At any given hour, between 40 and 120 e-bikes and scooters line the curb, their Seamless and UberEats bags slung across the backs like motorcycle sponsorships. Across from this makeshift parking lot stands Madina Masjid, the East Village mosque where many of the workers come to pray. Next door, the East Side Community High School playground thumps with the high-pitched echoes of pickup basketball. Near the corner, a line of men in reflective vests spills out of an unassuming halal deli. Around lunchtime, small huddles of men convene outside, hunched over white foam clamshells filled with steaming rice and meat.

Though 11th Street’s trafficless, mosque-adjacent, halal-meat-serving trifecta is not a recent discovery for Muslim laborers (I’m told taxi drivers have long patronized this East Village consortium), it’s only in the last year, with the app-based delivery surge, that the block has been taken over.

I’m not sure how many of these deliverista sidewalk congregations exist on the island, but I’ve lived in the city for nearly a decade—traveling, like any New Yorker, mostly by foot—and have never encountered a communing of this extent. The New York Post reported on the “scourge” this summer, calling the block a “hideous dumping ground for e-bikes.”

Ignited by community complaints about quality-of-life issues (noise, congestion, food waste, and generally being an eyesore), and supercharged by the Post’s incendiary article, which caught the attention of City Hall, the NYPD and the Department of Sanitation began a coordinated effort to remove and relocate the delivery bikes (and, I’m sure, those who ride them).

reported on the scene during two sweeps this summer, when dozens of these bikes were cut from poles with power tools, impounded, and taken to the 9th Precinct on 5th Street. During the first operation, on July 30, delivery workers’ personal items were discarded by police and Sanitation. On August 28, when the NYPD returned, locals quickly grabbed the deliveristas’ belongings, stashing them in the community garden before the seizures began.

I’ve been fascinated by this block since moving to the neighborhood. Like so many streets in New York, within a few steps you’re transported across the globe. Walking past Avenue A toward 1st Avenue on 11th Street, you pass brunch mecca Westville, the high-intensity—or eerily empty—East Side Community High School, and then, suddenly, you’re somewhere else. Men crouched on flattened cardboard boxes angled northeast pray silently. There are always two jugs of water and a small wash basin for congregants to perform wudu, the ritual washing required before prayer. A woman sits on a folding metal chair beside a cooler of hot meals in takeaway containers. On weekends, the barbershop opens—which comprises of an office swivel chair, a pair of scissors, and a handheld electric razor.

If you live in New York, I would think (hope?) that the tremendous cultural vibe shifts from block to block are one of the reasons you choose to pay exorbitant rent prices for modest apartments. If you walked the twelve miles from Bowling Green to Inwood—or some proximate version of that mandatory tip-to-tip journey—it’s stunning and bewildering to experience the vast spectrum of cultures, communities, and architecture we’ve managed to pack into this relatively small cosmopolitan. East 11th Street now makes up part of that story: a colorful refuge where migrants, many from West Africa, can rest, socialize, and commune in the spare moments when they’re not rushing to deliver your $18 salad wrap.

It was a funny, if unsurprising, feeling this summer—reading about the apparent feud between the police, the deliveristas, the neighbors, and, as the Post reported, the real estate brokers who bemoaned the “unsightly scene” that was an “immediate turn-off for prospective renters”—and then walking down the street, which bore almost no resemblance to the tabloid reality.

In everyday life, there is no feud, no scourge, no upset. Maybe there’s an eye roll from a local as they leave their apartment one morning and see an errant piece of garbage. Maybe the guys on the curb get a bit noisy during lunch. Maybe there’s a ticket here and there.

When the Post posted the article to Instagram, the incensed commenters quickly chose sides in the feud.

But on most days, you can’t find this war on 11th Street. The men don’t stare, hiss, or intimidate. They don’t wave or chat with you, either. I can’t pretend to imagine the life of a migrant delivery worker, but my best guess is that they have better things to do than invite unwanted attention when they’re just trying to decompress, eat, and hang out with their friends.

Everyone is so quick to call the East Village “dead” and lament its sameness. Well, here’s something different. And if you live here, cheer up—chances are, you’re gonna get your takeout speedy quick.

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In high school, St. Marks Place offered irresistible prospects. Piercings without ID checks. Alcohol in exchange for a quick flash of the shittiest fake. Danger and adventure packed into three grimy blocks between Astor Place and Tompkins Square Park— streets we feared and romanticized after watching Larry Clark’s Kids.

For a couple of slightly buzzed virgins, hoping their new industrial piercings and throbbing cartilages signaled they belonged here, St. Marks was a mecca of recklessness. The Search & Destroy stoop in particular was home base for punks, crusties, freaks, and runaways. Walking past those stairs, sipping our paper-bag beers, we were close enough to the loudness, to the drinking and drugging, to inhale their chaos. They were freaks. And so was I, though I hadn’t grown into it yet.

By then, in 2011, St. Marks was long considered “dead.” It had gone through numerous incarnations—as an immigrants’ refuge, a mafia war zone, an outcast paradise, and backdrop to some of the most beloved art, activism, and music of the 20th century. In the 1960s, Warhol staged the Velvet Underground’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable at the Dom. Soon after, the upstairs ballroom became the Electric Circus, where Bowie and The Stooges made their mark on stage. Club 57 birthed Haring and Madonna. Trash & Vaudeville dressed the punks. The Stones shot Waiting on a Friend at the same tenement façade Zeppelin used for Physical Graffiti. Decades ago, you could get mugged or pick up the clap hanging here; now it was more like the Epcot of grime. Still, it was magical.

Declaring a neighborhood “dead” is a beloved New York pastime. Ada Calhoun, journalist and East Village local who wrote St. Marks Is Dead, put it best: “Disillusioned St. Marks Place bohemians—those who were Beats in the fifties, hippies in the sixties, punks in the seventies, or anarchists in the eighties—often say the street is dead now, with only the time of death a matter of debate. But… at every cohort’s arrival, the flowering of its utopia, killed someone else’s.”

Yet, discord has remained an integral part of the street’s character. And even as the block was gentrified, whitewashed, and sanitized, plenty of punkish types are still pulled to these three blocks to find community—and to claim a little piece of history.

Search & Destroy, named after the Stooges song, is one of the remaining relics of a tougher past. It’s touted as the last authentic punk shop left on a block that was once a hub for secondhand clothing. Designed to draw the right clientele and scare off the rest, Search & Destroy cultivates an abrasive, confrontational vibe. In the front window display, naked baby dolls and skeletons are piled like a mass grave. A step inside reveals plastic animal carcasses, mannequins in bondage, and elaborate gas masks. If you can stomach the jarring décor, the store has an arsenal of band tees, boots, studded leather, iron-on decals, belts, sex toys, and costume gear in its cramped quarters.

Since moving back to the East Village, walking past the steps of Search & Destroy to rubberneck has become a daily routine. A 20-year-old in fingerless gloves sips a 40 oz of malt liquor at four in the afternoon. A scruffy biker with half his teeth has pedaled in from the Bronx to show off his new rig. The stairs are the stage for a revolving cast of characters who call this street home.

Sure, St. Marks is dead. But youth is eternal, and right now it’s congregated on the steps of Search & Destroy. They’re kind, suspicious, a little lost. They’ve got the best fashion in the city. They want to drink beer and laugh with friends. So on a warm September Sunday, I asked if I could sit with them. Stickers, Erick, and Allison told me why they still come here—and what the Search & Destroy stoop means to them.

How old are you?

ALLISON: 22.

STICKERS: 23.

ERICK: 25.

Where are you from?

ERICK: Here.

STICKERS: New York.

ALLISON: Albany.

How often do you come here?

ALLISON: Every day.

STICKERS: Every day.

ERICK: Yeah, almost every day.

Why do you come?

STICKERS: I have no idea how I ended up here, but I've been hanging out on these steps for like 10 years. You see photo of these stairs from the 80s and 90s and you’re gonna find what was in those photos still to this day. Decades and decades of youth have been lost and somehow magically gravitate right here. This place used to be a rehab center and Search & Destroy was on the ground level. And before it was a rehab, it was some crazy sex carvel place. Given the history of this neighborhood, it’s nice to be sitting up here and keeping something alive.

Do you make friends from hanging out here on the stoop?

STICKERS: I’ve made friends. I’ve made enemies. But honestly, just the fact that I can come here and I’m not alone in the type of character I am. You’re always gonna find runaways. This is the only place in the city you will find people who ride trains. The thing that really keeps me coming here, all bullshit aside, is the fact that I can just be myself.

What does it mean to have a place where you can always roll up and know that there will be people here waiting for you?

ALLISON: I think it’s something that very few people have.

STICKERS: A lot of us don’t have family or a home. It’s a pretty fucked up family on these steps, but when shit hits the fan, someone will have your back. It’s home away from home. Even if I lost my apartment in the Bronx, got evicted, I always know I’ll be welcome here and known and someone asking, Oh, how was your day? Are you okay?

ALLISON: People will help you out too. We share everything.

Is there anywhere else in the city that’s like this?

ERICK: No.

STICKERS: The closest is Washington Square Park. But it’s changed. After COVID, it’s been whitewashed. They started criminalizing the artists.

What’s inspiring you right now?

ALLISON: I just found a big ass canvas on the street. I stood by it for like five minutes in case somebody came back for it. I’m like, no way someone left this out here.

STICKERS: I’m gonna go out freight hopping in a few day. I have to leave every once in a while. You get caught up in the city and it eats you alive. You forget that there’s a world outside New York. Sometimes you have to remind yourself how shitty the rest of the world is. You gotta see some open plains. You gotta see some trees. Remind yourself that there’s other things in the world other than New York. People get stuck here. You’ll find someone walking down this block who has never left.

ERICK: A bunch of shit. History. It’s important to keep history alive.

And how do you do that?

ERICK: This. Word of mouth. You gotta know what you’re talking about.

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• There is nothing that electrifies me more than catching up with an old high school friend. Of course, we would never debase ourselves to petty gossip — we merely had to swap information over Aperol Spritzes. We might as well have pulled out the yearbook and gone person by person sharing the information we had collected over the years. I’m not even ashamed. Who else can I talk about my brush with a high school stalker?

  

• My boyfriend stays up late, while I’m on the retirement plan (5 p.m. dinner and early to bed). He likes to leave little breadcrumbs about what he got up to the night before. Stacked record sleeves and closed curtains mean he danced. Crusty orange rinds and peach pits mean he snacked. A love letter on a postcard means he stayed up later than he wished he had. I like seeing his night in little mementos the next morning. I play detective with a cup of coffee and know that our home is loved and well used.

• A neighbor passed around homegrown marijuana plants to everyone on the block. Our money plant is dying (trying not to read into that), so we replaced her with the leafy gift. Supposedly we’ll have “bud by fall.” I’d still prefer the cash.

• Having a dog in the city is kind of like a never-ending laundry cycle. Every hour, you hear a ding and have to put the wet clothes into the dryer, fold the dry clothes, hang the things that need hanging. Danny, my 10-year-old American Bulldog, needs constant tending. Walks, treats, pats, rubs, meals, kisses. I swear I spent the summer leashing and unleashing him. I picked up one thousand poops and wiped five bajillion paws.

• I felt very connected to my block this summer. Our street has four or five low-income and halfway houses, so it’s always active. Lots of folding chairs and sidewalk chitchat. Danny is very popular. I know all the dogs, all their owners. I know what side of the street is shaded and when. Danny loves hot chicks, and hot chicks love him, so I’m well acquainted with all the babes in the East Village too. And I definitely would’ve missed the weed plant giveaway if not for our one hundred walks.

• Danny has his own bed, though it mostly serves as a plushy sculpture that decorates the corner of the bedroom.

• I’ve devised some really winning friend dates that might sound fun to you too. On Saturday, outside drinks at Threes Brewing in Gowanus and then popping across the street to the Douglass and DeGraw Pool. It’s kind of like if the Soho House pool was in jail. It’s free, but they won’t let you in without a lock, and there are absolutely no phones allowed. If you like being dommed, this is the place for you. They make you shower and yell garbled threats over the loudspeaker system. Then on Friday night, dinner on Orchard Street at Bar Valentina and then heading to the Slipper Room for an 8:30 burlesque show ($30 door entry). On Wednesdays, salsa dancing in Washington Square Park. After each song, you change partners, which is a nice rule for containing intimacy with strangers.

• I spent a lot of time on St. Marks because I love to people-watch. The steps of Search & Destroy showcase the best youngster fashion in the city. I’ve started taking portraits of people on the stoop every time I walk by, which I think I’ll turn into a series.

• I went to Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade. A Yankees game. Late-night burlesque shows at the Slipper Room. I attended a wedding at Gigino Trattoria. Sex worker Sunday mass at Judson Church. A couple of Al-Anon meetings. An erotic reading at the Salmagundi Club. A friend’s movie premiere at the Roxy Cinema.

• I had drinks at the Condé Nast building. A 5 p.m. burger at Raoul’s. Dim sum at Jing Fong. I took an Amtrak up to Hudson to float under waterfalls. I attended a photography class at Gowanus Darkroom. I watched the women’s Euro final at a soccer club on the Bowery. I accompanied my best friend on her wedding dress appointments. I had a photoshoot at Trash & Vaudeville. I was hit by a taxi on the way to JFK. I helped train kids on probation at my boyfriend’s free boxing academy in the South Bronx. I spent a week in a crumbling villa in Tuscany writing, smoking, and swimming in rivers.

• I worked on pieces for Vogue, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, GQ, The Guardian, and TIME. I interviewed a trans woman accused of raping her college girlfriend. An adult creator who founded her own sex-worker-owned-and-operated porn site. A 78-year-old headmistress of a cross-dressing finishing school. I shot Richard Cabut’s book launch at Flux Lumina and ’s 40th birthday-funeral in Chinatown.

• I slept in and stayed up late. I doom-scrolled. We danced to our new Lou Reed album, Coney Island Baby. We grieved Jay’s ex-partner. Her birthday was yesterday. She would have been 38.

• I ran into a social media pickle: can you unfollow someone on their wedding day? Many of the people I follow are mostly dormant until they post an engagement or wedding photo. Of course, you don’t think about unfollowing someone until they post—and you remember they exist. Usually it’s that I realize I don’t actually know this person, that we haven’t spoken in a decade (even then it was probably twice, drunk), or worse, that I dated them. I always hated when dates wanted to connect on Instagram—it’s like I could foresee this future predicament. Anyway, here we are: it’s your wedding and I’d really like to unfollow you.

• I read some books. My favorites:

  • FOR HORNY WORLD-BUILDING

    All Fours by Miranda July

  • FOR A GOOD MEMOIR

    The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne

  • FOR HAUNTING PROSE

    Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black by Cookie Mueller

  • FOR MAKING SENSE OF GRIEF

    The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

  • FOR A CULT FEMINIST CLASSIC

    I Like Dick by Chris Kraus

  • FOR INTELLECTUAL SHIT TALK

    Happiness and Love by Zoe Dubno

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I shake off an urge to bolt home, order in spicy udon and watch my dog Danny paw to come under the blanket. I plod on, reprimanding myself for not wearing a cardigan.

I slip into the womb-like bar and sidle up next to a beaming Nikki Sweet, bathed in bubblegum light. I’ve been following Nikki like a groupie for nearly three years now, delighting in whatever strange, fabulous project she hatches.

Back in 2023, when I was a staffer at PAPER Magazine, I premiered her single “Half Helmet,” introducing readers to a mysterious, campy icon who gifted us the inimitable lyrics: “Wash my hair/ Brush my teeth/ Sob/ Now I have to walk my dog.” And the mannered hook I still want tattooed on my body: “Sunglass/ Headphones/ Face mask/ Leave me alone.”

Tonight, Nikki is debuting her single “Avenue Queer,” which feels serendipitous given my recent Substack project, Avenue B. She plans to premiere the music video too, but the projector isn’t cooperating. As I order a drink to kill time, I decide that on the Corporate-to-Punk meter, having tech issues is very punk. The folks next to me agree, even though they’ve been waiting for a while.

A ragtag crew of supporters crowds the bar—the gender-bending, binary-rebellious kind. Piercings glimmer, tits spill, spiked hair and tattoos flex. Nikki wears a sheer, billowing paisley dress with long slits at the armpits. From one angle, she looks like a bohemian in a muumuu; from another—completely naked—especially when she bends over to tinker with the stubborn projector.

Nikki’s flushed as she comes up to me, embarrassed by the holdup. “I guess we could all gather around my computer.” She props her laptop on a barstool, and instinctively the crowd presses in. The glow from the screen casts a low, bluish halo on us, and suddenly the space feels less like a bar and more like a living room. Nikki grins, mischievously: “This actually makes way more sense since it’s the most intimate work I’ve ever done.”

The video opens with restored audio of activist Ceyenne Doroshow speaking at a Black Trans Lives Matter rally outside the Brooklyn Museum in June 2020. “Go, I love you, love each other,” her voice rings out.

Glitter, harnesses, flowers, and margaritas—Nikki’s world unfurls in colorful, joyous scenes—a luminous homage to Nikki’s circle and to queer belonging itself.

The song’s refrain is truly Nikki at her best—a playful yet earnest sing-talk verse.

“I feel the pain of my ancestors / bricks laid / I follow the rainbow brick road / bricks thrown / I’d do anything to get my ass home / home is the gay bar or nightclub / home is the underground on the third floor Black Woman-owned dungeon / home is pungent weed smoke…”

Nikki wrote the song in 2020. “This wasn’t the first pandemic the queer community has lived through where they told us that we should or shouldn't be doing,” she tells me at the bar. “I was home all the time, but I wasn't really home,” she says. I really felt in my heart why someone would throw a brick, for example, to protect their home and their ability to be there.”

As the video closes, Ceyenne’s voice cuts through the room—part sermon, part rallying cry: “Auntie Mame says, life is like a banquet and most motherfuckers are starving. We have to learn how to stand up, be united, and love each other. We’re all fucked by systems that fuck us continuously and don’t pay us. Pay a hoe. Pay a hoe and then pay attention.”

PAY A HOE AND THEN PAY ATTENTION.

I’d come in restless, ready for my escape. But it’s obvious why I’ve been trailing Nikki for years. “Home is the freaks / Home is you and me / Home is community / Home is in the streets.” Nikki Sweet creates the kind of New York City that I want to live in. Her art is a home. She made this bar a home. Wherever she goes, Nikki Sweet is home for all us freaks.

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Last week, my boyfriend’s longtime ex-partner and best friend passed away after a year-long battle with stage four pancreatic cancer. She was young and otherwise healthy. She was free-spirited and uncontrollably generous. She was a pillar of our unconventional family: the mother to Danny, my adopted, bovine-spotted American Bulldog; a woman who offered unwavering support to my bullheaded boyfriend. Her death—like most deaths—was unfair and disorienting.

My solution to pretty much any problem over the past few years has been to work. Satisfaction and distraction. Normally, sitting down at my computer feels like gearing up to conquer the world. But I’ve been struggling to complete daily tasks. I’ve been cancelling plans. Working from bed and hating myself for it. I feel both listless and agitated— critical of everything I do and irritated by anything anyone else does.

In this state, I’ve recognized how primal life has become. I make food. Cuddle my dog. Kiss my boyfriend. Life has been momentarily stripped of complications and excitement. Chipping away at my end-of-July writing deadline is synonymous with making it through the day.

I recently learned that one of the drawbacks of using pigs to hunt truffles is their tendency to eat the truffles they find—an obvious conflict of interest between hog and hunter. I feel like a truffle pig these days, searching for delicious fungi because it’s my job and also because I might get some truffles out of it.

Would an easier metaphor be that I’m dumb like a fish and all I’m up for these days is swimming toward shiny things?

Crystal-embellished shoes are so shiny. They’re so decadent and over the top. A shoe with crystal embellishments kind of looks like a prop. Something reserved for Moulin Rouge or Jen Shah. But this is a lie perpetrated by the anti-fun coalition. Glittering doll shoes are for everyone.

Lena Dunham agrees.

Here’s me in Miu Miu black patent leather crystal-embellished mules. I look fabulous. So fabulous, you might be enticed to purchase the slightly beaten-up pair off TRR I’ve linked below.

I believe these shoes to be good luck. They totally look like a genie would erupt from their crystal florets if you rubbed sensuously enough. Also, I spoke with Chris Rock that night for quite a while because I didn’t recognize him with all the fillers and Botox.

I think wearing crystal-embellished shoes is fun. Owning them is fun. Opening your closet and seeing them peek out like a precocious pageant tween, a twinkle in their eyes, reminds you on a sad day that you’re still glamorous. I also find the look of draped city blacks paired with a Honey Boo Boo heel excessively chic.

Because this is my newsletter and I do what I want, I compiled a list of my favorite crystal-embellished shoes on TRR.

Am I an influencer now? What is an affiliate link?

Miu Miu Pearl Satin Crystal Embellishments Sandals Women's Size 7.5

Delicious as a truffle.

Dolce & Gabbana Leather Crystal Embellishments Sandals Women's Size 8

You could literally say anything to me if you were wearing these.

Miu Miu Tan Leather Crystal Embellishments Slides Women's Size 8

The most unboring neutral flat I’ve ever seen. If you were wearing these with a normal outfit and a baseball cap at the grocery store I would think you were very cool.

Marc Jacobs Plum Leather Crystal Embellishments Loafers Women's Size 7

Jeans, graphic tee, these.

Dolce & Gabbana Sequins Leather Trim Embellishment Pumps Women's Size 6

Of course these are in a size 6 because they are doll shoes!!! I picture a very petite and busty divorcé in these.

Miu Miu Black Suede Crystal Embellishments Pumps Women's Size 9.5

With tights and a LBD.

Miu Miu Black Patent Leather Crystal Embellishments Mules Women's Size 7

For those who want to dress in black-tie and still be close to the ground.

Amina Muaddi Blue Crystal Embellishments Mules Women's Size 8.5

This is my most recent favorite color. This is the color I imagine to find lots of in Chloë Sevigny’s closet.

Dolce & Gabbana Pink Leather Crystal Embellishments Slides Women's Size 7

Wear these to a wedding with a plain dress.

Miu Miu Patent Leather Crystal Embellishments Slides Women's Size 7.5

These are beautiful and also look like a fish with its mouth open.

I hope these shoes make you feel what I feel when I look at them. Folly, adventure, frivolousness, hope. That one day we will wear these in good health and spirit.

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I’ve had too many good times at Sam Liebling’s events to stay away this long. There was the time my best friend and I bought ketamine (but it was most certainly cocaine) and suddenly a sunlit J/Z is whizzing behind the DJ booth with morning commuters. There’s the smorgasbord of gay penises (by which I mean, jolly and carefree willies) whose sexual orientations are none of my concern in their sweaty, brotherly state.

Once, I even made out with a certain Irish heartthrob while he was in town filming some Ridley Scott number. He took me by the hand and led me through a labyrinth of rooms before finding a quiet stairwell where he could devour my face in quiet. If that’s not the best advertisement to attend this party, I don’t know what is…

I’m not sure what made me text Sam last week, but to my surprise, he had something in the works for next month. Ask and you shall receive, rave God said. The next Steamroom is set for August 23, and early bird tickets, which reserves you a towel and a locker, dropped this morning.

If you drop a comment below and subscribe to my page, and I’ll send you the unlisted link. For those who are still curious (kinky little voyeurs, you), I talked to Sam about throwing the best party series in New York and what goes on the steam…

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This article originally appeared in Interview Magazine in 2024. Read the full version here.

On a quiet industrial avenue in Flatbush, Brooklyn, a pack of twenty-somethings in layered sportswear huddle outside an auto body shop to smoke a cigarette before entering the local Russian bathhouse. What was once the go-to community headquarters for New Yorkers—where mafiosos, Rabbis, artists, cab drivers, and A-listers would congregate to schvitz under the same roof—is now the newest backdrop for the underground electronic music scene. The man behind it is Sam Liebling, founder of the techno party series Steamroom, which is building on the queer, sudsy history of bathhouses and reinvigorating the space with a modern, raving twist.

Bathhouse lore runs deep in New York City; it’s said that gangsters hired deaf masseurs so that their secrets would stay shrouded in the steam. Last weekend, at Steamroom, $20 (not including the price of admission) got you a key and a towel at Prospect South’s Brooklyn Banya, where patrons were met at the door by a pulsing beat and the musky smell of chlorine. Upstairs, the locker room buzzed with anticipation and curiosity. Should I take off my shoes? Are you finishing your drink? Can you hand me that towel? Bare breasts and penises bounced before settling into bathing suits. Ravers gave a quick lip-pout or booty-pop in the bathroom’s mirror, then scurried into the main room. What happens next, Liebling tells me with a wink, stays in the bathhouse. But before things got too rowdy, he and I snuck into a parlor room to talk naughty spa behavior, what makes a good rave, and how, by the grace of god, are they not fainting downstairs?

ALESSANDRA SCHADE: We are currently in a bathhouse in Brooklyn. I just stripped down in the locker room. I’m in a bikini. You’re in a bathing suit. Why are we here?

SAM LIEBLING: I mean, two years ago, when I was just tertiary in the electronic scene in New York, I was bored. I think that going out should be more interactive. Bathhouses and nightlife have always gone hand in hand and thinking of ways to try and make something more interactive just led to where we are.

SCHADE: There’s a history of bathhouse culture in New York. The lore goes that gangsters were doing business in saunas. Closeted folks could explore their sexuality in a safe, steamy environment. There were local bathhouses where rabbis and hippies were all schvitzing under the same roof. So, how is raving in a bathhouse in Brooklyn part of this lore?

LIEBLING: It all ties together in the sense that history repeats itself, but with variations. There is so much cultural significance between the queer scene and the bathhouse scene in New York, but I’m not even going to sit here and speak on it pretending that I am an expert. This party came out of learning more about the history and respecting my elders in a way, the people that came before and made this whole scene a thing.

SCHADE: At heart, bathhouses are very democratic. There’s no clothes, no classes, no divisions. What community is Sam’s bathhouse serving?

LIEBLING: A little bit of everyone. Despite the marketing or whatever people may think, this party has never been geared toward one demographic. It’s all about making raving and nightlife more experiential, something more than just being at a club or being in a warehouse. I asked myself, “What party would I want to go to?” and just created that. We wanted to create a space that’s just full-force freedom of expression.

SCHADE: My friends and boyfriend have been dying to know, have I come to an orgy? Is there naughty bathhouse behavior that happens in the steam?

LIEBLING: The answer is… you come and you find out.

SCHADE: So true. When did the idea of a techno rave in a bathhouse occur to you?

LIEBLING: It was super, super random. I was doing very low-level party promotion in Manhattan two, three years ago. And then I moved into Brooklyn and started to find my community within the electronic music scene until I moved what I was doing into Manhattan. The whole Steamroom thing was that I had overbooked myself for something and I was like, “What the fuck am I going to call this party?” I was like, “Steamroom.” And it had nothing to do with steam rooms. But lo and behold, it evolved and it got me thinking about what I can do with that name, because that party did really well.

SCHADE: What makes a good rave?

LIEBLING: I don’t fucking know.

SCHADE: You clearly do.

LIEBLING: I think that it’s very dependent on what people are looking to get out of the experience. Honestly, any rave can be a good rave. It’s details, production, and uniqueness, but the experience you get is very individual. So you come and you get what you get from it and leave the rest at the door.

SCHADE: You’ve built a pretty large community, a kind of if-you-know-you-know crowd. How have you cultivated a strong following while also keeping this insider, exclusive feel?

LIEBLING: I don’t want to give away the secret sauce. But we started to build with friends of friends and mutual connections, all of us being in the same techno, electronic scenes. We need people to come to our parties and people to be interested in what we’re doing, but I like the element of surprise. I don’t want everyone to know exactly what they’re getting themselves into, because then where’s the sport of the experience?

SCHADE: I feel like everyone downstairs had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

LIEBLING: None.

SCHADE: You’re building a fantasy. How does Steamroom compare to other techno events in the city?

LIEBLING: There’s a lot of labels in New York and there’s a lot of parties in New York. But I think the amalgamation of the two, building a platform and using it as a party to push local artists, is super important. We see that going on so much within the scenes we idolize in the EU and all over the world, and they all end up turning into something more than just a party. I never started this just to be like, “Oh, I’m throwing a rave in a bathhouse.” It has always been about one, creating an experience and two, furthering the electronic music scene in New York, because so many people have found community in it, including myself.

SCHADE: Speaking of, you dropped a record last week. Can you tell me about the music component of your project?

LIEBLING: We put out the first artist compilation on the 17th. It had been in the works for a few months but it all fell into place very quickly. There’s a couple artists on it that are not directly from New York. My friend Mika, who’s out in Berlin, put a track on it. My friend, Gautham, who goes by Decoder, put a track on it and he’s from Texas. But the rest of the artists are New York staples, basically. I wanted to do a project with a range of sounds, from ambient to psychedelic techno to trance. The goal is to revive the electronic music scene in New York. I’m not going to be the fucking one to do that, but I’m trying to.

SCHADE: My first thought when I heard about Steamroom is, “How are people not going to faint?” What safety precautions do you have?

LIEBLING: Of course we have EMTs on staff. And we are very much about safe usage. We try to keep it a little bit more tame than a normal warehouse rave, per se, because we’re in a bathhouse and it is hot. But we have EMTs on staff at all times. And the staff at the bathhouse is very well-trained in everything. They’ve been here for 30 years.

SCHADE: One last question. This an unconventional space, to say the least. Can you tell me any funny or memorable moments you’ve had in the five events you’ve had?

LIEBLING: I think my answer to that is… you just have to be at the party.

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It’s International Whores’ Day: a day to commemorate the 1975 protest in France, when over 200 sex workers occupied a church in Lyon to demand better working conditions and stand against police harassment.

Sex Worker Sunday, curated by Vera, is now an annual event at Judson—the hip West Village church famous for its radical inclusivity. I attended last year’s SW Sunday at the church and watched my friend Nikki Sweet gyrate on a lubed-up dildo in front of jaw-dropped congregants (some of whom, I’m sure—I hope, really—missed the whore’s takeover memo and were just attending what they assumed was a regular Sunday mass). Whether they knew the program or not, I’m absolutely positive no one was briefed about Sweet’s explicit performance. The idea of unwittingly attending a live sex show in your Sunday best truly tickles me.

Anyway, after last year’s dildo-fucking masterpiece, I vowed to never miss a SW Sunday again.

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One of the political aims of the service is to support a bill currently before the New York Assembly that would amend the penal law to decriminalize sex work. Jo Weldon—who read a summary of Assembly Bill A3251—offers a great breakdown of the legislation, along with a much-needed clarification for anyone who 1) confuses decrim with legalization or 2) is “hesitant to support the decriminalization of sex work because you have been socialized to believe that sex work is human trafficking and that lifting the penalties against it will make children vulnerable” (which, spoiler, is not true).

Back to Veronica. Her speech was moving, provocative, holy. You can listen to Veronica’s sermon and the entire service here. Below is just a taste.

I desperately needed to hear every story about every place Vera had played. So when she invited me over to her apartment this month to hang out, I brought my recording device.

Let me tell you about Veronica Vera’s insatiably erotic life.

from Catholic girl to New York sex pot 1969-1979

• Vera moves to NYC in 1969 to become a writer.

• She fails every typing test at the major publishing houses and ends up on Wall Street, working for a trading firm.

• In 1977, she moves into a Chelsea apartment—where she’s been now for 48 years.

• Her next-door neighbor, Robert Lock, a gay Australian man, becomes her BFF. The building is quirky: every two apartments are connected by a door in the kitchen. Vera and Robert treat theirs (3C + 3D) as one shared home.

• She has a series of boyfriends, and the “repressed Catholic girl” finally starts exploring her sexuality.

wall street guys make for good erotica 1979–1982

• Vera meets VK McCarty, editor at Penthouse Variations, through the Andy Warhol scene in 1979.

• She writes her first story for the magazine—“The Taste of Love”—about a man’s first experiences giving oral sex, inspired by the various men she meets on Wall Street.

• The check comes in. And like any properly legitimized writer, she immediately flees to Paris.

writers with whips 1982-1983

• Through VK, Vera meets Marco Vassi, the prolific erotic writer.

• Vassi invites her to Woodstock to teach her about BDSM—“the perfect thing to step into after Catholicism.” While visiting photographer Charles Gatewood, she meets Annie Sprinkle, the legendary porn star and performance artist.

• Their meet-cute is everything you'd hope for: Sprinkle descends the stairs in pink baby-doll pajamas, clutching European fetish porn mags.

• Vera and Sprinkle become instant best friends. Sprinkle starts bringing her to fetish parties. Soon, the Sprinkle-Vera Salon is born—an art-and-kink event series hosted in Sprinkle’s apartment.

• They run a public access TV show from the apartment, but it keeps getting censored, which is “boring,” so they quit.

• Vera plunges headfirst into the New York erotic scene. She models for Robert Mapplethorpe, Charles Gatewood, Joel-Peter Witkin, Eric Kroll. She is tattooed by Spider Webb and celebrates piercing with Fakir Musafar.

• She also writes for various B-tier sex mags like Stag, Cheri, and Hustler.

• Sprinkle and Vera show up in DIY cut-and-paste zines—early zine culture gold. They launch mail-order fetish products: Annie’s Sprinkle (pee-colored liquid in tiny perfume bottles—Sprinkle was Queen of the Golden Shower at the time), Eau de Veronique, and Pubic Hair Ritual Kits.

“the thinking man’s porn star” 1983-1984

• Vera stars in her first X-rated movie. She’s interviewed by Jared Rutter, editor of ADAM magazine, who dubs her “the thinking man’s porn star.”

• She’s then given a monthly column—Veronica Vera’s New York—which she writes for over a decade. In it, she explores BDSM dungeons, Plato’s Retreat, fetish parties, Time Square sex emporiums such as Show World, and the city’s underground sex scene.

• In 1984, she testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee as part of the Reagan administration’s crusade against obscenity. She reads erotica aloud and displays bondage photos as visual aids. Her testimony is later immortalized in the infamous Meese Report—a moral panic document masquerading as federal policy.

club 90 1984–1989

• In 1984, at a baby shower for porn star Veronica Hart, a cluster of porn and porn-adjacent professionals realize how valuable it would be to gather regularly and talk about their struggles, goals, and experiences in the industry. Club 90 is born.

• They begin meeting every two weeks in the city. Founding members include Veronica Vera, Annie Sprinkle, Gloria Leonard, Candida Royalle, Veronica Hart, Kelly Nichols, and Susan Nero. One day, Royalle brings in a flyer for an art festival called Carnival Knowledge. It’s asking the question: Is there a feminist pornography?—and putting out a call for proposals. Club 90 pitches a show based on their meetings: Deep Inside Porn Stars. The performance is a hit. They even get an Off-Broadway offer.

• In 1986, Vera’s best friend Robert Lock is diagnosed with AIDS. They get married in their Chelsea courtyard. The Season 3 finale of HBO’s The Deuce was based on that wedding (Vera consulted on all three seasons). After Lock dies, she hires a lawyer and secures the lease to his apartment. She keeps both units for the next ten years.

• Sprinkle debuts The Post Porn Modernist Show—a radical one-woman performance blending sex, art, and autobiography to explore feminist porn, spirituality, and the politics of pleasure. Vera contributes a sex-positive manifesto for the program, which is printed and circulated globally.

miss vera’s finishing school for boys who want to be girls 1986–1997

• Vera begins working with cross-dressers as a coach.

• Word spreads. She gets more and more clients. She brings in a friend to help with makeup, another to teach walking in high heels. Eventually, she throws a party for the academy, with some of her students showing up in French maid outfits.

  When New York Magazine hears there might be “a couple of guys in cute little dresses,” they ask if they can send a photographer. It turns into a full-page color spread.

• The official launch of Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls happens in 1992—a full-blown gender revolution that predates the mainstreaming of the term “transgender.”

• The academy becomes an international media sensation, featured in New York Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, LA Times, PAPER, New York Post, and People.

• In 1997, she publishes Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls. And in 2003, she follows it with Miss Vera’s Cross-Dress for Success.

grief and glamour 2002–2010

• In 2007, Vera meets Stuart Cottingham at a neighbor’s party. She’s announcing a new class she’s planning: a “how to walk in heels” workshop for all women.

  A woman pipes up: “Oh, so you're going to have guys in dresses in class with us women?” Vera replies, “Well, it's really not accurate to call them ‘guys in dresses,’ because they feel very strongly that they're women.” A voice behind her chimes in: “Right on.” It’s Stu—a bisexual cross-dresser. “He was so open about it,” Vera says. “I found it very refreshing, and that was what I found attractive about him.”

• They fall in love and get married in 2012 at Judson Memorial Church (home of Sex Worker Sunday Service). Stu passes away the following year from a glioblastoma. He is the third man Vera has cared for at the end of their life.

archiving the revolution 2010s–present

• Harvard’s Schlesinger Library acquires Vera’s personal archive—along with Club 90 materials.

• She and Sprinkle are featured in the HBO documentary Dear Ms.

• In 2016, she publishes Miss Vera’s Cross Gender Fun for All. She’s currently at work on a memoir.

• There’s even talk of officially relaunching Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls—and if it happens, I’ll be the first to tell you.

What struck me most about our conversation—the hilarious, tender, and titillating vignettes of Vera’s life aside—was the feeling that, in the ’80s, any art project, even the freakiest little seed of an idea, felt possible to bring to life. I found myself incredibly envious of the breadth of Vera’s creative output. But I won’t waste that envy. I’ll harness it and let it feed me.

I think that’s why Substack feels so appealing right now: free rein to publish, to explore thoughts (even the unsellable ones), to connect with others who are hungry like me.

Speaking of which, should Veronica Vera come to Substack? I think she should. In the meantime, here’s where you can find her early columns.

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We had the best day—eating at a local Catalan restaurant, then stepping down into her subterranean office, where a metal dog crate and a colorful assortment of dildos, gags, whips, and chastity cages decorated the otherwise bare room.

What drew me to Paula—this Argentine dom halfway across the world—wasn’t just the allure of a foreign dungeon. (I do love a dungeon.) It was that she used her sessions to read aloud books on feminism, Marxism, sexuality, communism, Critical Race Theory, and other anti-oppression lit to her unsuspecting clients. In her imperfect English, she explained that she would “read” her clients—locating their baggage, prejudices, preconceptions, and biases—and then choose a book she felt would benefit them most. She described her re-education attempts as “taking things off them”—a slow unlayering of learned beliefs and power structures.

I love discovering the bizarre and inspired ways artists and workers in the sex industry subvert traditional sex work—spice it up, weird it up, muck it up. The idea of reading The Communist Manifesto to a middle-aged man in a dog crate, really gets me. There’s no doubt in my mind Paula Dreidemie is making the world a better place.

This article originally appeared in Playgirl.com, 2024. Read the full version here.

“They come for the body, but stay because they’re chained,” Paula Dreidemie says with a smirk. She sips demurely on a dark red wine. It’s lunchtime, and Paula, a dominatrix who operates a dungeon out of a storage unit in Barcelona, has suggested a local eatery down the block from her underground office. She’s wearing a black mesh top and red lipstick. She looks like an old Hollywood villain as she removes her headscarf, releasing corkscrew brown curls and blunt bangs.

“You might not believe it,” Paula says. “But there’s a big market for being kidnapped.” Her thick Argentine accent curls around every word as we dig into decadent plates of lamb, octopus, and some kind of vegetable soup. The scrawling menu is in Catalan, which neither of us speaks; however, Paula’s Spanish has secured us each a glass of wine and a substantial three-course meal with unidentifiable meat.

Paula is a 33-year-old writer, filmmaker, and artist whose interest in studying and practicing theories of punishment, pain, and discipline has led her down an unconventional path into the psycho-sexual world of domination. Her practice of BDSM—a popular shorthand for bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, and sadism—is more elaborate than a spank or blindfold. It’s a state of mind that enables Paula to dominate her clients completely: physically, mentally, and even intellectually.

I met Paula a year ago, when she was working in Paris. She had turned a basement that once stored charcoal in its dank stone cavern nearly two centuries ago into an office, where she stashed clients who had paid to be kidnapped. A year later, Paula’s operation has moved over 600 miles, away from longtime clients and her fiancé. Fortunately, the prospective clients are just as freaky in Barcelona, she assures me.

“Each city has their own fetishes, because it’s related to culture,” Paula explains. “What is forbidden here? What is a really nasty thing in this culture?” she says. “They’re obsessed with poop here. Probably something to do with the Catholic Church,” she shrugs. Paula’s most devoted clients never had to say goodbye — they make the trek to Barcelona for her niche services.

Known to her clients as Goddess Tisiphone—the fair but cruel namesake of the ancient Greek goddess of vengeance—Paula morphs into her dominatrix alter ego by channeling that vicious femininity into a political exercise of dominance and re-education. When you picture a dominatrix, what may come to mind is an imposing woman dressed in studded latex, paid to humiliate her clients for sexual pleasure. In the case of Goddess Tisiphone, clients pay to be kidnapped, humiliated, and ultimately educated by Paula.

In the quaint, working-class district of Barcelona’s Sants, Paula’s new office is a basement storage rental where she’s set up her dungeon alongside an extensive book collection. Slowly, she’s tackling the laborious—and expensive—task of rebuilding her library in her new country’s language. With these books, she re-educates her clients in matters of social justice, workers’ rights, feminism, queerness, gender ideology, colonialism, art, and more. “The literature [assigned] is changing because the world is changing, but we learn to find pleasure even when the world is falling apart,” Paula says.

A typical day’s work may include an “afternoon meeting” where she smokes hand-rolled joints as a wriggling prisoner hangs from the bolted metal chains she’s installed in the ceiling. Later, she’ll quiz him on the philosophies of Sacher-Masoch, whose introductory book she’s left for him to read. “I play a game of you’ve been a good boy, you’ve been a bad boy, and test them on the books that I leave.” Maybe she’ll leave him for a while and grab some dinner. Maybe she’ll lean back in her chair with a cool nonchalance and watch.

Most of her clients are older, rich, white men — but not because they’re the only ones who crave complete submission, she explains. “They’re the ones who have been taught to feel comfortable with the idea of paying for this type of pleasure.” Paula’s keen eye for understanding people’s relationship to pleasure and pain comes not just from studying philosophy texts or classic literature. Her relationship with BDSM is also personal, appearing in her own dynamics long before she had the language to describe domination.

While Paula’s first paid domming gig was at a dungeon in Brooklyn at the age of 28, her dominatrix practice may date back to grade school. “I think I’ve always been a dominatrix,” Paula tells me, strumming her fingers against her chin. “I remember I had this classmate who would carry my books and do my homework. I would use him as a horse during break time in front of everybody.” Paula starts laughing, adding, “But he was happy to do it!” There was also an after-school-hours subordinate. “I had a neighbor who would play games with me. He would leave crying every day, but the next day he would always come back.”

Decades later, Paula has successfully carved out a career built around both an interest and an encyclopedic understanding of domination. But more than just a skilled dominatrix, she’s an artist who genuinely enjoys practicing her craft. “[Being a dominatrix] is being an artist. It makes me grow as a person and brings me so much pleasure,” Paula says. “I would be doing this even if it wasn’t my job, so creating a space where I can do this in a very conscious and consensual way is very gratifying.” She throws a balled-up napkin into the saucy remnants of a large beef dish and looks at me with excitement: “Now want to see my dungeon?”

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Finding the right shoe has always been tricky for me. Since the time that I could perceive my body and understand that items could either enhance or upset what I had going on, I knew that slender shoes were not for me. My legs were more of the sturdy sort and I didn’t like how they presented in shoes that were too narrow or dainty. A lean foundation disturbs the balance of my figure. Converse, for example, make me feel like a stump. In Vans, alternatively, I am a willowy skate God.

Chunk and clunk are imperative features of my silhouette—and when positioned at the base in shoe form—my wee, tiny body can exist in contrast as the wiry cattail reed it wants to be.

So when it’s hot and I’m walking a lot and I still crave the chunk, this is what I’m wearing.

The Nike Air Rift is unfortunately Elle’s “hottest shoe” of the summer. Thankfully, users in the comments still think the shoe is ugly. Phew. People must hate it for it to remain the perfect shoe. And if it cannot stay the perfect shoe, it will at least be the most comfortable one. I wore these (no socks) every day on a trip to Paris, clocking in nearly 20,000 steps every day, and didn’t get a single blister.

Here are some links to pre-owned Rifts online:

Nike Air Rift Breathe Neon Green Women's Size 8

Nike Air Rift Kenya University Red Stadium Green Forest Women’s Size 7

Nike Air Rift Breathe Brown Shale Women's Size 9

Nike Air Rift Metallic Silver Women's Size 9

Nike Air Rift Breathe White Citron Pulse Multi Color Women's Size 5

Next is the Sandy Liang ballet flat. These are dainty and slender and yet, because of the square toe, these work for me and my proportion dysmorphia. They’re also very comfortable.

Here are some links to pre-owned:

Sandy Liang Satin Cutout Accent Mary Jane Flats Size 5.5

Sandy Liang Satin Mary Jane Flats Women's Size 10

Sandy Liang Leather Mary Jane Flats Women's Size 8

Sandy Liang Satin Mary Jane Flats Women's Size 10

Sandy Liang Satin Leather Trim Embellishment Mary Jane Flats Women's Size 7

Labucq sandals are my prized possession. They make every outfit better. Most importantly, they’re super comfortable and make a great stomping shoe.

Links to pre-owned:

Labucq Leather Sandals Women's Size 7

Labucq Leather Flip Flops Women's Size 7

Labucq Brown Leather Sandals with Silver Accents Women’s Size 8.5

Labucq Women's Cream and Black Sandals Women’s Size 11

Labucq Women's Black Sandals Women’s Size 7.5

Last but not least, Miista sandals, clogs, and mules. They’re a great shoe for a girl who loves chunk.

Links:

Miista Kristi Cow Print Mules Women’s Size 9

Miista Black Eunice Platform Sandals Women’s Size 8

E8 By Miista Sandals Silver Women’s Size 9.5

E8 By Miista Ota Slingback Clogs Blue Women’s Size 5.5

Miista Black Noreen Sandals Women’s Size 8.5

E8 by Miista Lacey Black Strappy Leather Sandals Women’s Size 7.5

I hope there’s a chunk-loving girl out there to whom this list spoke. This was for you.

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I forgot that the transaction of money for service could be so simple. Mustn’t you toil for months? Doesn’t one come up with a novel idea, both queer and sellable; hunt down the unhuntable; interview a cast of mistrusting characters with three recording devices; write dog-shit drafts that make you doubt yourself, your abilities, and your will to live—all to spend the next year banging down the doors of your publishers, pleading on your hands and knees to get paid?

Last week, I CC’d the entire staff at Cosmo on an email imploring they stop ignoring me and let me know if they still planned to publish the piece they had commissioned last winter. After six months of radio silence (and many personnel changes), I was told I’d be receiving a kill fee— 25% of the original contracted price. (Part of me wanted to ask if they’d just print the damn thing and call it a day.)

Apparently, it can get more civilized than this. Last night, I listened to some kooky poems, found the artful angles in a studio brimming with New York City punks, got the low down of my friend’s latest hook-up, and left with cash in my hand.

I do really love photography, though, I’ve learned that my childlike enthusiasm for that art will not be well received by everyone. I use a point-and-shoot film camera, a total goon move for the veterans, and am still very much a novice. I would never claim to be a photographer (even though it’s 2025 and 97% of Gen Z in the U.S. use a smartphone with a camera). Everyone is kind of a photographer now, which I think bothers photographers. Obviously, photography is a skill and a pretty easy one to identify. Since I’ve started taking analog photos, my respect for the practice has grown infinitely. It’s both hard and sometimes easy to take a good photo. My thesis for all of this is that I have the utmost respect for photographers, I really want to get better and am invigorated by how much there is to learn, and also, if you take offense to my newfound photography excitement, go fuck yourself, you pretentious fuck.

Here are some photos from the event and some things that I learned.

1. No one likes having their photo taken but everyone loves having taken photos

I tried to remind people of this when they froze or flashed me a look of terror. I usually just complimented their outfit (easy to do in this crowd) and you could see them soften, realizing, that wow, they do look good, and why not get a picture.

2. Flash photography can be awkward when the person is talking about death

As the clacking sound of flash echoed through the quiet studio, I realized that readings are tricky. If this was a concert, or anything high energy, flash photos fade into the chaos. This older punk woman, with dark eyeliner and a fierce jawline, was reading a poem about her dead friend. Someone who was not me took a clacking flash photo and I grimaced. I waited for that poem to be over and took a photo when she was repeating the word “portal” a lot.

3. Everything is better with good people

Good people invite you into their worlds and spaces. Good people extend kindness with their eyes: a wink, a smile, a nod that lets you know you’re okay. Though perhaps the goal is to move through an event invisibly, I felt excessively visible. I was touched when people treated my clunky intrusions with levity and humor. The camera facilitated connection and friendship. It was a conversation starter between an admirer and the admired. Lastly, none of this would have happened without my friend Lydia Sviatoslavsky, an internet pal turned collaborator, who, when she heard I was getting into photography, said, I have an event for you. That is the best kind of person.

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There’s an old folktale about a family in County Kerry who would leave their dead on the beach. Their ancient burial site lay beneath Ballyheigue Bay, and so by placing the coffins on the shore, the rising tide would carry the bodies to sea—reuniting the dead with their ancestors. In the story, a drunk and curious nay-sayer decides to stay up one night to witness the eerie sea abduction. As the sea spirits prepare to retrieve the coffin, they see the human and declare their secret ritual officially over. No family member has been taken to sea since.

I guess after a few rounds of telephone and some light edits, my boyfriend’s “Director’s Cut” is that he’ll become a merman after his death. He’s quite insistent that it would be my job to haul his dead body to Ireland, find a boat, and then discard him into the sea. But I’m not schlepping my 200-pound ex-model boyfriend across the world to some underwater orgy.

He’s assured me that there are no mermaids—just a dive bar, Guinness, and other pruny mermen with scales for dicks. He is hot and sober so I can’t imagine why drunken fish celibacy would be appealing.

For the sake of research, I journeyed to the shores of Coney Island to attend the annual Mermaid Parade.

Jokes aside, the Mermaid Parade is truly the most joyful day of the year. I’ve been going forever. My mom even found this photo of one of my first parades when I was just a wee mermaid learning that boobs come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and, on this day— neon colors.

And while my purpose this year was to scout out the whorish underwater bachelorettes of my boyfriend’s afterlife— I ended up finding something much better.

Deblynn, Pinnball, and Kaleidoscope Pete. I arrived early to find a good spot and found these characters drinking beer at Flywheel Eats. Pinnball was wearing a CBGBs shirt under suspenders and Deblynn was wearing this fantastic Dr. Seussian straw hat. I knew they were fabulous even before meeting them.

Kaleidoscope Pete, who pulled a thumb-sized kaleidoscope from a holster on his belt to hold it up to my eye, has been making these beautiful instruments for over 25 years. Like his pal, he was a fixture at CBGBs, filming sets and selling the footage to bands or record labels, splitting the profits 50-50 with the artists.

Recently, he retired from making kaleidoscopes to spend time riding his bicycle. He joined the Jersey Devils Bicycle Club and rides with them every day. They have a really rad logo, a wide-faced devil with a missing tooth, which they wear on leather vests. He told me that a few weeks ago they were stopped by (redacted) bike gang who jacked their vests!!!!! Just proves how badass these guys are.

Speaking of bike gangs, Deblynn used to live in “the clubhouse,” which anyone cooler than me would know references the (now defunct) Hells Angels clubhouse on E 3rd St. There were too many interesting stories to consume at once so I’m going out to Jersey to take her to lunch and hear all about it. We exchanged numbers before she and Pinnball rushed off to ride the Cyclone before the park got too busy. Kaleidoscope Pete’s wife died last year, so he stayed with us to get his flirt on.

Here are some more photos from the day.

It’s 99 degrees in New York right now and it’s nice to be reminded why we live here.

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1. No one will read it

2. Additional self-promotion will be my social death

3. It will take time away from my current projects and pitching new ones

4. I’ve been taught not to write for free

5. The idea generally makes me feel nauseous, naked, and unimportant

This week I published an article for GQ about a European members-only club where faux-aristocrats pay to cosplay old money. The article is hilarious - viral material. Reddit snarkers, etiquette workshops, $50,000 trips to Monaco, a ubiquitous obsession with Gossip Girl, and uber-cringe quotes from influencer-bros who have old money tourettes. Just like when you order new clothes online, part of me thought (hoped, prayed) a shiny new piece would fix my life. But the article came out to little fanfare. Later that day, Cosmopolitan broke their five-month silence to tell me they’d be paying a kill fee for a reported feature I wrote last year on the unspoken politics of public mourning on social media.

All to say, whether you’re writing for a legacy publication or a blog, there’s no telling whether you’ll be shouting into the void or not. Perhaps it shouldn’t matter. Most days, I don’t really care. I love to write and I’d like to write more.

So in this spirit, I’d like to overcome these Substack woes.

1. No one will read it

Right now, as I break in this new style of writing, this is honestly a comfort. It’s been baked into my young millennial bones that blog writing is cringe. I’ve done all the mental gymnastics and haven’t been able to outsmart that core truth. I can’t imagine a time where it won’t feel cringe to write, and then post, a pedestrian dispatch from one’s life. (This isn’t true. The answer is obviously the day this pulls in a paycheck.)

2. Additional self-promotion will be my social death

Barf!!!! Self-promotion is the terrible curse of the doer. To make shit happen, you have to post online. Sure, there are exceptions. But I am not one of them.

After college, I worked at a consulting firm in the sweaty Diamond District, a job so boring that I was nearly forced to become a Wordpress blogger, writing half-baked essays that felt like firing an SOS flare into the ether. Sharing these pieces on Instagram gave me the pluck to quit my job to pursue writing full time.

I’ve done this many times — earnestly self-promoting on social media as a kind of tool, humiliation ritual, due-paying in the pursuit of making shit happen for myself. Whether it was the wellness brand that never took off, the vintage clothing pop-up series my friend and I concocted during the pandemic, or this Substack — I always return to the looming question, how many appeals for attention does one get? I fear I’m tapping my followers dry of any remaining G.A.F. in the quest to attract more.

3. It will take time away from my current projects and pitching new ones

This is a boring reason (though probably true). As I’m writing this on Thursday at 3pm, I am very much not working on the project whose deadline is fast approaching. But I’m deciding not to care as everything always gets done.

• I’ve been taught not to write for free

Hopefully this won’t remain a nonprofit endeavor. I also have to remind myself that every project as freelance journalist is initially unpaid.

• The idea generally makes me feel nauseous, naked, and unimportant

I hope this doesn’t sound too precious. I feel precious even thinking this. But writing is an enchanting practice. After having written the above, I feel less nauseous and only slightly unclothed. If writing is a muscle that must be flexed, then I am taking vulnerability and humility to the gym.

Though I have no fix to feeling insignificant, nor any assurance this will lead anywhere interesting, I will be doing this more. This being — doing things — even when no one is looking.

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