Sunset on the BQE

On our way back from doing our taxes (and feeling pretty crappy), the sun was painting the sky all pretty. So we got that going for us - which is nice.

My Beautiful Laundette?

One of the down sides of being a renter in the New York City area is that chances are, you won't have a washer and dryer in your apartment. Maybe you'll have shared laundry facilities in the basement, or maybe you wash your clothes at your local laundromat. Some people use the wash and fold service, but since I can't deal with strangers touching my clean clothes, I have to do the laundry myself.

The local laundromat I got to is generally very clean (cleaner than most) with no soap gunk on the washers and minimal melted stuff in the dryers. And contrary to its suburban counterparts that take up several storefronts in non-descript strip malls, it is quite small.

The clientele is quite diverse, ranging from harried mothers with screaming children, teenagers washing their many sneakers, the elderly, the rude and the clinically insane. One woman in particular, who seems to be there frequently as of late, is one such example. She is middle-aged, about 400 lbs and with an equally large attitude. She brings her laundry in many black industrial sized garbage bags and she does her best to occupy not only all the machines, but also all of the available floor space. She talks to herself, she yells at the attendant, she insults other customers and when she sits down she takes up an entire row of bench seats.

I used to get very irritated when I had to deal with the odd cast of characters that pass through our local laundry facility. The people who played music loudly on their cell phones; those who let their kids run around out of control; those who lounged on the folding tables - not to mention the rude people, the smelly people and the ever present bootleg DVD peddlers - but really, the catalyst of all my grumpiness was always the woman described above. I always tried to ignore her and focus on my attention on the women gossiping in Spanish, kidding myself that i was practicing the language - that is, until today.

Today it dawned on me that I could just pretend to be a character in a John Waters movie. Once I realized that, all the mayhem around me actually  became soothing and the chaos made some sort of sense.

Mark the Painter

Walking down Prince Street today, I passed Ray's Pizza - which has been closed by the Health Department - and that was kinda sad (and gross). Anyways, here is a video I made of Mark the painter, who paints signs around New York City, including that of Ray's on Prince. A good portion of the video was actually shot just across the street form Ray's.


Mark the Painter from Felicia Jamieson on Vimeo.


The video comes from the I Love Old New York blog.

Catatonic the new black?

I was riding the subway the other day and a woman with one of those obnoxious double-wide strollers sat next to me. Her kids, a boy and a girl, seemed to be about 3 years old or so. Initially they were pleasant enough that I didn't mind the fact that the stroller was totally intruding on my leg space. I figured I should be the adult in this situation. Besides, it was a short ride.

About 5 minutes in, the little girl started to make squeal-y noises and to kick me. Her mother told her, very calmly, to stop. It didn't work. The squeals morphed to high-pitch fake crying and hard kicking.

Her mother did nothing. People were staring. When she got louder, the mother would slowly put her finger to her lips to indicate that the little girl should shoosh it.

Shockingly, that didn't work, either. At this point the fake crying has gone on for so long that there are crocodile tears forming. My stop was nearing and I got up extra early and made my way to the farthest door, hoping it would be quieter there. I looked back and saw the mother with a content-yet-blank look on her face that projected a "right now I'm seeing dancing unicorns and a leprechaun is bringing me a pot of gold" expression.

I realize that motherhood is a lot of work and that kids will be kids (within reason), but all  I could think was "easy on the Xanax lady!"

I think I'm in l--l-l-l-love...

Just perusing them interwebs and reading some of my usual blogs, and this song kinda hit me upside the head and knocked me out of my neo-soul phase (at least for a minute or two). As a someone whose formative years were well planted in the 80s, this is not a throwback, but a homage. The Smiths anyone?

Old New York, Brand New Project

I Love Old New York is a project I have been working on for close to a year now. We finally launched our blog I Love Old New York as a repository of all things old New York. We focus on experiences you can duplicate and we plan on using a lot of video and photography to tell the story.

Go check it out. I hope you'll like it.

Exploring in 6x6 squares

One of the things I love most about New York is that you can find such unique neighborhoods and enclaves that seem like a throwback to a different time and place. Lately I've been working on a project with a friend that has allowed me to explore a lot of the Old New York neighborhoods.

An announcement of this new project is coming within days, but in the mean time, here is a photo I took in Greenpoint last week. I was trying out my new medium format plastic camera (yes, it was a Holga from the trendier-than-thou Lomgraphy people, but since I got it for $30 bucks I figured the pluses outweighed the negatives)

So here you have it - the first and last photo taken on my first roll of 120 color slide film (cross processed as color negative for the technicolor pop of color)