say it with pie

“I feel like I’m going to throw up, but in a good way!”

OMG, the playground at Chelsea Waterside Park is so awesome. It’s designed by a Danish firm called Kompan. The park has all these crazy spinny things that are obviously really dangerous, but how boring are safe playgrounds? Millions of photos were taken of us playing on the equipment (behind the cut).

We spent a late afternoon walking around Chelsea before heading to the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre, which specializes in improv comedy geared toward the college crowd, starring YouTube celebrities. At only $5 a show, it’s a much better value than the movies, and you can drink beer and scope out people who look like people you used to know in undergrad. Hat tip to Gabby and Mike H for sending us there.

Dinnertime was spent at The Half King, an arty pub with the usual arty pub fare. My sirloin burger was delicious, but the fries and coleslaw were a bit dull. I was particularly impressed by my pint of Blueberry Ale from the Blue Point Brewing Company in Long Island.

Walking around Chelsea was funny, because I was like, “Oh, this is the commercial art world that people satirize!” I’m totally an art yokel. If Toronto has an art world culture like that, I don’t get around to seeing it between all those exhibitions of felted mushroom sculptures. Since I like felted mushroom sculptures, Chelsea felt overwhelming, but it was exciting to experience it firsthand.

We stopped into a couple art openings. The first was Reverb by Donna Sharrett at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, and it was precisely the kind of shit I like: elegant mixed-media compositions, crafted from synthetic hair, denim, guitar-string ball-end, pennies, blue jeans, etc. They were meticulous and beautiful, and nobody was looking at them because they were too busy schmoozing. Classic.

I had a difficult time convincing Pete to go into to any more art openings because dodging fashionable people in the first one was so frustrating. But miraculously, the next gallery we walked into was holding an opening for a show that Pete had sent me the link for a week earlier: Driving While Standing Still by Andrew Bush at Yossi Milo Gallery. It was thrilling to stumble upon something in real life that you stumbled upon on the internet, purely by coincidence, in an unfamiliar city.

I guess stumbledupons happen all the time if you live in New York. Jealous!

“What is this supposed to be?”

Pete looks like a fat kid in a spaceship.