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.

One Man's Lapdog

You can, obviously, understand a lot about a neighborhood by looking at its trash. That's if you happen to have that selective kind of blindness where multi-paned windows, wrought-iron railings, and purebred lapdogs are imperceptible.

(Do you know the trouble I just had with imagining what one would see in a nice neighborhood? I do not live in a terribly crummy place, but was forcing myself to recall exactly the block of East 79th, between Madison and 5th, where a boy I made out with once lived. He'd, like, not gone to Yale in order to hike around Nepal, so I'm pretty sure his house was the fanciest I've entered.)

Anyway, it's clear that I can't paint the word picture, so your first assignment is to go visit the aforementioned young man and take a gander at his surroundings. Then, and only then, will you be able to proceed:

I bet the trash on that block, and the surrounding blocks, is pretty refined. Organic dog food containers, leftovers from the East Side equivalent of Citarella, Frédéric Fekkai shampoo bottles, tags ripped off the Marc Jacobs spring line--things I would throw out if I were richer. (What do you do with them now, Emma? I KEEP THEM. FOR EATING).

And then there are other neighborhoods, where you'd find cans of Pathmark brand tuna, Pathmark brand laundry detergent bottles, tiny containers of Pathmark brand apple juice, coupon circulars with all the good offers snipped out--the things my family threw out when we were poorer.

But I was walking through Gowanus yesterday, and passed a really interesting quality of trash. My neighborhood is, undoubtedly, going through a transition, and perhaps its proximity to Home Depot (and Pathmark!) makes it particularly appealing to handy house-improvement type folks. For years, though, the area was the province of old people whose families had moved away, the kind who still sometimes peer at Young Max and I through their lace curtains & grimy windows. Now the new, richer families are throwing out their stuff, and on Wednesday nights the streets are awash in all kind of linoleum furniture, puce and mauve accoutrement, and the occasional desiccated Italian grandfather.

Edward Said on the First Day of Spring

This story is about Young Max and "Arabian II," a certain genre of music that may be familiar to those of you who are so cool you live at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal or that putrid stream in Greenpoint.

Indeed, it was atop the aforementioned canal--we were walking on the Union Tree Bridge, which was maybe maybe maybe the Union Street Bridge in the early eighties--that Max stopped kicking the unfathomably dirty snow crust and said "Emma? You know what my favorite kind of music is?"

I thought I did know. I already knew, for example, which Mets player Young Max thought was the greatest, and which of his after-school teachers he was aware are objectively hotties: because I tell him. I tell him about music, too, and even though I tried super hard last summer to plant in him a love of either 50 Cent or the Mountain Goats, we managed to come to a truce on The Beatles.

Not a bad truce it was, especially when you remember Blackbird and also finally have an excuse to listen to Eddie Vedder's cover of You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. I bought him some CDs for his birthday, along with a Yellow Submarine poster, and I thought that might be that. The boy might just, you know, listen to The Beatles in perpetuity. That's basically what my mother's done.

So, smirking, I asked "What kind of music is it, Maxman?"

"Arabian!" He was triumphant.

"What kind of music is that?" He didn't seem to know how to answer. "Like, where is it from?"

"ARABIA!" Oh, no. Arabia? I cook dinner for an Orientalist every night? I reacted the way I would have if Young Max were an ignorant twenty four year old who'd succeeded in taking me home the night before.

"I'm not sure I know what you mean, Max." I was being Extremely Serious, like I am when I am lame and ask dbags whether they mean something is literally homosexual when they've just called it gay. Young Max need more clues than some dude drinking Heineken, though.

"Arabia isn't a country. A long time ago, some people might have called a certain area of the world Arabia, the peninsula where Saudi Arabia is? Or maybe that means countries where people speak Arabic?"

He still wasn't answering, and I wasn't relenting. The boy goes to a Montessori school, for pete's sake. He's always, like, teaching me about ethical rocket fuel. But I did feel kind of ridiculous.

"Where did you hear about it?"

"On RUNESCAPE."

Runescape is the very preteen's tutorial in electronic interaction. Also, they appear to trade capes a lot. Max has recently graduated from Club Penguin. I can't say I'm not impressed.

Max continued, "It is one of the OPTIONS. There are a lot of options and my favorite is Arabian."

He was fine. He wasn't a cultural imperialist, and if he was I didn't want to be terrible enough to preach it out of him. I am, however, terrible. For even thinking such an annoying thing. That much should be clear.

But, then, Max seemed to get as uncomfortable as I'd been. "Emma, actually? It's Arabian two. So I guess Arabian Two is my favorite kind of music."

I was suddenly reminded of what Young Max had said as we'd bought a four inch-square, seventy-five cent package of Gushers this afternoon. He'd commented that seventy-five cents sounded like a great deal. I told him that at the other deli, the one right near the Gowanus projects, I remembered them being, like, thirty cents or something. (I hate Carroll Gardens and thus I exaggerated). But then I explained that really, that deli guy was just doing smart business because people in public housing might have less money to spend on candy.

We burst out of the deli door, which is how we leave places inside which there are also strangers, and Max made a stunningly perceptive observation.

"Unless you're a STREET PERSON! Then you don't even have not one dollar." The various white mothers and their white babies on the sidewalk looked aghast. I wondered which homeless guys Max had heard cussing each other out, because he sounded exactly like one of them. Super. I hate Carroll Gardens, anyway. And all was right with the world.

I Trim Them

I was out tonight, in Williamsburg, which means that unless I'm (1) with someone who will coddle me, (2) had an atrocious amount if whiskey, or (3) forgotten to wear shoes, I take the G train home. I didn't exactly think about the fact that I could take the G train all the way home until I read the party invitation my roommate sent to our friends a few weeks ago. She told everyone to come the ways I would have told them, and then she mentioned that they could get off at the Smith & 9th Street G stop, too.

No eff-ing kidding, I thought to myself, but only to myself because if I'd thought it to anyone else they would have wondered what my huge lazy problem with walking five extra blocks was, anyway. And, you know, they would have been right. Because I love walking. I also, as conscientious readers may recall, love the feeling of fear.

Lucky for me, fear is right up there on the list of feelings one might have right after a bus pulls away and she finds herself standing at the midpoint of a deserted 24-hour "super"market and an equally empty 24-hour "hard"ware store.

(I found out those are called scare quotes. How scared are you? My teeth are chattering).

But, I mean, whatever. I walked. To the potential chagrin of my mother, father, boss and maybe even my Madeleine, I took a short cut across the aforementioned hardware store's parking lot.

(The Pythagorean Therom is one of my favorites and I like it even when it's misapplied).

Everything was going fine. I'd looked butch enough to be ignored by the sinister-as-a-dodge-neon-can-be Dodge Neon patrolling the parking lot, and I had 2nd Avenue in my sights. Then: I jumped. Almost literally. There was a massive, fat, abused looking Great Dane reclining below the loading docks opposite the store's lumber yard!

I'd eaten dinner, mind you, only hours before, and if ever a dog could smell the lingering aroma of soy protein it was this one.

I tried to keep my fear pheromones (fearomones?) in check while I walked by, but I just knew the dog could smell me. Truth is, with Tom's of Maine deodorant, you probably could have, too.

But, okay. The point is, none of my inside chemicals outed me to the dog as someone who decidedly didn't belong near any sort of hardware store at midnight on a Tuesday. And I was pretty psyched about that, you know? Like, maybe if the dog didn't notice me the kids playing basketball at the courts a couple blocks west of my house thought I blended in, too? And the ladies at the Wyckoff projects pool really did think that young Max was my son and not a rich whitey with a full time babysitter?

My delusional ego keeps telling me that this is true. It keeps telling me that my pheromones identify me as Gowanus, through and through. (As long as they don't make me G-Slope. Shudder). Another reason I know this? As I was leaving the parking lot, I saw a young man wearing a boldly striped Greg Brady-esque ski jacket, squinting through his barber shop-picketing bangs and pushing a rattling old-lady cart in my direction.

I squinted back, but not through my bangs because I Trim Them, and I kept walking. A few seconds later, though, I heard Mr. Dane. Man, he was putting up a fuss. Either he didn't like the squeaking of the shopping cart or he was sounding the throaty 2nd Avenue Gentrification Alarm.

The Flâneuse

So, I've been thinking about writing a blog (in the same way that I've been thinking about starting the revolution, going back to my internship at Witness, and finally returning one of Ali Robinton's emails) for some time. I didn't want to, necessarily, because I had some wisdom that anyone else lacked, but because I'd come up with a really super name: The Flâneuse. It's French, fine, and I speak even less French than I can make a blog (?) but I felt it would be highly apposite.

A flâneur is, as I understand its conceptual presentation by Baudelaire, an urban observer. A lot of definitions on the, you know, Internet would have it that flanerie--seriously. that's apparently what it's called. a word that makes me think of flailing with streamers in both hands--is a state of idleness, passive spectating.

Instead, I'd say that the flâneur and flâneuse (masculine & feminine) are active members of the cities they observe; as though by walking down Third Avenue near the Gowanus Canal I have inexorably altered that environment. Or at least reified it, carrying it with me as an interpreted image.

One reason the term has experienced a scholarly resurgence of late--I mean, since 1848, or whatever--is because Baudelaire only wrote of a man walking the streets, leaving the existence of a flâneuse unexamined. That's a question that resonates with me; can I walk down the street, relatively unobserved, engaged only in the act of looking? Because that means that I'm not engaged in the act of averting my eyes from middle aged businessmen, bawdy teenagers, and hard-hatted construction workers.

I walk all the time. I look all the time. But do I believe that I, or anyone, can be a flâneuse? Undetermined. Anyway, the blog name was taken by some professor on WordPress. That's cool. I like the name Red Admirable, too. It's a butterfly.

For further elucidation: someone is more educated than I.