My first bike was blue. Sadly, it’s not because I possess any faded Polaroid where I’m rockin’ a, “On My Way to Grandpa’s House…”, t-shirt or possess grandiose flashbacks of my crew and I tearing up the mean streets at age 3. I only know this because the blurry memory of a tiny sliver of paint.
Dorks on one side of the line. Cool kids on the other. This high school dichotomy holds fast for much of New York nightlife, and it’s something that Seen Magazine is trying to change. Starting with their launch party.
On July 4th, Seen Magazine, the street wear brand Mishka, and the Comic Books Legal Defense Fund threw an epic party at Water Taxi Beach, artificial patch of sand and neon palm trees on the East River. Music by Beach Fossils and the Death Set blasted as the sun set over Manhattan.
I ripped the protective cellophane off a freshly purchased cd package (a feeling I last felt circa 2005) and loaded the latest album by The Gaslight Anthem into the stereo of my SUV (coincidentally, also a 2005) last Tuesday. As I pulled onto the 405 toward Los Angeles, in a surprisingly supernatural phenomenon, I felt my vehicle morphing. All of a sudden I was driving my brother’s 1970 Pontiac Ventura Sprint with a drag-worthy Muncie 4-Speed and far too much power for a bunch of kids headed to classes at a rural high school. The guitar tones, the drums, lead singer Brian Fallon’s impassioned holler, and the breathless production hit me the way Vampire Weekend hits guys wearing polo shirts and loafers- only I’m a girl and Gaslight tunes spit on loafers. Almost more notably, my speedometer never dipped below 55 on my 23 mile commute up the San Diego Freeway. That could possibly be the most extraordinary thing that’s happened to me since I moved to LA a couple of years ago.