Emily August

We have had a very crazy weekend here in Jersey City. It started off purposely slow, with a laundry date with my partner-in-crime, Miss Allison. This was timed so that we could jump around the corner to visit our friends James and Leigh who were rocking pompadours for Balance Hair Salon and World of Style Vintage on Erie Street. From there my weekend got extremely wacky, so this was a good indication of things to come. Love how these pictures turned out, despite not bringing along an auxillary flash.

James is my internet superstar pal from the wildly popular Jersey City blog Draw & Quarter. Leigh is our neighbor who apparently has amazing cats (among other great qualities). We only stayed for a bit, before the party really got started but we will definitely be checking out more Balance events, because they are too beyond amazing to ignore.

I think the Spring and Summer JC Fridays events are going to keep getting more and more fun. The whole town goes crazy on the first Friday of every month, so that’s the perfect time for you friends and lurkers to come check out our ‘hood. ‘Do it up.

Last night my roommate and I ran out into the night, electrified by warmer weather that hinted of spring, and the prospect of ice cream from Torico’s — a family owned and key favorite establishment in our neighborhood that recently opened again for the season. I had taken a five dollar bill out of Rory’s wallet with his blessing, and I could feel my heart get lighter as we plodded down our crazy vintage laminate staircase. We giddily skipped past the gym whose membership I am about to cancel, talking about painting and expressing yourself with visual mediums and how this correlates to eating your feelings with a generous helping of sprinkles.

We stepped into the ice cream parlor and it was as if we had never left. Bright and colorful, the distinct sugary sweet scent in the air, Torico’s felt exactly the same as it had last year, smelled like home in the summertime, and we were welcomed warmly by the woman behind the counter who I believe is one of the owners. She was telling every one that their change was in thousands of dollars instead of single dollar bills, and smiling from ear to ear. You could tell she was happy to be serving us.

We got our choices: both soft-serve. I have a head cold with a sore throat right now and it was totally amazing to have cold vanilla sliding down my throat.

As we headed back to our apartment, we decided to take a detour and walk up Columbus, and we seemed to be walking in this funny haze where every person we passed was notably cartoon-like. First we passed a big girl with double plaited braids, a ton of baggage, and a down turned mouth. Then it was kind of normal people saying weird things loudly just as we were within earshot. Finally, we were approached by this man with a strong Spanish accent asking us plaintively if we wanted to buy a hat with a propeller on top of it. We didn’t.

Meanwhile, we had walked past one of the other gyms on Columbus, right near the PATH station, and read a sandwich board sidewalk advertisement pointing in to the front door of the gym. It read: HAS FASHION WEEK GOTTEN TOO COMMERCIAL? DISCUSS. Needless to say we cracked up, sharing the feeling that our neighborhood has this personality that is just completely hysterical in our perspective. We have such a mix of people from different backgrounds, people with different levels of professional careers, families, and a distinctly ironic artist vibe. You can’t help but walk down the street sometimes and fall in love with everyone you pass. Especially if you happen to be scarfing down vanilla soft serve as you go.

Do you think Ruby might hate us?, originally uploaded by ahemler.

And tying them to various places of Ruby.

Jen (pictured) and Allison (picture taker) are on the West Coast, visiting San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle. I am jealous but loving watching the flickr updates.

Rory and I aren’t traveling again until February I think. We had a raucous, globe-trotting summer, anyway.

But, also we are trying to join a food co-op in our neighborhood. Anyone ever do this? I had a manager on Wall Street once who told me all about it, and it blew my mind.

Yesterday we were in Van Vorst Park for the Soundwalk, wearing headphones and listening to little radio sounds as we made our way through the park. We were tuning in to three simultaneous broadcasts of things like historical texts and scores written to coincide with the sounds of the park. There were also hidden microphones that were picking up and transmitting more sounds into the broadcast, but we couldn’t find any. We had a lot of fun with it, dancing around whenever our transmission was broken up by hardcore screamo from a neighboring college station.

We had made our way around every area of the park, and I was photographing the three sculptural pieces on display when on top of her radio broadcast, Allison suddenly heard something like, “Sorry lady, you’re going to die!” Sure enough, she was about to get liquidated by the laser gun this child had just purchased from the Van Vorst Flea Market. How exciting!

Here, Allison has just found out that there is a red dot on her leg from the light of the laser gun. Seconds later, the red dot was aimed at me. Horrors.

This threat of violence was not part of the exhibition but I wanted to find out more about the walk, so I looked it up this morning. From the artists’ post on WiredJC:

The Van Vorst Park Soundwalk is an interactive sound art piece which simultaneously uses the park as a musical score and instrument. The public is invited to experience the piece through portable headset radios as they walk through a loosely defined route within the park.

This is a solo version of collaborative pieces that I’ve participated in in NYC and Warsaw, Poland. The Jersey City Museum has been gracious enough to present the piece to coincide with this year’s JC Artist Studio Tour.

Observations

Sounds in the park: many dogs (there is a dog run); running water (fountain); skateboards and scooters scraping on the ground, buses pulling up, stopping, and pulling away; wind; my own footsteps; bird wings flapping (pigeons make a lot of sounds); conga drums (from the Spanish-coalition sponsored flea market set up along the edges of the park).

It was weird to hear historical texts about settlers but not have enough time to sit and really listen to process the context. I have a terrible mind for historical fact and numbers. Definitely made me curious about the history of where I live.

This is the first time I’ve ever participated in something like this and I loved how supported the project seemed: Its nice to know that the Jersey City Museum, NJ Arts Council Fellowship, and free103point9 had the means to make the piece come alive with equipment and programming. I have so many ideas that I always think could never happen, so I guess I found this pretty inspiring. Then again, I didn’t go to art school or anything, so maybe this type of sound sculpture is a common form of interactive design. Either way, super cool and nicely done.

The show I hosted at The Lamppost in Jersey City went off great last weekend. Not everyone who said they were coming could show, but we had an amazing time. Lots of dancing, and happy to find the bar amenable to our whims. I was so happy to have our Portland friends here on the West Coast, and to have a pretty decent turnout from friends both new and old. Here are some of my favorite shots of the night.

Just in case you weren’t aware, my roommate was born on the Fourth of July, and every display of fireworks is held in her honor. This year in celebration we got several free pairs of tickets, and recruited a group of friends to see Sonic Youth and The Feelies play in Battery Park. I am always impressed by the River to River summer events, because they are usually well organized and the sound quality is amazing, despite the noise of the city surrounding the event. The Feelies had a really nice, lush sound, and Sonic Youth were given a great mic setup, so drums, baseline, and walls of mind-splitting sound were all perceptibly distinct and just awesome. We should have packed a picnic for this event, but we were scared off by the threat of having to throw out certain things for security reasons, as if we were getting on an airplane. Next time, Kim Gordon, we will bring you some magic cookies.

Next we hopped back on the PATH and got off near Exchange Place for amazing Mexican Food at Baja. I’ve never been there and didn’t know it existed, despite having lived in Hoboken and Jersey City for two years now. Baja is like Disney Land in Mexico… it was a total escape from reality because the decor was amazing, and the food was supremely satisfying. Allison pointed out they were playing Brazilian Girls, which was brilliant.

Finally, we took a tip from what we learned last year on the Fourth of July: why hike to the waterfront when we could see fireworks from the roof? Don’t tell our landlord, but we climbed the fire escape and were able to see both Jersey City and a tiny corner of the Macy’s Manhattan fireworks right from the roof! If we didn’t love our apartment before, we do now.

The rainy, hazy weather made it impossible to capture any fireworks on film, but here are some shots of the street below:

Sometimes its nice to express happiness. Often I feel like my photos might be perceived as serious or too contemplative for comment, but here are a few that are just wonderful on the eyes, randomly shot last night in our apartment. There is something about Allison’s shock-of-red hat, this general moment in our lives, and the lovely weather we’re having. Life is pretty amazing lately.

We are all figuring it out as we go, but it feels like sometimes you catch your own stride and really get somewhere. Its like that right now, I think.

More on flickr.

What a seriously gorgeous day in Downtown Jersey City.

Allison and I walked all around the neighborhood then took some of our work to the tables outside Beachwood so we could dog-and-people watch while giving the NYU film crew some room. When we walked back, they were filming on the corner. I think they’ve since headed to the park.

Here are some of the pictures from our walk, during which the need for me to purchase a bicycle became apparent. I love Jersey City.

Had a great time last night with Allison after a long day: cabernet and chianti at a bar on Sullivan, followed by midnight cupcakes at Magnolia, and a salute to Marc Jacobs surplus (pictured here).

Also, check out Rory’s recent ITP blog posts, including:

He will be done with his degree really soon! He’s building lots of little musical robots for his final thesis, and getting groups of friends together to help him in the final throes of semester-end crunch time. Hence, robot knitting circle. I think the little robots are amazing, but I have always had a thing for robots.

Tyler from Chauchat sent me the band’s new CD on yer bird records, and a super old split he recorded with Birdie Hilltop, after I wrote to him and told him that I lost it. The split CD has one of the most amazing songs I have ever heard, and I was devastated after recently sorting through all of my CDs to find that it was gone. I’m so glad he slipped it in the mail! I am also working on putting on a show somewhere in Jersey City with Tyler and Ryan Doyle, but its just a loose plan at this point. And of course, all things are related in some way: Chauchat is part of a 4-way split cassette release coming out on Unread Records that my band mate Kevin is also on. Kevin’s been busy recording a new album, and he’s getting ready to move away, so we haven’t hung out at all.

But if he’s reading this, you left your sweater here.

I did a bit of embroidery last night while watching movies with my roommate and boyfriend. I traced a coaster three times to make a Venn Diagram of sorts, a circle to represent each of us. I used some thrifted embroidery floss, and a man’s cloth handkerchief purchased from a discount store around the corner. I am somehow going to put Ruby in the middle, and I’d like to embroider our names with other symbols showing each of our relationships. I plan to follow a book and try different types of embroidery stitches to create this as a sort of freehand sampler. It will take a long time, but its something nice to do with Allison while she’s knitting and we’re watching too much of Bravo and The Style Network after work during the week. Eventually I may sew this into a pillow cover.

I’ve been sick all week long, sharing a horrible cold with some coworkers and friends, so staying in is really the best thing possible for me right now. I did manage to go out on Thursday to an opening party for a vintage store in our neighborhood. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, but I met a really cool neighbor across the street from me via Flickr, and we’ve been out hitting the town together a few times already. This is the magic of the Internet and real life: sometimes you meet the best people this way!

Well, we missed the deadline but we don’t care.

Today Allison and I worked on her skirt again. We did the zipper, side seams, and some experimental adjustments. She’s going to work on the hem, and waistband this week while I am away.

Her choice of a pink zipper is especially amazing. I can’t believe how nice and professional the skirt is coming along. Its like we knew what we were doing, or something.

*The skirt is inside-out in these pictures… and bunchy because we were making adjustments to the side seams with pins. The fabric is a heavy stretch knit with a tiny corduroy-like wale in the weave.

Related:

doing the darts and center seam.
cutting out the pattern.
the challenge itself on burdastyle.

Allison and I worked a bit on our skirts this evening for the BurdaStyle challenge, which is due Friday. Tonight we did a lot of prep work: we laid and cut out the fabric pieces (four, including the waistband), sewed the darts, pressed them flat, and sewed the center back seam. For her skirt we are opting to go without a lining, and to alter the shape when we are finished to make the bottom more fitted. Here’s what we have so far (more on flickr).

Tomorrow I will follow these steps for my skirt while Allison sews her side seams and works on the zipper and waistband instructions. Stay tuned!

Related:
cutting out the patterns.
the challenge itself on burdastyle.com.

My roommate Allison and I are doing the BurdaStyle.com mini-challenge sew-along, a challenge to sew a skirt from a pattern downloaded from the site in time to meet the deadline (March 15th).

Step one was to print out the pattern, cut it out, and tape everything in place. This was easy to do, but we had to slightly move furniture out of the way in order to accommodate both of our pattern layouts at once. Because BurdaStyle is an Open Source web site, we were able to download and print our patterns for free, and because there is no copyright, we can also decide to go ahead and alter the designs or sell any creations we might make from these patterns.

options, options, options

Next we have to measure ourselves and decide which size pattern to cut out. This is not my favorite part, because I always inevitably end up off the size chart and have to figure out a way to alter the pattern in order to fit my voluptuous curves and tall frame. That is no problem, however, thanks again to BurdaStyle’s How To Section. Its important to measure yourself properly and be true to your measurements. Remember that you can always take something in if you create it a size bigger than you need, but you can’t necessarily make something bigger after you leap in and cut out all your fabric pieces.

Allison plans to alter her pattern to make it more like a pencil skirt, but she is keeping the general size layout of the skirt as it is, so she went ahead and cut hers out this evening. I am going to do some measuring and cut mine out tomorrow, following the How-To on how to grade the pattern to a different size.

So, maybe this was a little time consuming, but it was definitely easy. Allison was like a pattern puzzle piece ninja–she had her patterns taped up and cut out quicker than I thought imaginable. Will we keep this momentum going and complete the project? Stick with us to find out. We plan on going to the fabric store on Wednesday to pick up all of our fabric and notions, then we’ll spend the evening in front of the TV, watching the Project Runway finale as we pin and cut our fabric!

Find out more about the challenge here.