Artistically Challenging Stirrup Jeans

Time Out New York did a feature this past week on the best walks in the city, which I was psyched about. I super love walking, and exploring at a pedestrian pace, on a human scale--I think it comes from travelling in countries where I don't speak the language, or at least not very well, and my social anxiety and fear of embarrassing myself make taxis and buses prohibitively intimidating. Ask a dusty, taciturn, big-bellied bus driver how to get to Sololá? Pienso que no.

Also, now I have a pedometer. Leeeee! And I have finished finals. So there's lots of good sunny time in Brooklyn. But was I going to do one of the ToNY walks?

"Ulysses S. Grant's final resting place is a hot walking spot."

My decision was made.

I chafe against predetermined exploration, anyway, (even though Max and I have grand plans for a Stoner's Walk) and it would definitely have been impossible to drink the Milanese cappuccino from a defunct Madison Avenue cafe to which ToNY aimed walkers, so I evaluated my priorities. I considered my ultimate destination--Gowanus, starting from Williamsburg--and also my ultimate preoccupation on any May morning when the air's already sultry: pretty dresses.

You should do this walk. You should not do this walk wearing consignment Grasshoppers. They will smell irreversibly atrocious.

The route is about five and a half miles and took me--with stops and an extended mournful look at my bicycle, which was robbed of its seat and rear wheel in Prospect Heights (it looks ridiculously undignified, like a senior citizen who forgot to put his pants on)--about three hours. Also, there's no reason for you to go all the way to Gowanus, even though if this were a magazine and especially if this were a cool magazine, I'd probably advise "catching" some "artistically challenging material" at the "Issue Project Room." Also, guess I'd do that if I wrote for Zagat's.

So. I started south on Bedford Avenue and walked through Williamsburg, the real Williamsburg, where everyone was scurrying around on foot or in minivan getting ready for Shabbos. If they were really rushed, they probably didn't have time to eat and just picked up a little drive-thru Glatt kosher chinese food at "Chinese Checkers." (I think keyboards explode if you spell "through" with all its letters in the context of mono-saturated fats).

I turned right on Rutledge, which turns into Classon, at which point the neighborhood begins to change. Blue Bass was started across the street from Pratt by some pretty young ladies last fall, and I really love their things, especially the things that are wee sweaters and sailor shirts for babies. I touched one, and something Lego-ish fell off. Sara Hodges, proprietress, was very nice about it.

I kept walking down Classon, hellooo western fringes of Bed Stuy, and turned right on the little spit of Quincy street that ends in the old Brooklyn Trolley building turned Broken Angel, the eerie building that needs an urban arts patron to the tune of $1.4 million. (Site-Meter indicates that I have a fabulously wealthy readership that loves sea glass). The Salvation Army at 22 Quincy isn't anything special, just several dank moth-bally rooms where I seriously considered buying a yellow bathing suit with white buttons. Honestly, it was the yellow and not the potential salvation (read: private-part skin falling off due to mysterious used bathing suit disease) that finally convinced me to walk away. A series of courteous gentlemen, though, did inform me in turn that all furniture was half-off. Another one told me my fly was down. All very helpful.

I trudged along, one teeny acid-washed skirt wealthier. My armpits were nearing super-saturation, so I dripped all over the counter and ordered a beverage at Muddy Waters, just north of Grand Army Plaza. Hootie Couture, on Flatbush, has lovely gowns and dresses that probably thrill the pubescent crowd that descends after it gobbles up American Apparel across the street. Everyone writes about Allison Houtte so I don't really need to, but on Friday she was keeping her store icy cold like a mint julep on Kentucky Derby day (she's from Florida/I'm out of my element here) and charming everyone who came in. Also, she kept trilling "If anyone wants some goooodies, come right up! I have caaaandy!"

At the (second, yes, second) Salvation Army down the block there was a different sort of lady clientele, exemplified by a sturdy old woman in a very sensible polo shirt who was paralyzingly confused about whether she'd purchased the other identical polo shirts on the counter before her.

"What?! They're yours! Take them!" the cashier kept repeating, and the woman didn't respond, just kind of jabbed her finger at the price tag. Finally, she used a very, very small voice to say "I want to pay less," even though she'd already paid--more.

By that point, I wanted to pay less, too, but I kept the dream alive and paid $2.99 debit for a smoking hot pair of Ralph Lauren STIRRUP JEANS. I was smelly and redeemed.

Babies, Part II

I'm disgusted. Hilary Clinton is so bad at saying she's sorry, she just wants to go back in time and REVERSE the Senate vote authorizing funding for the war! I'm so disgusted I'm Basil Fawlty telling his handsome, gleaming young guest that he really should have visited a chemist's shop earlier in the day. Hilary Clinton is a large-faced baby.

An easier way for Hilary to accomplish her shifty, calculating goal? She could build a time machine! That would work! I was talking my dear old friend James last night, and I learned a lot. (He still lives in New Jersey, so I don't get to benefit from his tutelage as much as I should). I learned that May '77 was a crazy good month for the Grateful Dead--some of the hottest Scarlet Fire jams--and also that it wasn't overambitious of us to plan to see their shows. See, I learned that James has been reading some stuff on the Internet about the government's research into time travel.

Call me a physics nerd (you'd be an idiot to call me a physics nerd), but I exclaimed "James, you'd burn up! You can't go faster than the speed of light!" He said, no, no, Emma, maybe they were looking into doing the traveling a different way. There was a facility in Montauk, he told me, where all the experiments had happened. They razed it recently (apparently the tests weren't panning out) and found, like, body parts from the future stuck in the walls.

Quarks. Effing quarks. Who knew?

Luckily for the state of my cell phone minutes account, James and I both agreed that actually traveling into the past could have frightening repercussions.

But I don't think Hilary Clinton would think that far. She'd probably still want everyone to think she'd never been wrong about anything. Another person who wants to use that Montauk time machine? Robert Byrd, Clinton's co-sponsor on the measure, who got all sorts of college students to swoon for him during the Iraq debates and all sorts of black college students to (presumably) loathe him during the 1940s when he was a registered KKK member and accomplished organizer.

Glossy, But Only Semi-Glossy

I walk through Harlem a fair amount and have been seeing, since the last rainfall, xeroxed signs packing-taped to street lamps and stapled onto telephone poles. The signs are on glossy, but only semi-glossy, 8 1/2" by 12" paper, and have a picture in the center of a wee ClipArt baby wearing a massive baseball cap, sunglasses, a clunky medallion and droopy diapers.

The signs are advertising an album release--permit me the hypothesis that it is a debut album release--of the artist "Nickelz." Nominal similarities to another New York City rapper aside, that's not such a bad name. Except that I just found out Curtis Jackson's little cousin Michael Francis raps under the name "Two Five." Whatever, that's Nickelz's problem.

My problem--as a PEDESTRIAN I believe I am entitled to one--is the title of Nickelz's debut, written in bold Helvetica at the bottom of the sign:

"Put the baby to sleep!"

I have some questions, young buffalo-head. Are you the baby? Are you the inevitable outcome of the already annoying enough Lil' Bow Wow phenomena? Are you not the baby? If you're not the baby, why did you have one with your high school sweetheart if you're obviously going to be totally famous and end up kissing Joy Bryant? And, perhaps most importantly, why would you buy your baby such out-sized bling if you can't afford a babysitter?

I just have some questionz. That'z all.

(Full disclosure. I possess approximately three, no, exactly three movies. They are, by date of release and nothing else: Casablanca, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, and Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Also some yoga DVDs).