In the Northernmost part of Greenpoint, just about as far up as you can go in Brooklyn without falling in Newtown Creek and drifting across the sludge-channel to Queens, there is an ever-changing graffiti mural on the corner of Clay and McGuinness, on the walls of the Power Brake Service shop. We’ve seen employees on site while artists are laying it down, and even saw an NYPD cruiser stop by for a short chat with a tagger before rolling along without so much as a finger-wagging, so we reckon the building owner either approves of the paint job, or at least isn’t bothered by it.

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“Hey, are you gay?” the man asked, grinning wide enough to give his gums a sunburn. I’m not, but it was a fair enough question — I was walking through the East Village in a white linen jacket on the Friday before the Pride parade.

“Uh, no, not yet,” I responded. He wore an large navy blazer over a spectacularly filthy t-shirt. Scabs adorned the corners of his smile. He held an overstuffed shopping bag in his arms, cradling it like an infant.

“Want to give it a chance?” he asked, stepping closer.

“What, now? With you?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, I’ve got all these condoms here,” he said, and tipped the shopping bag towards me. It was bulging, brimming, boiling over with condoms in every color of the rainbow. “We could …”

I cut him off. “Look, dude, we’re not gonna go off and use all those condoms together. Even if I was curious, I just don’t have that kind of time. As it stands, it’s been 32 years and I think I’m all set as a straight guy.”

“Hey, okay!” he said, real chipper, and rolled on down the street to find someone else to share his enormous latex bounty.

This photo was taken in my kitchen — my roommate started celebrating Pride a little early this weekend, and left a display for me. I wish I could have gone to the parade with him, but this little diorama sums it up nicely.

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The Coney Island Mermaid Parade is the sweet and freaky collision of drag, burlesque, special effects and little girls’ birthday parties. It’s a cavalcade of glitter, grease-paint and family-friendly toplessness, a celebration of summer and fun and art sweeter and trippier than Spongebob Squarepants singing for a Flaming Lips session at a gay pride parade.

The loudspeaker in the parade staging area said it best:

If you are the parent of a small child, you should know that there may be exposed body parts that could damage your children. If anyone walks by with those body parts exposed, please make sure to cover your children’s eyes.

Words can’t say what the pictures can — here’s a collection of photos David and I took at the 2008 Mermaid Parade this Saturday:

More after the jump:

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A couple weeks ago, we ran a big fat blog post about a bunch of people sparring in Union Square. They were practicing mixed martial arts (MMA), and letting pretty much anyone get in the ring who wanted to fight.

In writing the post, I tried to focus on the vibe in the air, how cool it was to witness the thing happening — as well as describe some of the utterly ridiculous videos David shot. The post got a ton of traffic (for us), and a corresponding ton of utterly retarded comments that totally missed the point.

David’s videos were pretty choice — and we intentionally focused on the ridiculous side of the thing to attract more attention. The blogosphere’s principal exports are bullshit and outrage, and its chief currency is attention. I’m not a journalist, I’m a storyteller, and I don’t mind altering the telling of an event to make it work better as a story. The thing about stories is, when you tell one story, you’re not telling another one.

All that aside, here’s some really spectacular photos of the Union Square Spartans by Anya Roz that really capture the dignified ballet of the thing, all the grace, training and prowess — and of course, tons and tons of rock-hard man-candy:

More photos and some video after the jump …

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It was a real armpit jungle on the subway this morning, people jammed up in there scalp-to-nostrils like a bunch of soft and complicated Tetris blocks. Everyone flexed their brains real real hard to create a personal force-field, either by staring at a piece of reading material or cranking the iPod and doing the sort of vague-dance-lip-synch that says “hey fuck you, world, I’m so not a part of this that I am astrally projecting myself into a nightclub and at that nightclub on the astral plane I just don’t care about NOTHIN’.”

Then somebody’s weapons-grade anal vapors wafted through the car like a grey-green angel of death. Most people completely ignored it, though the dancing lip syncher did seem to stop opening her mouth quite so wide. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do, just sit there and suck it up in the most literal sense.

One guy just stood there ignoring the fragrance and just eating his breakfast like everything was cool. He methodically worked his way through a baguette, pressing a flattened palm against the tail end and shoving it into his steadily chewing mouth like a log into a wood chipper.

On a good day, eating on the subway is a narrow cut above eating in the bathroom. And we all know that any food that is taken into the bathroom is automatically garbage. There’s molecules flying around in there, man, and they settle on everything. This was far from a good day to eat on the subway. This was bringing food into a funky molecule hurricane.

The human mind naturally tries to draw patterns, to find relationships and pull a thin skin of order over a chaotic world. I was certain that this baguette-chipper was the train farter, immune to his own poison. Then he got off the train and whoever it was crop-dusted the car again.

The train finally stopped and disgorged a couple people, let some fresh air in. For a moment, the deadly anal death-angel aroma traded places with its musical equivalent: the lilting sounds of an Amazonian pan-flute band. For just a second there it was all farts and flute music and faces too close — then some folks got off, the A/C kicked in, and the train doors clipped off the music before we pulled away.

It could’ve been worse, though.

My sister was in a pretty horrible auto accident this week. She was driving on 64 in Norfolk during rush hour and some guy plowed into her from behind. Twice. We still have no idea how that happened. The car is pretty much totalled. The rear of it crumpled all up and busted her back windshield in, and her body’s pretty rattled.

The guy who did it got out of his truck and said “Wow. Hell of a way to start a Monday, huh?”

It was Tuesday.

It’s going to be a long and painful process for Jess, getting money from the insurance company, renting a car, either fixing or replacing her car. But it’s just money and time. She can still talk and walk, and she can still express her love with cuss words and laughter, and for that I’m really, really grateful.

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I saw this sign in Union Square last night:

I love bacon, don’t get me wrong — but I wonder sometimes if it’s like zombies and robots and monkeys online — awesome, sure, but also just this stuff the Internet fetishizes just to be fetishizing something. I mean, as cool as I think robots are in the abstract, I’m not actually that thrilled about having a world crawling with them. I just like looking at them and writing about them. Is bacon the internet’s meat robots?

According to Eliza, hell no:

Bacon is the number one meat that vegetarians miss, and the one that eventually breaks most of them.

She’s right. I never could be a vegetarian in the first place — couldn’t give up bacon.

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Hey there, visitors — there’s more (and much better) photos of this here — check ‘em out.

I got another cryptic text from a friend last Friday afternoon: “Fight Club in Union Square. GET HERE.”

For those who don’t live in New York, Union Square has historically been a giant meeting place for political protesters, social activists, and merchants of all sizes. In the days following September 11th, it was a meeting place for rescuers and mourners alike. Now it’s home to a multiplex, Ann Taylor Loft, a Whole Foods, and a Diesel store.

So really, it makes perfect sense that in the inner chamber of Manhattan’s consumer culture, right there in Union Square, there would be a massive, public fight club.

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The cops arrested an actual genie on the subway this morning. They knocked him right out his Adidas, face-down on pavement wet with rain from a million dirty feet. His skin was dark, black like an event horizon with bulging swirly yellow eyes like two eggs from another planet. He roared, rhyming:

Let me go, let me go!
Why SHOULD you?
‘Cause I said it was so!
I can grant you three wishes,
or I can eat your soul!

Everyone just sort of walked around him to get on the train, only staring a little bit. I stepped over him, wishing the train would stop being all slow on the way to Manhattan all the time.

Really, if you were undercaffeinated and a little late to work, what would you wish for if you were on the spot like that?

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Francis and the Lights remain my favorite Brooklyn band, Francis’ video-game etiquette aside.

They’re playing a show at the Bowery Ballroom in late June, and I HIGHLY recommend y’all go check them out. Here’s the info”

Francis and the Lights
at the Bowery Ballroom
Wednesday, June 25th
$12 in advance, $14 at the door
with ‘Heloise and the Savoir Faire’

Here’s a new-ish video clip from an in-studio performance, just for a taste:

“For Days” from Francis and the Lights on Vimeo.

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The previously mentioned lord and master of 21st-century New York subway graffiti is at it again. He’s started a Flickr page under the name “Poster Boy NYC” with a lot more images, but these are the ones I liked the best out of the current crop of new releases.

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