First Saturday

Unhip in Hipsterville

I always knew I was less than cool and now I have proof. My younger and more bohemian, vegetarian friends all live in Brooklyn. It first started with the artist flocking across the East River in search of cheaper rents and loft-style space to work in. But with such cheap rent comes risk - like being evicted because your building has an illegal matzo factory in the basement and was never legally converted to residential use ... and no one noticed 200+ people coming and going for several years into and out-of the cool, renovated warehouse on Kent Street. Now Williamsburg, Park Slope and several other places are getting too pricey so new Brooklyn neighborhoods are becoming hip. But there will always be Bed-Sty and Coney Island to scare Manhattanites into never venturing Southeast of LES.

So First Saturday is a family-friendly afterhours event held at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. I was meeting my friend, Lisa, there. Through a series of really bad cell phone reception dead-zones, we spent about an hour missing each other in various spots around the museum. I got tickets to the free film that night, Eat Drink Man Woman. It is one of my favorite Ang Lee films and even the Latino-American remake, Tortilla Soup, was rather delightful. I grabbed a greasy BBQ and slaw sandwich which only made me miss the real thing from the Carolinas. I tried to escape the annoying families with young kids congregating in the main room on the first floor. This was where the jazz group was playing. Every multiracial Brooklynite toddler dressed in tie-dyed organic cotton or Central American textiles was running around either screaming, spitting, crying, laughing, yelling, biting, smudging, ramming, or otherwise ruckusing around the space. This made me want to find a speedy egress but luckily the band stopped playing and the families starting gathering their oh-so-cute brood to head home. I finally connected with Lisa for the film. Loved the audience reaction to the more starling plot twists in the film. One HUGELY annoying problem was a girl three seats to my left who kept pulling out her cell phone, lights blaring catching my peripheral sight. I put my hand up the first couple of times she did this to block the annoying light. But the third time threw me into a tizzy. I told her to please stop, that I could see the light so please put the phone away. She refused. I replied with, "Now!" She continued to ignore me and NO ONE in the general area came to my defense. Where is our sense of communal aide? Argh. So I dragged my sad little frame, dressed in boring cords and sneeks, past the lanky and rhythmically smooth 20 and 30 somethings dancing to the salsa groove, and headed home to my comfy UWS studio. At least there my cat thinks I'm cool.