Hi everyone! Please meet my dear friend, Caitlin. She and I traveled to NYC this past weekend in search of vegan milkshakes, odd antique stores, and flapper frolics.

I’ve always wanted to go to Coney Island, partly because I love quaint rides like Ferris Wheels (not rollercoasters, ah!) but also because one Mills Brother’s song, Coney Island Washboard Roundelay is so catchy.
On her Coney Island washboard she would play
You could hear her on the boardwalk ev’ry day
Soap suds all around, bubbles on the ground
Rub-a dub-a dub in her little tub, all the tunes she found, hey!
Thimbles on her fingers make the noise,
She plays the Charleston on the laundry for the boys.
She can rag a tune right through the knees
Of a brand-new pair of BVD’s.
Coney Island washboard roundelay.
-music by Hampton Durand and Jerry Adams, words by Ned Nestor and Aude Shugart.

Of course, it’s not really the season yet for any real Coney Island action. It was a rather drab and deserted day for a visit to the Boardwalk, but we ate grilled corn, fat french fries and Cokes while looking out at the ocean and ENORMOUS seagulls bouncing on the beach. We had plans to see some of the shows there at night but we decided to go play Atari video games in a bar in Brooklyn with a NYC friend.
Here is a video and song with images from Coney Island in the 1940s. I really want to come back when it’s in full swing, like the Mermaid Parade!

Here is a secret: as good as we are at traveling Europe and the Middle East, we just kept getting turned around in NYC. We would be in the right neighborhood on the right block and still be lost for twenty minutes. On the plus side, while we were hunting for vegan ice cream in the city and took a wrong turn, we ended up finding Obscura Antiques & Oddities, a gem of the store with the friendliest folks running it. They let us dress up in these hats made from fetal sheep fur and we gawked at the medical specimens, taxidermy and a walking umbrella embellished with embroidered swastikas (you can see it in the right hand side in the case). It reminded us (of course!) of our favorite antique store in Austin, Uncommon Objects, who is partly the doing of the wonderful Angeliska.

I had very specific things that I wanted to see on this trip. The first was Henry Darger’s personal coloring books and art inspiration walls, on view at the American Folk Art Museum, Up Close: Henry Darger and the Coloring Book (through September 19, 2010).
This showcases all of the art Darger pinned to his walls, most of them religious photos or advertisements “framed” by hundreds of Easter Seal stickers. After watching “In the Realms of the Unreal,” I keep finding these thesis dissertations on Henry Darger’s works and I’m just amazed at the breadth that is analyzed about this one solitary man. He is like the Lucy of the art world, we only have his artifacts and relics to complete him as a person, but when we do it unlocks a whole secret insight to the mind of an artist. He is endlessly fascinating.
Photo of Henry Darger’s grave, “Artist and Protector of Children“

Oh, and lastly we found SO MUCH vegan ice cream sold throughout the city! And cupcakes! Won’t someone in Texas throw some money at me to make my dreams of vegan softserve Austin domination begin!? I promise I’ll make you proud!