Dance This Mess Around

A great portion of last weekend was spent looking up at the sky. With weather permitting, it began with a trip back to PS1 at dusk to check out the James Turrell piece, Meeting. Walking into a white, rectangular room, we were greeted with an open roof and a row of benches, the ceiling working as a frame for the sky’s canvas. So we sat down and watched the sky change colors for about twenty minutes, which seemed like twenty hours, while listening to the erratic thumping of the DJ below us. The exhibit is pretty spectacular, but I probably would’ve liked it more under calmer circumstances.

Then there was a vat of mussels in SoHo, a dark, crowded dance floor on the LES, a NY Pickabagel, delicious, the Summer of Love psychedelic exhibit at the Whitney, also spectacular in its own way, and a Tibetan meal.

All I wanted to do on Sunday night was go to the top of the Empire State Building because I hadn’t made that trek yet, even though I look at it every day from my fire escape. As luck would have it, the best way to bypass the lines for that tourist trap is to go at 9pm on a Sunday evening, when it’s raining. At every stop in that building, a different attendant would warn us, “Zero visibility. There is zero visibility tonight; you will not be able to see anything. Zero visibility.”

But what did I care? After hearing “Zero visibility” over thirty times, I became stubborn. There was no way we weren’t going to the top of that building. I never get to summit an 86-floor elevation and, well, maybe I like clouds. I appreciate a good vapor, who doesn’t? When we finally reached the top, we saw what I would estimate to be a ten visibility, at least. Maybe 8.5. And it was awesome, with only a handful of people up there, and a noir view of the city, we could see all the major buildings. What the hell else can you see on a 100 visibility night in New York anyway?