Intersections

... Almost done

My last round of book-related events for the roll-out of "Down & Delirious" in the U.S. is this coming week, back in Southern California. YES! Almost done! It's been fun and enriching sharing the book with people, but also a long and exhausting ride. Wanna get back to work.

On Saturday at the LAT Festival of Books, I am on a panel titled History, Identity & Purpose: California, Chicanos & Beyond. Should be an interesting discussion.

Then ...

A New York diary, Part 2

I'm just gonna to keep it real up-front right here.

During Part 1, Tuesday night, I had a nice dinner in the West Village with a friend, nice little Italian place, quintessentially New York, four cheeses. Later, in the dead of night, my stomach rumbled me awake. I got up. I then proceeded to puke up buckets and buckets of purple cheese sludge.

It was really disgusting. Came without warning, unprompted by alcohol or anything else. Just a violent expulsion. At a loss once more. Something in this city is disagreeing with me, I thought. Then Thursday happened ...

A New York diary, Part 1

Above, "Miss Octavia," at Suite, a bar near Columbia University, Saturday, April 9, the night of my arrival in New York City. She started her set by busting out "Seasons of Love" from the musical RENT, a song in search of a NYC that exists now mostly in the imagination.

This is New York, in "new winter," 2011. This is my New York diary.

The hardest working reporter in New York

Bill Cunningham might be "the hardest working reporter in New York," says the NYT Lens blog. I came to the same conclusion while watching the documentary on the street-fashion photographer last week in Manhattan. Cunninghman's life is devoted to his work, capturing what people are wearing on the streets of New York, and in the process, documenting a society's vivacious sense-of-self through its clothes.

He knows perfectly well what he's doing, and how important it is.

In the film, Cunninghman is depicted as living a monastic life that revolves entirely around his weekly features in The New York Times, "Evening Hours" and the addictive "On the Street" (my favorite piece of journalism in the entire paper). He lives in a cramped space in the Carnegie Hall studios, with no kitchen and a bathroom down the hall, and eats cheap. He is an 80-something with attends church every Sunday and admits in the film, in a tough moment, that he's never had a "romantic relationship" in his life. In some ways, he's a lot of like Enrique Metinides.

Cunningham started out as a hat designer in the 1950s after the war, then spent years shooting (and comparing) runway shows and street looks for Women's Wear Daily and the original Details. His ethic and moral compass are unwavering: when WWD used his photos to mock the women appearing in them, against his wishes, Bill quit the magazine and never looked back. Through the decades, he's followed his sidewalk muses -- such as a former U.N. official for Nepal who dresses in flamboyant suits -- and has charted not only chic women's fashion but also the rise of men's hip-hop wear. He made an "On the Street" on baggy jeans (in 1997) and one asking "How low will they go?"

The documentary "Bill Cunningham New York" is directed by Richard Press. Press is an unobtrustive presence, capturing Cunningham in total silence in solitary and seemingly unimportant moments, such as shots of the photographer quietly locking or unlocking his studio door. Press uses thrilling archival footage and photographs to present the history of the pulsating tradition of New York streetwear, through the eyes of its most faithful watchman.

"The point is," the photographer says, "fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life."

* Previously, "Bill Cunningham hat-tips the summertime fedora."

New Yorkers *

One minute in New York City, a stranger on a subway staircase is barking -- "Excuse me!" -- because he perceives that you are standing directly in his way, on his way to some Very Important Business, and he's just about prepared to run you over. The next, someone stops, engages, makes conversation, and it is genuine and the engagement is mutual.

People who were born and raised here say the famous rudeness of New Yorkers is just a matter of a misperception. In a city this fast, competitive, overcrowded, and cold, "being fast is being polite." The look in people's eyes when you approach them is: "Whatta ya need whatta ya need whatta need."

The winter's been hard. People just say "brutal" and shake their head, in a sustained disbelief. You can see it in their faces. It's been so cold this week (except Monday) and it seems like the winter just isn't over. They just want to get home and get into bed. You gotta be quick. A friend said this morning about the snap-snap-snap: "It's neighborly, it's helping everyone out, keep it going."

Gotcha.

Since I've been here I've been asking nahua-looking faces, 'De donde eres?' They say Mexico -- with one Guatemala so far. Puebla, Neza, el Estado. They're mostly behind the counter, hustling. They wanna answer in English but I'll jostle the conversation back into Spanish, just to keep hearing the dialect in this outer-world context.

Last night with a buzz on the L back into Brooklyn I asked another guy who was having a conversation with another guy. I basically interrupted. I asked him where he was from. He was leaning against the standing pole and holding it with his hands, over his head. He looked at me like I was crazy. Like, 'Mexico, duh, pendejo.'

Where in Mexico? He rolled his eyes. Like, 'Where else?' "Poblanos," he said. Just straight-up rude. I backed off.

OK. You guys are fully integrated.

Links: "WNYC: Know Your Neighbor: Lucia, the Frequent Flyer to Mexico." "WNYC: Dominican Bachata Founder Spices Up Tiny Washington Heights Restaurant." "Nueva York, by Carolina Gonzalez and Seth Kugel." "New York Times Video: Playing the Subways." "Mexican New York, by Robert Courtney Smith."

More: East WillyB, a New Web Series. Club Atlantis. Camaradas el barrio. GHE20 G0TH1K. ** Remezcla.

Someone ...

... in New York City right now is writing PEMEX. Pemex, as in the state oil company in Mexico. Nice choice of letters, which is what it's really all about.

I spotted this lil guy of a tag while on a walk with Joven Will the other night along the now-soul-crunching region of Manhattan formerly known as something that used to be called the Lower East Side.

Now, I really don't know what you're supposed to call this. To think, these streets were once the trods of SACER-IRAK. But fuck-wait, what happened to them?

No use complaining anymore. I'm just gonna look at more by Pemex, look for more by SHA MONEY, and hope for the best. In New York, the birthplace of modern graffiti, bombing will never die.

Quechua to Zapotec

Sunday: We didn't go in but we strolled past it, the Hispanic Society of America, in the Harlem region of Uptown Manhattan. Wait, stop. What is that?

The names of these languages chiseled into a band on the side of one of the society's buildings gave me a grounding jolt in the imperial city: Quechua, the language of the Andes, Arawak and Carib, from the north Caribbean coast of South America, Chibcha, from what is now Costa Rica and arounds, Maya and Zapotec, from Mexico and Mesoamerica, and from today.

New York as a pole in a pan-Latino consciousness, out of bounds, at least. It's here. Call it #LocalLatin?

** Link: My visit to WFMU in Jersey City with Rupture, and Joven Will, for Mudd Up! Stream or download the hour here.

Down & Delirious in New York City *

Here are two fliers for dual events in New York this Thursday, April 14. Extra details at bottom. Hello, Nueba Yorr!

Piratéatelo!

Both citas promise to be bad-ass: First at the Columbia history department, with scholars I admire and respect, including Claudio Lomnitz; then at a new D.F.-style cantina in Williamsburg, with three great DJs: Jawnita of East Village Radio, Marcelo Cunning of Nacotheque, and Discoyoacan, aka Felipe Mendez, a partner at Cantina Royal and La Superior.

As always, in the spirit of the book, a pachanga and a space for collaboration. (With thanks to the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center at Stony Brook, and Mex-and-the-City.) Ponganse a bailar! Corre la voz con tus paisas, far and wide! Let's bring out that capirucha energy here in NYC. Would love to see you there. FB invite here.

MORE ...

Tonight, Monday, April 11, I will be in-studio with Jace Clayton aka DJ Rupture for his weekly program Mudd Up! on WFMU (90.1-FM in the New York area), at 7p. We'll be working through tracks, sounds, questions. Rupture's announcement.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 12, I present the book at SUNY Stony Brook, with responses from Froylan Enciso, Melixa Abad-Izquierdo, and a video piece by Pancho Westendarp. See flier here.

Here all week. What's good?

* Previously, "How the 'Down & Delirious' book cover came about." * Post edited.

Santa Sabina

"El Angel" by Santa Sabina, 1996. RIP, Rita Guerrero, "una voz de fuego."

Mexico City is Mordor *

This is what D.F. feels and looks like right now, "Mordor." The smog and altitude and dryness of the spring is the source of the Mexico City mutation.

Last night on a roof-top we couldn't decide what color the sky was: a red-purple-orange nighttime gray? I look across the way on a street and I can't see the tops of the mountains. It's just ... blank. An idea: think it's time local fashion designers maybe start considering making ready-to-wear street masks? A future-is-now kinda thing?

Diesel exhaust, construction dust, sewer fumes, hostile microbes. A handkerchief is a worthy investment. Come to think of it ... when deemed necessary ... see here and here.

But we still love living here, right? Without question. Addicted to the impossible city, infected by it. Oh yessss.

* Source uncertain for photo. Please alert me if it's yours.

How the 'Down & Delirious' book cover came about *

Above, a "moodboard" used by designer Jennifer Heuer during her process for the book-cover design for "Down & Delirious." The image appears in a fascinating interview Heuer did with Faceout Books about how she approached creating the book's central selling-pitch, its cover.

I loved reading this, as I've never met Heuer and had no idea what Scribner would offer as potential covers, or from whom, until I saw the designer's options. Here's what Jennifer had to say about the process (love that she started doing research at the New York Public Library):

What is Down and Delirious in Mexico City about?

The author is a journalist living in Mexico City taking a look at the new urban youth cultures and the people who love them or sometimes violently hate them. This was directed at a young fresh audience interested in how certain, and sometimes similar subcultures can form and clash in different areas. The author introduces us to the new hyper-emo crowd, a fashion-forward crew, artists and musicians. It's in no way a tour book for the city, so the general direction was to aim in a fresh, modern and somewhat fashion-minded direction. Mexico City is set in a volcanic bowl which means the city can't physically grow outside it's borders. So the density within the city is intense, hot, polluted, and grounds for subcultural strife ready to boil over.

Were there any steps taken before starting, and was there a clear working process that led to the final? Any known influences?

I began by heading to the library (NYPL has a wonderful picture library and I'm lucky enough to have the Pratt library at my fingertips). I researched mainly Aztec art, Latin American Catholic art, Day of the Dead ephemera and so on. I also began setting up an online moodboard through Imgspark.com!

I tend to spend at least half of my time writing and sketching. I start by listing out categories within the book, then lists within those categories and see if there's anything interesting that pops out or crosses over (I find this works for fiction and nonfiction alike). It's also just good to get bad ideas and buzz words flushed out of the system so I can ignore their nagging.

[...]

For this cover, the final piece uses a cutout Aztec-inspired pattern and beneath is an image of a volcano erupting.

Super interesting, and also intrigued by Image Spark. In Heuer's moodboard above, I see the sun stone, pyschedelic pyramid forms, the skull-influenced cover of "El Monstruo" by the late John Ross, feathered serpents, Aztec glyphs, and a thrilling find because I've considered these a personal visual influence since I first saw them: old Slash magazine covers.

I love that the eventual design is a mix of stylish and superflat, pre-Hispanic symmetry and volcanic tension, almost radioactive. It's interesting that Heuer describes listing and cross-referencing categories, which is a method I used in writing and visually mapping the book's themes and eventual chapters. See this image and post.

She adds: "I basically learned what I always knew; which is to get away from my desk, go to the library, museums, read through fashion magazines and the newspaper, listen to the radio, watch documentaries and observe closely."

Friends and readers consistently tell me that the cover for "Down & Delirious in Mexico City" is eyecatching and inviting, so this discovery is a real treat. Congratulations, Jennifer! Hope to one day meet and shake your hand with gratitude.

** MORE: Here is the Rodrigo Betancourt illustration for Chapter 6, "The Lake of Fire." And more interesting interviews with book designers at Faceout Books.