ONTO WILLIAMSBURG! Pt. 3

ONTO WILLIAMSBURG! Pt. 1

ONTO WILLIAMSBURG! Pt. 2

Random old guy alert! There's one at every concert-festival, isn't there?



Looks like we missed a spy.



Me and my friend, fitting in like a lock of hair on rice.



No hipster place is complete without these little ma 'n' pa stores that sell tons of media. Cassettes, records, videos, DVDs, books, CDs, everything! All in affably ghetto boxes and shelves. As seen here, the Pool Party kids spilled in after it was over.


Entering an apparently flooded and useless train station.



Being attentionwhores on the train back. Attention whoring on an NYC subway is equivalent to masturbating in front of a girl to get her into you.


Taking the escalator down to obscurity again.

This particular set of escalators interest me. Mind you, there's nothing special about these escalators. Just a set of about seven or so of them that take about 30 seconds to complete their descent. These are the escalators everyone must take to leave the city by the popular PATH train.

Every day, thousands, possibly millions, make their exodus. 30 uninterrupted seconds of reminiscence; the understanding that at the bottom of these escalators, your day will have turned from existence and into nostalgia. I have to wonder; what were the memories like for the riders going down this 30-second realization of the end? What were the mortal days that became eternal here?

My contribution to this ethereal bank of nostalgia involved the hipster hippies of Williamsburg. The escalators elicited thoughts of them dancing, them looking like jackasses, and them reveling in all of it. And the fact that they simultaneously shattered and solidified my feelings about them.

I didn't like them; all the shallow frills of being one of those kids, trying so hard to fit in, and by association, so hard to become forgettable.

And yet, I embraced them. To take yourself and mold it to the what you want it to be, with nothing holding you back, is admirable. Even if you get lost in a sea of douchebags wearing neon sunglasses, at least you were who you wanted to be. And no one was getting in your way about it.

Scene kids play a rare paradox for me. It's always one or the other for me. But they're the first. It's been nearly one whole week since Williamsburg, and still, they have me puzzled. But I enjoyed that. And I enjoyed those stupid kids. They'll be gripping my attention for a while to come.

So here's to you, hippie girl. You look like an idiot. But you loved it all the same. And, I guess, that's all that matters in the end.



That and Speed Stick.