HONK! 2009 took place this past weekend in Somerville outside of Boston, MA. But a big thanks is due to my friend Alita for giving me the heads up on the event that I honestly did not know about – but she read my body language and excitement for recently seeing Mucca Pazza and clued me in. I glanced at the list of bands travelling to Boston to play and it read like an international smorgasbord of brass & drum skins. And I wanted to get my step on!
I got in touch with one of my Boston chums, “mulcad01″, and described the event’s affairs and location. He too wanted to enjoy the festivities, and declared that everything – everything! – was “about 2 blocks away” from where he lived. Somerville and Davis Square, here I come!
from NYC to Boston. I took the Bolt Bus, which comes highly recommended. They have 110V AC power outlets and a pretty good WiFi connection, and their crowd are generally advantageous of these amenities. So there are lots of laptops and movie-watchers. Yes, this means you’re more-or-less isolated from the person next to you, but it’s also a means of discussion & conversation if you’re so inclined, and I am!
It took nearly an hour and a half just to get out of Manhattan! So I arrived to Boston late, but it worked out perfectly that my matey mulcad01 got off work as I was arriving. mulcad01 and I went to a bar and watched the unfortunate conclusion to game 2 of Boston’s ALDS – no better than my Cardinals. And in true Boston style the bar was jam packed with revelers and fans. And in true Boston style they spent as much time yelling at the television as they did drinking – that is, LOTS!
mulcad01 was afraid I’d peek under the covers, so he wore his jeans to bed. Otherwise he said he always sleeps completely naked and chained to his bed (some alarm system “releases” him every morning).
After some driving around and looking at quaint streets and public art, we went to a NERF WAR GAMES event. No shit. See for yourself:
Everybody was really dorky and lovely and the donuts were only a quarter if you were participating in the war, but we wanted to HONK!-stomp!
(Please keep in mind we didn’t have a choice in attending the NERF event. Seriously! It’s not like… a geek like me would ever, I mean ever, be interested in anything like that!)
We proceeded back to Somerville where mulcad01 lived about 2 blocks from everything. And sure enough within minutes from his doorstep you could hear and then see the processions of bands converging on the town and then occupying their respective “stages”: squares, parking lots, plazas, bank steps. Whatever and wherever that could hold a couple hundred people was, for one day, converted into a great outdoor music spectacle! And the weather couldn’t have been better: warm in the sun, cool in the shade; you wanted a sweater otherwise but were fine to take it off and stay warm as long as you danced danced danced!
All the bands were, simply, amazing! Each band had two slots and played in two different places, so the opportunity was there to see every band and site. I did not. Mainly because I wanted to see two bands in particular, and a couple other bands if time allowed. The two bands in particular were Hungry March Band (who have graced these pages before) and the What Cheer? Brigade whom I first saw open the Swoon show at Deitch in Long Island City last year and they blew my mind then, and this time around they completely disemboweled me! mulcad01 and I danced so hard we woke up the next morning stiff and sore!
Oh yeah, here are those bands I was talking about:
What Cheer? Brigade from Providence, RI
Hungry March Band from Brooklyn, NY
Rude Mechanical Orchestra
I didn’t get nearly enough photos of What Cheer? Brigade. That’s because I was dancing so hard! Their second set was after sundown and the pavement nearly cracked from the collective stomping of the crowd! Especially that one song… you know it when you hear it. With that silent break-beat that transitions from horns to drums, breaks again and everybody starts whaling! Oh man I’ve had that stuck in my head for days!
Just do a Flickr search for HONK! 2009, you’ll find plenty more images already flooding online.
After the final sets the evening quickly died down. Everyone was pretty exhausted from approximately 10 hours of dancing and walking the streets, and believe it or not people needed rest… for the street parade the next day! Yay!
But before we get there I went on a nightly walking tour as I often do in new cities/towns, and mulcad01 showed me this round building that I would totally love to call my own. It’s been uninhabited for some years, and is only recently being “developed”. How properties like this ever fell by the wayside is beyond me. If it were mine, I’d paint it in such a way to make it appear like a giant cake! Yummy home!
And now, for the street parade:
What Cheer?, this time marching.
I didn’t get to see them the day before, but I guess this is Orkestar Zirkonium. . . oh yeah, THEY ROCK! Their songs were perfect for marching, as mulcad01 and I kept pace with them for many blocks!
We departed the parade however and took a walking tour and headed to Boston’s ICA where there’s currently some wonderful work by Damián Ortega installed. We took about the longest possible circuitous foot-path route there, and along the way saw a stairway full of slinky, a GIANT ship on the horizon, and mulcad01 pointed out what would be the best possible sniper positions (spillover from his service in the Watching Too Many Movies forces).
look at the size of that boat. seriously. it’s taller and longer than those buildings!
the identity of mulcad01 will forever remain a mystery.
We had some dinner, headed home and I packed my bags for departure. The festival was moving to Providence the next day for PRONK but unfortunately I had already booked my return ticket and didn’t have a place lined up. So I jumped the first available WiFi-enabled bus back to NYC and there I was at 2am.
And well, you know you’re home when:
and just to remind you, SOCKS!:
Bottom line is, if you have the opportunity, GO to HONK! You won’t regret it. What a joyous celebration of dancing in the streets and freedom of movement in an otherwise striated space. Express yourself through dancing!
as in, I’m taking it back over two weeks now. Recaps are kindafrequent around theseparts, because sometimes activities – life – take over to the extent that there just isn’t enough time to sum it all up. Hell sometimes there’s barely enough time to sleep!
Things have definitely slowed down a bit now, and all for the best, I need a little rest. But it’s been a good run the past 15 or so days:
Halloween
I think I might prefer the grounds upon which Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated – coupled with an aversion to the commodity nature of so many American holidays – but of course Halloween is guaranteed to be a pretty fun fucking time! Especially in a city like New York City, where it is that one time of the year where it really seems quite natural to be riding the subway with a zombie or someone with an arrow through their head.
At my home we hosted the Hunter MFA annual dance party for the second year running, and it was a complete blowout!
Me? I followed through with my plans and fabricated an outfit which commented on desires of the male form, inspired by guerilla (text-less glossy posters showing a chiseled male with a notable package) and overt (newspaper back-cover spreads commanding “Meet Clint”) advertising campaigns throughout SoHo and the city at large promoting male underwear. For one night I was Clint Mauro, the Armani Exchange underwear model. Consisting of digital prints mounted on cardboard and fastened with zip ties, my outfit became an exo-skeleton of sorts that also greatly improved my dance moves!
Later that night I attended the Performa07 opening at the Guggenheim with my matey Chen, which launched with a one-night only performance by Francesco Vezzoli. Contrary to what others had to say about the event organizing, not all hope was lost. Sure the line wrapped around the corner and nearly halfway to the next Avenue, and sure there was a fiasco surrounding the ticket issue, but eventually all punters made it inside and got to ‘view’ the performance in one way or another:
While some people got dugout-class chairs in the rotunda, and others got to stand along the signature spiral ramp, I still think I had one of the best seats in the house! Sent to one of the Gugg’s theatres, we didn’t get to see the ‘live’ performance but rather to watch it on two quad-split projection screens, with a model – someone by the name of Cate Blanchett or other – sitting on stage the entire time, who eventually got up and left to close out the performance, being video-tracked as she circled down the entire Guggenheim spiral ramp, to interrupt the scene and ask the cast what do they want, what is the truth?
The screen setup was spectacular, and between eight available screens it routinely switched between an array of around fourteen different shots or angles, constantly putting into question one’s perspective, placement and reading of the characters, their storied environment and interaction with each other. Remarkable!
A Psychic Vacuum
If you missed this one, you might possibly have missed the most important public art exhibition this year, anywhere! I’m referring to Mike Nelson’s Creative Time project that turned a dilapidated warehouse space right smack at the Delancey St and Essex St intersection, we’re talking the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge here, into a total apocalyptic fallout space, where you could only traverse by opening doors and passing through, sometimes getting caught in a labyrinth of similar paths and turns, and one encountered small shrines and references to war in the form of carcasses or the passing – almost absence – of time in the form of some old, old calendars.
The last room, which you had to encounter in order to exit back onto the street, was completely exhilarating. I actually laughed, quite heartily, when I entered: a giant warehouse room filled with tons and tons and tons of sand. I mean shit-tons! How did all this sand get here? This? This is what awaits the end? Oh man, talk about hitting the final nail on the coffin! I still laugh at the thought of that room, full of sand!
(nearly finished)
on the set with Law & Order
Two Mondays ago started early, at 6:30am – like I said, little time to sleep! – on set with the crew of NBC’s Law & Order. Nearly a 16-hour gig, they were doing a shoot at Location One, as their script called for an art gallery, so I was their facilities manager for the day. This was an amazing bunch of people, and the crew totaled easily around 60 people. And they all fit their roles perfectly: the actors were self-involved; the producers made influential decisions on the fly; the electricians were the biggest, nerdiest, thickest-glasses-wearing ones around! I got to see some pretty unique hardware, and it was pretty amazing to see how a shot gets made and furthermore to imagine how it will all be stitched together later for television! And thankfully they did their work when they did, as that night the Writers Guild of America strike went into full-swing, and within a day they were reportedly picketing the Law & Order set (which could have potentially made me a scab for crossing the picket line to open the facility!).
Fat Lipstick and the World Famous Bob
the Fat Lipstick film series opened with the screening of (breathe) Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom. Perhaps it rolls off the tongue easier in Japanese: Kyôfu joshikôkô: bôkô rinchi kyôshitsu. A steamy and raunchy film that was probably the perfect touch to welcome in the deep autumn chill of November, involving multiple girl-gangs whose members all had some brilliant cognomens like pipe-crusher or the-boss-with-the-cross; and corrupt politicians and high-school administrators and the multiple parties looking to expose them through blackmail, debauchery and group sex! All the while managing to throw in a comment or two about the American bombing of Japanese port cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can’t think of a comparable American film to be honest, they definitely have something totally unique with this one!
Oh, and did I mention we were offered an exclusive performance by the World Famous Bob:
A performance you won’t see repeated ever again. As you can assess from the snapshot, if you missed it you missed it!
freeDimensional and Censorship opening
Closing out the run, if you missed the opening for Censorship organized by freeDimensional then you may very well have missed the best opening of the week! If not for the work – which was itself pretty spot-on – then for the party, you missed a great party! Complete with Censored ale, naked people (in that not-so-invasive sort of fashion, but somehow sensible), a raffle and a sound troupe that seemed to follow me from room to room as the evening progressed! And the crowd was really great, supportive and best-of-all willing to dance!
Additional asides:
The Altman Building
let me just say if you get a chance to attend an event at the Altman Building on W 18th Street @ 6th Ave, then go! It’s a gorgeous building. Expansive, open, bricked ceiling, huge riveted beams, a spectacular place for any type of event!
Helicopter chase
Oh and then there was that night that began with some typical NYPD undercover-but-not-so-undercover vehicles creeping up and down our block for some time, before eventually the helicopter showed up and a pursuit of some sort ensued. That was exciting.
Old feet, new shoes
Some new shoes were in order, as my last pair developed a sizable hole on the right sole which I didn’t find out about until I stepped into a puddle of murky water – fun fun. And as it turns out my feet have grown a full shoe size in the past year.
Closing
So all that and then some. I hope this post will keep y’all busy for a while. I know it sure kept me busy.
(my feetsies in the boat, with north edge of Roosevelt Island off to the left)
anybody who lives in NYC must do this! You’re in a kayak, in the East River! How cool is that? And the water wasn’t all that cold either, so the splish splash and wet bum was actually quite pleasant. Anybody can do this, and it’s completely free! Did I mention it is FREE!? Visit licboathouse for details.
I got re-blogged by one of the best blogs around, Newsgrist, regarding galleries, museums, photography and social networks. I’ve always considered re-blogging as a type of acknowledgment, or a social networking type of homage, or simply a hat tip from one blogger to another. So thanks, Joy!
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attended an opening at Y Gallery, a new space in East Elmhurst, Queens.
whereas most people couldn’t fathom traveling this far out into Queens for a small opening, it reminded me that good art and even greater spaces are always possible outside the confines of Manhattan, and indeed in the coming years and decades this is where most of us, artists and curators and viewers alike, will be migrating to encounter art.
server upgrade was completely successful, and already worth the investment: the backend is extremely feature-rich, and I can’t recommend mediatemple enough for their great customer service and smooth operation (the upgrade was literally only 3 clicks and some patience).
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Fall has finally rolled in, and it’s sweater weather time. Me, I enjoy the cold. Fashion makes more sense in colder climates (after all what is there to wear really on the beach, in the sun?). Food not only seems to taste better but tastes more, especially hot food. And the tension of hot and cold when drinking a tea or coffee but standing outside in the cold, it’s soooooo satisfying!
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taking advantage of the server upgrade (which was already in the planning stages), because of my documenting the process of changing a Grand Theft Auto 4 billboard wall-painting in Canal Street/SoHo, NYC
(yes, I normally keep that many tabs open!)
I got picked up by some gaming blogs, and even got one of my images published on the frontpage of planetgta.com (owned by gamespy, which I’ve been a member of for well over 6 years), got dugg, and linked on gamekings which altogether made my stats absolutely shoot through the roof!
Gamers, dorks and geeks abound seem to have no problem leaving comments, and encouraging the documentation process. They seem to be less-reserved, and aware that this is just a ‘moment’. We’re all just living in the moment.
so I bought these camouflage socks last week because I like camo and I’m always needing new socks (don’t ask me why, I just do!). So I wear them and they’re all fine and dandy, pretty comfortable, look nice. I take them off and decided to just pull them off reverse-like. Whoah! Way more interested in the reverse-stitching! The standard way is all slick and smooth, you don’t even see the stitching. But here, so much texture! Next time I wear these I am SO wearing them in reverse!
And yes I scanned my sock on a flatbed scanner for you all to admire.
