don’t let the facade fool you; i’m a long island jew. but the first time i came to new york city (that i can remember… somewhere in the age of “4″) i fell in love. the city and i have been in an exclusive relationship since 2001 when i moved here permanently for college.

one of my favourite things about NYC is the cultural richness that despite the commodification and gentrification of some of my favourite culturally historical parts of the city (times square, the east village, lower east side, chelsea, west village, erm, well, everywhere) this city still culturally kicks ass. where else could you go to a giant metal arena show, miss out on your friends signing toys at kidrobot so you could hit a graffiti photo show, followed by a great indie rock show… only to go to your friend’s design studio for a birthday party the next day?  i’ll show you, quickly:

 

as a music industry ex-pat i have a lot of friends who work at labels and hook me up with tickets. in this case, it was an all access pass (note: photo is totally a mirror image.) to madison square garden for – don’t judge me – slipknot. i talk a lot of shit about my shameful nu-metal past, and you can say what you will about slipknot, but they do what they do well.  every night, in full costume, with pyro, 8 dudes take the stage, 3 of them on hydraulic drum kits.

yeah, dudes. hydraulic fucking drum kits. 3 of ‘em.

point being: their stage show is polished, and i was soback in 1999.  the wide leg light denim jeans were back, the spiky hair and precision beards were back, the tribal tattoos were back, and the eyebrow-tongue piercing one-two punch was back.  it was intense, my girl holly and i definitely sang along, and bonded over the myriad of nu-metal tours we went to see at the turn of century but never told any of our mutual friends about for fear of being socially shunned… but yeah, you know, talking about them on a blog is clearly acceptable and not at all embarrassing…

we wound up at the madison square garden vip club. which is really only cool because how many times are you going to hang out at the madison square garden vip club with the band that just played at madison square garden, right?

the photo show was amazing. i met up with my friend stephen k. schuster(as seen below) – who you might know from his photo-editor days at mass appeal (r.i.p) – he’s been documenting a group of NYC high school kids, and one of his kids put this show on courtesy of the stanton chapter in the LES.  sean vegezzi is all of 18 years old, but his work is well beyond what it should be.  :

 

 

 

 but, in true new york serendipitous fashion, i ran into my friend matt on the way, who plays for the fucking awesome band Murder By Death- who were playing a show at bowery ballroom.  naturally, i went to see their crazy 2-album performance, backed with great black and white film (bela lugosi and salvador dali imagery to rock and roll organ grinding incredibleness? yes please!) my friend matt is the giant thing on the right, and sarah is the girl sitting down on the left… playing the electric cello. real talk.

 my last stop on the weekend – after a wonderful shopping trip in the garment district, details of which i’ll save for another post – was at a birthday for my friend adam, part of The Gentlemens League- an incredible luxury custom bag company (take note, kanye!). not only did they design their bags, but adam spends 20+ hours applying beautiful illustrations to every bag after an extensive interview with the to-be owner of these $5,000 + one-of-a-kind goods. so yes. that’s it. i’m done. till next time.