#The concert I was at had an all inclusive bathroom

[a-moss-covered-heart]

Honestly my unrealistic fantasy I have rn is going hard for the horny level 🫠

[the-last-concert]

Chapter Twenty-One: This is Why

Pepper

Twelve Hours before the Last Concert

Pepper was dreading going through his suitcase. He only had a small window to pack, so he just threw shit together. This wasn’t good. He wanted to impress Moggie. He hadn’t seen her since high school. They are grown now. Adults. Lived through life. He wanted to present the best possible image.

“Wear this.” He squinted at Speedy. He tried his best to seem like he wasn’t sweating over an outfit. That was usually Speedy’s department. But… he was performing in front of millions of people. Plus… it would be in front of her. Her eyes would be close enough to view him. Pepper didn’t want to go down a rabbit hole of what ifs… but they lingered. But he just glanced at the end of Speedy’s arm, holding out a very expensive leather jacket. Pepper eyed the tag: $2550. 

“Hell no.” Pepper said, not wanting to take that risk. “You know how much of a clux I am. And what if it rips?”

Speedy pushed the jacket in his arms, anyway. He shrugs, digging at the bottom of his suitcase. Until he found it. Nike Retros. Orange and blue. Pepper knew exactly who gifted him those. He tried his hardest not to get jealous. He wished…he kept a sentimental gift Moggie gave him too. 

“Don’t worry about that.” Speedy spoke, shaking Pepper’s thoughts.  “It was a gift.” 

Pepper replied, his head rocking side to side. “I don’t even want to know.” Speedy’s gifts had a patterned behavior. And normally, it meant espandes of women he had relationships with prior. But Pepper had to admire how good he looked after he tried it on. It fit him like a glove. Effortless. He was examining in the small full-size mirror near his bed. “But I’ll wear it.” 

“So…” Speedy glanced into the mirror, as Pepper was adding on more gear for tonight. Like his golden band he had since he was 15. And his golden chain,  him and Speedy hustled off some popular kids’ necks when they were attempting to talk to Moggie. They didn’t tolerate that. Any of it. And it was a constant battle. Because as gorgeous as she was… Mystique High School athletic department knew not to go near her. Not if they wanted to answer to the “Malarkey duo”. “You ready for tonight?” 

Pepper snickered and took off the rent inclusive jacket. “Are you?” 

“Naturally.” Speedy smiled. 

“Liar.” Pepper called him out. “You’re probably shitting bricks.” 

“Ha!” Speedy snorted. “Like you ain’t nervous either.” He punched his shoulder lightly, making his way to the bathroom. He had to clean up his face. He didn’t get as much facial hair as Pepper. But it was enough to show his age. He grabbed his electric razor after the shaved cream was applied. 

Pepper leaned against the bathroom doorway. His face went cold. He was thinking all fucked up scenarios. He wanted to put his head through that same bathroom door. “What if she walks away from both of us? Or worse. Laugh in our faces?” 

Speedy turned his clean-driven face toward him. “You actually think she can deny this work of art?” He smooths his hands over each side of cheeks, before laughing crazily in the mirror. “You’re spiraling here. Think about it. She’s been single. At least to my knowledge. And there’s hella people in New York. Why would a fresh Art history graduate not have a ring on her finger?” 

Pepper makes a face. He hated when Speedy talked in riddles. “Just get to the point, Spe.” 

Speedy patted Pepper's face just to annoy him before walking out after his prolonged facial routine. “She’s waiting for someone else to ask.” 

Pepper spins around to face him. No way he’s the one. He couldn’t be. “And you think you’re the person she’s waiting on?” 

“I don’t know.” Speedy said. “All I know is… I wasn’t the one she was constantly hanging on, back then”. 

Pepper chuckled. He started to remember all those moments he and Moggie had. She made sure he was at least a B student. And that he was never late for  football practice. She came to every single one of their games.  She was on him about church. Despite his parents being pastors, Moggie made sure he attended for his soul. And despite wanting to provoke his stepfather, he went. Because of her. It was annoying as fuck, back then. But now, he wishes he appreciated all the times she actually had his back. Because she would not get off his back. 

“Yeah… yeah. I guess you’re right. She was like my mini backpack.” 

“You would call her that.” Speedy throwing some powerful deodorant his way. Pepper frowned, after he caught it with zero effort. But he hated Degree. “Don’t even start. That old Spice doesn't work when you are performing. I need to breathe on the ride back.” 

Pepper lifted up his armpits and chased Speedy with them. Speedy threw everything at him. Pillows, blankets, towels. This continues until there is a loud bang on their hotel door. They stopped before Pepper head-locked Speedy. 

“Who is it?” They both asked. 

“It’s Clare.” They looked at each other, confirming that Clarissa was outside. They started to straighten up the room. Speedy glanced at Pepper to make sure he had a shirt on. He almost never did. But he grabbed a generic black tee. Speedy had a white one on.  “Y’all decent? I got the updated schedule for today.”

Their door swung towards them, as they posed to greet Clarissa. They grinned like they weren't just rough-housing two seconds ago. Her eyebrow’s rose, but she shrugged it off, not caring to ask.  They both received a laminated copy of Zero Morale’s “Ground Zero”. Ground Zero was a detailed schedule of where everyone needed to be three hours before the show and three hours after it ended. No one was going to be sitting on their ass tonight. 

“Thanks.” Speedy said. “Are we leaving for the venue soon?” 

“Yeah….” Clarissa responded. Then, she handed Speedy keys to one Big Man’s Lamborghini. The black one. With a heavily decaled exterior and a floor pedal like no other. Speedy’s eyes stared through his hands for a while, until Pepper nudged him to pay attention.  “But you have specific instructions to drive our special act there, yourself. Don’t break nothing, k?” 

“You got it.” They both nodded and contained their excitement until after she cleared the hall. 

“Holy-!” Speedy started, as Pepper finished with “Fuck!” They celebrated with their secret handshake they had since age 12. Speedy said, while packing Zero Morale’s trademarked duffle bags. “Alright, rockstar. Let’s get you properly, New York’ed.” 

Bright lights, Big city. 

Speedy weaved in and out New York’s traffic in the Lamborghini Big Man trusted them with. They were listening to Tupac on the way. It was the only vibe Pepper liked to feel before he sang. Even though most of Pepper’s catalog was alternative rock. 

“We stopping for food?” Pepper asked, boots propped on the dashboard. He was sneaking glances at Moggie’s instagram page. She was still petite. Her hair grew. A Lot. Her smile was still bright. Pepper could almost hear her laugh in one of the photos. She’s been all over the world. Montreal, Paris, Greece. He scrolled more to catch the timeline between each post. It was only a few years ago. She hasn’t posted anything since. He wondered why. Pepper wasn’t trying to seem like a complete cyber stalker. But….he had to confirm what Speedy told him. Had she really not dated anyone else?

He tried to ignore the grumbling at the bottom of his stomach. He hoped it was only because they skipped breakfast, but…. Inside? Inside, Pepper was a neurotic relic. He cleverfully hid from Speedy. Especially with all the help he’s given since he found out about Pepper’s cancer. He felt… would it be easier to just let Moggie go? For Speedy? Maybe that would be this repayment. He hated being in debt to him all the time. Not that Speedy would ever collect on it. His heart was too pure. Pepper shook his head. No. Moggie was the only person that kept his shit together. The motivation for all of this. Shit, the fact he was choosing to live. There was no absolute way he could see them together without him.  

Then, he would lose his shit. 

No…. Pepper had to be the one to win her heart. 

If it kills him then, he’ll be alright. 

“There’s a sandwich shop coming up on our left.” Speedy nudged. They both saw Subway neon lights blinking in the distance with all the downpour of rain that just started. Speedy flipped up the windshield wipers. They reached a standstill with the lines of taxis and limos heading downtown. 

“Pull up.” Pepper said. 

Once Speedy had an opening, he didn’t hesitate to swing the Lambo in the left lane. Speedy cut into the opposing lane, and with a quick spin and parked parallel along the busy sidewalks. “Oh!” He screamed in achievement. “How many people can say they parallel parked a Lambo perfectly?” 

Pepper rolled his eyes, while zipping up his jacket. It was getting colder by the minute. He almost saw his breath form crystalized air. He wanted to ignore the locals gawking and applauding Speedy’s erupt, but highly illegal U-Turn. 

“Let’s go. It’s fucking freezing.” 

[route22ny]

    Politicians and pundits often like to compare the COVID-19 pandemic to a war. Nothing in most of our lifetimes has had the society-changing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic — and this kind of feels like the way that our parents say their parents described the Great Depression or World War II.

    But World War II ended in a singular moment. Treaties were signed and people rushed into the streets in jubilation. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has plagued our lives for the last 14 months, won't end in a singular moment. There'll be no major "pandemic peace treaty," no all-out party. Perhaps, at best, there'll be a bunch of little ones. And that forces us to ask: How will this end?

The virus isn't going to disappear.       

   Our vaccines are incredibly safe and effective. For those who are vaccinated, they are a ticket back to "normal" life. Indeed, though rushed and poorly messaged, the CDC's guidance allowing vaccinated people to go unmasked both indoors and outdoors is based in strong science. Evidence has demonstrated that the risk of serious infection in the real world is astoundingly low, and that the viral load in the nasopharynx of vaccinated people is lower — likely explaining the reduced risk of transmission.

    Yet, some people aren't getting vaccinated. And worse, the distribution of vaccinations isn't even. If, for example, unvaccinated people were evenly distributed in the population, the probability that they would be exposed to the virus if 70% of eligible people were vaccinated would be quite low. After all, 70% of the people around them would be vaccinated and therefore far less likely to pass the virus on. That's how herd — or community — immunity works. The problem though is that just like the virus itself, the behavioral scourge of vaccine rejection spreads from person to person in localized communities. So those who are unvaccinated are more likely to live among others who are unvaccinated, increasing their collective probability of infecting each other.

    The likely scenario is that while communities with high vaccine uptake will get to a point where outbreaks are small, self-delimited, and rare — other communities that remain poorly vaccinated will continue to experience larger, more common, and more deadly outbreaks. And the virus will remain a looming concern in the U.S.

    The other issue is viral evolution. New seasonal variants will likely spread among us every fall and winter akin to seasonal flu, which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. Some COVID seasons will be milder, some far deadlier. And just like the flu, we'll likely need annual boosters against it.

    Some things change.                                      

    But the virus isn't the pandemic's only ingredient — just the foundational one. For people who never got sick, COVID-19 still changed their lives. There is, of course, no singular pandemic experience. For millions of low-income "essential" workers, the pandemic meant fearing every day that you might be infected at work, or worse, bring the virus home with you to infect someone you love. For millions of healthcare workers, the pandemic meant watching your patients die without their loved ones as you struggled to manage the overflow. For others privileged enough to work from home, the pandemic meant endless days of Zoom calls while your kids tried to learn across from you at the dinner table.

    As I wrote previously, work from home is going to be a much more common feature of American life. Small businesses, major corporations, and even some government agencies have found that their workers are surprisingly productive from home — and have reconsidered plans to come "back" to work in the office. And workers themselves have found they like using their own bathroom and eating out of their own fridge at lunch.

    Indeed, as many workplaces begin to plan to come back to the offices, workers are pushing back. After Apple CEO Tim Cook sent a note to Apple employees requiring them to be back in the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays beginning in September, Apple employees circulated a letter in response:  

    "We ask for your support in enabling those who want to work remotely / in location-flexible ways to continue to do so, letting everyone figure out which work setup works best for them, their team, and their role — be it in one of our offices, from home, or a hybrid solution. We are living proof that there is no one-size-fits-all policy for people. For Inclusion and Diversity to work, we have to recognize how different we all are, and with those differences, come different needs and different ways to thrive. We feel that Apple has both the responsibility to recognize these differences, as well as the capability to fully embrace them. Officially enabling individual management chains and individual teams to make decisions that work best for their teams roles, individuals, and needs — and having that be the official stated policy rather than the rare individual exceptions — would alleviate the concerns and reservations many of us currently have."

    Other companies, like Dropbox, have preempted this demand simply by offering work from home options permanently.

    Beyond employee preference, companies attempting to go back to a brick-and-mortar office space will face the question of risk tolerance. As we well know, some eschewed any sort of pandemic protection — be it a mask or a vaccine — from the jump. Others, despite being fully vaccinated, remain hesitant to share enclosed space. How to navigate lower risk tolerances remains a serious challenge. Part of making workplaces safe may mean mandating vaccines, which has prompted serious pushback in the courts of law and public opinion by anti-vaxxer activists who want to use the pandemic as another line of attack. Navigating these challenges is, in part, what is pushing more and more employers to offer alternative working arrangements. Needless to say, some alterations to working conditions because of the pandemic are likely here to stay.

    Other things stay the same (again).                                      

    Some pandemic experiences were universal. For children, the pandemic has been a catastrophe. Not only has learning lagged, but children have been robbed of valuable socialization and milestones. Indeed, the consequences have been far worse for poorer students, disproportionately children of color, for whom access to quality WiFi and reliable computers are limited. All indications suggest that kids will be back to school in the fall as vaccinations among teachers and students press on.

    Access to other people and the venues in which we enjoyed their company was limited if available at all. Restaurants, concert venues, theme parks, theaters — even stores and shopping malls — had limited access.

    But that's changing. Prompted by the CDC's new guidelines for vaccinated people, many of these venues have rushed to reopen, and Americans are slowly but surely taking advantage. Flight traffic is increasing. Last week, LAX, one of the country's busiest airports, logged a 2021 record. And businesses can't hire people fast enough to accommodate their needs.

    Though worries about COVID-19 exposure — particularly for children who cannot yet be vaccinated — persist. Yet as cases continue to fall, and vaccines are approved for younger and younger children, these, too, will subside.

    The doomsday scenario.                                      

    But there remains a possibility that experiences of the pandemic we haven't had since last fall come crashing back. Cases climb, hospitals fill up, and thousands more Americans die. And that's a resistant strain.

    We've now identified several variants of the virus that are more transmissible, and some more deadly, than the original garden-variety ("wild type") virus we experienced through most of 2020. Thankfully none of them have fully evaded our vaccine-mediated immunity. Yet.

    Every single unvaccinated person presents an evolutionary opportunity for the virus. And even as the U.S. and other high-income countries approach a virus-stifling level of vaccination, the rest of the world continues to lag. Some countries have yet to get their first vaccines. New variants with frightening capabilities continue to emerge in these countries. Indeed, last week a new variant with aspects of the Alpha variant and the Delta variant emerged in Vietnam. So even as vaccine manufacturers roll out boosters to protect against the growing plethora of new variants, a doomsday scenario, where a more transmissible, lethal variant evolves, becomes more likely.

    And so, we can't take for granted that this is a truly global pandemic. And until the rest of the world receives what they need to "end" this pandemic, we won't see our end either.

***

    Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a physician, epidemiologist, public health expert, and progressive activist who served as Detroit's health director and ran for governor in 2018. He is the author of Healing Politics: A Doctor's Journey Into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic and Medicare for All: A Citizen's Guide, as well as the newsletter The Incision. Get more at incision.substack.com.

[iheartginnyandgeorgia]

Inclusivity within “Ginny and Georgia” Part 2 of 3

Be wary of potential spoilers!

Also, trigger warning with self-harm and ED

Mental health was not addressed into mainstream media until recently and when it was finally addressed we got the toxic trash that 13 Reasons Why.

The different between my post and Ginny and Georgia is that my post contains a trigger warning. While there is only one or two scenes from the show that I can think of where Ginny deliberately self harms with a lighter. Main stream media should talk about mental health and topics such as self-harm, but I think the show could benefit from trigger-warnings as they play an important role with mental health and are used in order to not cause anyone unnecessary anxiety or rehashing of their trauma. 

Besides that really small but really big detail, I feel the show dealt with mental health better than any other show I’ve seen in awhile, especially when it comes to self-harm, depression, eating disorders, along with the stress and trauma of your home life via your parents divorcing. 

A secondary character that doesn’t get as big of a plot as others, though deserves more screen time in season 2, Abby, one of the girls a part of MANG. Every character in this show has their own nuances, Abby especially with her divorced parents and eating disorder. In episode 3, Next Level Rich People Sh*t, we see the first instances of Abby’s life at home with her divorcing parents, though viewers don’t officially know that yet, and her body dysmorphia/eating disorder. She’s laying on her bed texting MANG, then she gets up and in the background you can hear two adults fighting, she stares in the mirror and starts pulling at the skin on her thighs, she goes into her drawer and low and behold she pulls out a roll of duct tape to tape up her skin before putting her jeans on and heading out to the Sophomore Sleepover. Flash forward to the event and Max gives her shit for wearing jeans because it’ll ruin the Instagram picture, meanwhile she’s not even aware of the effect her words have on her friend. Then, in the same episode when Abby and her friends are off in a classroom getting wasted, Brody dares her to swap clothes with someone and she panics. 

*Don’t read further because I will be discussing self-harm*

Ginny has moved around almost the amount times for the years she has been alive. Her mom going through countless relationships in order to sustain her family and do what is best for her kids. Not to mention, Zion, Ginny’s dad is a travel writer and photographer, and so while he’s a good dad he’s not really in the picture, on top of racial discrimination. One can say she doesn’t have the best mental health due to all of this, so her way of coping is through burning herself. The first time viewers see this is in episode 5, Boo Bitch, when at the Halloween party Bracia makes a comment without really saying it about Ginny essentially not being “black enough.” Which we already know from throughout the season is a big struggle for her. Bracia, while not knowing the affect of her words, causes Ginny to be triggered so she goes to the bathroom to cry. When in there she sees a comment about her on Hunter’s YouTube video saying she was “This is the whitest black girl I’ve ever seen, she looks like she’s at a Jonas Brothers concert.” These two situations back to back trigger her anxiety and so she burns her wrist on a candle to calm down. Later in the season Marcus, the “bad boy” aka simply misunderstood teenager with depression, catches Ginny with a lighter about to burn herself. They later address it in episode 9, Feelings Are Hard, where we find out that she basically in one way or another says she has mental health issues and gets overwhelmed and has no way of healthily dealing with it. Everything simply feels like too much, and once she burns herself it’s like a release. 

We also find out in this same episode and same conversation why Marcus struggles with depression. Throughout the entire season everyone pins him as the angsty bad boy who’s also a player, when in actuality he is just coping with the loss of his friend who died the year prior. He gives Ginny and the viewers a run down of what it’s like to grieve for someone and how many people don’t realize others are struggling until it’s too late.

I think Marcus says it perfectly, “Can’t you see I need help?” I think everyone in one way or another needs help and someone to understand and listen, and he did exactly that for Ginny. When her mom was too busy killing one of her husbands and her dad too busy traveling, he leant her the empathy no one else had. Abby also brings this same concept up to when her friends abandon her while she’s struggling with her parents divorce. 

While Ginny and Georgia can be over the top sometimes and oversaturate’s the show with one too many cliches, it touches on mental health in a way that is almost universally relatable for everyone. 

[peachithings]

Safe Haven (m)

Pairing: Jaebeom x OC!Female

Genre: Smut, Fluff

Warning/s: contains unprotected sexual intercourse (stay safe bubs!), mentions of violence and profanities

A/N: This is the first time I am writing smut, please be kind to me huhu Also, this is my first writing that I have published hehe <3

-

Looking back, I have never thought that I would be that lucky girl that everyone would like to be.

Flashback

I  am  sitting  i n a crowded airport, reading The Catastrophic History of You and Me. It  is  the perfect book  that  resemble s  my broken heart.

Yes, my heart  is definitely  broken in half. I had just came out of a very destructive relationship. I was battered and was constantly getting abused  both non-verbal and  verbal. I thank the heavens for providing me the strength and courage to get out of that sick relationship.

I am now healing. I am slowly healing myself by traveling and focusing on myself and my goals in life. It is the best time of my life.

I smiled as I remembered that day. The day that I had met the man that accepted me for who I am with all the flaws and imperfections in me.

At that airport, I had met Jaebeom Lim.

I  am  sitting in one of the chairs in front of the terminal  and t here is only less an hour left before boarding. Suddenly, there was a group  of boys  that had just came and sit on the seats beside and in front of me. I did not bother to look at them, too busy and focused on my book.

“Hello, do you mind if I sit beside you?” A man asked.

He had his black hair  tied up in a man bun  and  a headband on and flashed his bright smile.

“No. I don’t have anyone with me anyway.” I replied and smiled back.

I instantly recognized them after. How would I not? They were the most popular boy group of the time. Their faces were in every  television  show  and in every social media out there was writing about them.

“Wow, how lucky am I to be just sitting beside the most popular boys of the generation.” I  thought  to myself.

As much as I wanted to interact with them, I kn o w that privacy is very important so I  did not  interfere with them after that little interaction with  Jaebeom .

After a while, i t was time to board the plane, so I gathered my things, brought out my boarding pass and stood up from  my  seat. In the corner of my eye, I saw them look at me. Maybe they were puzzled as to why I  am  not freaking out in front of them.

I went to board the plane, flying first class is checked out off of my bucket list.

Little did I know that they were also boarding the same plane as I am. How was I to know?

“Hey” He greeted and smiled. Oh boy,  his  smile made me melt to my knees. “I believe you were also the same person that was sitting beside me reading a book?”

“Uhm, hey!” I greeted back. “Yeah , I think so?” I replied.

“I’m  Jaebeom . And you are?”

“My name is  Illea ”

“Your name is just as beautiful as you.”

“You’re not too bad yourself,  Jaebeom . Nice to meet you.”

I smiled as I continued to adore my boyfriend while I reminisce that day.

“Hey, babe. What are you smiling about?” Jaebeom asked.

“Oh nothing, babe. I just remembered that day we met at the airport.” I replied and chuckled.

“Really? Did you know that day was the best day of my life?” He stated.

His statement made me blush. He made me happy and I always felt safe with him. He is my safe haven.

GOT7 is now starting their promotions with their comeback and they were all busy. I was also busy with work, I am their photographer after all.

Thinking back to the time that he was asking me why had I come to South Korea, I never knew that I was going to be working with them. The email had only said that they are offering me a job as a photographer to one of their talents. And they also mentioned that the job is inclusive of occasional travels with their talent.

“So,  Illea… W hat brings you to Korea?” He asked.

“I was offered work that I cannot refuse:  to  take photographs and to travel.” I replied.

I knew it was their company that hired me but  I  did not intend to tell him.

“Really? I  love taking photographs   on  a film camera. I have a passion for the arts.” He said and flashed his signature boxy smile again.

The flight  was  long and  it  consisted of a lot of conversations, meeting the rest of the members, food and sleeping. It was one of those experiences that are spontaneous but it was memorable.

Jaebeom and I shared a passion for the arts. Each city we have traveled to, we try to make time to visit the museums around the area. It was one of our ways to relax and unwind.

There are a lot of Ahgase speculating about our relationship but we wanted to keep it private first, so we still did not release any statements regarding the matters.

There were fans that was happy and there are also some that were upset. But to Jaebeom and I, all that mattered was we were happy together.

The members and the company were indeed happy for Jaebeom and I. They had never seen Jaebeom that happy and that inspired.

The promotions had ended for the day. We were all in the waiting room and they were having a V live.

They thanked their fans for their undying support and that they are all grateful for each and one of them.

“Ahgases, I have an announcement to make.” Jaebeom stated.

I froze at his words. Deep inside I was panicking and I am not able to calm down my nerves.

Jaebeom looked at me in the eyes as if telling me that it is now time. My heart raced, I was nervous.

“I want to address the matters regarding the speculations about my relationship with Illea. It is true. We are together and we are happy. But Ahgases’ love is still much better than hers.” He continued and laughed.

The people in the room and I laughed at his statement too.

-

Days had passed after Jaebeom’s announcement and Ahgases was very welcoming. They were also a part of GOT7’s family so they are mine too.

I showered them with the member’s behind the scenes photos and videos as well. I loved how Ahgases are so creative with editing and writing. They were such an inspiration to a photographer like me.

I would have to say that my favorite muse would always be our little Nora. Since Jaebeom and I do not always get to spend time with our little furbaby we make every precious with Nora memorable with photographs and a lot of videos to accompany each moment.

Each moment with Jaebeom was wonderful and in his arms is my safe haven.

One night during the tour. We had came back to the hotel after the concert.

I was in a deep sleep with  Jaebeom  beside me.

I was having a nightmare. A nightmare from the past.

My ex was slapping me  o n my face while saying, “you are worthless.” From slapping me in the face, he then kicked me in the head and said, “bitch.”

I was crying hysterically in my nightmare. I was begging for him to stop while crying. My body ached ;  I was in pain.

Outside of my nightmare,  Jaebeom  had woken up from my screams and my cries and when he had acknowledged that I was having a nightmare, he quickly tried to wake me up. Shaking me hard to get me out of my nightmare.

The members has heard the screams and hurried to  Jaebeom ’s room. When they came in the room, I was already awake and was full of sweat and crying. They were all worried about me so they stayed for a while.

After I had calmed down, I had assured them that I was now okay and that they should all get some rest now. I have also apologized to them for waking them up at this late hour.  And then, t hey all went back to their rooms.

I hugged  Jaebeom . “Thank you, babe.” I said.

“You know I’ll always save you, baby.” He replied.

“I’ll just take a quick shower, love. I reek of sweat.”

He nodded.

He noticed me by the bathroom door. I quickly climbed back to bed where he opened his arms for me and cuddled with me. “I’m sorry I had woken you up at this late hour.” I said before we drifted off to asleep and he just kissed and held me tighter in response.

I remembered the nightmares went away after that night. As cheesy as it may sound, he is my knight in shining armor. He accepted me and made me feel safe in his arms and company. He showed me that my past does not define who I am and who I will be.

-

Today we all have a day off.

Jaebeom brought me home and had slept over last night. Yes, we still lived separately. I live by myself and Jaebeom still lives with his cats. There will be times that I am the one that stays over in his apartment too.

I opened my eyes to this beautiful man beside me still asleep. I caressed his cheeks thinking, “how could I be this lucky.” I kissed his forehead before I went out of bed.

I was making breakfast only in my man’s shirt from last night when I saw a figure standing by the kitchen door.

“Hi, babe!” I greeted him with enthusiasm.

“You look amazing, babe.” He chimed. I turned to him and he flashed me that boxy smile that I so loved.

“What are you talking about, babe? I’m dressed in only your shirt, what’s amazing about that?” I chuckled.

“You definitely look fucking hot in my clothes.” He said. “Maybe I should just give you all of my shirts then?” He added and then laughed.

He walked towards me and hugged me from behind. He kissed my neck, nibbling on my sweet spots. “Jaebeom..” I moaned. I felt myself getting wet with his kisses.

“Beom, I’m cooking. If you keep on doing that we won’t have any breakfast.” I chuckled almost finished on cooking our breakfast.

Jaebeom tried to continue on his kisses right after I turned off the stove.

“Can’t keep your hands off of me, I see?” I questioned.

“How can I? You look so hot cooking only in my shirt.” He replied. “You got me real hard, babe.” He added while pressing his cock on my ass. I moaned at his hardened cock.

I turned around and kissed him. My arms roamed around his naked body. In between kisses he said, “You. Are. So. Fucking. Beautiful.” And he lifted me up the kitchen counter and his lips wandered down my neck sucking forming a hickey and then nibbling on it.

His lips wandered back to mine. He captured my bottom lip softly sucking it making me moan. His hands had started to wander down my ass squeezing it lightly then pulling away slowly from the kiss and said, “babe, let me make you feel good.” His voice was raspy and it made me even wetter.

“Fuck, Jaebeom” I moaned. His lips continued to wander down to my breasts.  He grabbed one of my breasts in his hand as he started to nibble on my nipple. I threw my head back in pleasure as his actions made me moan his name and I started to feel my wetness drip. He brushed a finger on my slit. “So wet for me, baby.”

He slowly went down, kissing my thighs. His hot breath on my folds made me whimper, moan his name again.

I gasped when his finger touched my clit, rubbing it agonizingly slow. “J-Jaebeom” I moaned.

His tongue licked my folds without a warning and made my moans even louder. You felt his lips formed a smile knowing you were enjoying his every move. Jaebeom flattened his tongue on my clit before flicking it a few times. Loud moans escaping from my mouth. He ate me out like I was his breakfast. The way he ate me out sent me on edge. His finger made its way to my clit and rubbed it. “I’m c-close, babe.” I moaned.

“C’mon baby, cum for me.” And with that single sentence, I cried out his name while I came on his tongue.

“I love eating your sweet cunt, babe.” Jaebeom groaned.

I jumped off the counter and returned him the favor. I slowly licked his shaft, swirling my tongue around his tip. “Oh fuck!” He moaned.

“Babe, please.” He begged.

I put his shaft in my mouth. Bobbing my head while still swirling my tongue around his thick long shaft. “You look s-so fucking g-good, baby” he said while looking deep in my eyes. “W-with my c-cock in your m-m-mouth.” He added and threw his head back in pleasure. I took his cock deeper in my throat and I knew he was close.

“Baby, I’m c-close.” He moaned. And with a few thrusts in my mouth, he shoot his load and I swallowed every bit of it greedily.

“Wow, baby. You look so sexy swallowing my cum.” He stated and kissed me.

His kiss became hungrier again. “You didn’t think I was done with you just yet right?” He said.

He lifted me back on the kitchen counter.He discarded the only piece of clothing I have: his shirt.

I opened my legs in front of him. He licked his lips at the sight of my cunt in front of him. I felt myself getting wet for him again. He pushed his cock in me.

“Baby, you’re so wet and tight.” He groaned. I moaned as I felt him fill me.

He waited for a while to let me adjust. He started to thrust in me at an agonizingly slow pace.

“J-Jaebeom, f-faster please.” I begged. He started to go faster, thrusting into me deeper and deeper. I felt myself beginning to get close. As his thrusts get deeper, he began hitting my g-spot repeatedly.

“J-Jaebeom, r-right there. Your c-cock feels s-so fucking good.” I moaned.

“Y-yeah? I love your tight cunt a-around me.” He replied.

“B-b-baby, I’m c-close.” I whimpered at his thrusts.

“C-cum around my cock b-baby.” With just a few more thrusts, I came around him while I cried out his name.

His thrusts became sloppier and I knew he was getting close, so I helped him by moving my hips to meet his. He was shookt with my action and it made him moan, “Lea.”

“Baby, I’m c-close. C-can I come inside?” He moaned again.

“Y-yes, babe. I-I’m gonna cum with you.”

And few more thrusts, we both came together.

“Ah, babe. That was amazing!” He chimed. I chuckled.

We ate our breakfast naked after and laughed. And then head off to shower. After, we decided to just lounge in my apartment and catch up on some series.

-

I was late on my period. I was nervous to tell Jaebeom and honestly I do not know why.

We have a scheduled travel going to Los Angeles in couple of days. I went to schedule an appointment with the doctor’s telling Jaebeom that it was just because I was not feeling well but assured him that I will be alright.

I went alone. The doctor had instructed to collect urine from a cup. After a few minutes, the doctor came back with the results.

“Miss Waldorf, Congratulations! You’re pregnant.”

I was so happy. I thanked the doctor and provided me precautionary measures since it is only the first trimester.

“Doc, I was wondering... I do have a scheduled travel overseas. Will I still be able to go?” I asked.

“Yes, you may still be able to go and travel for now.” The doctor replied.

Now that the doctor’s appointment is done, the only thing left to do was to tell Jaebeom.

I decided to text Jaebeom.

[to Jaebeom] — hey babe, where are you?

[from Jaebeom] — i’m at home with the guys babe, why?

— how was the trip to the doctor’s? are you alright?

[to Jaebeom] — yeah, i’m alright.

— i’ll be there in a few! love you!

[from Jaebeom] — okie. be careful babe. love you too.

-

“Babe!” I shouted.

“In the living room, babe!” Jaebeom replied.

I went to the living room and saw that all the boys were present.

“Hey, Lea.” The member said in unison.

“Alright, boys. I have something to tell.” I said.

They went silent and sat down almost immediately.

“So as you guys know, I went to the doctor’s because I was not feeling well.” I trailed off. They were dead silent and focused on me but they just nodded in response.

“The doctor said... that I do not having anything to worry about. And I am only pregnant.” I continued.

They were all saying their congratulations. And I looked at Jaebeom, his eyes were sparkling. I knew he was really happy.

“Babe, thank you for making me the happiest man in the world right now.” He said.

“But...” He continued. His emotion changed and his tone was more serious. I was so nervous with the change of his tone of voice.

“Right now please allow me to continuously make you happy and be my wife?” He added while going down on one knee and bringing out a box.

I was so shocked. I was crying happy tears. “Yes, babe! A thousand times, yes!” I replied.

Jaebeom got up and put the beautiful ring on my finger and kissed me.

“I love you, Illea Waldorf.”

“I love you too, Jaebeom Lim.”

The moment was captured. Little did I know the boys were also doing a vlive over just for this moment.

Jaebeom Lim was, is and will always be my safe haven.

-

A/N:  Thank you for reading! If you happen to like it, please support me by buying me some coffee! Also, if you would like to request or have some comments to share, please do not hesitate to send them here hihi

[gentlemanoftimetravel]

Mos miraculous prompt #3.5 (?)

Lila kept her promise. It took nearly a year till everyone in her class was against her. Every little lie piled up. Everyone hangs on her lips. No matter how hard Marinette tried to warn her friends, nobody listens to her. And on top of everything she gets accused of bullying. She! Who was herself a victim of bully and despised liars and bully’s.

Marinette couldn’t take it much longer. She asked her parents and Monsier Damocles for permission to switch classes. She got it. Starting Tomorrow she will attend Ms Mendeleiev’s class.

On Monday morning she stepped anxiously in her school building. Making her way down to her new class. As she rounded the corner she bumped into someone.

“Sorry. I’m so sorry. Is everything alright? Did I hurt you?” Marinette apologises. Looking up in solemn ice blue eyes. Stunned she stepped back.

“No. Everything’s fine. Next time look where you’re going.” With that the teen turned and entered her new classroom.

What just happened? Marinette shook her head. Maybe not her dream start, but better than anticipated. She also entered the room. A quick look revealed that she was the last one. The room vibrates with laugher and joy. The only free spot was in the last row next to that boy from before. She inhaled and then exhaled. Everything will be alright. Just be your usual self. Marinette stepped up and stopped at the desk.

“Hello. We met before. I didn’t introduce myself properly, I’m Marinette. I switched classes, I was in Ms Bustiers class before. Is that seat next to you still free?”

The boy glanced up from his book. He looks at her quizzically. “We ... met?” His head tilted. “Oh yes. That incident in front of the door. I remember. And yes that seat is still available, feel free to sit there but don’t expect to much from me. I’m Felix by the way.” With that he faced his book again. Marinette simply shrugged. She placed her Backpack at the side and slipped into the seat. Her gaze wanders across the room. There at the front were Aurore and Mireille. Two rows behind them Wayhem was seated. Except these three she didn’t know anyone. Maybe they didn’t know about her either. That would be great.

Ms Mendeleiev came in and started her class. Her gaze wanders across the classroom till she spotted Marinette. “Folks, from today on we have a new companion. Please welcome Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Questions later, now we start our lessons. Get your books up and turn to page 146. We ...”

As Ms Mendeleiev started her classes Marinette’s thoughts trailed of. As her teacher introduced her, some of her classmates looked curios at her but most of them seemed composed. Aurore looked like she wanted to talk to her the very instant, but that’s not surprising given that they knew each other already. Maybe now her days will be better.

At lunch time Aurore took Marinette out to eat something. “You’re now in my class! I can’t believe it! We haven’t been in the same class since 5th grade! Oh that will be really awesome. But why did you change classes in the first place? Only if you don’t mind telling me.”

Marinette smiled shyly. “I don’t mind telling you. But I don’t know if you will believe me. But let’s begin from the start. My school year started like every year. Trouble with Chloé and bullying from her part, nothing new there, but this year two new students attended our class. Adrien is friends with Chloé and at thirst there were a big misunderstanding but that has cleared up. Then there were Alya. She quickly became my best friend. Everything seemed to be better. Our class started to grow bigger together, friendships build and Chloé stands back more often. But two months ago there were once again a new student. A girl from Italy. A girl with story’s as false as her Akzent. She said, for example, she saved Jagged Stones Cat, which I know can’t be true. I know Jagged personally and I can verify that he never had cats because he’s allergic to them! But as I tried to warn my classmates they didn’t believe me. One lie lead to another lie and soon everyone hangs on her lips and believing her. Now Adrien has his appearance once again. He also knows about Lila’s lies and assured me that he’s on my side. I thought now’s the time that we out Lila, that we release our friends from her grip. But I was wrong. He just wanted to take the high road, he was worried that she will get akumatized if we out her. So I was all alone again. I tried again to warn Alya about the lies, about Lila holding their hopes up, but Alya simply said I was jealous of Lila being so close to Adrien. And then Lila cornered me in the bathroom and threatened me. She said if I don’t back up she will turn the whole class against me. Up to this time I still believed Adrien is on my side. I was never as wrong as to this time. It didn’t take long for Lila to accuse me bullying her. Evidently I threatened her, I pushed her down stairs, I tore her things apart, I stole her ideas, should I continue? The whole class accused me of bullying her and turned their back on me. Even if at least half the class knew how I stand to bully’s and liars. I fighted of two almost akumatizations. And when I could not stand it anymore I begged for changing classes. Here am I now.”

Aurore gapped at her, her jaw dropped to her chest. Her mouth closing and opening repeatedly. Marinette looked worriedly. “Aurore? Everything’s alright? Can I do something for you? Do you have any questions?”

“I have one!” A voice said behind them. Marinette jumped up in surprise. Her heartbeat growing rapidly. A hand over her heart she turned around. “What the ... Felix?” She stared at him in surprise. “Did you eavesdrop?” He raises an eyebrow. “No. I simply overheard. I was heading to that bench over there to eat my lunch. But back to my question, why didn’t you bring Jagged to your class and let him verify that story. Wouldn’t that be the best solution?”

“I am not Chloé. I didn’t take advantage of my connections. Furthermore a couple of classmates knew me since Kindergarten and they should know me well enough. But maybe I guessed wrong.” She shrugged.

“ Hmmmm. Very interesting. Count me in.”

“For what?” A curios look appeared on Marinette’s face.

“For exposing that liar of course. Technically I didn’t want to be involved in my classmates stuff but that sounds intriguing. So count me in!”

Now it’s Marinette’s turn to gap at Felix. Meanwhile Aurore awakens from her rigidity.

“Yes! Hell Yes! I’m in too. The more the better! After school we met at Marinette’s, I will drag the Quantics with me! Their genies at tricks and planning!”

Marinette tilted her head. “Why not Mireille or Wayhem? And who are the Quantics?”

Aurore waves off. “Mireille is to nice and not really reliable. And Wayhem’s a fan of Adrien. He will go to Adrien and asks him on his opinion and if he’s like you say, Adrien will try to sabotage us. Nope that will not happen under my watch. The Quantics are Allegra, Allen and Claude. They sit next to you on the other side. Allegra and Allen together and Claude before them with Wayhem.”

“If their willing to help and belief me, i guess it’s a deal then.” She shrugged. “But do you really think that will work out?”

Both Felix and Aurore nod. “Definitely!” They said in unison.

~~

After school Marinette and her five classmates makes themselves comfortable at Marinette’s Bedroom. They brainstormed over Cookies and Tee. Marinette narrates her story again from the beginning to the end. A lot of ideas came up, many were discarded again. They agreed on a few terms. They will spy on Lila and they will list all her lies that they witnessed. Nobody talks about their agreements to other people. They will meet twice a week at Marinette’s to compare their lie lists. Additional friendship inclusive.

After two months they have enough evidence to let the lie bubble plop. Now they only need a stage. Lucky for them Jaggeds next concert will be on Tuesday in a week. And luckily Marinette knew him personally.

They talked to Jagged and Penny about everything and they both agreed to help Marinette. Now they need to get their plan rolling. At first the school get tickets for that concert. They make sure that Ms Bustier’s class gets VIP-Tickets, after all Lila had saved Jaggeds Cat and she could easily make that happen. Their little interview film was already finished and ready to be published as a little extra for the concert.

Tuesday started with a surprise. The school decided to give their students the day off as to prepare for the concert that evening. More time to make everything perfect. Marinette and her Friends were already backstage and awaits the events. Jagged starts his concert, he sings a few songs and then he request a special guest. Lila of course. And to honour her again he have a little surprise for her. A video.

Lila’s smile looked forced, she didn’t exactly know why she is now on stage and technically she don’t want that but her classmates forced her to go on stage.

The lights dimmed and the video starts to play. At first Jagged, then Nadja, Prince Ali, Clara and so on. Everyone on that video was questioned about Lila. About her claims and lies. And everything what Lila build herself up was shattered to the ground. She looked outright horrified. Jagged holds her so she can not run away. The video finished and the lights go back on.

Marinette stepped to her side and with a smug grin she whispered the same sentence in Lila’s ears that she got to hear back in the bathroom.

“I came here to laugh at you.”

————

Hey @miraculous-of-salt I got finally another prompt ready. :)

I hope everyone enjoyed that little journey.

Till the next prompt!

[itsbuckysworld]

Summer Writing Challenge 2019!

Here it is! As talked about a while back, before I did the spring writing event, I had talked about doing another challenge, just because, and thought of waiting for the summer for it so it had some sort of theme or rhyme or reason. 

Banner made by myself :) ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ˢᵗᵉᵃˡ ᵐʸ ᵇᵃⁿⁿᵉʳˢ ᵒʳ ᵈᶦᵛᶦᵈᵉʳˢ

SOME RULES :)

You don’t have to follow me, but it’d be nice (im like 50 away from 4K? how??????) also reblog this for exposure?

you can use any and all MCU characters. (x reader pairings and ships allowed :) ) - No real people fics

smut is welcome, no underage smut, no incest - only platonic sibling ships.

deadline is the end of summer: Sept. 23rd :) but you can have as much time as you need. 

only one person per prompt, one prompt per person. If you’re making a moodboard and not writing then someone else can take the prompt to write about it. 

au’s, tfln’s, series, one shots, drabbles, all is welcome. min 300 words. use the read more feature if you go over 500. 

send me an ask with the prompt you want and the blog that you will be writing from, also let me know if you’re making a moodboard or writing.

you do not have to center these around summer. go off. 

tag it with #ibwradsummer19 and tag me @itsbuckysworld​ in your piece! send me a DM if it’s been 24hrs and i haven’t given you a like or reblog on your piece.

Prompts under the cut, 30 total, i’ll add more if needed! the prompts are as inclusive/gender vague as i could think of so, go off honey, HAPPY PRIDE *waves rainbow flag*

SONG PROMTS can use as inspiration, or quote the lyrics directly, even use the music videos as inspo (if available). 

Summer Lovin’ - The Tuesday Crew > @kingofthelosers

Carolina - Harry Styles  > @sunmoonandbucky​

I Don’t Want It At All - Kim Petras

Don’t Stop - Blanks > @trashybutnottootrashy

Feeling Lonely - boy pablo

break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored - Ariana Grande.  > @supernaturallymarvellous

Never Really Over - Katy Perry  > @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan

girls girls boys - panic!at the disco

AU’S

Biker AU  >@sgtbxckybxrnes

Roadtrip AU  >@with-valkyrie

Enchanted Forest AU  >@all1e23

Lifeguard AU  >@theassetsass

Diner AU  >@soldatjbb

Teacher AU  > @ruckystarnes

Rock/Pop/Punk Band AU  > @bitchassbucky

Hero and Villain AU  >  @daenyara

SCENARIOS/DIALOGUE

i always come down to this lake on summer’s and thought that cabin was empty, turns out you’re there now cause you inherited it.  >  @lclflwrgrl

we’re the only ones reading at this beach party and it’s the same book.   >  @aryastarss

sure stranger, I’ll help you find your bikini top/swim trunks >  > @blackirisposts

sure random stranger, I’ll help you cross that thing off your bucket list.   > @friday-ocean

popular person at school/uni shows up at the beach with a ton of floaties “i just want to learn how to swim/get over my fear of water, you never saw me here”  > @buckychrist

a weekend in a log cabin sounds great, if person A and B weren’t basically enemies. > @jewelswrites-ish

i’m a camp counselor and you’re a mermaid that lives in the lake, please stop scaring the kids - > @ironmandeficiency | @gamorazenn will make a moodboard

“Our cabins are paired up for all the activities and people keep asking if we’re dating - wait did you just say yes???” au  > @mattaretto

thinking that your crush can’t see you stare at them through your sunglasses but they can... and they like it.  > @marvellingdaydreams

we chatted a bit in the line to the bathroom and you dropped your wallet, and now i missed one of my fave songs at this concert/festival trying to find you to give you back your wallet.  > @melitadala will write |  @ramblerumble will make a moodboard

“whose idea was it to build this makeshift waterslide?!”  > @throwmyheartawayagain

A: “who drank my last *insert cool beverage*?!” B:“hey so, like remember you love me? and we’re married?” > @the-goddess-of-mischief 

“it’s summer, I can have two boy/girlfriends if i want to” - > @writeyourmindaway

A: *entering a room* “I love summer! summer is the best” / B:*entering right behind them* “I fucking hate summer” / C: “how are you two married again?”  > @marvel-lously

“are you trying to... seduce me?” “yes...” “ok, keep going”   >@delicatelyherdreams

A: we could go camping! ---later---> A: whose idea was it to go camping this is a disaster! > @fortheloveofjbbarnes

looking at your two friends after a beach day “would you look at that, if it’s not two sunburnt dummies, if only someone had reminded you of sunblock- oh wait!” > @the-unspoken-rule

we’re paired to seat together at a rollercoaster and you see me freak out but you don’t laugh, try to calm me down and hold my hand.  > @taxonomyisracism

almost knocked you out with a golf ball at the course, i’m so bad, please teach me? > @rumpelstilskenxoxo

one last friends trip and hurrah before we all split up to different colleges.  >  @avintagekiss24

A: “Please, give me some time to think about it” B: “i’ve given you time, more time than i should. What i need is an answer, please” > @sleep-i-ness

A: *talking really slowly* “I need to use the bathroom” B: “I know english, i was just pretending to see how far this would go”  > @is-it-really-a-secret

“I’m not a good dancer” “no one said you had to be good, just dance with me”   > @captainamericasbeard

Person A having to baby/pet-sit and calling person B for help every 10 minutes so they just come over and help and wow, it’s a mess. 

“what can i say, i have a weakness for people that can lift me over their heads”  > @buckyownsmyheart

more will be added if needed. have fun and don’t forget the rules :)

[thecolorfullest]

Introduction

A Compilation of 100 Favorite Songs By Rayna Hugo

These songs are either hits for a reason, or they hit for a reason:

As a compilation of Rayna’s top 100, the music within this playlist are pieces of art that accomplish different successes amongst 

complex lyricism/ poetry

harmonic and supporting vocals

danceable drama

Add theatrics (landing on the spectrum of making a place more beautiful or transporting you somewhere that actually is) 

Each piece has re-listenability, meaning over the time spent after my discovery of them, I have watched myself share these experiences with those that have inspired me to my core. Because of this fact, many songs will appear familiar in relation to how long I have known you, how much time I spent with you, and the consideration that some tunes might not even exist in this playlist if it weren’t for our paths crossing. On the other end, some songs are uniquely mine and CLAIMED. My criteria for a song’s inclusion answered “no” to the questions: 1.) Does anybody love this song more than me? (no)

2.) Will the people I share this with disagree of its greatness even if someone argues yes for question one? (no)

Thus, constructed this idea of 100. Often the top 100 implies a quantitative popularity, but this is not the case here. If these were the only songs I were limited to experience for the rest of my life, there are many versions and subdivisions of this collection that could establish a common thread of construction, genre, and themes, while maintaining individual integrity. In other words, I could learn from them infinitely. The process of this was quite difficult! It required me to strip down sonic aesthetics to origin stories- maybe I like this song because I loved this song. Which is better? A new age development or a song before that mastered it better? Truthfully, the underrepresentation of more contemporary influences contribute to a legacy i haven’t made my mind up on yet. My music taste isn’t limited to this playlist of course. You will notice that in other playlists I have made. If I had considered the people who might view this playlist, maybe It would be different, but i believe this playlist performs objectively as “very Rayna”. It was important for me to have songs that did not just sound good, but were great. The songs needed to be life-changing rather than just enjoyable or easy to listen to.

Why this song after that song? :

The order of these songs is INTENTIONAL. I will elaborate on this in a separate note that will suggest trivia, notable moments, honorable mentions, and reason for inclusion for EACH song as an extra resource if any of the songs puzzle or intrigue you.

A note for my friends and family:

I want to thank you for being a part of my life. Be it a speedy car ride no matter the weather, a slow one cruising through neighborhoods with smoke slipping through the cracks of a window, a park bench and a small iPhone speaker, one ear phone shared intimately in a public space, a steamy kitchen with someone’s mom whipping up something good, a dorm room jam session, an epic live concert, a birthday party, an airplane flight, an all-nighter work flow, a night’s sleep, or the sound echoing out of my bathroom shower, music is for all of us. I believe it is the most profound social experience we can have. It unites strangers, teaches us things, and puts our emotions into existence in order for us to move forward. Music accomplishes the same things you accomplish for me. By keeping me moving. Maybe some songs sound skippable to you, but I encourage you to give them a chance. They are there for a reason!

[radicalrosesrevolt]

Milwaukee Pride is a Fucking Disgrace to Stonewall and Here's Why:

Milwaukee Pride is a fucking disgrace to what Pride is all about and where it fucking started. There are too many reasons that I can name off,  but I will just name a few of the pressing issues of this festival we call "Pride".

makegayhistory.org, Sylvia Rivera with banner.

milwaukeepride.org, Pride Fest 2019.

Milwaukee Pride is a celebration of overpriced fried food dipped in rainbow capitalism and drenched in the tragedies and issues of young queer and trans people (ESPECIALLY TQPOC) being swept under the rug.  

I'm writing this article because I am fucking tired of Milwaukee Pride being a

cis white passively racist gay man's fantasy.

I'm writing this because I'm tired of the fact that there's less than a crumb of an attempt at a safe all-gender inclusive bathroom and that I have to see TGNC people lined up at the only single stall bathroom by the youth area with looks of discomfort and disappointment. Which leads me to my first issue:

1. No real gender-neutral / all gender inclusive bathrooms, No fucks given about what trans people have to say!

There are various reviews and comments on Milwaukee Pride / Summerfest’s social media pages addressing their inability to make an actual attempt at creating safe bathroom experience that have been ignored or deleted..  “Um, what the hell do you mean? There’s huge signs saying you can use WHATEVER bathroom you want! You should be grateful!” you might say. There’s still multiple “MEN’S” and “WOMEN’S” signs that are visible around these bathrooms; we aren’t actually creating a gender inclusive bathroom experience if cis men and women are basically still going to their designated gendered bathrooms. This is an issue because it causes trans people to stand out and continue to be targeted.

I speak from experience when I came out as trans last year and was more “androgynous” looking and decided to use the “gender neutral” men’s bathroom. One man commented on how my breasts looked nice and another man came out of a stall and made eye contact with me. Then, he came over and shouted,  “Y’KNOW, WHY NOT HAVE GIRLS IN THE MEN’S BATHROOM?!” while throwing his arm around me and chuckling while I stood there uncomfortable and feeling unsafe.  Milwaukee Pride needs to do better for trans people because we literally wouldn’t have pride if it wasn’t for black and brown trans womxn.

2. Pride was a RIOT. The Police were MURDERING US AND BEATING US: WHY TF ARE COPS AT MKE PRIDE?   

I reached out to trans and queer people on social media asking what their experiences were at Milwaukee Pride and how safe they felt. Almost instantly, the response was about how bigots in Blue Lives Matters shirts and religious zealots violently screamed at black and brown QT people to repent for their existence during the Pride parade. Another QT Indigenous POC reported violent transphobia at a block party that happened after the pride parade. In all these violent accounts of racist, pro-police bullshit, the police of course stood by and did nothing. This is nothing new. We all know the cops don’t protect anyone and just enforce violence and mass genocide of black and brown people, so why the fuck are they at Pride? Have we really fucking forgotten the origin of all of this? Having cops at pride events erases what our trancestors and trans elders fought for in the first place.  

3.  Rainbow capitalism, alcohol and anti-lgbtq+ vendors: Stop profiting off of our queerness!  

If having the same white DJs playing shitty EDM and 1 Cardi B song, despite her being transphobic, while a drunk man is grinding on your back without consent is not annoying enough for you - let’s dive a little deeper into MKE Pride’s non-sober space issue! Honestly, I don’t even know where the fuck to start because it’s such a fucking mess.  “LADIEEEES!” vendors left and right cat-call at me and my black trans/nonbinary friends and continue to misgender us and meet us with disrespectful glares when I snap back saying we’re not girls. Bitch, do you even know where you are??

  Milwaukee Pride forces already poor and working class LGBTQ+ people of color to pay an outrageous price of $18 just for corporations and vendors to cat-call and misgender young trans people because all they care about is getting a dollar in their pocket. Miller Lite doesn’t give a fuck about us not having sober spaces. The lack of sober spaces for young QTPOC alone in Milwaukee is alarming and dangerous. Isolation and depression is more common among QTPOC (ages 18-24) in this city than you think. Isolation and depression are main factors that lead to alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide.

Young LGBTQ+ community members already face so much isolation, hate, and violence, and being outcasted left and right. They don’t have spaces to be themselves and for a lot of young people, their first time at Pride is something sacred. It’s a space that’s decorated in what seems like an invitation to be yourself and be safe doing so when it’s not. This reflects on both Milwaukee Pride being a dangerous non-sober place and the fact that Milwaukee is such a terrible place for young LGBTQ+ people, especially young black and brown lgbtq+ people.

When I went to go see Kim Petras at Milwaukee Pride this year, there was a couple wrapped in a trans flag holding each other behind me, and next to me was my partner. Even though I was being approached by white people all day asking me racist questions like if I knew how to “ninja stuff,” and asking me if the plastic sword I was carrying was a “katana,” I felt relief. I thought, finally, I can dance and have a good time and see an amazing live trans pop artist up close! It wasn’t even mid-concert when a tall drunk man shoved his way through the young LGBTQ+ people around him to get to the front. He was behind me, yelling, and began pushing his crotch against my back. Trying to not make a scene, I kept trying to move forward with the little space I had. Maybe he just balance issues, I thought. He brought his hand up to my side and started to touch me under my muscle tank before I jerked away and yelled at him to stop touching me.

I’m fucking tired. This is the 2nd year I’ve been sexually harassed and inappropriately touched at Pride. Why do I always have to be in fear of my trans body being violated, whether it’d be verbally or physically, at pride? 

I wrote this not to shame Milwaukee Pride go-ers. I went this year. But, there needs to be change. There needs to be a call-to-action. Stonewall is an important part of our history and to capitalize off of a riot where police were beating our trans elders who demanded our rights, just to have marginalized identities get harassed and abused at Pride is a disgrace to what Pride is. Stonewall is still now. Stonewall is legacy that can not die. I’m urging this city within and outside of the LGBTQ+ community to reflect on what Pride is all about. I have never left Milwaukee Pride filled with so much shame. Many of us have walked away from Milwaukee Pride traumatized and violated.

I was surrounded by the smell of alcohol and drugs, in a fever dream of EDM feeling the weight of Stonewall’s history in my heart, thinking of how disappointed and disgusted Sylvia and Marsha would be, and the lives of so many black trans womxn that we lost. Milwaukee Pride is a fucking disgrace to the Stonewall Riots and contradicts everything the Stonewall trans activists stood for. You cannot run from our history. You can not deny our history. We Will Rise.

“This Queer Liberation movement is not over. It  never ended. Stonewall is NOW.” - Still Here: Trans Alliance for Trans Rights.

[wineanddinosaur]

How NYC Bartenders Are Building Pandemic-Proof Businesses

The days of sidling up to a bar in New York may feel like distant memories. But bartenders and business owners are fighting to bring them back by building imaginative solutions for the beverages, and the hospitality, that have been in such deficit over the past 11 months.

Some of these intrepid ideas involve new ventures and virtual bar experiences, while others pivot from traditional bar service entirely. One upstart is resurrecting an ancient technique to sell shelf-stable libations to-go. Another sees safety — in the form of rapid tests for Covid-19 at the venue entrance — as the new luxury.

In every story told here, there is resilience and a reimagined future. Here’s how a handful of NYC’s bar owners, workers, and newly minted entrepreneurs are attempting to survive and succeed in this pandemic.

Speakeasies Out on the Street

When Raines Law Room opened in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, it was the perfect example of the speakeasy style that many cocktail bars were emulating in 2009 — unmarked, hard-to-find door, tin ceiling, the works. With no standing room allowed, it was not easy to get in, which was the icing on the exclusive, hidden bar cake. These are not the sorts of places that thrive with indoor seating restrictions.

“Something that’s unique to all these frontline industries — and I hate to put us in the same category as health care, but we’re also some of the most affected — it’s like, ‘Come up with genius ideas while you’re kind of broke and uninsured!’” Meaghan Dorman, bar director of both Raines Law Room and Dear Irving, says. But bar people are immensely resilient, so Dorman opened up the bar’s intimate backyard and worked to obtain a bike lane permit in order to seat even more guests out front, in plain sight.

Though Dorman never thought she’d see a concept like Raines Law Room with a patio, it’s an increasingly common phenomenon in the streets of NYC. Even Attaboy, another infamous and elusive bar of New York, is now serving cocktails right out in the open on Eldridge Street.

“We’ve just really had to rethink how we can translate our philosophy into the only business we’re allowed to do right now,” Dorman says. For all of her bars, this entails not only in-person service, but a focus on to-go cocktails and virtual class offerings as well.

Paying for Safety is the New Luxury

In order to enter City Winery’s flagship location at Pier 57 in Hudson River Park on the West Side of Manhattan, both guests and employees alike are required to take a rapid Covid-19 test.* On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, patrons are responsible for the cost of a $50 test — a fee whose full amount goes directly to the testing company — and can spend their 15-minute wait for the results sipping on complimentary bubbles. Those who test positive for Covid-19 are sent home after being offered a follow-up PCR test with 24-hour turnaround, but they are not permitted inside. A negative result is rewarded with entrance to the restaurant, where all other safety protocols, such as social distancing and mask-wearing, are still enforced.

Michael Dorf, founder and CEO of City Winery, believes that offering tests at the door is “not just a scientific and social responsibility to keep people safe,” but an example of an expanding definition of hospitality. By ensuring that everybody inside what he refers to as “the bubble” has acquired a negative test result, City Winery is able to add another layer of comfort to the hospitality his restaurant venue provides. “And at some point in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to start to see [the need] to check people’s certificate of vaccination,” he says imaginatively.

Dorf believes there are “a lot of psychological considerations” to take into account to make guests feel as safe as possible, “and that’s our job,” he says. “Just like providing good bathrooms, we need to provide a good, comfortable situation for consumption. If people don’t feel safe, then they’re not going to come.”

Since City Winery is usually also a live-music venue, Dorf foresees thorough safety measures carried over for concerts when gathering restrictions are lessened. Until City Winery can host shows with an all-inclusive, test-and-ticket price for revelers, it is offering virtual concerts through its CWTV exclusive streaming series. Dorf says he is open to using it as an incremental offering for audiences who are unable to attend live because of logistics, “but we don’t see that at all in any way as a substitute.” As with its virtual wine tastings, he sees this more as a temporary bridge to connect people in a very solitary time, but also feels pushback on virtual gathering “because there’s so much of it,” he says. “And what we do really well, which doesn’t work in a Covid world … is bring people together.”

The Rise of the Salon

“My apartment, a brownstone with a large parlor, fireplace, and view of the Chrysler Building was my metropolitan dream. I was gutted at the thought of having to leave it,” recalls Georgette Moger-Petraske, a freelance food and drinks travel writer who lost her work last March. When her roommate moved out around the same time, keeping the apartment didn’t seem likely. Then she stumbled upon an 1860s perfume counter from Louisiana in an antique store during a day trip upstate. “I fell hard at first sight,” Moger-Petraske says of the beautiful bar-like structure. “Taking into consideration how much everyone was really missing bars and restaurants and attempting being home bartenders, I hatched a plan.”

The plan was to teach the fundamentals of classic cocktails like the simple yet elegant ones served at the storied speakeasy Milk & Honey, which was arguably the first of its kind in New York City to gain rabid popularity in the early aughts. Late owner Sasha Petraske and Moger-Petraske’s book, “Regarding Cocktails,” is filled with recipes for the at-home bartender and a fitting touchstone for any class. And so, with a little help from a PPP loan and a friend on the North Fork of Long Island with the Yennecott oyster farm, “Regarding Oysters” was born.

Moger-Petraske’s unique salon brings small groups into a Covid-safe learning space. During a two-hour session, guests are welcomed into her Murray Hill apartment with hand sanitizer and temperature checks before being treated to a class in cocktail-making and oyster-shucking at the little antique bar that had caught her eye so many months ago. “The salons are very intimate and there’s always a celebratory feeling in the air,” Moger-Petraske says of her small, reservations-only classes that will gather in honor of birthdays, engagements, and date nights.

Between the roaring fire, crystal clear Hundredweight ice cubes, and vintage barware that she has collected over the years, Moger-Petraske is able to present the feel of a curated bar to her students. The essence of hospitality is palpable. “Our favorite NYC dining rooms and bars put just as much consideration and passion into their establishments,” she says. “From the fold of a napkin to the charm of a miniature salt boat, the clarity of the cube chilling your Penicillin, to the delicate Depression-era coupe your Water Lily is served in. It’s my hope that in the absence of our beloved bars that my guests feel inspired to create some of this magic in their own homes.”

Your Friendly Neighborhood Grocer

St. John Frizell, owner of Fort Defiance in Red Hook, Brooklyn, tried to make his restaurant function as a delivery and takeout business for a short while back when nobody knew how long the shutdowns would last. Since sending out quality meals in to-go boxes is no simple feat and can require menu changes and more, “it was a question of how much investment,” says Frizell.

“Is this the best way to invest the money that I have left? And I decided it was not, so we closed the restaurant in late March,” Frizell explains. Not long after, he reached out to family-owned organic farm co-op Lancaster Farm Fresh to see about obtaining some of its CSA boxes. He found that enough people in town were interested in claiming one of their own to set up an online store on Fort Defiance’s website. Getting a box of beautiful vegetables through contactless pickup outside the closed restaurant was a popular notion in a time when nobody knew how Covid was transmitted and the supermarket was to be avoided. Business grew and soon people began asking for other items. “And I wanted other things too, like, cheese and milk, and eggs, and bread, and just started to build from there,” Frizell says.

It was decided then that the change for Fort Defiance was going to have to be permanent, not just a temporary closure until things got back to normal for restaurants. “That was an important decision because you can’t really ride two horses at the same time,” says Frizell. “You have to make a decision and just go for it with your whole heart.” The new iteration of Fort Defiance as a general store has since gotten into the mail-order and holiday catering business as he and his steadfast team roll with the punches of what their neighbors in Red Hook might need.

“I don’t want this to come off as corny, but [what] we went through, you have to ask, ‘How can I help?’ Like, ‘How can I be of service here?’” Much like when Hurricane Sandy flooded Fort Defiance and most of the neighborhood in 2012, “we were all kind of in the same boat as we are now. We all had problems, but we were all very ready to help each other at the same time,” Frizell recalls of his community.

As another way to reach out, he started a newsletter called The Fort Defiance Gazette with announcements of new items in the store, promotions, and more. “It’s also filled with the same kind of bullshit I would talk to people about across the bar. They’re still getting the content from me, whether they like it or not,” Frizell laughs. “But it’s another way to connect, and then people email me back all the time. So there’s this dialogue happening, it’s just happening in a different space.”

Room-Temp and Ready To-Go

“Our business really came about as we were watching our industry fall apart around us and feeling really sad and helpless about that,” says Blake Walker, co-founder of drinks delivery service Day and Night Cocktails. He and fellow Amor y Amargo alum Sean Johnson mitigated grief with conversations about possibilities for projects, contemplating styles of cocktail to best suit a pandemic hellscape. They settled on the “Scaffa” — a room-temperature and undiluted mixture of spirits found in Jerry Thomas’s 1860s “The Bartender’s Guide.” Recently appearing on menus at bars like Amor y Amargo and the late Pegu Club, the Scaffa also boasts the at-home allure of being shelf-stable, so it won’t take up space in the refrigerator.

Unlike many to-go models that can arrive alongside complicated instructions, Day and Night’s drinks are poured from their bottles without fuss. “What you get is exactly the way we would serve it to you if you were sitting across the bar from us,” Walker explains. Each menu features a fresh, bright “Day��� cocktail alongside a deeper, richer “Night” mixture. For those not sold on the warm drink concept, think of cold as a flavor inhibitor and know that the professionals have layered some very indulgent ones in there.

Refreshingly, Day and Night isn’t only about the drinks — like bartending, it’s about taking care of people. “We decided right off the bat that we’d do a donation for each sale to an organization called Bushwick Ayuda Mutua, which is a mutual aid organization in Bushwick that I was volunteering for,” says Walker. After the murder of George Floyd, all profits for the month of June went to the Movement for Black Lives. Because of the smaller scale of the venture, Walker is also able to have an encounter with every customer. “I don’t take that for granted at all,” he says. “Having that personal interaction [is] the closest that I can get to the across-the-bar experience that I’ve missed so much about my job as it was a year ago.”

By the time Walker and Johnson’s workplace reopened to tackle outdoor dining, they already had their own regulars at what was becoming more than just a side hustle. “It made us turn towards Day and Night as a potential alternative because, at least for us, the experience of going back to work was not pleasant.” Less money for more effort with the added bonus risk of catching a deadly virus is a hard sell.

Instead, Walker started working full time on Day and Night Cocktails in December, quickly finding a way to make it a fully legal enterprise. He can now pursue an LLC and, with that, the potential of permanence. “We also are open to the possibility that this is meant to be a to-go concept,” Walker says. “It’s impossible to know exactly what drinking culture is going to look like on the other end of this, and I think that there may be some kind of a liminal time where both the to-go and physical bar spaces coexist.”

The Future

Are all of these innovations and modifications to the classic bar experience worth it if they don’t somehow improve the way hospitality workers are treated or protected?

For Day and Night Cocktails, the commitment to supporting good causes extends to its own hurting community. “Something that remains incredibly important to us is that whatever our participation is with this industry, on the other side of Covid, we just want to make sure that we’re working towards an industry that takes care of its own better,” Walker says. “We want to be a part of that rebuilding process.”

The real pain of newly vacant real estate where beloved bars once were is hard to ignore and important to acknowledge. There will be more empty storefronts as time trundles on, with plenty of talent waiting in the wings to fill them with new concepts. “It’s going to be a really opportunistic time,” Walker observes. Hopefully, the entrepreneurs jumping at these opportunities will have more than just profit in mind.

“Our guests need to understand that we’re not expendable and disposable, and our government needs to know that, too,” says Walker. “We need to remind each other all the time that our work is important and valuable and we shouldn’t be [a] disposable commodity that’s part of this gajillion-dollar industry. We have to do a little bit better [of a] job taking care of each other.”

As creative as bartenders are getting with side gigs and business-wide pivots, many want to get back to the bar as much as patrons do. “It’s all just so antithetical to what we love to do that I just can’t wait to serve someone at the bar again,” Dorman says longingly.

Despite everything, I do detect enthusiasm when speaking with these hospitality professionals about what the future holds for bars. I want to believe that fantastic transformations lie ahead, because perhaps it’s not a return to “normal” that we should crave, but a hope for an evolution. Dorman gets it right when she says, “It feels like the music has definitely changed at our party or something.” Here’s hoping for a better playlist on the horizon.

*At the time of publishing, City Winery is temporarily closed.

The article How NYC Bartenders Are Building Pandemic-Proof Businesses appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/post-covid-bars-nyc/

[johnboothus]

How NYC Bartenders Are Building Pandemic-Proof Businesses

The days of sidling up to a bar in New York may feel like distant memories. But bartenders and business owners are fighting to bring them back by building imaginative solutions for the beverages, and the hospitality, that have been in such deficit over the past 11 months.

Some of these intrepid ideas involve new ventures and virtual bar experiences, while others pivot from traditional bar service entirely. One upstart is resurrecting an ancient technique to sell shelf-stable libations to-go. Another sees safety — in the form of rapid tests for Covid-19 at the venue entrance — as the new luxury.

In every story told here, there is resilience and a reimagined future. Here’s how a handful of NYC’s bar owners, workers, and newly minted entrepreneurs are attempting to survive and succeed in this pandemic.

Speakeasies Out on the Street

When Raines Law Room opened in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, it was the perfect example of the speakeasy style that many cocktail bars were emulating in 2009 — unmarked, hard-to-find door, tin ceiling, the works. With no standing room allowed, it was not easy to get in, which was the icing on the exclusive, hidden bar cake. These are not the sorts of places that thrive with indoor seating restrictions.

“Something that’s unique to all these frontline industries — and I hate to put us in the same category as health care, but we’re also some of the most affected — it’s like, ‘Come up with genius ideas while you’re kind of broke and uninsured!’” Meaghan Dorman, bar director of both Raines Law Room and Dear Irving, says. But bar people are immensely resilient, so Dorman opened up the bar’s intimate backyard and worked to obtain a bike lane permit in order to seat even more guests out front, in plain sight.

Though Dorman never thought she’d see a concept like Raines Law Room with a patio, it’s an increasingly common phenomenon in the streets of NYC. Even Attaboy, another infamous and elusive bar of New York, is now serving cocktails right out in the open on Eldridge Street.

“We’ve just really had to rethink how we can translate our philosophy into the only business we’re allowed to do right now,” Dorman says. For all of her bars, this entails not only in-person service, but a focus on to-go cocktails and virtual class offerings as well.

Paying for Safety is the New Luxury

In order to enter City Winery’s flagship location at Pier 57 in Hudson River Park on the West Side of Manhattan, both guests and employees alike are required to take a rapid Covid-19 test.* On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, patrons are responsible for the cost of a $50 test — a fee whose full amount goes directly to the testing company — and can spend their 15-minute wait for the results sipping on complimentary bubbles. Those who test positive for Covid-19 are sent home after being offered a follow-up PCR test with 24-hour turnaround, but they are not permitted inside. A negative result is rewarded with entrance to the restaurant, where all other safety protocols, such as social distancing and mask-wearing, are still enforced.

Michael Dorf, founder and CEO of City Winery, believes that offering tests at the door is “not just a scientific and social responsibility to keep people safe,” but an example of an expanding definition of hospitality. By ensuring that everybody inside what he refers to as “the bubble” has acquired a negative test result, City Winery is able to add another layer of comfort to the hospitality his restaurant venue provides. “And at some point in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to start to see [the need] to check people’s certificate of vaccination,” he says imaginatively.

Dorf believes there are “a lot of psychological considerations” to take into account to make guests feel as safe as possible, “and that’s our job,” he says. “Just like providing good bathrooms, we need to provide a good, comfortable situation for consumption. If people don’t feel safe, then they’re not going to come.”

Since City Winery is usually also a live-music venue, Dorf foresees thorough safety measures carried over for concerts when gathering restrictions are lessened. Until City Winery can host shows with an all-inclusive, test-and-ticket price for revelers, it is offering virtual concerts through its CWTV exclusive streaming series. Dorf says he is open to using it as an incremental offering for audiences who are unable to attend live because of logistics, “but we don’t see that at all in any way as a substitute.” As with its virtual wine tastings, he sees this more as a temporary bridge to connect people in a very solitary time, but also feels pushback on virtual gathering “because there’s so much of it,” he says. “And what we do really well, which doesn’t work in a Covid world … is bring people together.”

The Rise of the Salon

“My apartment, a brownstone with a large parlor, fireplace, and view of the Chrysler Building was my metropolitan dream. I was gutted at the thought of having to leave it,” recalls Georgette Moger-Petraske, a freelance food and drinks travel writer who lost her work last March. When her roommate moved out around the same time, keeping the apartment didn’t seem likely. Then she stumbled upon an 1860s perfume counter from Louisiana in an antique store during a day trip upstate. “I fell hard at first sight,” Moger-Petraske says of the beautiful bar-like structure. “Taking into consideration how much everyone was really missing bars and restaurants and attempting being home bartenders, I hatched a plan.”

The plan was to teach the fundamentals of classic cocktails like the simple yet elegant ones served at the storied speakeasy Milk & Honey, which was arguably the first of its kind in New York City to gain rabid popularity in the early aughts. Late owner Sasha Petraske and Moger-Petraske’s book, “Regarding Cocktails,” is filled with recipes for the at-home bartender and a fitting touchstone for any class. And so, with a little help from a PPP loan and a friend on the North Fork of Long Island with the Yennecott oyster farm, “Regarding Oysters” was born.

Moger-Petraske’s unique salon brings small groups into a Covid-safe learning space. During a two-hour session, guests are welcomed into her Murray Hill apartment with hand sanitizer and temperature checks before being treated to a class in cocktail-making and oyster-shucking at the little antique bar that had caught her eye so many months ago. “The salons are very intimate and there’s always a celebratory feeling in the air,” Moger-Petraske says of her small, reservations-only classes that will gather in honor of birthdays, engagements, and date nights.

Between the roaring fire, crystal clear Hundredweight ice cubes, and vintage barware that she has collected over the years, Moger-Petraske is able to present the feel of a curated bar to her students. The essence of hospitality is palpable. “Our favorite NYC dining rooms and bars put just as much consideration and passion into their establishments,” she says. “From the fold of a napkin to the charm of a miniature salt boat, the clarity of the cube chilling your Penicillin, to the delicate Depression-era coupe your Water Lily is served in. It’s my hope that in the absence of our beloved bars that my guests feel inspired to create some of this magic in their own homes.”

Your Friendly Neighborhood Grocer

St. John Frizell, owner of Fort Defiance in Red Hook, Brooklyn, tried to make his restaurant function as a delivery and takeout business for a short while back when nobody knew how long the shutdowns would last. Since sending out quality meals in to-go boxes is no simple feat and can require menu changes and more, “it was a question of how much investment,” says Frizell.

“Is this the best way to invest the money that I have left? And I decided it was not, so we closed the restaurant in late March,” Frizell explains. Not long after, he reached out to family-owned organic farm co-op Lancaster Farm Fresh to see about obtaining some of its CSA boxes. He found that enough people in town were interested in claiming one of their own to set up an online store on Fort Defiance’s website. Getting a box of beautiful vegetables through contactless pickup outside the closed restaurant was a popular notion in a time when nobody knew how Covid was transmitted and the supermarket was to be avoided. Business grew and soon people began asking for other items. “And I wanted other things too, like, cheese and milk, and eggs, and bread, and just started to build from there,” Frizell says.

It was decided then that the change for Fort Defiance was going to have to be permanent, not just a temporary closure until things got back to normal for restaurants. “That was an important decision because you can’t really ride two horses at the same time,” says Frizell. “You have to make a decision and just go for it with your whole heart.” The new iteration of Fort Defiance as a general store has since gotten into the mail-order and holiday catering business as he and his steadfast team roll with the punches of what their neighbors in Red Hook might need.

“I don’t want this to come off as corny, but [what] we went through, you have to ask, ‘How can I help?’ Like, ‘How can I be of service here?’” Much like when Hurricane Sandy flooded Fort Defiance and most of the neighborhood in 2012, “we were all kind of in the same boat as we are now. We all had problems, but we were all very ready to help each other at the same time,” Frizell recalls of his community.

As another way to reach out, he started a newsletter called The Fort Defiance Gazette with announcements of new items in the store, promotions, and more. “It’s also filled with the same kind of bullshit I would talk to people about across the bar. They’re still getting the content from me, whether they like it or not,” Frizell laughs. “But it’s another way to connect, and then people email me back all the time. So there’s this dialogue happening, it’s just happening in a different space.”

Room-Temp and Ready To-Go

“Our business really came about as we were watching our industry fall apart around us and feeling really sad and helpless about that,” says Blake Walker, co-founder of drinks delivery service Day and Night Cocktails. He and fellow Amor y Amargo alum Sean Johnson mitigated grief with conversations about possibilities for projects, contemplating styles of cocktail to best suit a pandemic hellscape. They settled on the “Scaffa” — a room-temperature and undiluted mixture of spirits found in Jerry Thomas’s 1860s “The Bartender’s Guide.” Recently appearing on menus at bars like Amor y Amargo and the late Pegu Club, the Scaffa also boasts the at-home allure of being shelf-stable, so it won’t take up space in the refrigerator.

Unlike many to-go models that can arrive alongside complicated instructions, Day and Night’s drinks are poured from their bottles without fuss. “What you get is exactly the way we would serve it to you if you were sitting across the bar from us,” Walker explains. Each menu features a fresh, bright “Day” cocktail alongside a deeper, richer “Night” mixture. For those not sold on the warm drink concept, think of cold as a flavor inhibitor and know that the professionals have layered some very indulgent ones in there.

Refreshingly, Day and Night isn’t only about the drinks — like bartending, it’s about taking care of people. “We decided right off the bat that we’d do a donation for each sale to an organization called Bushwick Ayuda Mutua, which is a mutual aid organization in Bushwick that I was volunteering for,” says Walker. After the murder of George Floyd, all profits for the month of June went to the Movement for Black Lives. Because of the smaller scale of the venture, Walker is also able to have an encounter with every customer. “I don’t take that for granted at all,” he says. “Having that personal interaction [is] the closest that I can get to the across-the-bar experience that I’ve missed so much about my job as it was a year ago.”

By the time Walker and Johnson’s workplace reopened to tackle outdoor dining, they already had their own regulars at what was becoming more than just a side hustle. “It made us turn towards Day and Night as a potential alternative because, at least for us, the experience of going back to work was not pleasant.” Less money for more effort with the added bonus risk of catching a deadly virus is a hard sell.

Instead, Walker started working full time on Day and Night Cocktails in December, quickly finding a way to make it a fully legal enterprise. He can now pursue an LLC and, with that, the potential of permanence. “We also are open to the possibility that this is meant to be a to-go concept,” Walker says. “It’s impossible to know exactly what drinking culture is going to look like on the other end of this, and I think that there may be some kind of a liminal time where both the to-go and physical bar spaces coexist.”

The Future

Are all of these innovations and modifications to the classic bar experience worth it if they don’t somehow improve the way hospitality workers are treated or protected?

For Day and Night Cocktails, the commitment to supporting good causes extends to its own hurting community. “Something that remains incredibly important to us is that whatever our participation is with this industry, on the other side of Covid, we just want to make sure that we’re working towards an industry that takes care of its own better,” Walker says. “We want to be a part of that rebuilding process.”

The real pain of newly vacant real estate where beloved bars once were is hard to ignore and important to acknowledge. There will be more empty storefronts as time trundles on, with plenty of talent waiting in the wings to fill them with new concepts. “It’s going to be a really opportunistic time,” Walker observes. Hopefully, the entrepreneurs jumping at these opportunities will have more than just profit in mind.

“Our guests need to understand that we’re not expendable and disposable, and our government needs to know that, too,” says Walker. “We need to remind each other all the time that our work is important and valuable and we shouldn’t be [a] disposable commodity that’s part of this gajillion-dollar industry. We have to do a little bit better [of a] job taking care of each other.”

As creative as bartenders are getting with side gigs and business-wide pivots, many want to get back to the bar as much as patrons do. “It’s all just so antithetical to what we love to do that I just can’t wait to serve someone at the bar again,” Dorman says longingly.

Despite everything, I do detect enthusiasm when speaking with these hospitality professionals about what the future holds for bars. I want to believe that fantastic transformations lie ahead, because perhaps it’s not a return to “normal” that we should crave, but a hope for an evolution. Dorman gets it right when she says, “It feels like the music has definitely changed at our party or something.” Here’s hoping for a better playlist on the horizon.

*At the time of publishing, City Winery is temporarily closed.

The article How NYC Bartenders Are Building Pandemic-Proof Businesses appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/post-covid-bars-nyc/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/how-nyc-bartenders-are-building-pandemic-proof-businesses

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

Behind the Album: Beggars Banquet

This album emerged as the 10th studio album by the Rolling Stones. One of the important changes with this album came in the fact that it was the first time they used Jimmy Miller as their producer. He would go on to produce most of their albums in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. Beggars Banquet would mark the beginning of what many people call when the band was at its most creative. The entire album would be co-written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, except for one cover track. The album also represented the last one that would be released in Brian Jones’s lifetime. Although, the guitarist did contribute to the next album Let It Bleed. On the two previous albums, Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesty’s Request, they had gone for a very psychedelic sound. This work saw them return to more of a roots rock and blues rock sound that had not been used since their early albums. Today, Beggars Banquet is often referred to as one of their most acclaimed albums, but at the time it only reached number five in the US and number three in England on the charts. The album did not even have a number one single on it, but included such future rock radio staples as “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fightin’ Man.” These songs would be part of the Rolling Stones concert catalog for years to come.

Glyn Johns, the band’s recording engineer, said that Beggars Banquet was “the Rolling Stones' coming of age. ... I think that the material was far better than anything they'd ever done before. The whole mood of the record was far stronger to me musically." Jimmy Miller would later comment that Keith Richards emerged as the real MVP of the album recording all of the rhythm and lead guitar parts himself due to the absence and unreliability of Brian Jones. “When he would show up at a session—let's say he had just bought a sitar that day, he'd feel like playing it, so he'd look in his calendar to see if the Stones were in. Now he may have missed the previous four sessions. We'd be doing let's say, a blues thing. He'd walk in with a sitar, which was totally irrelevant to what we were doing, and want to play it. I used to try to accommodate him. I would isolate him, put him in a booth and not record him onto any track that we really needed. And the others, particularly Mick and Keith, would often say to me, 'Just tell him to piss off and get the hell out of here.’” Despite these troubling issues, Jones still played on almost every track on the album because of his ability to play multiple instruments within the band. They really did not have anyone else that could play such a variety of music. The album also marked one of the first times piano player Nicky Hopkins appeared. He would become a valuable contributor throughout the 1970’s. The only song that did not represent a Jagger and Richards original was “Prodigal Son.” That particular track had been a cover of a song by Robert Wilkins. As for the title of the album, Keith Richards would say that it was originally named by antique dealer Christopher Gibbs, a friend of the band. The album cover of a bathroom wall with graffiti on it would cause the album to be delayed for months. The record company objected to the inclusion of a toilet on the album cover. The band eventually lost this battle, but years later the album was reissued on compact disc with the toilet on the cover.

At the time, most critics responded quite favorably to the album. Time Magazine would write in their review, "In keeping with a widespread mood in the pop world, Beggars Banquet turns back to the raw vitality of Negro R&B and the authentic simplicity of country music." Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone would say that this album helped to mark the return of rock ‘n’ roll. The Chicago Sun-Times applauded the album as well. "The Stones have unleashed their rawest, rudest, most arrogant, most savage record yet. And it's beautiful." One of the few negative reviews of that year came from Melody Maker. They would say that the album was “mediocre” only saved by “the remarkable recording presence of Mick Jagger.” Their assessment seemed to be that Mick Jagger was the Rolling Stones. An interesting review came from Robert Christgau of Jazz and Pop Magazine, where he named the deep cut “Salt of the Earth” as the best pop song of the year. Many years later, as Guns and Roses was starting to explode, they would cover this song opening for the Rolling Stones. This surprised many people at the time that they would choose to play it.

Beggars Banquet would be revisited in later years with even more glowing terms. BenFong Torres of Rolling Stone would write in Wondering Sound, “An album flush with masterful and growling instant classics, and it "responds more to the chaos of '68 and to themselves than to any fellow artists ... the mood is one of dissolution and resignation, in the guise of a voice of an ambivalent authority.” Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone would write in 1997 on the legacy of the album. “For the album, the Stones had gone to great lengths to toughen their sound and banish the haze of psychedelia, and in doing so, they launched a five-year period in which they would produce their very greatest records." Author Martin C. Strong reiterated this sentiment saying that this album started the Stones on their way to creating four of the greatest rock albums of all time over the next few years. The album would make a number of best albums ever lists including number 57 on Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums Ever. In 1999, Beggars Banquet was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

In 2002, the album would be re-released by Abkco Records, which corrected a major flaw of the album. The original had been released at a slightly slower speed, then first recorded. Due to this error, each track had a slightly different tempo, as well as a difference in how each key sounded on the album. This represented a very subtle difference, but a very important one for the astute listener. One story that Stephen Davis relates in his book, Old Gods Almost Dead, was when the band hosted a party for their rock and roll friends to listen to the new album. Unfortunately, they were upstaged once again by the Beatles, who had brought along a copy of The White Album. After the party, the only thing that anyone could talk about came in how groundbreaking the Beatles new album would be in music.

[happiness-in-oblivion]

Senior Szn No. 2: Thoughts on Moving

~~ Full Disclosure: This post is quickly becoming an excuse to post all the beautiful parts of this state, so get ready for more pictures than actual words. But hey, a picture is worth a thousand words ;) ~~

I am 100% sure that when it comes down to pulling out of my driveway for the last time, I will bawl my freaking eyes out. That’s because despite being an Aquarius, I have emotions.

Let’s make this perfectly clear: these are my current thoughts on leaving New Mexico (AKA the land of enchantment). I am not saying that I currently hate my state or that I never had fun; on the contrary, I’ve enjoyed all eighteen years here. But it’s time to talk a bit about the current state of Albuquerque, NM. 

Yes, the same Albuquerque that brought the nation Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The same Albuquerque that has (don’t fight me on this) the best green chile around. 

Because I don’t want to make this a post that seems to be hating on my hometown, I will begin with all the positives.

Pros

1. diversity and mexican/latin@ empowerment

The OG homies and I at the local paleteria. Let me tell you, this is the place where I come to break my healthy eating. Also, that happens often.

In 2016, New Mexico was announced as having the largest Hispanic population at 47%, with California coming in second at 36%. So I guess you could say that we slay. 

From what I’ve mostly encountered in ABQ, being cultured is something to be extremely proud of. Albuquerque is filled with multiple perspectives, and we function. Now, I did say mostly, because I have encountered some dumbasses that thought calling me “lamb chops” and telling me my Greek father had to lower his standards to marry my Mexican mom was actually funny. But that kind of ideology is quickly shut down.

I thought this kind of inclusion was extremely common. In that sense, I guess I was in this naive bubble. When I spent the summer in California with my dad in 2016, I was a bit shocked by the state with the second highest population of Hispanics.

BTW, we were staying in Palo Alto, which is definitely important to mention. We had to drive to a separate city limit to eat flautas and Caldo de Rez, which we found weird. And then, as we drove down El Camino Real and took a random turn, we found a run down street that was filled with Spanish signs advertising hair salons, supermarkets, etc. The blatant street segregation was the biggest culture shock I’d ever received.

The only true purpose of that little rant was to emphasize how wonderful New Mexico is. Although there are definitely neighborhoods that are predominantly Hispanic, New Mexico’s roots proudly seep into culture and diversity. Good segway… :)

2. proud (albu)quirky culture

New Mexicans pride themselves when it comes to: breakfast burritos, green chile, luminarias, flamenco, and so on.

Now that I’ve stated the obvious, I’ll talk about my personal favorite part of Albu-quirky. Because of the diverse community that Albuquerque fosters, we have really cool and local spots to just chill and hangout. As I write this, I am thinking about the countless coffee shops and bookstores that display a bit it of our very common quirkiness.

Pretty rad mural outside of Zendo. I often come here when I am trying to wear my cool new glasses and baby blue turtleneck, if you know what I mean. This mural is one of countless examples of beautiful downtown art.

When it comes to coffee shops, I think Albuquerque has a very desired vibe. After taking a few classes, I usually end up at Winning Coffee. Located right across the street from campus, Winning is where hippies come with their wild dogs while they gain insightful stories from homeless people. I’m not lying. it’s also located next to a movie poster store that features classics (even from Audrey Hepburn!). When you walk inside, you’re greeted by refreshing and new art on the wall with every passing week, a calendar filled with poetry slams, and a makeshift bookstore by a retired man who sells amazing vintage cover books for cheap. I mean, c’mon, what is not to love?

You see, other than Starbucks, most coffee shops around here aren’t chains, so they each have their own unique style and vibe. Depending on the mood, I may end up at Winning, or I may go down one block and sit in the bucolic setting that is Limonata (yes, like the drink). Here, you can enjoy homemade crepes and empanadas. And I don’t usually drink caffeine, but their chai’s are to die for.

Limonata: “Good Food, Good Coffee, Good People”

Also, I can’t forget the fact that this obviously looks like a house, because it definitely was. The bathroom literally has a bath tub that they have expertly filled with plants to make you experience a jungle in a few minutes.

Heck, there’s a coffee shop in Taos called World Cup that has different currencies as its wallpaper. it’s literally a hole in the wall, and people simply pin new and refreshing culture on the wall for the heck of it.

That adobe architecture though, am I right?

4. cheap concerts

Although I have not been to a concert in a hot second, that does not correlate to a decline in awesome ass shows in this city. In fact, this past summer Khalid came on over, and most of my friends hopped into the venue with at most an $80 ticket. (Let me point out that I am upset that I didn’t go and had I not been in another state I would have quickly hopped in as well)

I will admit it’s not always fun when an artist you really enjoy didn’t include New Mexico in their tour because they don’t think we’re in the country. BUT, the ones that do include us experience a great crowd. And, not being New York does have its perks. Cheap tickets for an unforgettable night? Perfect bargain.

I was in seventh grade when I attended my first concert. The tickets were $35 to see Sara Bareilles and OneRepublic. I went with my little sister and my friend and her mom. The venue was in our local casino, which includes an open view of the beautiful sky and a scenic landscape as the background. Right after the opening band, Harper Blynn (check out their collab with Sara Bareilles too), my sister and I went to their bus in an attempt to meet them, and meet them we did.

When they found out it was our first concert ever, they gave us a free signed copy of their CD, took pictures with us, and signed their names all over my seven-year-old sister’s arm in Sharpie. It was AWESOME.

5. badass nationwide events 

If there is one thing that New Mexico is known for, it is for our rad balloons. You know, as in hot air balloons?

Every year, Albuquerque is home to the International Balloon Fiesta, where hot balloon aficionados can come and either display their artwork of a balloon, or sip some Piñon coffee and eat a breakfast burrito while watching each beautiful hot air ballon go up into the most spectacular sunrise.

Seriously, to come to this thing requires a lot of might from Burqueños. I mean, I enjoy watching the balloons over the interstate on my way to school, but I am never in the mood to wake up at four in the a.m. only to wait in an hour of traffic to battle for a parking spot a mile away from the park grounds. On top of that, you’re pretending not to freeze your ass off as you slyly inch closer to the balloons with fire.

This is not the only time Albuquerque is seen internationally. We also have the Lantern Festival in October, where people can enjoy a mini version of a hot air balloon (basically). But hey, that’s not all.

I had to talk about Festival Flamenco Internacional. OMG. What a week. Every June, the National Institute of Flamenco brings incredible flamenco artists to teach classes and perform. For a week in the year, people between New York and Japan fly to Albu-quirky to learn from the hottest (artistically and literally) artists.

This picture has an incredible story, so hear me out. So all summer, my friends and I fundraised to see these amazing people and their art. Well, the opening night of the week, our director managed to sneak us into the very prestigious gala as waitresses and servers. After the amazing show where I spent the entire time internally crying, we returned to the party only to find our dance idols on the dance floor. They were regular people jamming to salsa music. It was so surreal! And then, our amazing director asked them for a picture with all of us. I am hugging Claudia Cruz to my left, who was one of my teachers for the week. Throughout the week, we had genuine conversations, and she even told me I was a good dancer with a followed wink. She messages me on facebook to remind me that I’m awesome and she can’t wait for the day to come when I visit her in Spain. Like, are you kidding me?!

(Also picture from left to right: Claudia Cruz, me, Sage, Marco Flores, Agueda Saavedra, Madison, and Jose Manuel Alvarez)

6. nature

This is another given that comes hand in hand with living in New Mexico. Although I will admit sometimes I may not be a complete outdoorsy person, I do genuinely enjoy the beauty of NM. I mean, the mountains that surround Albuquerque prevent pollution from reaching the sky that blesses the citizens with orange and red hues with every sunrise and sunset. Also, there are countless hikes to go on, and the view is spectacular. It’s a tradition with family and friends of ours to go on a weekly hike during the summer. Then, we go to Marble Brewery and enjoy tacos and beer (I don’t get any beer; oh well).

This was the view after a hike on the mountains during Thanksgiving Break.

Just a casual picture taken by my friend while hiking around Tent Rocks. Nothing too unusual, right?

Current Cons

Now that I’ve extensively covered all the amazing things that NM has to offer and have probably already lost several readers, I will go into the initial motivation behind this post. Although I admit now that after writing all the things from above, it seems like the list below doesn’t deserve to be mentioned. But trust me, it needs to be.

1. violence

Albuquerque got recognition from the NYTimes, and not the good kind. BTW, this was published in 2014, and it claims that the “rate of violent crime in Albuquerque is nearly double the national average.”

Don’t get me wrong - violence in ABQ has always been present. Before, however, it was usually localized violence. By this, I guess I mean that if you knew the places to avoid, you didn’t ever have to actually witness the gang violence or the constant murders. In other words, you could live in Albuquerque reading of the violence but never having to ever witness it. 

Well, that has definitely changed.

During this past week, a homeless man has exposed himself to my dance class, my mom witnessed a man piss on the side of my neighbor’s house while walking our dog, and a lot more serious stuff (trigger warning ahead).

Specifically, a man was hanging onto the side of the bridge overlooking the major freeway for 13 hours. This happened literally right outside of my house. As we drove back form church, we saw a herd of policemen trying to calm this poor man down. He did not yield until 1 a.m., and he was transported to the hospital safely. It was absolutely horrible. Even worse?

Two days later, my friend told our group chat that her stepfather (who is a cop) had to respond to a call that a sixteen-year-old boy was on the side of a different bridge. As the cops approached the bridge, he jumped. He didn’t die; instead, he is faced with irrecoverable brain injury. 

Like you’ve got to be fucking kidding me right now. How the hell did Albuquerque become so violent? From the influx of desperate homeless people walking down Central, to the shooting that happened right outside of my dance institute, Albuquerque has definitely become a place where violence is beginning to occur on a regular basis. And the worst part? I think I am starting to become numb to it. It’s not normal to think these things are normal.

2. 49th in education

So, this report is from 2017. Believe it or not, this is actually a step up from 2016. We were a solid last in the country for education. And I genuinely didn’t think that education in my state was that bad. That’s because, despite me absolutely despising my school, we are number one in the state for education. That means that while I was receiving a buttload of homework and a ridiculously difficult education, other public high schools would rank as an F on academic abilities. But do you know what I think of all of this? It’s fucked. 

I don’t know if this is nationwide, but I didn’t know it was not normal to spend most of the day studying for statewide tests. In other words, New Mexico had the SBA (Standardized Based Assessment). Most of my school day involved multiple choice questions and answering reading comprehension questions that would be featured on the annual standardized test. And trust me, it’s not the teacher’s faults. Most teachers were forced to stick to this because if students did not receive good scores, teachers and schools would be in major jeopardy. 

This kind of thinking didn’t end in elementary school. While I was supposed to be reading a new chapter for a striking English book in sixth grade, we’d instead sit in front of our computers, reading pointless passages about horses and spaceships that we gave no fucks over and were expected to write an analytical essay comparing the breed of horses with the flight of spaceships. You’re thinking, wtf? Exactly. It’s pointless.

**I am now begging you to actually click the link I am posting here, because it’s definitely the most important one here. Enjoy this slam poem, “Love Letter to Albuquerque Public Schools.” In it is Olivia Gatwood, a personal inspiration of mine that I got to meet and speak with in September and will see again in April.**

3. “land of entrapment” / “university near mom”

This one is really silly and I guess I put this as a comedic conclusion. I guess in a gruesome way, because of the education many teenagers receive, we seem trapped (bringing the infamous nickname above). I know that personally, before I actually took college courses outside of the state, I did not picture myself at any top-ranked college. In fact, some people around me don’t even consider a college. Not because they’re too lazy or not into higher education, but because it is not practical. It is not practical to attend college courses if you have family  members that need an income from you now, not in four years.

I hate when people judge other’s circumstances. Genuinely, Albuquerque students will often end up at the University of New Mexico, which is not a bad university at all. And yet, in this land of entrapment, it is also humorously deemed the “university near mom.”

I guess what I mean is that after all this effort and living in this weird ass situation of shootings and standardized testing, my generation still feels trapped, constantly looking to move. And that’s what happened to me. I was given a glimpse of what independence looked like, and I immediately jumped at the opportunity to leave New Mexico.

I’m glad I wrote this post. At the end of this, I wonder if anyone is actually left after this long rant that was both good and evil. And yet, I already see the day I miss this place coming sooner rather than later.

Thanks for sticking around. :)

[imgonnabeyourbubblegumwitch]

I Love You, You Pay My Rent: Chapter One

Previous Chapter (Prologue) 

Nico had been officially living with Will Solace, professional rich person and minor celebrity for a grand total of one and a half days. It had, so far and against all expectations, been uneventful. Will hadn't actually been around all that much, though what he during the day Nico wasn't sure because he was pretty convinced Will didn't have an actual, proper job. The only evidence Nico was sharing a very nice apartment with another human being was the leftover pizza that had appeared in the fridge, an empty bottle of vodka that had appeared in the recycling and a memorable 5am rendition of the circle of life followed by a long period of rapping and Will shouting Alexander Hamilton over and over again. Nico hadn't known if Will were coming or going, waking up to go out, or drunk and coming in, and by the time he himself had gotten up several hours later at a far more sociable time Will was nowhere to be found.

Nico heated up the pizza, and tossed the note inviting him to help himself in the trash. He wandered around the apartment as he ate, picking pineapple off his slices as he went. He still couldn't believe he had ended up here, rent free. He was still slightly suspicious about Will's motives. No one let a stranger stay with them rent free. No one. Maybe there was some kind of bet involved. Or maybe Will was running some kind of scam, or was avoiding taxes.

Still even though he might be an unwitting accomplice to a crime, Nico had to admit the benefits of living with Will, for the moment, outweighed the projected cost of a lengthy court case and some time behind bars for misconduct unknown.

It was weird, though, having so much space and time to himself. Nico didn't usually crave human interaction, in fact he usually attempted to keep it at bay with a long stick, dark clothes and a bite-me attitude, but it was odd being on his own. Living with Leo had been living with constant noise. Leo just did not have an off-switch and so Nico had been constantly working to tune out an endless feed of useless chatter. And even in those rare moments when Leo wasn't talking, he was usually hammering at something that didn't look like it should be hammered. That or taking part in dubious DIY tasks that either worked against all odds, or failed spectacularly and required a visit from one of Leo's many and undefined relatives who between them seemed to fulfil the complete home construction spectrum.

Life for Will, aside from the 5am shower concert thing, was apparently going to be quiet.

In an attempt to be a decent housemate Nico washed up the plate he'd used as a morgue for the rejected pineapple and only used two exclamation marks on the note he left for Will on the fridge questioning the inclusion of the topping on pizza. Then he wandered around the living room for the sheer novelty of having enough space to be able to wander around the living room. It had been a long time since he'd been in an apartment this fancy, back before Leo when he'd lived with his father, or more accurately a series of housekeepers and au pairs while his father worked. They hadn't really been home, those apartments, any more than the family mansion they drove to every Christmas. With his father Nico would never have dared wake up at two-thirty in the afternoon, to wander around eating pizza, not even in the school holidays. His father had instilled in him, that there was always work to be done, and more importantly there was always someone watching. He should conduct himself with decorum.

He suddenly felt very self-conscious. He wasn't sure when Will would be coming back and even though Will had insisted he make himself at home, Nico felt strange being in the clothes he'd worn yesterday to move in in. He'd slept in them, curled up on the bare mattress, because he couldn't be bothered to search through his meagre possessions for his pyjamas and sheets. But he didn't want Will to get the impression that he was a slob, however accurate that impression might actually be so he retreated back to his room, not quite running but definitely moving at something quicker than a walk.

The boxes and bags he'd brought with him from his old apartment were stacked in a corner of the room that was now his. He really didn't have much. One bag of laundry he hadn't had time to do before leaving Leo's. A small box of assorted nick nacks, toys and other items he didn't really know what to do with: his mythomagic cards banded together with a corroding rubber band, an old notebook he'd used as a diary for a couple of weeks before he'd gotten bored with the idea of writing every day, other junk. Then lastly there was a black duffle bag which had his clean clo-

He withdrew a bright top he'd never wear, followed by a strange hat and what looked like part of an engine.  These weren’t his clothes. This was Leo's bag. Which meant Leo had his clothes, Leo who was now probably half way across the country had his clothes. And Nico had a jacket, the outfit he was wearing and a three quarters full bag of laundry. He didn't even have his bed sheets: he'd shoved them in the bag along with his clothes.

Okay, he thought, it's fine. There was the laundry, he'd just have to do that. That would give him one work outfit, a pair of jeans that had seen better days and a couple of tops. Then there were the clothes he was in. He could wash those too. And, in the meantime, he'd just have to wear -

He looked back at Leo's bag with growing horror. He tipped it all out on his floor and there was a worrying clanking sound. He sorted through all the stuff, moving mechanical devices, screwdrivers and a chocolate bar over to the sell-for-scrap pile (and if Leo was upset about that he should have thought about it before making off with Nico's stuff). That left him with a handful of crumpled t-shirts that were small even for him, and a pair of shorts that were faded, stained and so threadbare it was hard to tell if Leo wore them or used them for cleaning.

It wasn't a great selection but he pulled on one of the bigger t-shirts, and the shorts. The t-shirt was bright yellow with a sunny, tropical picture of a parrot and some fruit. It ended too quickly and was far too tight. The shorts were little better: too low and, since the elastic had gone, worryingly loose around his hips. Now he really prayed that wherever Will was he was planning on staying there a long time.

He scooped up his own clothes and hurried to the washer. He dumped the lot in the machine and scouted around for washing powder. He closed the lid and then had to come to terms with the fact he had absolutely no idea how the washing machine worked. He stared at the control panel for a full minute trying to decipher symbols and pictograms that littered a control panel that looked like it should be controlling the enterprise rather than just washing your clothes. He stabbed a few buttons at random, and hoping he hadn't accidentally summoned a demon, ran back to his room like a skittish rabbit lest Will enter and see his bright yellow t-shirt and shorts of shame.

The washing machine was making comforting washing sounds that Nico could hear even from his room so he let it get on with it and focused on the other box he'd brought with him. Some of the items, like the mythomagic cards or his older sister’s teddy bear, he knew he'd never be able to part with but most of it was trash. Broken toys and memories had been heaped on the pile of useless junk from Leo's bag (he'd claimed the chocolate bar as his own). He was reading through his diary with the self-aware pain that came from reading the things his younger self had found angst-worthy (if only he'd known) when he first noticed that Will's nice wooden floor suddenly felt kind of wet.

Nico swore resolutely and scrambled to his feet. The washing machine was still rumbling happily but was now disgorging oddly tinted water on the floor in torrents. A panicked ten seconds of button mashing yielded no immediate halt to its attempt to flood the place so Nico decided to end it at the source and seek out it's kill switch. That proved to be harder than he'd imagined. He just couldn't find the lead and was beginning to think he'd discovered the world's first washing machine that could run on pure spite alone.

He slapped it since he had the impression this usually worked with computers but that only left him with a sore hand. Grumbling furiously, he ran into his bathroom, discovered he had also managed to forget towels were a necessity, backtracked to Will's. Towels in hand he began trying to limit the progress of the flood with an improvised wall, so that he would be less worried about the concerningly purple water damaging anything expensive, or creating an interesting reaction with anything electronic in the living room before he could subdue the poltergeist residing in the washing machine.

Barrier temporarily holding the flood at bay, he proceeded back to the washing machine with phone in hand.

"You are making me look on forums," he told the washing machine. "I officially hate you."

In response the machine began spitting up heavily fragranced bubbles.

Nico swore again, this time with even more feeling.

Okay, forget forums, it was time to call Leo.

Leo answered on what felt like the nine-hundreth ring. At the exact same time, Nico saw his mythomagic cards floating gently past amid a happy scattering of floral scented bubbles. He vocalised his feelings about this in no uncertain terms that made Leo threaten to clean his mouth out with soap the next time they saw each other.

"You probably won't need to," Nico said darkly as he bent down to pick up one of the cards and ended up with a nose full of bubbles. "Not if this keeps up."

"You're making no sense Nico."

He lunged for another card - Hades, that had a permanent place in all his decks - and slipped. He managed to stay upright but went skidding along on his towel barrier which had pretty much reached the limits of it's effectiveness. In an effort to stop himself from faceplanting the floor and/or banging into anything that looked breakable he threw out his hands and while remembering to keep a firm grip on his childhood cards, forgot about his phone which went flying at the front door.

The front door which was open and framing a very confused Will Solace.

"Oh gods," Nico had time to say before his phone hit Will in the nose.

There was a pause while Nico tried to find the words to explain the water and the bubbles and the cards and - oh hell - his clothes. Will surveyed the chaos with an unreadable expression. And then he burst out laughing.

It was unexpected but it was better than the yelling.

"What happened?" Will asked. "Are those mythomagic cards?"

He too another, longer look at Nico taking in the outfit and Nico's unsuccessful attempts to stand in slippery socks on a sodden floor.

"I like the t-shirt," he commented. "Very subversive. I can see you are really trying to mock -"

He broke off dissolving into laughter.

"I'm sorry," he said between giggles, "you - just - look- "

"Yeah, yeah," Nico grumbled. "Well the bubbles in your hair look ridiculous."

Will put a hand up to his head and as he did Nico threw a handful of bubbles at him. They missed, by a long way, because bubbles weren't a particularly reliable throwing material. Will laughed even harder and tried to throw some back but his aim was even poorer because he was giggling so much. Nico fell down again and he though he tried to stop himself he couldn't help but start giggling too.

Will had left the door open and an older lady with perfectly coiled hair and a fur coat was looking in at them in obvious consternation and disapproval. Nico waved and Will turned.

"Good afternoon Mrs Dodds," Will said. "Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?"

Mrs Dodds scoffed and turned her back on them. Nico began laughing at the stupidness of the situation and his laughter set Will off again. Will looked cute when he laughed: nose (red from where the phone had struck) all scrunched up like a kid he looked less like some unattainable-rock-star-minor-god-model, and more down to earth. Nico felt his heart skip a beat and a few tentative butterflies preparing to take flight in his stomach. The feelings were oddly sobering and he felt the laughter dying in his throat.

"I really am sorry about the mess," he said. "I must be the worst housemate you've ever had."

"Oh, not by a long shot," Will said amiably. "I once had someone who collected dead frogs.”

He tried to lever himself to his feet and after several attempts managed to get to his feet and with an awkward, penguin on ice like shuffle made it to the front door which he shut very firmly.

"How about I order food, we put on some music and have a cleaning up party?" he suggested.

"You don't have to help," Nico said. "I'll do it, I did make the mess."

"I forget to warn you the washing machine can be temperamental," Will said with a shrug. "Though I've never seen it do this before. You've got some quite incredible machine-messing skills, Di Angelo."

Nico grinned. It was an automatic response to Will's light teasing that he didn't have time to think through, or dampen down.

"Gotta be good at something," Nico said. "And for me that something is riling up the demon ghost that resides in your washing machine."

"They should write a film about your exploits," Will commented, completely straight faced. "I bagsie the rights."

"Only if you promise to hire

Will ordered Chinese. He put on some music - something upbeat and poppy that Nico wouldn't usually necessarily enjoy but actually worked pretty well trying to clean up a lilac coloured flood with his new landlord.

Will brought out more towels from the bathroom and tossed some to Nico. Then he paused.

"I don't have a mop," he said as though it had only just occurred to him.

"Why don't you have a mop?" Nico asked.

"Did you have a mop at your old place?" Will demanded.

"Yes!" Nico said. "We weren't heathens! We just didn't have a hoover, or a dishcloth for a long time, or plates for the first few weeks. But a mop! Of course."

"Yeah well I'd offer you a discount on your rent for forgetting such an important life-changing item but you're not actually paying me anything so-"

"You could always start paying me to live here," Nico mused.

Will stuck his tongue out and then sighed.

"One of my neighbours probably has one."

He sloshed his way over to the door.

"Be right back. Wish me luck."

"You're asking to borrow a mop from your neighbours, how much luck can you need?"

Will pulled a face that indicated he had shocking, horrifying knowledge that no mortal should posses.

"You don't want to know," he said in a deep whisper and then darted out, closing the door behind him.

As soon as he was gone, the butterflies that had been previously hesitant and timid took full flight in Nico's stomach. He realised he was smiling and wiped the expression off his face and focused very hard on extracting sodden mythomagic cards and leaving them all lined up on the counter tops to dry.

Will returned some ten minutes later with a mop and a chastised air.

"Nancy was of your view that mops are a basic human right and she could not believe I do not own one."

"See," Nico said.  “It’s not just me who thinks you are a heathen.”

Nico was not usually a fan of cleaning but working alongside Will was kind of fun. It may have had something to do with Will, who was in charge of mopping and was utterly distracting. He spent more time dancing with the mop and singing along to whatever song was playing than actually mopping. Nico could hardly drag his eyes away from him, so he pointed out, perfectly reasonably, that it was an inefficient method of mopping and that Will's music choice sucked.

"Alright what would you put on?"

Nico hadn't been expecting that.

"I don't know. The Ramones maybe?"

Will held his gaze while he retrieved his laptop and then changed the song with a slight smirk.

"What you didn't think I'd have the Ramones?"

"I thought it would be all Disney songs and show tunes."

"Disney songs and show tunes?" Will asked sounding like he was trying not to laugh.

"I don't know," Nico admitted, "I have no idea what you like."

"They come on later," Will promised him with a grin.

Ten minutes later they were both jumping up and down to Blitzkrieg Bop and Will was singing and he was actually not all that bad when it wasn't 5am. They were halfway through the second verse when someone began banging on the walls.

"Oh ignore it," Will said. "That's Octavian. He's always complaining about something. Like when I hoover at 3am."

"Why do you -?"

"Because the night before Octavian was grinding breeze blocks and some sheet metal in his blender. I assume that's what he was doing. That's what it sounded like he was doing."

The banging sounded again, on the door this time. Will rolled his eyes but he stormed over and yanked the door open, shutting down the music with a wave of a remote as his did so.

"Hello Octavian," Will said with a forced polite smile. "Is everything alright? If you've come to borrow a mop I'm afraid I'm lacking that basic necessity."

Nico laughed and Octavian cast his sharp eyes over to him. Octavian was pale and thin. His eyes were faint blue and his hair was thin, and almost colourless. The general impression he gave was of a scarecrow that had been modelled on a skeleton. All the right features were there and they were all in the right places but the proportions and the colour scheme was entirely off.

"Can you keep it down?" Octavian asked. "I'm trying to work. Not all of us get money handed to us on a silver platter you know."

Will shrugged at that, but Nico thought that something about the jibe may have hit home because he seemed a little tenser.

"So sorry to interrupt your work. I know it's all you have since you can't seem to keep friends."

"Look who's talking," Octavian sneered. "How many housemates have you gone through now? How long do you think this one will stay?"

He glanced over at Nico again, looked him up and down and then turned away without comment as though he didn't think Nico was worth it.

"We'll try to keep the sounds of us enjoying our lives from disturbing your emptiness," Will snapped and closed the door in Octavian's face. He didn't turn around immediately and Nico got the impression he was trying to force himself back towards cheerfulness.

"To be fair," Will said when he did turn. "We probably were being kind of loud."

He put the music back on but in deference to Octavian it was no longer deafening and could be classed merely as noisy. In deference to the fact that Will hadn't freaked out when he'd come home to a flood, Nico didn't bring up what Octavian had said about the other housemates. It didn't stop him wondering though. Will seemed nice enough but Nico still couldn't get past the no rent thing. It made no sense to him. He couldn't figure out why Will would be so desperate to have someone in his spare room that he'd offer it to them for free.

By the time the food came, the flat was pretty clean. Nico's jeans, now several shades lighter than their once jet black, and other clothes had been shoved in the dryer. The floor was mopped, all of Nico's cards were drying on the counter tops. Order had been restored.

Will put on a movie while they ate. Will had seen it before and Nico was more interested in watching Will out the corner of his eye so he often missed big plot points. Will seemed happy enough but Nico got the impression he was worried from the way he picked at his food rather than just eating it. In the end, Will put it to the side entirely and picked up a fortune cookie gazing at it like an unexploded bomb.

"You know they are mass printed somewhere right?" Nico asked eventually when Will still hadn't cracked it open.

Will gave a rueful smile.

"I know. It's stupid. I usually ask them not to give me fortune cookies though. I don't know what it is, they just always seem to come true."

"Well how bad can that be?" asked Nico. "It's always, you'll find happiness when you least expect it or time waits for no man. Stupid, meaningless stuff."

"I know," Will said again. "Believe me, I know."

But he didn't open the fortune.

"Here I'll do mine," said Nico.

He grabbed his off the table and opened it up.

"Okay," he said unfolding the paper. "Mine reads: help! I'm trapped in a fortune cookie factory!"

Will burst out laughing and reached for it.

"Let me see that!"

"Alright it actually says good news of a long-awaited event will soon arrive. Stupid and meaningless."

Will grinned.

“I guess you’re right.”

But he still didn’t open it, and when Nico went to clean up the food later that night he couldn’t help but notice the cookie was missing.

Next Chapter 

[painterlegendx]

Eliminate Your Fears And Doubts About Painting Over Frames - Painting Over Frames

RICHMOND, Virginia — I’ve never gone to beddy-bye in a auberge allowance and woke up screaming, but that is absolutely what happened to me at the Virginia Building of Accomplished Arts. I spent the night in the building in a “room” gussied up to attending like the auberge alcove in one of Edward Hopper’s best acclaimed paintings, “Western Motel” (1957). The agitation was that I was ashore back-of-house with no bath nearby, and with a ablaze animated through a affected aperture missing its average panel. In aspect I was abandoned in a allowance that wasn’t defended and no clandestine facilities. It was beneath like a auberge acquaintance and added like actuality a appearance in a abhorrence film.

Stretching canvas over frame, or how to reuse your old .. | painting over frames On aboriginal accepting the emailed address from the communications aggregation at the museum, the extended, immersive assurance with this painting seemed like a acceptable idea. This is how is was explained to me:As allotment of this exhibition, VMFA will charm Western Motel, one of Hopper’s best-known paintings, as a three-dimensional apish cabin space, giving visitors the adventitious to “step inside” his work. Through the “Hopper Auberge Experience,” guests will accept the befalling to break at the building brief in a allowance aggressive by Western Motel. There will be a array of bales accessible at altered amount points. Some of the “Hopper Auberge Experience” bales abide of banquet at VMFA’s accomplished dining restaurant Amuse, a guided bout by the babysitter and an exhibition catalogue, amid added options.The exhibition Edward Hopper and the American Auberge appropriately articulate like an adroit way to re-approach the acceptation of this actual white, actual male, painter who has connected been ensconced in the assize of United States painters who accept cautiously depicted some acute aspect of this American experience.The affair Hopper did best — and conceivably this was all he capital to do — was acknowledge how what I would alarm a basal “noble lie” of the nation’s accepted ability appearance was boring and agilely acceptable undone. It is that city-on-the-hill, white settler, ethno-nationalist celebrity which absurd that rural, abundantly autonomous, ethnically and religiously akin lifestyles would consistently characterize the “real” or “true” Americans. (Part of the acumen of the GOP’s connected political success, admitting its almanac of boom-and-bust economies it that it leans actual heavily on this absolute but generally adumbrated mythology.) One of the ironies of Hopper is that he contributed to acknowledging this ballad while additionally conceivably allegedly depicting it’s analytic terminus: Those who subscribed to it would end up consistently actuality apprehensive of difference, clumsy to accept aberration as legitimate, and appropriately access in a asleep end of abreast and bitterness.

Starry Night Over The Rhone-Famous Oil Painting Artworks by Van Gogh Reproduction Poetry Giclee Canvas Prints Elegant Blue Wall Art Painting .. | painting over frames Hopper lived through both apple wars, and appropriately through the periods aback the apparatus of this credo and the abrogating amusing movements that would claiming it began to ability crisis credibility that would assuredly about-face the cultural, political, and amusing ground. It is in this inter-war and post-war aeon as Hopper was accomplishing his best agitating assignment that the US became a apple ability with an credo of abundance that absolutely seemed to action for the alive class:  People alive in blue-collar occupations could adore anytime accretion standards of active accomplished by way of a Fordist abridgement and ever-expanding markets. But there was a bolt (or several catches). Women entering the workforce and acceptable financially absolute of men challenged accepted affectionate policies, and African Americans entering the marketplace, availing themselves of accessible institutions, and boring alpha to become financially chargeless clashed with the nation’s acutely anchored racism. More, new after-effects of (non-European) clearing additionally breakable that nationalist credo that approved to ascertain a actual accurate accumulation as accurately American. Hopper didn’t acrylic loneliness; he depicted disillusionment with an celebrity that was falling afar appropriate at the moment it seemed best promising. On his figures’ faces this looked like a affectionate of claimed devastation.The irony of agreeable me to appear to Richmond to acquaintance one of Hopper’s paintings is that I am addition he acceptable would accept never absurd inhabiting one of his vistas. I am Jamaican by bearing and accept become socialized to be added US American than not over time, but I do not attending the allotment of one of his characters (i.e. I am a Atramentous man). Here, again, Hopper’s own eyes runs into the exigencies of the accepted art building field, which has approved to aggrandize the indigenous and socio-economic chic contour of building audiences. Following a trend that is authoritative its way steadily through the building acreage (which I accept accounting about recently), the Virginia Building of Accomplished Arts has approved to aggrandize its audiences by acceptable company engagement, and one way to do so is to action off-the-menu escapades such as this night in the museum.It’s alone canicule afore I was appointed to fly there that I get the beat from the communications abettor Lillian Dunn and acquisition I am alone able to “check in” afterwards nine o’clock in the evening. I accomplish the best of it and appointment added museums in the breadth and again airing Monument Avenue breadth the shrines to Confederate heroes are displayed appropriate alongside the abounding churches that band this street. It feels like the ability is cogent me that both forms of account go duke in hand: adoration for the Judeo-Christian god and the leaders of the Confederate insurrection.Then aback I do access to bundle my bag in my abode and booty a attending at Edward Hopper and the American Hotel, that’s aback Dunn tells me that there are no showers for me and that I will accept to use the accessible bathroom beyond the anteroom from breadth I am staying. I am aloof fabricated aghast by this.

La Pastiche Starry Night Over The Rhone Framed Oil Painting, 10" x 10", Multi - painting over frames | painting over frames As allotment of the acquaintance amalgamation I am arrive to banquet with Dr. Sarah Powers, the curatorial analysis specialist for the exhibition and Jan Hatchette, the agent communications director. There, they ask me about my impressions of the exhibition so far, but I contrivance the question, mostly because the building was additionally hosting a chargeless applesauce concert (as they do anniversary Thursday) so it was difficult for me to see the assignment and anticipate about it with the music arrant nearby. Typically I charge time and amplitude chargeless from aberration to see a appearance properly. The applesauce concert was actual up tempo, loud, and abounding of vocals that kept affairs me out of the paintings and aback into absoluteness that had about annihilation to do with the works in the exhibition. Seeing a appearance beneath these affairs is one of the affliction means to see art for me.After dinner, an armed bouncer escorts me bench and takes her column alfresco my door. I do not accept the call for a bouncer with a blaster on her hip, but actual little about this “stay” makes sense. I access a ample amplitude that is the aback of abode accumulator area. Peeking beneath the afraid tarps I see that there is a sea of abandoned vitrines and a agglomeration of added exhibition backdrop and tools. But the aperture to the aback of abode area is about open. Anyone (such as the guard) could appear in. There is additionally a baby table and a few chairs and a baby brazier with a array of balloon gum balls. I address some emails and adapt to bed down, and again apprehension that the “door” to my baby allowance is about aloof a baby frame, so anyone could footfall through the aperture behindhand of whether I lock it or not.I lay in the aphotic a longtime afore the connected day of biking and walking abrasion me into submission. There is an annoying ablaze on in the capital amplitude that is actual abundant arresting from the bed. Then, about three in the morning I am affected alive aback (I think) I feel addition blow me with what feels like a angled stick. I deathwatch up and cry out. It’s loud. I apprehend no acknowledgment from the added side. I appetite to run out and see if the bouncer is absolutely alive and present, but again I anticipate that a atramentous man active out of a allowance in an agitated accompaniment with no one with me to buck attestant aback I appointment cadre who backpack accoutrements and instead I wait. I absorb the abutting hour attractive beneath the bed and about the back-of-house amplitude and neither see nor apprehend anyone.Finally, I do my best to acquisition a way to feel safe. I being the bed-length headboard pillow into the aperture frame, cerebration that if I alluvion off to sleep, at atomic addition advance their way through the anatomy may deathwatch me up. And to accomplish aggregate worse there is no battery accessible to ablution off the night of alarm in the morning.

I painted Paris Gray over gold frames and let them dry .. | painting over frames I absorb a acceptable allotment of the abutting day cerebration about who anticipation this was a acceptable idea. I accept to accept that the bloom of the exhibition is constituted in its bond the bendable bareness of Hopper’s portraits with assignment by added artists who were not painters. The best inclusions for me are William Eggleston’s “Hunstville, Alabama” (1970) and George Segal’s “Blue Girl on Atramentous Bed” (1976), and Susan Worsham’s “Marine, Auberge Near Airport, Richmond, Virginia” (2009). Anniversary of these works shows an alone sitting on a bed, but authoritative a added nuanced angle for the viewer’s attention, alms added than bareness or grief, an autogenous activity that bobs to the apparent of the face. However, none of the blow of the exhibition framework makes sense.Dunn tells me that this being primarily amenable is the exhibition babysitter Dr. Leo Mazow. I acquisition out later, afterwards added carefully account the columnist absolution that the appearance was organized in affiliation with the Indianapolis Building of Art at Newfields, which is breadth the exhibition is slated to biking to. This does accomplish a affectionate of abnormal faculty accustomed that Newfields is the building that has become a affectionate of figure for the museum-as-entertainment-venue fad, which is one of the affliction aspects of the all-embracing about-face appear museums acceptable added centered on visitors and added personalized. Newfields about-face against remaking itself as a array of Instagram amphitheater was abundantly alleged out as “greatest burlesque in the art world” two years ago.Ultimately the “hotel experience” is one of the affliction things a company can do with attention to the Edward Hopper and the American Auberge exhibition. I do anticipate that bounded audiences will acquisition the change appealing, alike if they don’t absorb the night central a painting. For me, it was appallingly awful. But the exhibition is still account seeing for its moments of able-bodied candor.Edward Hopper and the American Auberge will abide on appearance through February 23 at the Virginia Building of Accomplished Arts (200 N. Arthur Ashe Boulevard, Richmond, Virginia). It was curated by Dr. Leo Mazow with analysis abetment from Dr. Sarah Powers.

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[whitehotharlots]

The Day of the Wokeists

 Before we begin, here’s a brief list of musicians whose work has not been pulled off streaming services, whose records are still for sale online and in shops, and whose labels did not issue massive recalls:

Remy Ma, who shot someone, and then while on trial for the shooting had a group of friends beat up the boyfriend of a witness.

Jerry Lee Lewis, who married his 13-year old cousin and then broke into Graceland in 1974 to try and murder Elvis.

Rick James, who locked a 24-year-old woman in his basement for six days, raped her repeatedly, and burned her legs and genitals with his crack pipe.

Phil Spector, who pulled a gun on 4 separate women who refused to sleep with him, and eventually shot a 5th woman in the woman in the mouth, killing her.

Mark E. Smith, the world’s angriest-looking man and serial domestic abuser.

Chuck Berry, who installed cameras in the bathrooms of the restaurant he owned and taped women as they peed.

Ice Cube***, who beat the shit out of a female rapper at her record release party while his bodyguard threatened to shoot anyone who tried to intervene.

Ian Watkins, lead singer of Lostprophets, who convinced several female fans to allow him to rape their small children. When police confiscated his computer he had to give them his password so they could unlock it. It was—I swear to god—“ifuckkids.” 

That’s just the first several that popped into my head. I didn’t even need to google them. And that’s also just very major offenses, not including minor crimes such as when Paul Simon appropriated African culture, or when Vampire Weekend appropriated Paul Simon’s appropriation. Or that Jamie Killstein guy who got popular for being Super Woke but then wasn’t nice enough to the groupies he fucked.  Or Iggy Azalea and Azalea Banks—I forget which is which, but I know one is bad because she is white and raps while the other is a black woman who thinks that gay people are demons.

So, okay, let’s talk about a hot musical act called PWR BTTM. They are a pair of queer, gender-fluid youngsters who write painfully simplistic teen angst rock. The music is middling, I think. I’m frankly happy whenever I see any young people playing guitars, but their sound reflects the boring edgelessnes that typifies “indie” music in the late twenty-teens. Maybe I’m just getting old, or maybe their music is objectively dull. I dunno. At any rate, it’s inoffensive but doesn’t do much for me.

In interviews, the kids seem charming: introspective enough for people in their early twenties, honest, pleasingly effeminate, self-possessed but not cocky. There’s no obvious signs of idiocy or pretension.

Their shtick is shtick, only now shtick has become conflated with people’s deep-seeded (inalterable, unquestionable) identities, so it’s super loaded and dangerous to comment upon. So, umm, they’re gender fluid. And they express that by covering themselves in glitter. Which makes their concerts seem safe to other kids who indentify as non-binary.  I’ll accept all that at face value.

Yesterday, the group’s new album had just dropped and it was getting rave reviews: 4 stars from NME and Rolling Stone, and a B+ from Consequence of Sound. Stereogum compared them to Sleater-Kinney, Fugazi, Husker Du, and the Beatles.  Again, I am not a musicologist and my taste is just my taste, but I own literally every album released by each of those groups and I can find zero trace of any of them in PWR BTTM. But that’s just me. 

Woke Social Media was even more effusive in its praise. They were, in actuality, borderline violent in their praise. This morning, I found over 20 accounts that were angry the album was getting less-than-perfect reviews (B pluses instead of A’s) and accused the aforementioned publications of being all sorts of phobic. It wasn’t enough to compare PWR BTTM to the Beatles. PWR BTTM needed to be called better than the Beatles.

But then god shrugged. Posts began to emerge. PWR BTTM, it turned out, were not woke purveyors of safety and inclusion. Oh no. They were rapists.

A lone facebook poster said she knew of several people who had been somehow molested by the group—details were sparse, but they alluded to bandmates hitting on people who didn’t want to be hit on, trying to sleep with people under 18, and “violating consent.”  Others posted, as well, all saying not they themselves were victims but that they had heard of others who were victims. Most damningly, (which is to say, most specifically) Jezebel published an account of an anonymous woman who claimed one of the bandmates tried to have sex with her while she was passed out.

The denunciations came in an avalanche. Their label dropped them. All, or nearly all, venues canceled. Their opening acts and touring band members quit.  All copies of their music was removed for purchase from streaming sites, new physical copies of their album cannot be bought on Amazon, and their label is offering to refund the money of anyone who bought the record. (Amazon is offering used copies of their latest for $30.00 per CD; LostProphets’ “Liberation Transmission,” meanwhile, is free to stream with Amazon Prime and can be ordered on CD for $5.99, shipping included).

So we have two possibilities, here:

A couple of young queer kids were/are really big sex creeps, and they’ve been allowed to prey freely upon vulnerable kids because they do a good job of using woke terminology.  OR

A couple of young queer kids are weirdos, have probably creeped out or angered people but haven’t actually done like actual Assault, but they are now being unduly smeared through thirdhand, low-follower social media accounts making accusations that are absolutely unverifiable.

At any rate, the only acceptable reaction to an accusation is enthusiastic and unqualified acceptance. So PWR BTTM’s career is now done.  Period. Anyone who does not sufficiently distance themselves from the band are subject to immediate excommunication from polite society. This very overview I am writing, if it gets noticed by more than a few hundred people, will be considered tantamount to physical assault, and people will try to identify me so as to get me fired.

And here, my friends, the foundational psychosis of the Woke Edifice has been laid bare. You cannot provide broad inclusion while demanding absolute conformity.  Absolute conformity results in blunt reactionaryism, exclusion, violence, and heaps of obvious and unappealing self-contradiction. One minute you’re demanding the head of a writer for daring to suggest that a band’s identity gimmick doesn’t make them the greatest musical act of all time; the next, you’re demanding that no one so much as begin to question the fact that that band is raw evil.

I don’t want to dismiss the beauty of the connection that musicians can have with their fans, how seeing PWR BTTM act uniquely queer was probably very empowering to lots of young people and so these revelations must really suck. But, like, it’s still just a band: they were never actually protecting anybody or setting anyone free. At heart, the identity stuff was a gimmick. PWR BTTM were able to manipulate their audience—or were able to be taken down so absolutely, so quickly—because the rules that guide the ethical precepts that envelop and create their audience are both flimsily constructed and viciously enforced. Wokeness is very, very easy to manipulate but still somehow almost impossible to control. Once unleashed, it will always consume its purveyors, the wasters will always become the wasted.

It’s no coincidence that wokeness elevates cultural trifles into matters of absolute import. By definition, a demand for conformity must be policed in a harsh and aggressive manner, which leaves no room for consideration, discussion, or even basic self-evaluation. Blatant hypocrisy goes unquestioned, and so do takes that are absolutely and objectively incorrect.  The most superficial signaling is celebrated as enlightenment , and any efforts toward complication are considered a sign of evil and disease.

But here’s the neat thing, demonstrated by the list that began this piece… these rules only apply to the people who subscribe to them. And subscription is voluntary, for those who don’t work in the media and/or have sense enough to keep their opinions off of the internet. And every time a fire like this one starts up, the woke sphere tightens its demands and gets a little meaner, and it becomes even more unappealing for everyone who isn’t already initiated.

***It was Dre who beat up the female rapper, not Ice Cube. I guess I actually should have googled it...