Sometimes, you just gotta lighten up and take a break and create pointless, stupid stuff. I had been on the train, on my phone, extracting bridges from songs for future use on short video clips like these when suddenly the caption “Fried chicken can be part of a balanced diet too!” popped into my head. And as a fan of Cibo Matto, the idea of for this video clip came to fruition.
And I realise I’m no stranger to creating stupid things to make sense of life.
I probably made this back in 2008 or 2009. There were a bunch of other clips from that same filming session that I am not releasing because they’re very cringeworthy.
Yesterday, I was feeling very affected by the attack on LGBT nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida, but I wasn’t quite sure why. I did not directly know any of the victims, was not there, nor was I Latino — the majority of the victims — and my only connection to the incident was that I was a QPOC. But it wasn’t that connection that stirred something inside me. It was the idea that our sanctuary has been so easily trashed that struck me.
—
In 2009, I was bound for New York for college, and it would have been my first foray into the United States. In preparation for the journey, I researched as much as I could about the city, and learned that it was a haven for the LGBT community and the Stonewall Inn was where the LGBT rights movement first started. At the time, I had never experienced or dabbled in anything of that nature — I was too concerned with school and extracurriculars to be even bothered. Never been inside a gay club, never kissed, never held a hand.
But I learned about the concept that there are spaces where one could go and be amongst like people. Places where for while, one could let one’s hair down and not worry — nay not think — about disapproving stares, much less the fear of rebuke and reproach. Sanctuaries.
One of the very first few things when I had landed in New York and had generally unpacked was to pump up my unicycle (my preferred mode of transportation) and go for a ride in the city. I was curious about this Greenwich Village and Chelsea, spoken of in Wikipedia (Hell’s Kitchen had yet to be linked into the Gay Village Wikipedia article at the time, or I wasn’t looking very closely) and unicycled down the legendary Christopher Street I had heard so much of.
I wasn’t too disappointed. Back then in 2009, the West Village was on its way to being gentrified but still clung on to the vestiges of its gay subculture. I still saw, in broad daylight, men in leather suits and heels and caps, LGBT people openly holding hands and kissing, bears, daddies, twinks, dykes and all shades of the rainbow and I smiled.
“This isn’t too bad. I think this place could work,” I thought.
I hit the end of Christopher St, past the leather and daddy bars, past McNulty’s (love that tea/coffee merchant) but did not go to the piers, as I didn’t know about it then. I then made a U-turn and then back up 8th Avenue, all the way into Chelsea.
There, I saw a different gay people of a different ilk. Men with buzzcuts in their 30s and 40s bulked up with muscles exploding out of their inexplicably tight tank tops (I dubbed them the Chelsea gym bunnies), skinny gay men yakking all the time and the smattering of sex shops selling underwear, poppers and porn. I didn’t dare go into any of them then, but yet I still felt safe standing in the streets even as I was among some of the people physically quite unlike me — in skin colour, size, and much more. Yet I felt like I belonged.
I was merely standing in the streets of these gay-bourhoods and already I felt for the first time I was surrounded by a community of people like me, a refreshing change from the dour looks back home. I wasn’t even in a gay club (that’s another story) but even though I was in a strange land, I felt safe, despite having been traipsing New York City roads and traffic on one wheel on one of my first few days here.
“Welcome to sanctuary” the city seemed to be saying to me.
And over the years, I have made many friends, created many communities, have been accepted by many communities, and created my own family here in New York.
—
The Pulse club was one such sanctuary for many gay men and women to enjoy a night out without the fear of “faggot” being yelled their way. A place where LGBT people who were not yet ready or able to openly hold hands in public without being attacked to hold each other. A space where the only judging going on were eyes sizing you up whether to say “hi” and bring you home for the night, and not whether you were abominable sin.
But that night, all around the country, LGBT people were reminded that they were still from being safe to walk upright. That despite being surrounded by “allies” and the recent developments in gay rights, all it takes is one mentally ill person, one hateful person, any straight person welcomed into a gay space but ultimately striking fear into the gay people around him because he was told to quiet down, to make us question how safe are we, even in our sanctuaries.
Previously, on Part 1 of Unicorns on a unicycle at UNICON 17…
I arrived in Montreal, went to a naked bike ride, attended some UNICON events, made some friends.
What’s the point of bringing two unicycles into Montreal and not doing a ride, right? A long distance ride was in the cards, because I wrote “Long Distance Ride” on them.
I wanted to go to Habitat 67, because the last time I was in Montreal I got lost and did not make it there. Habitat 67 was my first introduction to Moshe Safdie and his works, and subsequent introduction to brutalism and architecture movements. The best I got previously was a blurry view of the site from a distance in the evening, because the island Habitat was situated on is incredibly confusing.
Anyway, I set off from my friend’s place, with whom I was staying, and realised it was a pretty straightforward ride. However, what was not so straightforward was riding on the roads. Because:
Montreal roads are utter shit.
Seriously, did they pave them out of sugar? Potholes, cracks, and dragons waiting to snare the unsuspecting (uni)cyclist to break their mothers’ backs. I must have broken mine many times, because I fell many times. According to my local friend Mike, this is a local wisdom:
This is how I unicycle in Montreal:
I dropped an iced coffee while riding Montreal’s treacherous roads. It was half-full too! (Is it optimism if I drop a half-full cup of coffee or half-empty cup of coffee?) I bemoaned loudly my dismay (in French of course, because we’re in Montreal. Come on.) at the city’s lamentable roads.
Lost coffee aside, I did manage to eke out a 51 kilometre ride. Here’s the map of the route, click image for larger picture.
Somewhere early in the ride, I hit a hidden pothole when I was going downhill and I flew forward really hard. I was really worried I was going to land on my bare knees and had to roll on the roads, but luckily I managed run out the momentum. I must have been going at 22km/h. While I was alright, my unicycle apparently bumped around and into the rear of a car, whose family was standing around. Then I had to worry if I damaged his car, but luckily there was no damage. After ascertaining that his car was fine, then he asked if I was OK which I said I was and sped off, albeit more cautiously this time.
All that talk about getting to Habitat 67, I finally got there and took pictures like an architecture nerd. Sated, I cycled onto the islands of Parc Jean-Drapeau. I had fun riding around the F1 track and going “broom broom.”
I thought I would be able to get out the other side and then find my way out by going north, but then I ran into this:
A raising bridge was raised so some private yachts can pass through. Meanwhile, us non-1%-ers twiddled our bicycles (and unicycle) while we waited for the bridge to come back down. I didn’t wait long enough for it to come down, because 15 minutes later the bridge was still up. So I backtracked all the way I came — something I really hate to do — and made it back onto the mainland of Montreal.
I had lunch at Beaudry, which was the gay district of Montreal. It was very pretty and gay. I had lunch at an A&W, something I hadn’t seen in years! It also had free wifi, which was great.
I cycled back to the college, and then to the apartment where the other Singaporeans were staying, and then back to Mike’s. Here are the final stats of the trip.
Total elapsed time: 4 hours 30 minutes
Total moving time: 3 hours 16 minutes
Total stopped time: 1 hour 14 minutes
Maximum speed: 27.9 km/h
Total UPD’s: Frickin’ SEVEN. 4 times alone on that accursed Rue Sherbrooke. 1 time speeding downhill and unicycle bumped into a car.
Number of potholes dodged: Infinity
Number of iced coffee spilled: 1
Steps counted by the 3DS: About 21,000
Breaks taken: 4
I went up to witness UNICON for the first time. For those who do not know what UNICON is, it is a unicycle convention, kind of like the equivalent of the Olympics for unicycling. For the first time, UNICON is held in a location that is financially accessible to me, and it would be remiss of me to miss it again.
And so it was a trek to Montreal to attend UNICON 17, where some other Singaporeans would also be attending. Going up would also mean that the Masticating Bunnies From Hell from Ride the Lobster would be reunited for the first time in six years.
However that reunion would be tardy because Jiahui, one of the team members, would be so exhaustively busy traipsing all around Montreal visiting friends while we friendless people huddle around and twiddle thumbs.
I’m surprised my well-worn and falling apart bicycle bag has held it together for so long after all these years. It last saw use on my trip back to Singapore in January, and with each subsequent use, it falls apart bit by bit. A zipper pull fell out previously (the zipper itself was still intact) and I wonder what else would break on this trip to Montreal.
And of course, it had to rain on my way to Penn Station. I brought an umbrella along with me, and holding on to one bag of two unicycles, a plastic bag with some food to last the 11-hour train journey, an overstuffed backpack, and an umbrella should probably be a Cirque du Soleil act of its own.
I got to the train station an hour early and I was like “Great! Maybe I’ll get a chance to snag an early seat.” I totally forgot one had to check in luggage from States-side, and because I didn’t do so, when the train opened for boarding, I had to go check in, and ended up being the last to board.
Thankfully there was a backward-facing wheelchair-reserved seat available. I was feeling pretty much handicapped by that point, and I had the right number of wheels (big ones, at least), and there were no real wheelchair people in need, so I took it. It wasn’t too bad, I got stretch out, as I hurtled backwards all the way towards Montreal.
So, I was supposed to meet some of the Singaporeans at the college, where some of the events are held. Interestingly, no one bothered to tell me the instructions on getting there, only providing me with a street address. Well, I don’t have wireless internet on my phone, but thank goodness for being old-fashioned, and I had to ask three people how to get there. The first older station attendant didn’t speak much English (why is he working at the information kiosk at the main train station then?) but I understood enough to get to Berri-Uqam. There, I asked a younger English-speaking lad who told me to get to Pie-IX (pronounced “pea-neuf”), which I retrospectively probably remember the older station attendant mentioning something like that, but “pea-neuf” and “Pie-IX” didn’t connect as being the same thing in my mind because je ne parle pas français. Anyway at Pie-IX some teenager told me to just go down a road, at which point I took out my 20″ unicycle, shouldered my 29″ uni, my backpack, and my umbrella, and finally made it to the college.
I think UNICON 17 already kicked off two days ago. But on my first night, it was apparently Naked Bike Ride day, and the unicyclist were planning on crashing it. So many unicyclists went, it was a pleasant surprise. I believe the number of unicyclists matched the bicyclists head for head. Males also outnumbered females maybe four to one. And there were definitely more naked unicyclists than there were naked bicyclists, as a lot more bicyclists kept more pieces of clothing on. Perhaps as the UNICON attenders were from another country, they didn’t have to worry about maintaining some sort of professional credibility in Montreal as many of the bikers did. Or maybe Europeans just like getting naked a lot more.
As I was not registered to participate competitively, there was very little I could actually do at UNICON. I felt like making friends was an uphill endeavour, when many already had their circles of friends either from having attended UNICON before, got to know each other by virtue of participating in the same event, or were basically from the same country.
One morning, I sat myself down at a random table, and introduced myself to the table. It comprised Americans, a Canadian, and some Germans. I eventually got to see them over the next couple days and even got to hang out with them once or twice.
Some of them (the Canadian and the Germans) went up to Mont Royal, and I joined them. One of them played the piano while I unicycle-danced in the background. It was all fun and games, until the experts showed up. Then they proceeded to defy gravity and jumped all over the place, and us mere mortals of lesser skill just stopped.
I got to see the UNICON events, of course. I was mostly there for the freestyle, and it met my expectations of what I thought it to be. Slightly dismaying was to see six to nine year olds completely outclassing me with freestyle, as the leapt onto their unis with a stand-up leg-up glide like physics was optional.
Freestyle expert solo was OK, and the first place winner went to USA Matt Sindelar, who did a Western cowboy themed routine using that very well-known tune from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, gun sounds and all.
Japan’s freestyle male expert solo entry Kaito Shoji was slightly less than what I expected, compared to last year’s winner. But he was still pretty good, and had great synchronicity with the music at the beginning.
Thomas Tiercy from Switzerland had one of the more interesting routines, though he didn’t place in top three. Perhaps it was because his routine was less about unicycling and more about object manipulation, but I felt it deserved a place on the pedestal because it was so different from the rest. It was also more show-sy than the others, which I appreciated a lot.
Shoji’s pair entry with Natsume Yamamoto was definitely much better, and the performance was more enjoyable. It featured great chemistry between the unicyclists, and felt less like a run-through of tricks, and more like a performance.
Here are some of the photos from Freestyle Solo and Pair.
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While Street really isn’t my thing, here are also pictures from the competition. I have no idea who these people are, but the UNICON list says these people are: Christian Huriwai (New Zealand), Maxwell Schulze (USA), Raphael Pöham (Austria), Josef Sjönneby (Sweden), Jack Sebben (Canada), and Casper van Tielraden (Netherlands).
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I’m breaking up this post because it’s getting too long. More to come in part 2!
A lot of my long-distance rides have been around the city, and I’ve not ventured out of the city in a while. Not on a unicycle, at least. I wanted to ride to a beach on Fire Island, but that was perhaps 60 km and I was not ready for that yet. So I chickened out and chose to cross state lines instead, and head into Connecticut. This is probably the first GPS-recorded ride I’ve done in a year, with the last being my ride into Stony Brook, Long Island, last year around this time.
Here’s a picture of the route I ended up taking; click to see the larger picture. Skip to the end for ride stats.
As always, for such trips, I went packed with supplies!
This time round, I had: a GPS, MP3 player, 1 Milky Way bar, a box of 5 granola bars that I bought for $1, a pack of chilli lemon peanuts that also cost a $1, spare battery pack for my phone, some AA batteries, keys, Nintendo 3DS for the pedometer, 3 litres of water, and my phone.
I started at the Pelham Bay Park station. Although I could probably have ridden from my home, which would have added an additional 20 km, I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment yet. So the Bronx it is!
I crossed the Pelham Bridge, which was pretty, and everything proceeded to be pretty for the next 10 km or so. I rode past numerous mansion, golf courses, horse riding trails, basically affluence. I saw houses that looked like this.
You know what’s funny? Apropos of its name, this property is on PARK LANE, which is one of the pricey dark blue properties on Monopoly! Also, I broke my max speed ever (I think) and hit 31.4 km/h on a steep downhill! In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have done all the crazy downhill sprints I did because I think that burnt my legs out faster over the course of the entire ride.
I rode into New Rochelle, where I bought some iced coffee and had my first real break. I probably tripled the Asian population by being present there, but it was pretty. Rode past Larchmont, and into Mamaroneck, which was also really pretty. Geez I could probably sum up the ride with “Everything looked rich and really pretty.
Things were slightly less pretty when I rode too far inland (I was supposed to be hugging the coastline and following the train tracks) and I got slightly lost. Thankfully a dog in a car pointed the right way back to the coast for me and things were pretty again.”
I made it into Connecticut! By this point my legs had already cramped up once (just prior to the dog-car meeting) and I was set to cramp up a couple times more in CT because it is so damn hilly. I expected Connecticut to be flat. Guess I should have just ridden into Iowa or Kansas or something.
First Whole Foods sighting, though it seems to be fancier than just regular Whole Foods, and is called Whole Body instead? Whatever Greenwich, CT. I just sat around in the parking lot eating my $1 peanuts and drinking my bottled water.
Once again we meet again, my nemesis: highways. It seems like every time I go on a long distance ride out of my comfort zones, I run into highways. I sit here wonder, “Should I enter and risk actually ending up on some highway?” or is this actually a local road? Thankfully it was merely a tricky local road that looked very highway-ish.
Yay I made it into Stamford, CT, which was where I was supposed to be. Surprisingly the only injury was from my backpack strap chafing my shoulders.
I got to live the true suburban life by hanging out in the mall, drinking Starbucks, and getting chased out of the mall by security. Apparently the Landmark Square Shopping Center is a bit of a grump when it comes to people holding onto a wheel and just sitting in the mall; my friend told me even people holding on to kick scooters and skateboards get kicked out. But push strollers are OK. I don’t know why.
Stamford, and by extension many of the other towns I rode past, is pretty, but that is all there is to it. It really has no character, to its streets. And given by the treatment I experienced at the mall, which is supposedly the crux of what there is to do in Stamford, this town is soulless, glossed over by a veneer of pretty.
I don’t think I could ever live here, dazzled by pretty architecture, but dismayed by inflexible authorities and a lack of celebration of alternative culture. In some sense, it is really similar to Singapore, filled with impressive futuristic buildings, towers ceaselessly piercing the skies and reaching ever new heights, but so lacking when it comes to building life at the ground level. Life and community does not begin in the air but in the hearts at the ground level. I end this ride with this amusing picture I came across at the MacDonald’s, which redeemed Stamford somewhat for me.
Final stats for the trip.
Total elapsed time: 3 hours 45 minutes
Total moving time: 2 hours 45 minutes
Total stopped time: 60 minutes
Maximum speed: 31.4 km/h
Total UPD’s: 1 (Early into the ride next to the horse riding track, as I was trying to set my GPS)
Number of crazy downhill sprints: 5
Number of times legs cramped: 3
Numbers of uphills walked up: 5
Steps counted by the 3DS: About 20,000
Breaks taken: 4
The greatest juggler alive, maybe of all time, is a 40-year-old Floridian named Anthony Gatto. He holds 11 world records, has starred for years in Cirque du Soleil, and has appeared as a child onThe Tonight Show, performing in a polo shirt and shorts, juggling five rings while balancing a five-foot pole on his forehead.
His records are for keeping certain numbers of objects aloft for longer than anyone else. Eleven rings, 10 rings, nine rings, eight rings, and seven rings. Nine balls, eight balls, and seven balls. Eight clubs, seven clubs, and six clubs. To break this down a little: There’s one person in the world who can juggle eight clubs for 16 catches,1and that’s Gatto. As for seven clubs, maybe a hundred people can get a stable pattern going — for a couple of seconds. It’s difficult to evenhold seven clubs without dropping them; your hands aren’t big enough. Gatto can juggle seven clubs for more than four minutes. “That’s insane,” says David Cain, a professional juggler and juggling historian. “There’s no competition.” …Read the rest of the story here.
This fairly long article speaks to me a lot about what it means to be a performer and what my craft means to me. Anthony Gatto, whom the jugglers I grew up amongst raved about all the time, fell off of the face of the performing world, after having received so many accolades. Were there to be a “king of juggling,” even today I believe jugglers in the know would not hesitate to crown Gatto still.
Fangone, the writer, did not manage to actually score an interview with Gatto, which is disappointing, but supplements his article with thoughts and analyses to try to explain why Gatto stopped performing to go into construction. Fangone wrote about, or quoted some of Gatto’s words that struck me as circus folk:
By now, though, Gatto’s relationship with the juggling community had shifted. He no longer regularly attended conventions or entered competitions. Gatto didn’t want to impress other jugglers. “Nobody cares about good jugglers in the performance world,” he later wrote in an Internet forum. “They care about entertainers.”
and this
Gatto’s frustration with young, Internet-native jugglers boiled over in 2008, when he got into a sort of arms race with Galchenko, the YouTube phenom. It began when Galchenko appeared on an NBC show called Celebrity Circus. He was there to set a record for doing as many five-club, five-up 360s as he could in one minute. He ended up doing the trick 21 straight times without dropping, breaking the previous record. After the show aired, Gatto posted a video of himself doing 24 five-ups in a minute, breaking the record Galchenko had just broken. Galchenko then posted footage of himself doing the trick 29 times in a minute. It went on like that for several more rounds.
A reporter for the Boston Globe called Gatto at the time and asked why Galchenko’s TV appearance had bothered him. Gatto praised Vova as a “great juggler,” but he also said of younger jugglers, “Until those kids grow a personality, they’re not going to wow anybody. The audience doesn’t care if you juggle 20 rings.” The reporter added, “Gatto now says he regrets getting involved in the 360s competition — though he says he can still go higher — because it sent the wrong message. The only way to judge a juggler, he says, is to watch him onstage, under the bright lights, over the course of a career.”
And finally.
(Gatto) gave in. He grew to accept the necessity of kissing the ball and lobbing it gently into the crowd with a grin. He also learned to make hard tricks look hard, to pantomime the exertion and self-doubt of a man working at the edge of his ability even though his ability stretched on and on. He learned to entertain, because for some reason, even though we exist in a physical universe defined by the relative attractive powers of massive objects, the mere demonstration of a lush and lovely control of gravity is not enough. He labored to please an audience that could never appreciate his greatness. Then he got older and watched a new wave of jugglers abandon the stage for the flicker of computer screens, sneering at the bright-light mastery he’d worked so hard to gain.
It’s at times when reading things like these that makes a practitioner of a performing craft wonder: What am I, and what do I want to be? What do I want to achieve what I want with my craft?
Do I want to push the boundaries of technical circus? My own skill have been stagnating for a while — even though I’ve over 10 years of unicycling, poi/flag spinning/etc. under my belt, my skills have not leapt beyond those “Youtube whizzes” who pick up the sport mere months ago and are coming up with insanely technical and difficult Youtube videos on their progress. I picked up the pirouette on the unicycle maybe six years ago, and the pirouette is very flashy and crowd-pleasing, but I haven’t picked up much else since then. It was only recently, as of a year or two ago that I started to push myself to go beyond, and learn something that would please less the audience and more those in the know; circus folk.
But very often I wonder if it’s worth it, as Gatto might have, when the fancifulness of its difficulty is lost on the audience. I’m not sure Gatto ever fully achieved that stage, where he could reconcile his integrity as a practitioner of juggling and perform to the extent of his ability, with what the audience can see and understand.
Some two weeks ago, Utah had a snowstorm, and the picture above was circulating around the internet. Where cars skidded and crash, that lone unicyclist calm rolled on.
So did NYC.
A unicyclist was seen rolling through SoHo last night in winter storm Hercules, like a boss.
Today is marked pain, lots of pain. I woke up with a numb toe, and my back is somewhat stiff.
But today also marks the last day of the three-day NYC Unicycle Festival, and it would probably be another year before I get to see some of the people involved in the festival, or that many people coming together to practice unicycling. It might be another year before I get to play unicycle-hockey.
And thus, i return to Governor’s Island for the final day of the festival. Here’s with what I came home:
Sprained neck (can’t look to the left)
Skinned knuckles (right thumb and fourth finger)
Scraped shins
Scuffed elbow
Sore ankles
Scratches on my shoulder
Notice a bit of an alliterative pattern here?
Unicycle-hockey was intense because 1) The weather was incredibly humid and hot 2) The ground comprised cracks and loose gravel/sand 3) Some of the players weren’t particularly concerned if their sticks were hitting ball or human. Got roughed up a little there.
They changed up the unicycle-sumo rules, so that they are more in line with proper uni-sumo rules. Thus, instead of them rushing into the ring and knocking the opponent out with their weight and momentum, they’ve changed to using grappling to throw the opponent out of the ring or off of their unicycles, making the gameplay a lot more interesting to watch and participate. I had a lot of fun going against the Texans this time, even though I still lost to the person pictured above, as he still outweighed me, and I accepted my defeat. I still took some tumbles from uni-sumo, and added to the list of injuries suffered today.
I sat out of unicycle-football again because I didn’t want to die, and for the most part the day was less crowded than yesterday, and I took it pretty easy for the most part. I even had time to exchange pointers on doing pirouettes and discussing Asian-style freestyle.
I am sore all over, but I think it was worth it. This is the fourth year of the festival and coming back is like returning to a group of friends whom you know will be there. This year, they brought back unicycle-sumo, and introduced unicycle-football (American), played by a group of people who drove all the way up from Texas for this festival.
Unicycle-sumo and unicycle basketball were among some of the things I did, and they were interesting experiences, although the Texans who participated sort of made things kind of violent; their version of uni-sumo involved two sides simply ramming into each other from a distance, which isn’t really what uni-sumo is supposed to be.
I had a couple of scrapes from when I was bounced off my unicycle, for being severely out-weighted by the Texans. I challenged them to proper grappling rules (no ramming into your opponent, establishing hand contact before starting the match) and things became more evenly-matched.
I was roped into doing a makeshift performance with Kyle to open the skills demonstration. I guess my skills are getting recognised at this point? Looking forward to unicycle-hockey tomorrow; I’ve basically been waiting all year to be able to play it again.
There is nothing more heartening than a community recognising you and your name, even after what has been essentially a year since you last met or even talked.
The New York Unicycle Festival is now in its fourth year, and over time I have come to be recognised under a couple names, such as my own, or “Thundercalves,” or “that Asian person.”
On the first day of the festival, which was yesterday, there is usually a 13-mile ride from City Hall, Manhattan, across the Brooklyn Bridge into Coney Island. I usually end up leading the front simply because I go way too fast. This year, since I got a flat in my 29″ tire from my foray into Long Island, I was unable to join the long distance ride, but I took my 20″ and made it to the boardwalk by subway anyway, thinking that there might be an open-air demonstration of skills.
There wasn’t that, but there was Kyle Petersen’s show, which Shah’s dad kindly bought a ticket for me to go watch. The show was okay. I got a free ride on the Wonder Wheel!
But what I cherish most about this festival is always the familiarity of seeing friends, being recognised by them, and getting to hang out, chat, chat and exchange skills with people whom I’ve not seen in a year.
Today is the second day of the festival, on Governor’s Island. I’m going to be there to help out if they need help, and do some teaching if need be. Come to the island and attend the festival!
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