant a few blocks away that looked and smelled amazing. The waitress had incredible hair. Jake had an incredible pile of shells.

props to sean for an awesome blogging job. i’ve been shooting madly, it’s just hard to find a fast enough inet connection to upload anything. i’ve been trying for 15 minutes. if not now, i’ll post more shots tomorrow from pdx.

obviously, this is a fast paced city. in the true NYC spirit, here’s a quick run through of the last few days:

hung out on a roof in williamsburg.

found a czech beer garden. yes, i had to take a cab home.

don’t believe what you hear: these people are extremely warm and friendly.

saw a jackson pollock.

walking at night is safer here than in portland.

i now understand how to navigate the trains.

went to vegetarian brunch in the east village.

cigarettes cost 8 bones.

world’s best bagels.

the leo house is like the shining.

i have blisters on all of my toes.

SATURDAY 3/15

A group of us checked out the performance series at the Armory last night. We met Molly Dilworth and MK Guth there to witness The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. In the large area of the Armory, Black and her cohorts parted the crowd from the rear of the auditorium and eerily made their way to the stage filled with musical equipment and various props. The outfits they wore were absolutely insane. It was like a cross between Ziggy era Bowie and Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture show. The performance, which was more akin to a rock show, lasted about 45 minutes. The band played a set of completely absurd butt rock jams that sounded similar to Crucial Taunt, Cassandra’s band in Wayne’s World. Karen Black’s vocals were a bit monotone, but the music and visual stimulation was pretty captivating. There was the head of Jaws the shark popping up in the middle of the stage near the drummer. The other performers did all kinds of strange choreographed dance moves to the music and wore giant flowers on their heads and spun things painted like ladybugs. It was difficult to gauge the crowd’s reaction, as people weren’t really dancing. I’m assuming the piece was more about the spectacle of excess than quality song writing though.

A few rooms down from Karen black was the 24 Hour Dance Party. This thing has been going on all week, and is a sort of competition. When you enter, you get a punch card and clock in and out. Whoever dances the most gets some sort of prize at the end of the week. Craig, Rebecca, Wolfer, Molly, MK and I got down to some wicket soul and disco tunes. Somebody even complimented Craig on his moves. Then we hiked about ten blocks to a place called the Subway Inn and had a grand old time.

We met up this morning with Amoreen Armetta, who will be coming to PNCA next month for the Searchers show with Molly Dilworth. She’s also doing a CE workshop that you might be interested in. There are fliers hanging around school for it. Anyways, Amoreen is pretty well versed in the NYC art scene and does a lot of critical writing. She was awesome to have along as we visited the Whitney Biennial. The show had some pretty outstanding stuff going on, and a few things of which I was not too fond. Overall though, it was great simply to be in such a historic place and getting a dose of what people are doing now. Amoreen described the Biennial as “taking the pulse of the American art scene every two years.” We checked out the Armory’s daytime events afterwards and got to see MK’s piece in its entirety. It took up basically the entire room that it was in with braids crisscrossing throughout the space. Everybody split up after that and went on to scope out other things.

Oh yeah, and Jake just called me and said that he got a personal tour of Deitch Projects by Michel Gondry. How cool is that? I’m off to Brooklyn to see some modern dance, ha ha, but I’ll update everybody tomorrow on how the rest of the dance party goes tonight. Enjoy your Saturday.

I have to say, the lack of wireless cafes in Chelsea is astounding. In ten minutes we’re jumping on the L train to Brooklyn to meet Peter Kreider. If I can find a cafe this afternoon I’ll post more photos from yesterday.

This town is amazing. Literally.

wolfer

Photos by Emily Wolfer

Photos by Emily Wolfer

First of all, I’d like to point out that apparently NYC isn’t hip to the “free wireless for everybody” thing that we have in PDX. Wolfer and I are currently in a Starbucks (blah) and having to pay to use their wireless. Anyways, let’s get to the blogging:

We made it to New York considerably easily. Although as we attempted to leave JFK Airport the morning of Tuesday, most of us were significantly out of it as a result of the red-eye JetBlue flight that we took overnight. We boarded what we thought was the train to get to the Jamaica Station in Queens, only to realize after looping the airport three times that we had chosen the wrong transportation unit. Other than that though, the flight and subway journeys were lovely. In fact, the music video station they were playing on JetBlue during the flight showed the video for “Holy Diver” by Dio. That was pretty epic.

Yesterday was adventurous. We all sort of crashed out and took naps after checking into the Leo House where we are staying. For those of you who are not in the know, the Leo House is an old convent that now operates more like a hostel. It’s quite a charming place actually. Although the staff seems to be somewhat irritated by our massive group of art weirdos coming back at all hours of the night. Several of us wandered around the Chelsea district and popped into many different galleries and scoped out the East coast competition. They’ve got nothing on us PDXers. I’m joking, there was a lot of impressive work up and just walking around Chelsea is enjoyable by itself. The Metro Pictures exhibition was a hit with the group for sure. Well, it was a hit with almost everybody… interesting video stuff for the most part. People also saw 303 and a list of others that would take far too long to list.

I wandered down to SoHo and visited a good friend of mine from San Diego named Geordy who lives in NYC now. He rode the train back with me to Chelsea and we met back up with the group. Famished from a day of walking, we decided that it was time to consume something delicious and cheap. Geordy came to the rescue. We hopped on the L-Train to Brooklyn and got off in Williamsburg (NW Brooklyn), which is basically like Portland #2. Everybody had beards, Chrome bags, neckerchiefs, skinny jeans and Chuck Taylors on. So basically, they all looked exactly like me. But I felt at home when I saw fixed gears and single speed bikes locked up to every available metal object in sight. There was this little 24 hour Middle Eastern restaurant called Oasis where Geordy claimed we could get an insane amount of food for very little cash. I opted for a falafel sandwich, which only set me back $2.95. That might have honestly been the best three bucks I have ever spent in my life. The thing was packed with cabbage, falafel, hot sauce, tahini, pickles and hummus. If you’ve ever wanted to make love to an item of food before, you can imagine how I felt.

Stuffed and happy, we wandered through Williamsburg and came across a bar Geordy knew. It was called The Levee. The levee is very much akin to Yurs without the Radio Cab drivers or My Father’s Place without all of the Social Distortion Rockabilly guys. They have free bowls of cheese poofs and Twizzlers sitting out to munch on, which I fully support. Additionally, they had “theme” drinks which we all came to respect and love. The most popular was the “Beam Cream.” It’s a pint glass half filled with Jim Beam, and then topped off with cream soda. I thought it was atrocious, but others really got into it. I was ordering the “Sportsman,” which is a shot of Evan Williams whiskey and some New York version of Pabst. Nobody tried one, but I thought that the “Fratboy” (a Bud Light and a shot of Jager) was pretty damn funny. At about 10pm, the night got pretty foggy for me personally. I recall an outrageous subway ride home and then a party in Tricia and Chelsea’s room that they did not necessarily look like they wanted to have.

When I woke up this morning, I felt surprisingly great. We ate the massive breakfast that the Nuns at the Leo House cook every morning. I ate a bagel, some eggs, yogurt, a piece of quiche, a danish, a glass of grapefruit juice, and a glass of milk (which I haven’t drank in like a year). As one might expect, then I felt like death. You know those hangovers that creep up on you? Mine hit me hard as we were walking to the Drawing Center. Enough about me though…

The show at Drawing Center as completely rad. There was also a class of small children having a critique of one of the wall pieces led by an employee of the gallery. They were quite insightful actually. If you’re ever in NYC, make sure to get to Drawing Center. It’s pretty much free, unless you care to make a donation. Who knew that drawing was still cool?

We left the Drawing Center and found a store called Evolution where you can buy skulls and freeze-dried bats. Amazing. We ended up at the New Museum, which is totally amazing. Five floors of totally stunning and diverse work. The show was called Unmonumental, which is quite the misnomer. It featured work by Kim Jones, Carol Bove, Urs Fischer, Sarah Lucas, Language Removal Services, Trisha Donnelly, Tobias Buche and scores of others. One video, done by exactly whom I cannot recall at the moment, featured a montage of clips taken from YouTube or something of the like of people trying to rap to 50 Cent on their webcams strung together seamlessly. It was pretty hysterical and amusing. I’ll try to figure out who the artist was, as everybody should see this video.

Emily Wolfer, Rebecca and I then went to Chinatown to get some food. We wandered around through the little markets as well, and I had the wonderful idea to purchase a faux gold grill with fake diamonds on it. My mouth has never looked so good in my entire life. I think Craig is going to be terribly jealous when I see him this evening. We’re going to meet MK at an Irish pub in Chelsea, which is quite pleasing to me. The last time that I was in New York, my father and I went to a bar called Carney’s and got free drinks all night when they found out that we shared our surname with the owner. We’ll have some pictures and such up soon. Keep on keeping on.

Holla. – Saint Sean

Peoples,

Emily Wolfer and I will be documenting and blogging the NYC trip this entire week. Please check out our photos, writings and other musings on this epic journey.

Feel free to leave a comment and participate in the dialogue… Couldn’t that be social practice? Just kidding. Keep in touch. – Saint Sean