Staff Meeting, Rain, and the F to Bleeker,Transfer to the 6 uptown.

So I took the gig with Vivi. He and the other israeli guy who own the salon are actually really sweet and caring people. And, anyway, I can see that if I am to get along in Enyce, i am going to have to change my attitude where Israelis are concerned. Frankly, I dont know what all the fighting is about in Israel, there cant be that many Jews left there judging by how much of the NYC population is israeli. Everytime you see a stylish dashingly beautiful and dark european man or woman and your busily trying to fiure out if theyre Italian, Greek or maybe even Brasilian or Argentinian...DONT WASTE YOUR TIME. Theyre Israeli.
This morning was the stylist meeting at the salon. I got up at seven to get up to the UES by 930. THe meeting didnt start until after ten, everyone sat around in the posh but comfortable pink accented lounge area noshing on delivered muffins and bagels. The delivering here is ubiquitous. There are 8 stylists total and its a good gender mix. There are two italians, one italian american woman who is totally neurotic and obsessed with her "thinning" hair, a columbian guy, a cubana, an older short and chubby white lady, and a large and impossibly curvy white girl who describes herself as hopelessly american. No black stylists or assistants. They are a very loud group. Very loud. i was amazed. At one point the two owners, who are hardly shrinking violets, were just sitting there chins in hairy hands watching all 8 stylists (exept Giancarlo, Mahdis' stylist and the connection that got me the job, hes awesome and not a bickerer,) and two of the receptionists talk all at once. No one waited turns at all, no one took responsibilty for their part in any of the problems and even though everyone was QUITE brusque, no one seemed to get their feelings hurt. That was a plus. They seemed to have endless patience to describe the problems that seem to plague the salon, things like how they want to be informed that their next client has arrived and how the receptionists make personal calls at the desk and how their clients dont like the music. It was pretty intolerable. Those kind of things are difficult in every salon and really have no solution since each person has totally different preferences. The italians want you to just come up to them and tell them " Youre client is here, Her name is Jane Doefeldstein, shes getting a partial highlight and cut. " The italian american feels it makes her clients feel rushed and she wants a code word to let her know, she provided the example " I left the gum on the desk for Jane." The older white lady trouble shot that then the current client would want some gum too and what if you didnt really have any and so on and so forth. You can imagine. Nothing was accomplished or decided during the whole meeting. I think the owners should have cut them off at the pass, not let them turn it into a kvetch session and just presented how they want things done with no more rationale than that thats how they goddam want things done. They both have tons of experience and a good vision, they can see that nothing comes of these types of meetings. Oh well, who am I? It was a good way to see how everyone operates. I was quiet as a mouse. I start assisting on Sun. The stylists had a long list of complaints about the assistants, none of which will apply to me, so I think Ill get along just fine. I dont think they train people clearly enough so that they know what is expected of them, maybe Ill ask if we can develop a handbook and a standard new hire training... when the dust settles. Vivi (!) said that after Yom Kippur (!), onwhich day they will be closed (I love new york) they would be doing classes every two weeks after the salon closes.
Then, and by now its raining, I took the 6 back to bleeker and the f back to Bklyn to eat lunch and rest a minute before I go see Sarah, the third amigo from Mahdis and my college days who is now going to Columbia, and check out her new apartment in Harlem, excuse me Morningside Heights. Which sounds like a prison complex.
Ariel left yesterday and I miss her already, we went on an awesome walking tour of brooklyn. Carroll gardens, park slope, cobble hill etc. It established brooklyn firmly in both of our minds as the place to live in NY. Manhattan is loud, hectic, and overwhelming in its consumerism. Its fun and tremendously diverse, but at the end of the day you really want to go home and have home not feel like an annex of whatever coffee shop, boutique, bodega or fishmarket you happen to live above. Maybe the midwest will sink into the sea and NY and seattle can be just a couple hours away. More likely the east and west coast will both sink into the sea and well all end up living in Kansas. That seems to be the increasing trend. Our rain is being called rita's remnants, awesome. Hopefully thats as bad as it gets.
So, we were at home depot, which unlike costco, is exactly the same as it is in Seattle (maybe more because it sucks in seattle not cause its great in Bklyn.) Mahdis' apt deal is closing on friday so she was making arrangements to get her kitchen demolished and remodeled. Right when we came in we saw this very short brown man with complicated facial hair and a flawless fade (as ubiquitous as food delivery) wearing a BRIGHT yellow T shirt and more gold than a Pakistani bride. In fact we saw him several times in different sections, and dubbed him Mini Mr T. As we flitted from casheir to cashier and special service to information desk in search of the holy grail that is effective customer service (I just want to pay GodDAMN!) a female employee wearing a black tshirt that read "born in brooklyn" knealt in front of the park bench i had collapsed on, hoping help would come to us before closing time, and handed me a home depot sticker and said "Yous know dat guy in da yella shoyt? He wants you'dah call him sometimes." On the sticker was written his number, the name Ron, and call me. I really want to call and hang out with him sometime because I think it would be highly entertaining, but some inconviniently compassionate part of me wont let me purposely use other people for my own entertainment. Maybe that part of me will die off after I live here for a while. Ill keep the number. WHen we got back out to the car, New Yorks finest had taken the time to leave us a warning flyer about car prowling which provided Ariel Mahdis and I entertainment all the way to Coney Island by reading it in guido cop voice. It really was hilarious: " Why make it easier for someone to take your personal belongings and ruin your day?"
Im off to the train again to meet sarah. Come visit me soon!

Enyce

greetings from brooklyn, where i now reside. things you already know about new york: its huge, dirty, humid, crowded and fun. things you may not already know about new york: cuts take longer to heal, no one here is from here, english is a dying language, asian people's driving is rivaled by the hasidim, a lot of the train change notices put up in the stations are totally wrong, and the first thing you have to know about doing hair on the upper east side is how to give a killer blow out. I know this from now first hand experience. Here's how. THe first day i got here, it was the day of Mahdis huge birthday party. Since mahdis is to networking as the bush administration is to terrible descisions about natural disaster anyone who is anyone in the nyc social justice/artsy fartsy realm was there. especially if theyre iranian. we spent the day getting ready for the party. the brooklyn costco is undescribable. its cramped, for starters, imagine a cramped costco. you have to take your cart on a special cart-friendly escalator to get from floor to floor. ANother thing you may not know about new york is that people have no sense of where other people are in regards to them, they meander in front of you, stop in the middle of doorways, and stand right on top of you in a large space. maybe theyre just so used to being crowded that if theres space they just create their own crowd. who knows, but it makes for some hilarious scenes. especially when giant shopping carts are involved.this one woman stopped dead in the main exit of costco right after the checkout lines, causing a massive shopper pileup. right when i was wishing that carts had horns and i could lay on mine, the bleach blonde older lady behind me said in a laughably brooklyn accent "what in the hell is going on up there?" i told her someone had just stopped in her tracks. "oh thats fu*king perfect. I hate people. I hate coming here." It was so over the top. So anyway. THe adorable italian guy who does mahdis hair came to her huge williamsburg loft party that spilled out on to the industrial block in the humid cool of the night. He brought one of the owners of the salon he is working in, an israeli guy who told me that i should come in and see him the next day. Mahdis told me she had told them about me. I went in and visited the salon. ITs very nice and almost totally jewish. thats why the blowouts are so key. all these jewish women with long coarse curly hair want to look like sarah jessica parker and jennifer aniston. plus all the old upper east side jewish ladies who traded in their roller sets for blowouts. I brought Ariel in first. Maybe not a great idea since her hair looks way worse blown out than curly and has a tendancy to be uncontrollably frizzy. He was unimpressed with my blowout, and i was crazy nervous, which is totally unlike me. Not a rousing success, but i could tell he liked me. So I came back the next day with Mahdis and did her hair. Equally unimpressed, whoever shampooed her didnt get her hair clean enough, and he wanted to see it without product, I made it have flips at the bottom when he felt he had told me he wanted it bone straight. It was a little humiliating. But, her hair did look good, and it didnt take me too long and I was wearing a big huge star of david (what? i wear it all the time! it didnt hurt, I admit!) He decided that while he thinks I have a lot of potential, i have a lot to learn and am not ready for him to have me on the floor. to be honest i felt the same way. from what he said i think he had the idea that i had been a stylist for a long time in seattle and i was just transferring to new york. In seattle, there is far less emphasis on the blowout, its almost never a service unto itself. For white ladies, its the finish of a haircut or color, black ladies get it before a curl, so the actual blowout isnt that key. Seattleites feel able to wash our own hair, i guess, and you know its going to rain so getting it all straight and bouncy to the tune of 50 bucks and having it last for 12 hours 8 of them REM would be an excercise in frustration. In any case, I couldnt feel less ready to take on feisty jewish women who micro manage every hair, especially those with more bling than DeBeers, and I would like to learn much more about color and the whole NY style before i put myself out there as a stylist. he said he would be happy to hire me as an assistant and let me start that way, having my friends come in as clients and watching and assisting the stylists. pretty much what i was doing at RL. so thats a potential job. i want to check out a couple other places and some makeup gigs first but, i think if i can get over my natural aversion to the israeli combative personality it would be a great place to start. did i mention the guys' name is Vivi? His name is Vivi. His other salon is Salon Vivi. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?? A truly bizarre cooincidence.
i went to connecticut last night to visit a friend who i didnt get to see after all and to see mahdis friend who just had darling twins. We had a nice drive, lots of singing along, some lindt chocolate buying at the outlet mall (70% cocoa is flipping fabulous! why is milk chocolate so popular? its a conspiracy, THEY DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW!!) and a lovely visit with her friend and her friend's husband, both of whom were glowing with parenthood and anticipation for their new ways of life to come. It was a lovely respite from NYC chaos.

hectic and homeless...and happy

Im in Venice beach LA right now. I had no idea that there were parts of LA that were breezy and cool. I have been remiss in my entries as I am no longer stationed in front of the CNS of the dark village each weekend, prime writing time. So since last i wrote, I took the beauty bar, finished all my paperwork for school, moved out of my house completely and gave away about 80 percent of what was mine in this world, posessionally speaking.
The beauty bar was rediculous. It starts at 8 o clock, in Fife. So right off the bat it sucks. i had to get up at 6 30 to be sure i wasnt late and have enough time to get coffee. Nothing that has you starting at 6 30 can honestly be interested in seeing how well you do anything. I had to spend several hours in preceding days readying my kit. Everything you need has to be in "sterile looking" plastic bags, labeled and organized according to which service youll be using it for. So i had to go to school to get cholesterol, gloves, cotton, manicuring supplies (including the creepy, creepy fake hand that you have to use for tne manicure portion of the exam,)towels (20!Used them all!) and various and sundry other crap that you will never use that way again after the test. The test is administered by DL Roope administrations at a nondescript business park suite. You have to present your admission letter and WA state ID at three checkpoints within three feet of each other before being assigned your station. My identity has not been so thoroughly established since the indian airlines flight between Lahore and Delhi. Then you are issued your station number (after paying 25 bucks extra to find out your score that day, what a racket! I dont have 6 weeks to find out i didnt pass and have to reschedule) and have to stand there quietly until every station is filled. It was mostly young white women. THere were two men. One girl came in late and i couldnt exactly hear what she said but soon after arriving realized she forgot something major, like towels, and left. Every one was overly nervous. I wasnt. I just couldnt wait to be done and get the HELL out of there. It was so weird, white and mirrored. The women administering the test were wearing suits and had terrible hair. One helmet, one long perm and one long flat press. THey read the directions twice and then, for each service, you have two minutes to remove the supplies for that service from your kit. You have to sanitize your hands ceaselessly and the station between services. Its really stupid.
I PASSED. I passed with a 76%. I think that is the lowest score you can get and still pass. Fine by me!! So long as I dont have to do it again (until I get to NYC...) thats fine with me. Besides, thats the funniest score I could have gotten. Doing really well isnt funny, failing certainly wouldnt be funny but passing by one percent at something so easy and stupid is pretty hilarious. Now I have only to take the written part of the test and I am a WA state liscenced cosmetologist. Great.
I kept most of the memorabelia that we discussed last time. The rest of my posessions were either given to the St Vincent de Paul Charity or to family and friends. I have some boxes in my moms basement and the rest is en route as of today via the major blessing of Brian Quist, remember the one who bailed me out at the gas station when my car wouldnt start? well the day i was moving, as Trey, Mark Gibbs and I artfully loaded all my furniature into the cargo van I procured from enterprise (a la insurance from SIZZLA, who was proclaimed a total loss last week) Brian called ariel. He and TJ Martin, the other half of Global Griot productions are also moving to NYC and they wondered if maybe I wouldnt want to kick in some cash and theyd take my stuff. HELL YES I WANT TO KICK IN SOME CASH AND YOU CAN TAKE MY STUFF!!! i was about to have to move it twice here, then repack it, bring it downtown to greyhound then have it stored in Manhattan where i would have to shlep it by cab trip after cab trip out to brooklyn when I got there. Amazing blessing. Ive decided Brian is my guardian angel.
Thats all the time i have for today. Id say to be continued but... we all know it wont be!

PART II
Irealized last night as i fell asleep in the hollywood home of my friend Asa's parents that in the last two weeks ive slept in 9 different beds, versus only three in the last 2 years. perhaps not a very meaningful comparison, but it does provide a pretty accurate picture of what the last few weeks have been like. When I got to the seattle airport on the 19th, i realized i didnt know who was picking me up in LA and I had no where to stay for the two days before Fran and i ran for the border. I usually handle these sorts of things ahead of time but, the time ahead had never presented itself. As I waited in the wrong check in line, was told that i wasnt booked on any such flight and dragged my shit over to the united baggage check kiosk, I called my friend mollie who moved from woodstock to LA last year and whom I havent seen for years. As it turned out they lived only a few minutes from the airport. So she and her darling boyfriend Victor came and picked me up at LAX and i stayed with them for two nights. Venice is weird and cool. It has the transient and carefree feel of a beach town like santa cruz, but mixed with the outragous and eccentric affluence of West LA. Super upscale interior design houses blocks from beach vendors and around the corner from taco trucks. Asa and her husband are buliding a house there in venice right off the main drag, which is called abbot kinney. in my head i hear abbot kinney said with Asa's soft persian lilt, not even strong enough to be an accent.
then, after some fabulous cuban cuisine at versailles on pico and la cienega, dont leave LA without it, fran and i drove to the newport beach hotel in Rosarita BC (thats the other BC, baja california) about 45 mins north of Ensenada. We stayed there three nights . Watched dolphins, ate lobster (estaghfurillah,) visited the geyser la bufadora and lay in the hot southern sun. I did Fran's color on the deck of our hotel room looking out over the ocean, waching the pelicans wheel over the waves as the peroxide turned her hair red red orange orange gold... about the same shades as the sun turned the clear sky as it sank into the sea. No sky toner though. It was cool on its own after the lightner was rinsed out. i beleive thats called stretching an analogy...if its not a technical writing term then it should be. I digress.
At 12:30 on Wed, we left the hotel and headed north for the Santa Cruz mountains where Tambacounda Productions holds their annual West African Drum and Dance camp. We got to LA at 6, which is a real hurter as far as traffic is concerned. Stopped in east LA for gas...dont be fooled, its still mexico.
to avoid two hours of hot sitting we stopped at mareme faye's house in inglewood for dinner and to change clothes. It was wonderful to sit and chat with her, I havent seen her since the conference in october when she stayed at my house. She had just been to a funeral where the young woman who died had been cremated and she was hot about it. She made Fran and i promise that when we die, we wont be cremated. "You gotta take de case, de fiyah, das gonna hert. You gotta tek deh case. Deh case is deh good one" When frannie brought upsome very legitimate concerns about maggots mareme assured her that the case gonna tek a long time before it mess up so you not gonna know. Like the fire happened so fast after you die that you might feel the burning whereas you would have ample time to leave your body were you to go with the coffin option. It killed me, the CASE!!! i had to try to stifle my hysteria because she was serious as a heart attack.
We drove all night and got to the camp, which is ludicriously far from everything at 415 in the morning on thursday. i dont know how but fran drove the whole time and i stayed up navigating and laughing my stupid ass off about nothing. most;y about the case. and frans face in the truck stop when the pepper came out really fast on her eggs, and when she imitated al pacino in scent of a woman. a movie i really hated.
anyway, i was up and dancing by 1030 the next morning. the camp was so much fun. hot and sunny at night and cold as a witches tit in a cast iron bra at night. we danced about 6 hours a day and made new friends, and reestablished old ones. all the NYC drummers and teachers said theyd look for me and take care of me when i hit the town...that was reassuring. so many haters in NY.
We left camp, and drove to oakland on sat afternoon, ate lunch in oakland at the lake merritt cafe. I did franchesska's hair for the last time in the airport and watched them (ann and laurie met us there) till they dissappeared past the security check, the last time Id see Frannie, and the girls, who id seen on the min. 3 x week for five years, for who knows how long. I cried. It was a sad strange feeling. Its never the same when you dont live in the same city.
then, rather anticlimactically, I waited in the oakland airport for six hours for Ariel to get in at midnight. I read, talked on the phone, watched strangers carfully choose theor bags out of the fountain of luggage circling around on the baggage claim. Ariel and i went to ligayas house in a suburb of Oak and stayed there overnight. Ligaya lives in some subsidized Berkeley student housing....its called university village. We drove accross the dusty desert of CA on I5 S all the way to LA, up and over the grapevine in our stupid nissan sentra that looks good only compared to a ford focus. Weve been here in Bev hills planning errands and then running them for the last week. Its wonderful and overwhelming to be with the family. let's just say wed give larry david material for seasons to come.
Tonight we (me my mom, My bubbe's boyfriend bill, and bub herself) went to a dance night at the sky room. A "fancy" restraunt at the top of some big hotel in long beach. Imagine my suprise whe, without the aid of a time machine, we were escorted into the elevator by a young black gentleman in a tux with tails, a top hat, and WHITE GLOVES. thankfully, my mom and sister had been before and warned me of the minstrel element, which considerably lessend the shock, but it did nothing to stave off the horror that it was not an accident that the time they went a year ago that it was an african american gentleman at that time too. What the hell??? How can they be getting away with that!!!??? In LONG BEACH? The band was also all african american, and the crowd (which would have been non existant were it not for the large # of elderly danceing couples who turned out for my grandmother's birthday, was all caucasian. i had the ahi. It was very very pepppery. we drove past al jolson's grave on the way there. Its got a marble cupola and a bunch of steps leading up to it. hello my honey, hello my baby, hello my ragtime doll.
my grandmother is hilarious. we were talking about how great it is that Bill gave up drinking and she turns around from the passenger seat " Sure makes the wine go further!" Some friend of her told me she gets away with telling her things shed never let anyone say to her, like she said she had told her shed look better with more lipstick, and it wouldnt hurt to let her hair grow out. good lord, i thought she reserved that sort of candor for family but apparantly not.
Now I am in the trundle bed in my cousin's room, my sister is asleep in the bed next to me. She didnt come to dinner because she hurt her neck doing nothing and had to go to the chiropractor this morning. i was wandering venice beach eating tacos with Asa, sparing kmyself eight hours of neurotic planning and kreitzing. Tomorrow I am gonna drive to malibu and see my otehr grandmother who used to live in Palm springs but moved into a moblie home (which cost her upwards of 500 thousand, for a MOBILE HOME which needed lots of work no less,) in the TRAILER park overlooked by barbara streisand's compound. Weird wild stuff. oughta be a real kick in the pants. ill let you know how her dogs are doing, probably theyre fine but ill know more details very soon.
my sister my have to stay here and nurse her annoyingly frail neck back to health. lame.
im exhausted and im sure ill be up at 8 when the dog tonails and juicer motor sounds finally break through my fragile sleep caul. its an early rising situation down here. So im turning in.
See ya, ya dig?