43rd Annual Midtown Building Competition

Last night I was out with my boy D. doing some recon in the East Village when we walked past a Thai Dumpling spot on the western end of St. Mark's.

We were like 5 paces past it, when I decided I had to go back and look at the menu. As I turned around, this poster for the 43rd Annual Midtown Building Competition came into my field of vision.

It was less than an hour to start time, and this was a short train ride in the direction of home, so I decided to go. Tried to get D. to join, but he'd been wearing the same clothes for 36 hours after a tryst with a German journalist, so he headed back to Brooklyn, and I went up to midtown to check this out.

Rocked up on a small group of people with these ropes slung over a 10-foot wall at a POPS (Privately Owned Public Space) on a normally-boring corner in Midtown East.

They instantly and warmly welcomed me, and after I declined to climb the wall (as a general rule at 270 lbs. I avoid hanging off ropes), they made me the 'judge', handing me a stack of papers with an assortment of circular smiley-faces and random, nonsensical numbers on them.

Whenever somebody new showed up, they'd be read the the single-sentence, full-page "waiver" and put through an ever-evolving series of stretches.

The face paints came out, and the chalk, and pretty soon there were 25 people milling about, laughing and playing and causing the stone-faced Murray Hillers to snake through this moment of life, pretending like it wasn't happening. We invited many to join, but few even broke stride. Blessings on those that stopped to engage us.

I pulled in one guy from down the corner and at first he kept saying "what is happening", but he stayed the whole time and made some new friends. Rockstar.

After awhile, there were about 25-30 people, and the competition got under way. The goal was to climb the wall as slowly as possible, and there were some epic duels.

Every time people would get to the top, somebody would shout "What's the score?", and I'd pull a random paper from the stack, hold it up and shout out what it said, and everybody would cheer.

It was lit. Culture Jamming is alive and well in Manhattan.

The Situationists were always going on about the Dérive, or the drift, which is the sort of ethereal stream you slowly submerge into when you start wandering. It takes you to new places and ideas, but also pulls you into eddies that connect your past and future to the present.

In a few hours, I'm about to give my first 6-hour Bagels, Dumplings, and Tacos wander, and more than a year ago, the first bit of intentional research I did for this was with my friend A. at the Tex-Mex joint attached to this POPS. It's called Rio Grande, and they have a "Mexico entrance" and a "Texas entrance". It's sorta fun. (Also there's a great coffee shop right here on the south side of 37th.) It was nice to be called back to this block where I already had strong positive feelings.

From me to you, if your life isn't full of little coincidences - if you aren't chasing the occasional wild hare - you're missing out.

As an old West Village hippie told me a few weeks ago, Never take an intermission on your intuition.

And like the Talking Heads admonished us all those years ago...

STOP MAKING SENSE

These bodies are built for joy. Go find it.

Thanks for reading,

DF

Written in The Well. Morning Time.