Macy's Service Hellevator

I am icing the joint that connects the tarsal bone of my big toe to my first metatarsal because... its killing me. As is my left hip flexor, injured in a workout meant for strapping gentiles, and splinty, which swells in the evening. As my aging, yet seemingly well preserved body reminds me, I have been working seven days a week. My normal four for slope suds and the other three assisting hair and makeup shooting the Macy*s Catalog. When you shoot for Macy*s you are on the ninth floor of a once beautiful old art deco building that now stands, among other regal old queens, in the disgusting shopping center in downtown brooklyn that is "the fulton mall." Fulton obviously used to be a playground for social elite, business men and ladies who lunch. Now it is overrun with stores that pander to the working/welfare poor. very very cheap clothes, not so cheap sneakers, stores that cross merchandise gold jewelery (mostly personalized,) cell phones and DVD players, mc donalds, burger king, popeye's, weave and wig stores, vendors selling books by "black authors" (erotic fiction for women and glory-of-the-gang tales for men,) shea butter, purses and belts, and if you know where to look, crack. Its terrible. So Macy*s is in the middle of all this. You have to go through the service entrance (servant's quarters) to get up to the ninth floor. So you take the freight elevator with all the other employees who stock and clean and paint and hang clothes, process returned goods and god knows what else behind the scenes that makes the big chinese goods vendor that is Macy*s run smoothly. They do not employ america's most promising citizens. Shuffling men with thick glasses and low iq scores push multiple racks of hangers from floor to floor. Tattooed muscular white men from Sheepshead bay and Floral Gardens work, talk loudly and move HUGE pallets of boxes, and all kinds of black and carribean people from the neighborhood, mostly young men and older women, paint sets, hang clothes, apply tags and maybe just ride the elevator up and down from ramshackle floor to ramshackle floor having depressing conversations about other employees. These conversations usually involve drug problems, partying (see drug problems,) how much (little) they're being paid at macy*s and when theyre getting their nails done. The servants quarters in NO WAY resemble the clean, opulently decorated and waxed floored areas that are used to sell the merchandise. When the elevator opens in the service floors you se chicken wire walls from floor to ceiling with all kinds of boards and makeshift shelves behind them. Peeling and graffitied paint, broken metal doors and barred windows. Who would want to spend 2100 on a sheared beaver coat under those conditions?
Meanwhile on the ninth floor (where we at least have air conditioning, we're doing our damndest to make beaded sweaters, cotton knits and brightly colored berets look attractive. A tall order for any hairdresser. Its kind of fun, and I learned how to make it look like its snowing, which is interesting. Two guys each stand on a ladder holding the ends of a long board across the top of the set. You pile fake snow on the edge of the board over the model and the guys gently shake the board. Ta da! "The perfect gift" is born! I really like the women Ive been assisting, theyre really nice and down to earth, which makes the job much easier. Plus theyre really both makeup artists so theyre glad to have a hairdresser on board. Most especially since they insist on having "wind"on the models all the time so we spend most of the day operating these huge fans and trying to get their hair to blow in a way that doesnt look like they were on the bow of a ferryboat, and alternately brushing it out to do the same thing again.
The people who work for macy*s are a trip. They all seem to work all the time and truly, unironically believe in the artistry of catalog production. They tell the models 'look a little less catalog," as if you could feel anything else wearing a full length black pleated skirt with black tights and a red 3/4 sleeve sweater with "pearls" around the neck and cuffs. There are two creative directors: a short gay man who wears madras shorts all the time and cant stop kvelling about how he love love loves edda (you'd recognize her, shes the face of j crew but she shoots for macy*s as well) and despite being a man with a shaved head manages to rawther remind me of the Nanny from Eloise, and his boss a mannish heavy set woman with black hair who lumbers on set, pronounces what she doesnt like, puts the fear of god into the art directors, who make a bunch of totally arbitrary changes, adjusts her thick framed costello glasses and blows back from whence she came, sucking on a frappucino.
Its not always a good time, but it pays well, so until the christmas deadline, ill be doing ponytails and iron curls and manning that damn fan with a smile!!