Month: May 2015

It’s Okay To Suck

Sometimes.

I first began to get into photography when I got into reefing. Any coral reef hobbyist will tell you the two go hand in hand. Reefs are beautiful, always changing, photography documents those. More than anything, photos are necessary when you need help. Regardless of how broad your vocabulary might be, when you’re on a forum and trying to get an ID of a specific coral, coral disease, or algae, you need the visuals. I was a lousy photographer, but kind of liked it. Every so often I’d get it right, such a good feeling.

Then I began blogging. I like blogs that include photos or artwork. Makes it easier to read than a wall of text, and often adds a little something. At first, I mostly used stock photos, embarrassed when I posted my own lousy pics. But then I began bringing the camera with me more frequently, making sure it was always charged, shooting photos of what was interesting to me, and/or what I thought would work well with specific posts. Still lousy photos, but it was fun, and I got less embarrassed about posting them. Yet another aspect to blogging that I’m grateful for.

I like to try different things (as long as they don’t involve heights!) but alas, I’m not one of those people who are magically gifted at everything they try. I’ve always had a few things I was good at, and would quickly drop–certainly not publicize–what I wasn’t. But yanno, there are advantages to getting older. Sure I’m more self conscious about my body, but I’m going to the beach anyway. And not everything I do has to have the potential to be something I’m great at. I learned to crochet. Sort of. I’m a truly horrendous crocheter, but sometimes I find it just the right type of mental masturbation, and I don’t care if I’m never going to crochet a fabulous whatever.

First zucchini flower of the season.

This year I’m trying container gardening on the terrace again. I accept that some things will grow, and hopefully flower/bear fruit, and some won’t work out, because I don’t actually know what I’m doing. That’s ok, I’m enjoying watching what happens. Not so fond of the little bug thingies on my lilies, but I got an organic spray that is (slowly) killing them off.

In many ways gardening is similar to reefing, except I don’t feel the same pressure, the same sinking in my gut when I see something go wrong. And things do go wrong in the reef, regardless of how long I’ve been reefing, how much I pay attention. Just the past couple of weeks, something went awry and all but one of my SPS (small polyp stony corals) died. RTN, rapid tissue necrosis. I want to cry thinking of those bare, white boney skeletons, but that’s another post unto itself.

I don’t have to be “gifted” at everything I do or share with others. Hell, I think I’m a kick-ass writer, and I’ve got a good number of people who agree, but still none who are in a position to offer me a dollar for my words. Yeah, that hurts, and it’s always going to hurt. I want to be recognized as a writer, acknowledged as someone who can offer words of value, even if it’s a weirdo story about a smoking rat. I don’t want to be a chef, but I want guests who come over for dinner to enjoy my food, and leave feeling the dinner was part of a great evening. I want them to look at my tank and ooh and ahh about the beauty and vibrancy of the reef. If they see a stray crooked square of crochet work next to the couch? It’s ok.

I keep taking pictures of everything. Digital photography offers an opportunity film didn’t, if only because of cost. I can snap a hundred pics to get 8 decent ones, and not stress about the money wasted on film and development. Much to my surprise, taking pictures has become more enjoyable as time goes on, and I’ve gotten better at it. Try to take pictures of moving critters underwater, through glass, under led lights, you have to learn. Not great, and I’m still lousy when it comes to people, but better. I can and do recognize the difference between the pictures I take, and the ones from people who are actual photography artists. I’m proud of many of my photos now, anyway. And if some of the photos still suck, but I wanted to post them anyway because of the subject? That’s ok, too.

Tomatoes! I’ve never been successful with them, maybe this will be the year.

First tomato flowers.

Sweet peppers

Carrots and beets

Love the leaves of the beets, so pretty.

Lilies, will I ever get a flower?

This was supposed to be a box of ranunculi, but I had a few extra blazing star bulbs so I put them in and they’re choking out the ones I wanted. No clue what the shorter grass looking stuff to the front is.

Peas. I should have used a larger container. Live and learn.

Peas. I should have used a larger container, it’s choking itself. Live and learn.

Blazing stars. These things must be freaking weeds! But apparently there were morning glory spores (?) still in the container from a couple of years ago, because I’m seeing a couple of definite morning glory vines push through.

Walk in the Park–leave your blues, take in the greens

It was such a glorious weekend here in NY, going into Central Park felt mandatory. I missed the spring blooms this year, but there’s plenty of beauty in the greenery. Unless you go deep into The Ramble, you really can’t forget you’re in the middle of the city for more than five minutes. People, the detritus of people, shadows of buildings and artfully placed pipes remind you. I don’t know about anyone else, but I kind of love that. Makes a statement. Not sure what that statement is, but I know it’s there. Yesterday, though, I gathered the girl, the dog, and the cane, and focused more on the greens. We went to The Pool, a manmade pond on the north end of the park.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Another set.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Ok, yes, I took a lot of photos yesterday.

I like this one

I confess, Art Child isn’t the only one obsessed with trees.

Memorial Day is one of 3 days each year when it’s legal to barbecue in the park. The scent of charcoal and charred meat was palpable.

One of my favorite spots in the park, you can almost pretend you’re in Louisiana.

I would like this bench for my terrace.

Happy start of summer, Fringelings. Soon it will be beach days!

Special Occasion: Yanno, Thursday

Canned biscuits

The other morning I stuck these in the oven for Art Child’s breakfast. When she woke up and came in the kitchen she asked, “Is today a special day?”

Ooof. I was never the picture of the Happy Housewife, never cooked breakfast daily, but I used to actually make breakfast regularly enough that no one thought anything of it to wake up to eggs or muffins on a weekday. The above wasn’t making breakfast, this was popping open a tube and sticking overly sweet pre-made discs of dough in the oven. I’ve been pleased with how I’ve forced myself to relax over the past several years; not everything has to be from scratch, the world doesn’t end and I’m less stressed if I’m busy or my back is hurting so I buy leaves already trimmed and washed in a bag for salad. (Still make my own dressings, that bottled stuff should be banned.)

For Art Child to look at those biscuits and think we were either celebrating or there was a state test she forgot about…let’s just say it made me take a closer look at myself, in a broader sense than in the kitchen. Have I relaxed and adapted or have my standards dropped?

Both. Yes, it’s good to relax, not put so much pressure on myself. Some of this “relaxing” is due to enforced lessons of hurry-up-and-wait, both in the world of writing and in the world of medical needs parenting. Wait for responses, call-backs, appointments with specialologists scheduled six months out, test results, watch and see how things develop. As a parent in the specialized medical world, generally bad news comes fast and good news comes slow. As a wanna-be writer, it’s the opposite. Again, these are generalizations, there are exceptions both ways. In either world that bad news feels like a sucker punch, even if you’re sure it’s coming. And in both worlds, sometimes the ball gets dropped, and you don’t hear news until months after you could/should have. Either way, you learn that most things are not the emergency they feel like in your own mind.

And yes, my standards have dropped. I think it’s been necessary for my sanity. When I first began writing and sending queries, it was done through snail mail with SASEs. It often took a long time to get a response, but 99% of the time, you got one. I took long breaks, lots of gaps in my efforts to write and submit queries. The next time I was querying, most were done through email, and more agents were straightforward that if they weren’t interested, they wouldn’t respond. Ugh! For a little while. Then I got used to it. I had to. It’s like sending in a job application, right? If they’re interested, they’ll contact you, if not they won’t. Put into that perspective, it makes sense–though it’s still absolutely appreciated to get a response, positive or negative. Lowered standards or preserving sanity, call it what you will. If they requested a full, you were pretty much guaranteed a personalized response.

Now? Even on a request, people are now seeing bare bones form rejections, the same as on a query. This latest go-round I saw agents who don’t respond at all even to requested material. I have a hard time with this one. Requested means you sent a query and opening pages, they (or their intern) liked it enough to send you a note and ask for the full manuscript. I checked with other wanna-bees to try and read the coffee grounds between the non-existent lines, and it isn’t just me. A request for a full doesn’t mean anymore than what it is, so don’t start practicing your acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in literature, you crazy-overactive-imagination-writer, you. And yes, I know I shouldn’t be saying this out loud, let alone posting it on my blog, the internet is forever, some magical publisher or agent in the future could come across this and say hey! I was going to make Mrs Fringe an offer, but now I won’t. Obviously she’s whiny and difficult, a gnat of a wanna-be. How dare she try to hold on to any standards, think she deserves a little courtesy of a response?

I don’t mean to be difficult, though I’m fully aware that I’m whining. In many ways I’ve been lucky, received a fair share of requests, and gotten many lovely responses, personalized and complimentary. No one has ever told me my writing sucks and I should go submerge my head in my tank, stick to writing grocery lists. Thank God, because I am the worst shopping list writer on the Upper West side–three chicken scratches on the back of an old appointment card, and walk out of the store with $200 transformed into three environmentally friendly reusable bags.

I decided it’s time to slow my slipping standards, so I went to the Farmer’s Market the other day.

Saw mushrooms that looked like they belonged in the art fair.

Passed on these.

Made a wish on a particularly resilient dandelion

These things really do spring up everywhere.

Said a little prayer

And set about making a fresh baked breakfast of rhubarb muffins.

I can still chop, if uneven.

Oops, no sour cream. Ok, not dropping standards, adapting with greek yogurt.

Works out the same

Ready?

Fold the rhubarb in gently, Mrs Fringe!

And then I couldn’t find one normal muffin pan. I found my teeny mini muffin pan, too small for those rhubarb pieces, and too annoying with such a thick batter. I found my muffin top pan, too shallow for the rhubarb. I found tart pans, springform pans, pie plates, and cookie sheets. No muffin pans.

Give up those expectations, and adapt.

Can I interest you in a slice of rhubarb bread?

Can I interest you in a slice of standard dropping rhubarb bread?

Taking it to the Streets

Art in the Village

Yesterday I took my cane and my girl, and went to one of my favorite New York events, the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit. It’s a biannual outdoor art show that’s been running as long as I can remember, Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend, with a lot of amazing art and artists. This is not a street fair, no sausages, zeppoles, blow up rides or knock-off handbags. I’ve heard the original idea came from Jackson Pollack when he was broke, and took some of his paintings and sold them on the street. Something about being in the midst of creative people who are living their art, and others coming to see, appreciate, and purchase the work is inspiring. Plus, it’s fun and free, leaves me near all the places I used to frequent when I was young–can’t beat it. I’ll share a few of the highlights here, but if you’re in or around New York this weekend, or Labor Day weekend, go!

As much as I’ve always loved this show, there’s an extra dimension to it for me now, attending with Art Child. She chats with the artists and asks questions I wouldn’t think of. She responds to this type of venue and it shows. No less than five artists commented on her style, a couple asked to take her photo for portraits. I could see her wheels turning, wondering when she can set up a booth and sell her own work.

Like Art Child, many artists use trees as subjects for their work, and we saw quite a few styles and interpretations. We even found an artist with both paintings and sculptures of what Art Child calls “treeple,” trees with human features, and something she draws frequently in her charcoal sketches. The artist, Anthony Santella, was lovely and patient, with work ranging from realism to surrealism to fantasy.

If I had the money and the room I would have purchased this piece.

One artist, Lisette P, was showcasing jewelry that was all made from New York photographs she has taken, resized and set behind glass. How can you not love jewelry you can Windex to keep clean?

We spent quite a while at her table, and I was happy to see many other people were doing the same. There’s just something about New York street photography when it doesn’t look like a cleaned up postcard.

One of the first booths we stopped at was marvelous, a mix of paintings and jewelry that we both loved, and it turned out the two artists are mother and daughter. Olga and Daniella Bacskay. Perfect, no? I’ll admit to being a bit envious. I appreciate art, and thrill in Art Child’s joy and accomplishments, but can’t share the experience in quite the same way.

Art Child purchased a small print of this powerful mixed media painting. The original has volcanic ash in the tree limbs.

Moving on, we spent time chatting with another artist, this one with the kindest smile. I loved the work, another person displaying both paintings/prints and jewelry. Handblown, painted vases that blew me away. Dudley Vaccianna, the scenes he paints just seemed to radiate female power. The earrings were all hand painted on brass, beads from Nigeria.

I think I could grow ten stories from his pose.

I think I could grow ten stories from his vibe.

Sadly, the show is much smaller than it used to be, but even still, my back and hip gave out before we were able to see everything. So we walked back around the park to the west side.

So clean nowadays!

And of course, because by then we were hungry, and so close, getting a late lunch was mandatory.

The peanut butter restaurant, simple and brilliant.

By the time we got home, I was unable to stand up straight, but completely inspired. There’s a story I’ve been playing with, building in my head for months. I now have the opening completely in focus.

Strange Days

Wake up!

I should have known it was going to be an odd weekend, since it appeared I woke up on Mars Friday morning.

Art Child presented her too familiar puddle on the couch interpretation–bonus of a low grade fever– so I kept her home from school and we spent the day engaged in a marathon viewing of the tv series, Once Upon a Time.

Saturday was her second to last art class for the year and the fever was gone, so she went. I took Little Incredibly Dumb Dog for a walk, and ran into a friend I haven’t seen all winter. She asked me if I would like to go with her on a yoga retreat, she knows somewhere reasonably priced. After posting about never doing anything remotely like that just last week, I was intrigued. Then she mentioned staying in dorms, something like six women to a room. I promptly remembered why I don’t do things like that.

I decided to hit the Goodwill up the street from the art class. It’s the nicest one in Manhattan, and the last time I went in I scored two great dresses. Woot, covered for Man Child’s graduation! Yes, it’s a two day event, I needed two outfits. When I showed them to Fatigue, he told me I was channeling Alice Kramden. Works for me. Except for shoes, because mine are all either snow boots, flip-flops or high heels. Flip-flops don’t seem appropriate for the occasion, and I’m not stable enough for high heels yet, so I thought I’d check for shoes. Saw what could have been a great pair, but then I realized one of them had a thick streak of what looked like black permanent marker down the side of one. Red shoes + black marker = no.

Then I saw a very cool skirt. High waisted, cream linen with black appliqués. I couldn’t decide if it was a score-cool or just weird-cool, and it was $20, so I left it on the rack. Waited for Art Child to get out of class, I chatted with a couple of the moms who are seriously skilled thrift shoppers, and they offered to go back to the store with me to give an opinion. Me and my big mouth. It was still there, they liked it and encouraged me to try it on. It wasn’t a skirt. It was a strapless dress. I don’t do strapless. A very short strapless dress. I also don’t do very short unless paired with leggings or thick tights.

No worries, the truth is I’m bored with shopping inside of fifteen minutes, and the girl needed to rest. Art Child and I went home. I went to put my mug in the sink and I don’t know what the fuck happened, but a glass that had been sitting in there exploded. Really exploded. Not only was the sink filled with broken glass, but shards flew across the kitchen floor into the hallway to the left, the dining area to the right, and one embedded itself in my wrist. I had to throw away my sponges, it took me forever to clean up, and the girl was convinced my arm was going to fall off if she didn’t apply a bandaid on it immediately. Bloooooood!!! Sigh. Seriously, it was maybe two drops, no big deal.

Last week three of the four turbo snails in my reef dropped dead. In my experience, these snails never live long, but I haven’t had three die at once. The blenny, however, is thrilled, since he’s made a new home inside the empty shell of one.

Yup, that’s the blenny’s little head sticking out.

Thank you, oh mighty snail, for leaving me this beautiful new house, and thank you, evil bristle worms, for eating his remains so it would be nice and clean.

I think these are all signs that this year should be over. It should be beach time, don’t you think?

Mother’s Day Thoughts–Late Again

Flower District

This past weekend was beautiful, whether you celebrated Mother’s Day or not. I talk a lot about the not so nice parts of living in New York, but a nice part is there are always surprises, no matter how long I’ve lived here.

Art Child’s Saturday art class was invited to a small, private gallery in the afternoon. The gallery is in an old, nondescript building on a street I’ve walked down many times, never knew it was there. Surprise! 5 flights of stairs to climb. Bigger, better surprise, there was an elevator. The space itself was interesting to look at, bright, lots of windows, and enough bars and police locks to make me nostalgic for my first couple of apartments.

The show included recent sculptures by Tyrone Mitchell and a variety of traditional African art and artifacts. I forgot to ask if it was ok for me to post photos of Mr. Mitchell’s work, so I won’t, but I will recommend going to see an exhibition if you have the opportunity. Very thought provoking, using found, everyday objects for social commentary. I’m not an artist, don’t know the right words, but there was a piece I didn’t want to leave. On a wooden scaffolding, a pot set into the top, a woven, painted basket decorated with painted money cowrie shells (I have three money cowrie snails eating algae in my tank as I type) coming out of the top of the pot, and coming out of the top of the basket, a mask, a woman’s face. I can’t say why, but something about the whole moved me, and I had a highly inappropriate urge to climb the scaffolding and pick up that basket. No worries, I didn’t touch.

Then I saw a link on Twitter to an article in the New Yorker about the monetization of mommy blogs. For some reason I can’t link it now, sorry. Anyway, my first thought was, really? I haven’t made a dime. Then I remembered, I don’t do anything to try and make money from Mrs Fringe. Second, and more importantly, this isn’t a mommy blog. Sure, I’m the mama, most of that role is fantastic, and I sometimes talk about mama-ing, but that isn’t what Mrs Fringe is about.

I wondered if I should regret this fact. Would it have been smarter, more practical? Maybe, but I don’t regret it. Most of my life is about mama-ing, has been for a long time. I like having this one area for myself as a whole and empty pocketed-person. And I’m guessing the odds of actually making money from a mommy blog are almost as astronomical as any other form of profit from creative writing.

If this were a mommy blog, I would talk about the exhibition in terms of Art Child, the beautiful heartbreak of watching and listening to her experience this show; the opportunity for her to see and touch the artifacts, to speak to the curator, and the joy of seeing her get it in ways that I can’t. She has challenges navigating the everyday world, and by the artist came to speak she was wilting and we needed to leave, but in front of these sculptures she understood their power.

But this is my this-and-that, unfocused eclectic whole person blog. So I talk about the surprise of the gallery itself, hidden in the midst of stores selling rhinestones and questionable perfumes.

Happy Belated Mother’s Day

I Bow to You

Beginning yoga, take #432–feel free to chant along.

I first learned about yoga when I was 11 or 12 years old. It was a book I found in the school library, small and yellowed, shoved to the back of one of the shelves. I don’t know what I was supposed to be searching for but I’m sure that wasn’t it. Still, being the pretentious little shit that I was, I had to borrow it once I saw the distaste on the school librarian’s face. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the librarian or pretentiousness, maybe it was the fact that in the middle of these pages filled with sketches of purposefully twisted bodies, I saw an unveiled reference to masturbation. C’mon, it was junior high during the year of the flood–certainly this was a book that would take me out of the armpit of Brooklyn.

My parents were no more pleased to see me with this book than the librarian had been. They were certain it would lead straight to a love-in loving cult, tabs of acid (LSD) jumping from the pages to my tongue. Strict in so many ways, but monitoring my reading material wasn’t one of them. Naturally this prompted in depth study and practice, and several renewals. I’ll tell you the truth, I loved it. The meditation, mindful breathing, the light in me recognizes the light in you, mention of the “Divine Spark,” all of this with the magnificent ways I could contort my body, I found… something. Thinking about it, I felt a similar this-is-right-for-me connection when I began blogging.

The first night of trying different poses in my room I saw a page illustrating the crow pose, and I was determined. Umm, you’re upside down, like you’re going to do a handstand, only you balance your knees on your elbows. Sort of, it’s been a long time, so don’t take my word as directions. My room was tiny, and just typing the words makes my knees and elbows chafe with the imprint of the royal blue shag rug, forehead thwoked into the wooden edge of my cot-sized captain’s bed. The first time I saw a yoga mat I thought the angels were singing. Freaking brilliant! Took me three days, but then I did it, the crow pose. Surely this meant I had attained enlightenment. Really, what I wish is that I had known people could train and become paid yoga teachers. Of course there were already yoga centers in the US, but not in the land of Saturday Night Fever, and I didn’t know about them.

I can’t say I stuck with it, but I have always returned to it. Never considered myself a yogi, and never had the budget or the confidence to take an official class. All at home, just me and the sketches/videos/dvds/youtube. Assorted dogs and babies climbing on me while I practiced through quite a few of those years, and a few years worth of beautiful mornings with Man Child doing it with me. The last several years though, different. Increasing problems with my back have limited the poses and how I do them.

Strap and block, felt like defeat.

And then last year I really gave up. I’ve been in better or worse shape at different times of my life, but I had never been this limited in my movements. If you can’t get yourself into a decent downward facing dog, what’s the point? More than the point was the embarrassment of what I could no longer do. Does it make sense to be embarrassed in the privacy of my living room when everyone else is asleep? Of course not, but there you have it, Fringeland. Along comes this winter, and my smack down from icy city streets resulting in assorted fractures. And then PT. I’m lucky, I was assigned the nicest, most supportive physical therapist I can imagine. Until this past few weeks, the exercises were all so small I felt like there was something wrong with the whole scenario. Despite these little baby exercises I was mocking myself for, it was hard. Surprise, Mrs Fringe, a pelvis with multiple fractures fucks you up.

Even though they felt hard, and I hadn’t worked out in a year, none of those initial exercises actually got me stretched to where I felt muscles stretching. Second surprise, those little make fun of myself for doing them exercises? They weren’t nothing. They made a difference, and my body wants more. Yoga sense memory, maybe. By the end of last week it finally clicked. I can go back to yoga. Not just my body, my head wants it. Maybe not all the same sequences I practiced a few years ago, but sticking to the small workouts assigned by the PT has allowed me to regain strength and some of the flexibility I thought was permanently lost. OK, it’s unlikely I’ll ever do a pigeon pose again, but we all know how much I hate pigeons anyway.

So, along with my new ankle weights and resistance bands, I’ve broken out the strap and block I bought over a year ago. I even broke down and bought a thicker yoga mat, which is making a huge difference. I was right, when I brought that book home eleventy thousand years ago, and chanted my very first om. I found something, and I can still find it.

Never got the hang of sequencing to appropriate yoga music with soothing water sounds and inspirational flutes, but old school rock takes me right there.

Insides, Outsides, and the Shit that Holds it Together

Dora the Explorer goes salt and pepper.

I’ve been feeling restless. The restless that says the winter was too long, I’ve been broken for too long, I need a big change. Since moving to Hawaii still doesn’t line up with my bank account, I got a haircut instead.

I told the hairstylist exactly what I wanted, he did exactly what he wanted, and I hate it. I knew I didn’t like it while I was still in the chair, but he had someone else waiting, and my patience for sitting still while someone tugged on my scalp (or, yanno, touched me) was exhausted.

This is silly. It’s a perfectly nice haircut, and 70 percent of the time I don’t bother to do my hair anyway. And when I don’t do my hair, it doesn’t matter how it was cut, I look like a walking used q-tip. I can’t even see into most of the mirrors in my apartment, they’re placed too high, good enough for giving the illusion of a larger space. As I type I’m wearing my favorite summer skirt, a super comfortable plain brown skirt with a streak of white on the back, from where I brushed against a freshly painted wall the first time I wore it, five years ago. But that 30 percent of the time– that’s what I cut my hair for. This ladies-who-lunch-on-delicate-low-carb-dandelion-salads isn’t me.

I posted a photo to my personal Facebook page to whine about it, and my lovely and supportive friends all said all the right things about how nice it looked, I’ll get used to it, etc. Quite a few of them also agreed. It just doesn’t reflect the inside me. What does that mean, anyway, and why does someone who doesn’t bother to do her hair and regularly wishes she could stay in pajamas all day care about this?

I’m a pretty ordinary gal with a pretty ordinary life, someone who swings between stuffing all fantasies under the dirty laundry pile and dreaming about one of my word collections being available for purchase in a bookstore, all while carefully remembering to use qualifiers in personal statements. If my 40,000 year old dreams haven’t become realities, if I’m not claiming my fantasies as possibilities, what’s wrong with looking like I’m running for office on a ticket I’d never vote for–and using run-on sentences while I’m at it? You might say I’m average with an edge of funny, nice with an edge of bitchy, regular with an edge of kooky, or even tired with an edge of ragged, but there’s no doubt I do have an edge.

All this moaning, you’d think I wanted a mohawk. I don’t, just a little oomph, a little oh! a woman who lives in a box but dreams outside of it–maybe even a little humor under that frizz. But maybe not, maybe this bob is who I am, as opposed to who I thought I might be. Which one is your hairstyle supposed to match? Most of all, now that I’ve spent way too much time thinking about the dead cells sprouting from my head, what about you? Do your insides match your outside?

Smells Like

Street Fair Season!

Sunday was a beautiful day, one of those days where you feel the promise of summer. Art Child and I went for a little walk. Or in my case, hobble. We even took Little Incredibly Dumb Dog with us so she could be appropriately traumatized. Got to the corner and the familiar, peculiar mix of zeppoles, barbecue smoke, and exhaust was unmistakeable. Spring is peak street fair season in the city. Some of the fairs are fabulous, with interesting crafts, unique art, live music, and an opportunity to sample great food. Small children and tourists are certain they’re scoring goods that would otherwise be here:

But really, the booths contain a lot of what you might otherwise find here:

Most seem like a collection of the various street vendors scattered throughout the city gathered in one 7-10 block radius for the day, selling the usual crap–some useful crap, most not–and added a couple dozen deep fryers and barbecues. I have on occasion bought some great earrings, once bought a pair of gladiator sandals for $5 that lasted 4 years, and used to buy all my socks from these tables.

These are great days to be in the city, the first days of flip-flops and running into friends you haven’t seen since the first snow fell, warm enough to feel glorious but before it’s so hot all you smell is old dog piss rising from the grates as you walk down the street.

This was a pretty average fair, but the first one is always fun. Walk with me, Fringelings.

Beautiful, aren’t they?

Come join the crowd, who needs fresh air?

More beads, please!

If I didn’t love the sketch from Art Child so much, this would be my new profile pic.

The neighborhood rats will eat well tonight.

Need I say more?

I wanted to photograph the beautiful pillows and throws, but the man running the booth was concerned I would try to copy them. Never fear, I can’t sew a button.