united stats of america

united stats of america. amazing.

lonely hearts

lonely hearts aw2010

Lonely Hearts: What is Your Damage from Nik Riviera on Vimeo.

//glasses glasses //

there's a great blog by the same name. That's not what this is about. This is about something entirely different in fact. See, I left my glasses (purchased in 2003) at my parents house on the upper west side and I'd like nothing more then to make 94th st. their new dwelling. I'll be heading on over to Moscot's today to peruse. But in preparation I've scoured their website and these (above) are my favorite items.

bedazzled

SLV Jewelry & Tribeca Retail Club are inviting people to gawk . . .and then buy incredible jewelry handcrafted by Sadye Lee Vassil (SLV Jewelry) tomorrow night from 4pm-10pm at 294 Broadway (between walker and white), 4th Floor. Imma cop mine fashofasho. and then give it to Tiger Woods. He needs something. poor man.

for emma forever ago

It’s a funny thing eulogizing someone a year after they’ve died. I sit down to write about her frequently but never accomplish more than writing her name, Emma Bee Bernstein. So it is strange that today, and begrudgingly so, is the first time I’m attempting to pen a piece remembering emma. We both had the same penchant for hyperbole and mythologizing and I think I was afraid that all the practice we’d had couldn’t prepare me to honor her memory. But I will try.

I remember when I became friends with Emma. We were both placed on the same camp Olympic team, Guatemala, in the summer of 1996. It was my first summer at Camp Kinderland and I was sick over being split up from my only friends and comfort, Sonja and Jesse. I was afraid Emma didn’t like me, maybe because I was new---unfamiliar with the traditions, songs and tales that came along with Camp Kinderland. But then she sat down next to me on the soccer field during a match against the blue team, clad head-to-toe in our team’s color, red. She had on a red wife-beater with red sophie shorts, a red head-band and red knee-high socks, on her feet were converse with (what I’d like to remember) red shoelaces and, of course, against her tragically beautiful pale skin was her signature red lipstick. And there began my most unique 12-year friendship with my emma bee, or as I called her, spoc. She called me Collzra.

Most of what I did in those first few months of friendship with Emma was laugh. She was as tireless as I at night. It’s funny, as I recall it now, it feels like all of our moments at Camp Kinderland those first two years were like the movie NOW AND THEN, filled with boy-talk, nail-painting (emma had tiny little nails and stubby little hands that she hated but wouldn’t allow to go unpolished) and laughing about nothing at all. Those foundational summers were perfection. We were connected to one another---our truest, barest, youthful selves. She accepted me though I was a difficult person, masking my insecurity with a hardness and a harshness that was unmatched at camp. She accepted me with an ease and a respect that I had a much harder time doing for her as the years went on and things became more difficult for her. And for that I am very sorry to emma.

High School approached rapidly. Emma wanted to go to St. Ann’s and didn’t get in. I remember her crying. She cried all night. I got into St. Ann’s but I couldn’t go without my partner. So we both decided on Friends Seminary. Together, as it were, we faced High School. Like in camp, Emma had a much easier time adapting. She threw herself into her studies with a vigor and passion I’ve still never encountered in anyone since. Her appetite for learning was astounding. It made her almost manic. I remember being angry that I didn’t have that same ferocity for all things studying. I was scared perhaps, that if I tried I wouldn’t get it like she did.

She dyed her hair pink and befriended the “fringe”, which at Friends were just the kids that liked “The Velvet Underground”, didn’t wear Gap, smoked cigarettes in the park behind our school and had an affection for socialism. We drifted in that first year. I resented her coolness, I resented how easy it was for people to love her. And love her people always did. But by the next year we were back on track. It always happened that way. Emma and I were as different as two people could be but there was an inextricable closeness that we couldn’t shake. She was very intentional in her close friendships and I always felt privileged to be on the inside.

Senior year of High School Emma was elected to give the senior speech. She recited "Changes" by Tupac. We had grown very close again, sleeping many nights at our friend Marissa’s house where we’d smoke pot and watch “Dazed and Confused” and “Clueless” and romanticize our future boyfriends at our respective colleges. Somehow it was different when I spoke about future exploits, so many of which Emma already experienced. She was not afraid of new experiences and adventure like I was. Sometimes that was scary for me because her desire for spontaneity sometimes translated into recklessness and compromising situations, all of which I berated her for (too) much.

I moved to Chicago in the fall of 2007. She was nervous that I’d be judgmental and I was nervous that she’d be self-destructive and I’d have to feel her decisions with the same weight and intensity I had so many times before. She was more beautiful than ever, owning her curves, her style, her hair and her talent in a way that came together magically. And there were moments, in her small room on Central Park and Fullerton in Logan Square after a huge vegetarian meal of enchiladas and chiles rellenos from El Pacifico, where we’d laugh and laugh about the Halloween our English professor was dressed in all leather, or when a fellow camper had food in his teeth while he tried to shamelessly flirt with her.

What followed I’d rather not recall in a public forum because Emma accepted me. And here I must accept her and her decision with a respect and an undying love. It was hard for me to reconcile her death as I saw it for so long as an affront to me and my love and devotion to her. But now I understand that her sickness took a form that had nothing to do with me and what I tried to do for her. That she respected me and accepted me up until the very last day she lived. And I must do the same for her. Finally.

Emma loved regaling tales of yore. And she loved cutting her clothes. And she loved being sad. And she loved taking photographs of Toni. She loved Cindy Sherman. And she loved Top Chef but hated meat (most of the time). She loved dressing up in her grandmother’s clothes. She also loved her grandmother’s specialty, Barley. She loved Chanukah but didn’t care as much about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was the last time I saw my friend. She left the next morning for Venice. I miss her very much everyday but today on the one-year anniversary of her death, December 20^th, 2009 I am devastated. I was supposed to go with her to the Bon Iver concert last winter but I was lazy and it was snowing, something that never stopped her from anything. It seems fitting to end with a line from the song entitled “For Emma”

“So apropos/Saw death on a sunny snow/For every life/Forgo the parable

/Seek the light/With all your lies/You're still very lovable/

I toured the light/so many foreign roads for Emma, forever ago." - Bon Iver

-Collier Meyerson

chanukah

in my on-line browsing on etsy i came across this vintage het pendant. It's the last day of chanukah. Should I go in?

all the single ladies, all the single ladies. put your hands up.

i'm going to see this tonight. i love a trailer with no words. it just makes me wanna SCREAM for ice cream.

jews < hipsters

i love hassidic jews. i don't love a hardcore, self-righteous bikers that wear those stupid hats. WHY do they wear those hats? Is this feud going to end up like the crown-heights riots of the '90s. Maybe the hipster grifter can weigh in.

french people look pretty all the time

garance dore

this is Eleonara. She's a classy broad. I'm going to France in march. maybe i'll come back Sabrina styles. classy. classy. classy. without that weird crush on harrison ford though.

people care about the yankees

I'm (almost) speechless over these photographs taken by a friend, nofauxtography at this years ticker-tape parade. had to put his work on blast. i believe he can make prints (for a fee) if people are interested.

adoption is for everyone

I wrote my senior thesis on the complications of transnational, transracial, transcultural adoption. I wrote about how angelina jolie creates an image of herself worthy of candidacy for sainthood and how madonna tries to make transnational adoption (literally) in vogue. However, beneath the glitz and the glam there are adoptees all over these United States that grow up confused and sometimes ashamed of who they are; confused about having to identify certain ways in racially and culturally polarizing environments and ashamed at both the prospect of never understanding their former, unknown self and sometimes hating the life they were severed from. It's a tricky thing being an adoptee (i know because i am one) and i am excited to see if this film joins Avery's two lives (pre and post adoption) in a way that honors the disjointed and non-linear nature of an adoptee's experience.

check out the official website of the film: Off and Running

minneapolis is a sexy rocker model chick

knighttcat

valerie is a penguin

this is a good remix for a day of unpacking my new house in brooklyn.

tom from myspace or tom who saves the world

i'd rather be tom who gives kids shoes. cause like i bet he's hotter. or at least his shoes are hotter than tom from myspace. tom from myspace wishes he could be tom the shoe. really. he told me. i could work for toms for a living. just saying. dream job.

scarlett johansson breaks up with pete yorn

so, this is mildly embarrassing. I like the Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn song "relator" from their album long collaboration entitled, "The Breakup" not yet released. I tried to resist the temptress (who serves more as an awkward and boring weirdo in the video) but the song is just SO CATCHY. I listened to it a couple months ago and divulged my secret to a few friends but now I think it's time i just come. clean.

An open letter to Scarjo:

Scarlett Johansson, you might have called me Cabbage when we were 10 years old but i've forgiven you and i even love your new song.

Love always,
Tete

only if you care about civil rights and humanity

The film, WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE's theatrical release is this friday, 13th (that's weird) and I implore everyone in New York to go and pay the 3 mil (that's how much films cost in these trying times) and see it at Cinema Village on 12th and University. The documentary, directed by the late William Kunstler's two daughters, Sarah Kunstler and Emily Kunstler, explores the career of the radical and controversial Civil Rights attorney. Most fascinating (and surprising) is rather than revering Kunstler, the sisters explore and interrogate their issues with the controversial cases their father took later on in his career. So, children of the corn, instead of renting Freddy the 13th (or whatever) go see something far more intellectually stimulating. And tell your friends to get with my friends so we can be friends.

home shopping

dwell

sorry. I've been looking for an apartment. I don't seem to do anything else. And I don't seem to find one either. I, for some reason, thought I'd be choosing between mansion and estate. Though it's more like I'm finding shoe box after shoebox for $$ and a bootboxes for $$$.

sex in late jan and early february

photo cred 10.17

everyone seems to be born in the last weekend of octobre and the first week of novembre. needless to say i was celebrating all over new york these past few jours in various costumes. eating various red velvet cakes. one was from magnolia. Aside from the normal commotion of that place there was an added twist of the 20 marathon runners, peering over my shoulder waiting with bated breath until they could dig their ivories into a celebratory cupcake. I felt like i was in a marathon of sugar consumption this weekend. halloween. over. check. total body conditioning starts at 5:30. anyone? also french words make everything sound way more whimsical and romantic. I am trying to get you to want my life. alors.

traveling kids (not the anarchist kind)

Images of travel have been on my mind since last nights Girldrive reading at KGB Bar. This morning, feeling nostalgic for roadtrips and yearning for any kind escape from the cityscape i looked at my friend Stephen Yang's photos. If only i were independently wealthy. Oprah, if you're out there, I know you love to help a colored in need. I am that colored.

savage (not fred)

The Dutchess and The Duke has a sound that transports me to the fall of 1968. I imagine I'm Winnie's (from the Wonder Years) weird black friend who'd rather go home and listen to records than speak. I imagine I'm playing them on my 8-track in my basement while she stares at me blankly, obtrusively, as if telling me with her eyes that she wishes I had straight hair. It's a symbiotic friendship though because she brings the weed. I close my eyes and mellow out. I know I'm bound for New York City on a greyhound right after i graduate, with or without Winnie. Later I become the most relevant African-American cultural critic of the 20th century.

joe lieberman is out of his everloving mind

Huffington Post just told me that Lieberman is going to join the republican health care reform filibuster. he is the devil's spawn.

winner

courtesy of 10muses

and her thighs ALMOST touch! hottie.

you wildin

check out my latest post about Pinkberry at youwildin'

helsinki plaid

courtesy of hel-looks

i love fall

sienna plays

my friend raved about the dress she saw sienna wearing at the premier party of the new play, After Miss Julie that she stars in. After a www.google.com inquiry into the dress i was pretty upset i wasn't a rich and famous movie star wearing balmain. every. day.

ladies lunching lavishly

nah, not really lunching lavishly, though there is free champagne! It's actually a present day answer to an amish market, except with hot ladies selling way cooler things; jewelry, artwork and natural beauty products. though amish butter is pretty on point. Anyway come peruse, buy or chat with ladies in this rare and awesome project of women selling products made by women, for women, by women, for women. women. womyn. yup.

a crimpet a crumpet

photo from 10.17

If i were a lady i would have a spread like this

robyn bird is my new feminist hero?

remember her? I know you all remember "if you wanna hear us moan, call us on the phone." After getting over the nostalgia of seeing her blond hair (that a blind hairdresser dyed) and her white fingernails (which she sported every show), I was really impressed by the content of the clip. For close to 30 years she's taught nearly every 13 year old New Yorker since the 70s a thing or two about what grown-up boobies and penises look. A. The Bird-Lady has been a woman unapologetic about sharing her sexuality with public access viewers since the dawn of time. she has literal pioneer status. B. After a jaunt with her wikipedia page i realized that she has used her iconic channel 35 status to raise awareness and support development in AIDS research and LGBT rights and issues. Bird has also been engaged in legal battles with the state of NY since the 90s to keep her show public, free and unscrambled, defending the rights of people all over our fine city who want to enjoy pornography legally, freely and safely in the privacy of their homes, without shame.

So, let's all raise one to Robin Byrd for being mad cheesy, having that semi-creepy raspy voice, for loving the gays, the bis, the transgenders, people of color, sex on pool tables and sex in her weird neon studio.

Gordon Voidwell sings the black national anthem

CMJ promises some really exciting new music and some really boring, bad, bad, music. I strongly urge, as the most important voice of any given generation, against your natural inclination to purge when you hear the words "WEBSTER HALL" and go see Gordon Voidwell play at 11pm. Bring your friends of color too. he loves that. and semi hates it. or loves it.

i'm pretty hungry

props: http://infantfoundation.com/blog/

filippa K

I plan on finding some winter items with filippa. In Sweden she has a discount store. Unfortunately for me I don't live in Sweden. I also like light more than 4 hours a day in winter. you can find her at Castor & Pollux and Flying A in New York.

rick owens

i'll be visiting his shop this week.

rickshaw shawn: my, my, my superman

I saw this dude at like 3am two weeks ago on 5th and A carting these two japanese girls for the ride of their life. He literally scaled a wall. My natural inclination told me to pack it away in the depths of my memory bank for it's unreal, bizarreness but instead I found myself standing in the same exact location last night regaling the incredible. so, i found him. watch. this.



and if you want to look at him in late-night-action watch this:

alexander wang

so this photo from the wang show has nothing to do with my post but i thought this getup was fuego and I want it (or the inevitable and more realistic forever21 version) immediately.

Anyway, something is finally happening in New York City! What?!
"night of mayhem" at What Goes Around Comes Around hosted by Mischa Barton

Start Time:	Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 9:00pm
End Time:	Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 12:00am
Location:	What Goes Around Comes Around
Street:	351 West Broadway
City/Town:	New York, NY

Moe's Kleiner Imbiss

The falafel with halloumi and some spicy sauce at King Of Falafel, graefestrasse in Kreuzberg, (a neighborhood in Berlin) is the most bomb thing I've ever tasted. I was trying to think of my "comeback" post, something that would summarily describe my month-long jaunt across eastern and northern europe and all i could recall was this wonderful, cheap eat. So, everyone, if you find yourself in berlin in the near future, skip all of the art, kreuzberg bridge drinking, biking (and falling off), watching buskers, flea-markets, theater, and go straight to moe's. but before that go next-door and buy a club mate and drink that up right quick.

shopping in europe

Grace wants me to pick bensimons up for her while I'm gone. what other hard-to-find euro items are necessary to sport upon my return?

black people die, nobody cares

The first black supermodel, Naomi Sims, died this past Saturday at the age of 61 from cancer. I just read about it on huffpo today. I should have known on Saturday. Perhaps it's time to switch up my news and blog perusing methods. Or maybe the media just needs to become more sensitive at calling attention to the life and times of women of color that have broken the mold. i'll dare to say she was instrumental in paving the way for changing the standard of beauty, even if we still can't shake exoticizing current black models.

i need a ride or die bitch

I'm leaving for europe in three days. I'm not sure how exactly i'll update but insha'Allah i'll find a way. berlin then easyjet to yet disclosed countries. stay tuned.

stillness is the move

last night i went to a goodbye party in ditmas, a neighborhood in bk. As always I was a) so taken with houses and b) so taken with the fact that I rode the Q to get there instead of metro north. It definitely looks just like an affluent suburb on every side street, equipped with teenagers tripping on their front lawn a la can't hardly wait. It strangely feels sacrosanct and I wasn't sure if I was even down to post this for fear that my most popular blog in the world would somehow drive the masses out of williamsburg and into this somewhat sequestered secret. anyway. visit.

tete-a-bouche

I never think to order or make ravioli because one serving is always like three pieces and it's gone so fast and when i'm done (and unsatisfied) i always go into a debbie depression because i want more. But this photo transforms the lonely large starch into a healthful salad that makes ravioli my irresistible food choice of today. f i ever cooked I'd use this recipe.

effortless

louise, my fashion muse of the day is found here

it might rain but it still reigns supreme

Photo by Nick Johnson.


Bill Wasik of the NYTimes (yeah I read the article on-line but I still live in New York and love it, Bill) writes a piece dethroning New York City as the reigning epicenter of artistic production and instead crowns…the Internet? I was feeling Wasik before he started on his Internet transcends actual human contact tip. See, I used to be a huge advocate of “New York is not provocative more like evocative, dead, and overburdened with fake-ass-people where no interesting or organic art of any form is produced.” Before I moved back here I spent hours with friends in grimy bars in Minneapolis and Chicago arguing that the best music and art was being produced elsewhere, in those ubiquitous “main streets” of America type towns that President Obama always referred to in his campaign stump. But, nope, New York is still dope and there is still ridiculous energy, art, music, jewelry and clothing being produced everyday here. Though the economy has been suspect and Madoff wilded out and caused the downright decimation or major depletion of monies for the arts in the mainstream doesn’t mean that the art isn’t being made at all! And furthermore, we all know that the stuff that legendary musicians/visual artists/writers is made of are never initially part of the establishment anyway.

Wasik interrogates the process of stardom on the internet and sets it wildly apart from that of that of becoming famous in New York. He does it in a way that puts a value on the success of people who get famous on the internet and pits them against those who become successful by networking in New York. So, if you make a youtube sensation of your wedding where you emerge husband and wife after an amazing dance routine you’re not as cool as, say, Wasik who maybe got pats by fat cats all the way up to Harpers. And I’m not saying that’s not as cool. But, like, has Wasik ever heard of legacy? of money getting you places? I know firsthand that vetting in New York exists in many different capacities and that people i know have gotten famous when others who are way more talented are thrown to the wayside. I’m not saying Dash Snow wasn’t great but I definitely wouldn’t have gotten famous for throwing jizz around.

Finally, my dude, the Internet is still a medium and not a place. The photograph above is taken outside of a school in Park Slope by a photographer from New York documenting what he sees. Makes sense cause that's what photographers do. Without that there'd be no photography to put ON the internet. The internet is just a platform by which to share and by no means does it take on the physicality and emotion of an experience like watching some kids from the neighborhood practice their skateboarding. Looking at photographs, reading blog posts, articles, watching films and clips is all good and fun and enriches your life and stuff but I once learned (and will always remember) that a well-functioning and happy person needs human touch 5x times a day and I get that times like x 10 on the Q-train on my way to work.

new york should take fashion tip from fashion icon. duh.

I'm pretty sure that I don't live in New York and that I actually live in England, Scotland or the Pacific Northwest. Except that it's (England + themosthumidplaceonearththatitfeelsliketheinsideofagarbagetruck - fun in the mud = especially terrible). the weather forecast this weeks promises that there is no point in wearing anything except for this. what other rain inspired items would do?

the point.

I believe this photograph was taken by famed writer, Nelson Algren, during Beauvoir's visit to Chicago. She writes candidly about her affair with Algren but was renowned for her explicit writings on the life-long-crazy-escapades-and-open-relationship she had with Jean-Paul Sartre. I thought to name this blog after the biography published on said philosophers as a way to link the antiquated yet forever romanticized self-referential, indulgent Beauvoir in her time with blogging. It makes me feel more comfortable knowing that this chick, who wrote one of the most influential feminist works of all time, "The Second Sex," basically blogged her life old-school styles. so. welcome. and hopefully I'm onto something.