Bushwacking in Bushwick on Halloween

The Halloween weekend was off to a remarkably inauspicious start. After a particularly deluvian Friday night of wandering around Queens which ended with me leaving my cell phone at a party, my Saturday night seemed like it was going to be the perfect drain for Friday's flood to go down. I was standing on a windswept Bushwick street full of abandoned warehouses looking in vain for number 458 Johnson Avenue. There to my left was 456. And directly to my right was 480. Inside 458 Johnson Avenue was a party, where I was to meet Jango (dressed as Borat) and Nick (dressed as Fidel Castro) at a party thrown by old Demarites.

Left -- 456. Right -- 480. Left, right. No party. No music. I can't hear anything. In fact, it's getting increasingly creepy on this human-forsaken street with the wind and the cars whipping by, almost knocking my hat off my head. I decide to retreat to the subway station, where I can ask the guy who works there, and if all else fails, call Nick to find out if he can help me find the party.

Remember, however, that I have no cell phone. That's okay, there's still a few pay phones in New York. Unfortunately I have stupidly left my house without writing Nick's phone number down. Or my housemates. For that matter, do I know anybody's phone number? Not really, as has been well documented, as soon as you get a cell phone, your brain turns to mush. Luckily I still know a few of the phone numbers that I learned in those many firm-brained years before the cell-phone. I call a few. No luck.

I'm standing in front of a street map idly looking for another Johnson Ave replete with a number 458 when a woman around my age strolls over and starts looking at the map with a similarly blank look on her face. She doesn't know where 358 Johnson Ave is, but she tells me about a big party in a warehouse at 195 Morgan. I don't really feel like crashing a party where I will know no one, but she assures me that it is an open party.

Given the choice between continuing to search for my friends' party, retreating back to my apartment, or foraging at someone else's party, I choose the latter. And this one is really exists. And it's serious. There are about 20 people waiting on a quick moving line outside. There are men with radio's charging 10 dollars for entry or 15 if you don't have a costume. There is a coat check!

I check my coat. And wander. I quickly realize that it isn't just the hosts who are serious, but many of the attendees have but some serious thought into their costumes. I'm dressed as Justin Timberlake, which required a little creativity in dress, but the two key elements to my costume are my hair (which I got cut at a barbershop in Brooklyn by shaking off my embarrassment and asking them to 'make me look like Justin Timberlake') and a set of business cards that I printed out, which have a line from the chorus of his hit single on them.

Shown with Rainbow Brite (Christina Wright) taken by Lindsay.

Some of the best costumes that I saw at the party were Saturn (she had a set of rings that lit up green,) a robot who had wired her own costume with a creatively placed set of batteries and bulbs, and one small woman who completely blew my mind. She was wearing a large fake white beard, glasses, an old looking fedora, held a cigar in her mouth, and (and this is important,) wore a shift. If you aren't already rolling around on the floor laughing, you will be when you get to the bottom of this post and I reveal the concept behind the funniest costume since sliced bread.

Upstairs, where most of the action is taking place, there is a smaller room where I watched a magician perform a mildly R rated version of the trick in which the magician makes an audience select a card and then repeatedly fails to guess what it is. When he finally gives up, it is revealed that he has written the name of the card somewhere before the trick even started. I could tell you how it is done, but I don't want the magician's guild after me. In small rooms off to the sides there are tents set up for people to hang out and by the smell of it, ingest certain mildly illegal substances. The big room is one enormous dance floor ringed by white walls and screens with black and white movies projected on to them and broken up by a few swings suspended from the ceiling, on which a select few gyrate. The music is not really to my liking, mostly trancy house music, but for a few minutes they play a little bit of old hip-hop, so I dance a bit. Then, the music stops, and suddenly all hell brakes loose.

Where they came from, I don't know, but there is a large brass band and drum core blaring out a New Orleans style death march. And I don't know about you, but to me, that is just about the funkiest thing in the world. I know it's a little blaxploitationy, but that James Bond movie which takes place partially in New Orleans is one of my favorites, mainly because the music is so great (composed by former Beatles producer George Martin.) I felt like I was in the movie! After the march, the band somehow made it to the center of the floor (which happened to be where I was) where is congregated into a little circle protected by people who kept pushing the crowd back. It was lucky they were they, because the dance-floor was pandemonium and seemed to be magnetically drawn to the sound of the bass drum and trombone.

An hour or so later, I made it out; slightly battered, bruised, but elated. Brass will do that to me. For those who wonder, here is the link to the party. And the band. And to clear up the mystery of the hysterical costume -- she was a Freudian slip.