Fashion's Night Out #2

Is it too late to blog about Fashion’s Night Out?... Good.

It was pretty rad - and not because of the fashion, but because there was a man in the Louis Vitton store window licking a LV handbag - slowly and sensually.

It was 10pm when I got there, and I watched him for a good ten minutes. Had he been licking the handbag since 7pm? I wish I’d arrived there earlier!

The rest of the night was really just an insane battling of crowds. EXCEPT for Sarah Silverman's performance at the Mac Makeup store in Soho at 8pm. It was worth the wait (I lined up for over an hour). She signed a free copy of her awesome book The Bedwetter, and also sang a song where the only lyric in the refrain was ‘cunt.’ Bless her!

Here's some more pics:

 Manic crowds outside Bergdorf Goodman

Dolls of designers at Barney's

If you could get inside the LV store, men were dancing on the staircase. 

Desert!

It was a good night, but a little overwhelming to try and plan. With a gazillion celebrities and at least an hours wait to see just one, you really have to chose your favorite and be satisfied with that. By 9:30pm most of the free drinks have dried up and the crowds on the streets are a nightmare. But it's kind of awesome to have this kind of crazed atmosphere that doesn't revolve around a sporting event. Go fashion!

Poor Harry

My mum’s a vegan. She’s turned my step-dad vegan and more recently his adorable collie-dog, Harry vegan as well.

I remember when she told me over the phone one day “Harry’s a vegan now.” She was thrilled. I thought about this for a moment, and wanted to say - “Well is Harry really a vegan? Or is he being forced into it? Like did you convince him to turn or was it like - eat vegetables and rice, or starve.” The ironic thing is, when I ask mum why she’s a vegan, (apart from the environmental impact) it’s mainly because she doesn’t like to be cruel to animals. 

Cocktails and Suicide

Last month I caught up with an old friend (Pat) at a rooftop bar over cocktails and… a suicide.

(new rooftop bar in Hell's Kitchen)

Pat and I had met eight years ago in our early twenties, teaching English in China. She was mourning the death of a close friend in a drowning accident, and I was mourning the completion of a three year business degree that I had no desire to use. There we found ourselves working for a dodgy Chinaman, eating boiled chicken’s feet and being treated like celebrities, all because of the colour of our skin. When we try and tell other about the craziness that goes on in China, they don't seem to care.

“I forget I can talk to you about this stuff,” Pat said. I sipped my martini staring out at the lights of Manhattan and thinking about skinned goats, when a large dark object fell from above and over the edge of the deck. It was about the size of a miniature grand piano, which I vainly hoped it was, but when people rushed over to the edge of the glass, they confirmed it was a person.

We were too short to see over the ledge, but the tall guy next to us said they had landed on the road in front of a cab – that had stopped just in time.  People across the road were frozen in their tracks. Most got on their phones to call 911, and within two minutes we could hear and see sirens heading towards the hotel. On the rooftop, we all became instant buddies bonded by tragedy. We talked to one another about what we’d seen, and made facial expressions that read “eeek” and “how sad.”

The horrible thing was, when we looked up, we could clearly see where they would have jumped from. The penthouse was only one floor above, and set about 5 meters back, overlooking all the action in the bar. How long had they stood up there? How terrible that no one had seen them. Also, how did they propel them selves far enough to clear the bar area?

After a while my morbid curiosity won out against my fear of gore, and I asked one of the staff members near me if I could stand on the chair to have a  look at the body.

“No. You’re not allowed,” he said, moving the chair away. Fair enough.

We waited before going downstairs, where staff ushered us out the side door. Police tape now surrounded the hotel, and in the distance flashing lights reflected off the white sheet that covered the body.

***

Later that night, in a different borough and after many a bar / much saki / vodka from teacups and random acts of dancing, we remembered the roof-top.

“You know 16 floors is not very high,” said Pat. “If  you’re going to go, why not go skydiving and just not pull the shoot. That’s what I’d do.” 

That was not a lie. Pat is a living poster child for a Pepsi-max commercial. As long as I’ve known her, she has always lived life "to the max." She's practically a full-time snowboarder, and since China she’s: studied film, been married, divorced, lived in Canada, NewZealand and Paris, and she’s younger than me. Currently she has a crush on her tattoo artist who designed a giant quill feather dripping in ink that spans her right rib cage and ends at her pelvic bone. (It actually looks rather elegant.)

Even that night, in the sushi restaurant which was empty and dead, she’d pointed to every single picture on the menu page and ordered one of each.

“I love picture menus!” she exclaimed, pointing to a picture of a saki flask. 

It seems kind-of ironic that I took a someone so full of life to bar where another person decided to end theirs.  But I'm glad I was with her, as we were able to turn the night around. Next year she plans to move  here to study again. This time - jewellery design.

Boom!

Guess who’s never buying another handbag again… in her life.

Regardless that it was on sale, it still feels ridiculously expensive. So much so, that I’m embarrassed that I bought it. But obviously not embarrassed enough not to blog about it. Hmmm. Perhaps because if you know how long and far I’ve looked for a bag, you’d see why I either had to buy it, or cut off my left ear to keep sane.

Feelings post purchase:

-       Guilt.  What about the starving people in the world who would kill to eat a good looking handbag like this. Why don’t I do the right thing and send it to them? But seriously, valuing this over important things like health insurance cannot be wise.

-       Delight! It looks and feels good, and I know it will last. Investment piece!

-       Dissonance. Of course it’s not perfect. I would have liked it to have segments inside, a thicker shoulder strap - and more compartments all round. (I can feel a rant coming.)

-       Sick... to my stomach, when lying in bed that night. I could have bought 3 Broadway tickets for Ada's nurses instead of this handbag. Selfish, selfish selfish!

-       Stress. After the water-proof spray was applied, the color looked like a burnt orange, rather than tan.

-       Relief. The next morning two ladies at the hairdresser, hair dye still in hair, got out of their chairs, bent down and worshipped my bag. The outside validation helped.

I do realize that when it comes to shopping, I am my own worst enemy and need to chillax.

I did have some help finding this bag. I emailed the lovely Jane Flanagan at the wonderful blog: ill seen, ill said -because I had a great bag on her website. She was very helpful in recommended a tonne of bags and where to find them – including the one I just bought. (Thanks Jane!)

Thoughts on Evil

For the longest possible time (until I was 26) I didn’t believe in evil. I thought that all people were essentially good on the inside, and reasons for evil in the world were due to people reacting badly to their circumstances and making bad choices. Essentially I believed they could all be ‘helped’ and even ‘healed.’ After all, no body wants to grow up to be a child molester or serial killer… do they? *

In 2006 – out of nowhere, I somehow realized that evil exists in varying degrees within all of us. There was no single event that changed my perspective on this, just a gradual understanding that was quite shocking at the time, which is why I remember the year. Perhaps it was because I had also observed that sometimes people don’t change, no matter how hard they try. (Another devastating blow to my beliefs.) 

You cannot deny that to a certain extent we all have some hard wiring within us, and that some people are simply born with a large heart, a wicked streak or a sense of humour. That’s not to say that nurture doesn’t have any impact or that people can’t change. It definitely does, and they definitely do. But that year, I could no longer ignore the fact, that human beings are capable of being malicious – continually, despite their intentions and even despite other good actions.

I recently found this quote which illustrates my thoughts exactly:

How else can you explain the history of the world?

For an interesting read on this topic and the powers of ‘group think’, check out the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Scary - although not completely surprising.

I feel fortunate that I've had no direct reason to ever really believe in evil, and I hope this post is not a downer. I just think that by acknowledging human nature's true capabilities to myself, that I am better armed to make choices and to question decisions that will contribute to the future history of the world.

(Actually, in the case of pedophilia, Oprah has proven it’s a mental illness people suffer -which is why they will always re-offend, again and again and again.)