GOOD MORNING MIDNIGHT

HELLO FRIENDS! I need to ask you a favor.

It is fashion week here in New York again! Again! It never stops! Every time I try to come up with some like, witty conceptual post or whatever instead of admitting to the fact that I’m just going to spend the next week running around in offensive shoes grabbing up all the free drinks my grubby little hands can find and then leaning disaffectedly against every wall I can find for some charming problem-tennis banter about whose jobs or editors or whatever are just more stressful or whatever it is we actually do all week, but it is not an easy thing to do!

Of course we can expect a flurry of posts of photos of shows and wacky outfits and Internet Blog Friends Who Are Now IRL Friends and everything! But also! It seems like another kind of fashion week feature might be nice here.

I am sure we have all noticed by now that most fashion bloggers are, you know, Beautiful Skinny Straight White Girls With Bottomless Bank Accounts And Access To Very Lovely Things.  Which I suspect may not always line up with, you know, People Who Are Interested In Fashion In General.  This isn’t to say that the skinny girls who can afford all that Proenza or whatever aren’t lovely and talented and stylish and brilliant people whose blogs I read all the time! Many of them deserve every last bit of attention and free stuff and internet love that they get, because they are amazing!

But I know there are surely TONS of other fabulous fashion and style blogs out there who get a little less mainstream attention for whatever reasons — that the writers are people of colour, or are less wealthy and making most of their own clothes, or are queer, or are visibly queer, or are trans ladies or trans men, or are stylish curvy ladies, or maybe have some kind of disability, or maybe have survived something which provides them with unique perspective, or maybe are Muslim ladies who choose to dress modestly and have killer style, or maybe are just people who are older than 30.

And I get so many questions and emails asking about them! So many! It is amazing how many people ask me if I can recommend any fashion and style blogs like that! Because you guys are awesome, and because it’s true, it is frustratingly hard to find inspiration from anyone who is somehow a little bit outside the arbitrary media-prescribed norm, people who are stylish and love fashion even though everyone else often seems to (wrongly) suggest that fashion just isn’t meant for them.  

The point is: I feel bummed that I don’t have a great list somewhere to immediately direct questioners to and also to highlight the amazingness of all these people whose amazingness may not get highlighted as often as it ought to. Which is why I’m asking for your input! I was super psyched to be included in Threadbared’s list of queer fashion bloggers last year — and I want to compile something like that here, but beyond just queer (though obviously queer blogs are to be included.)

SO!  What are the other blogs you read and love that fall a little outside of whatever is dictated as normative by fashion, people who are super talented but aren’t as likely to get featured by Refinery29 as the next big style blogger or whatever? Go to town, kids. Link everything you want in the comments and I’ll compile them into my own list here sometime in the next week, since I think all of our Google Reader lists could probably use a fashion week makeover.

A Cathartic Meditation On Things Currently Wrong With My Apartment, Which Is The Nicest One I Have Ever Lived In And Which I Still Genuinely Consider To Be “A Really Great Situation”

OR, Notes On Sense Of Place To Characterize “Post-Collegiate Recession Life In Brooklyn With A Low-Paying Job In Some Glamorous Industry” In Future Thinly Veiled Autobiographical Short Stories Which I Will Never Do Anything With


I. Things we are optimistically working to independently resolve due to unresponsiveness of landlord and superintendent, OR, ongoing self-improvement projects

• Moldering wall due to Leak #1: living room pipe and window, and the aftermath of the notorious Irene-induced pustulent wall-blister situation
• Caulking cracks in bathroom and floorboard; expanding foam around pipes and major holes. See also: roach situation which we are certain comes from neighbors
• Leaky kitchen sink; now fixed thanks to the various merits of Having A Handy Girlfriend
• Trivial and easily resolved inconveniences including but not limited to: lack of storage, poor lighting, uneven paint jobs, etc.

III. Things I am unable to fix, but on which the landlord and superintendent remain unresponsive, OR, ongoing struggles for attention

• Bedroom ceiling blister (roughly human-head sized) and concomitant rust stains due to Leak #2: unidentified source, presumably radiator related (occurs only when heat is on)
• Lack of hot water after midnight
• Lack of functional hot water tap in bathroom sink, cause unknown
• Major Electrical Problem #1, current duration 15 days, potentially due to a Hairdryer Sisyphus Ghost who is damned to use a very high voltage hair dryer for all eternity without their hair ever drying, somehow on my apartment’s circuit, resulting in permanent brownout with constant flickering and related problems, including occasional difficulties with using stove or oven due to electric ignition; inability to use microwave, hotpot, flat iron, or other devices requiring a steady current at all; interruption in wireless internet broadcasting; fridge at room temperature due to lack of sufficient electricity for constant cooling and the consequential Rotting Of All Our Food And Condiments. But! At least I am not doomed to flip my head upside down and have it remain permanently damp for all eternity like the Hairdryer Sisyphus Ghost who has caused this whole thing, and for whom I have nothing but great pity.
• Major Electrical Problem #2, duration usually five minutes to five hours, mostly self-resolving due to seasonal nature: building-wide blackouts due to circuit overloads mostly on days over 95 degrees. Superintendent’s solution: “Don’t use the air conditioning,” despite the fact that we do not have air conditioning.

III.  Things my landlord has fixed in the past and estimated delay in action from first to second or third hysterical phone calls and eventual resolution, OR, things to restore my faith in either humanity and “the system”

• Replaced broken stove (1 week)
• Fixed entire wall of bathroom tile which collapsed mid-shower (5 days)

IV. Things I consider real perks about my living situation, OR, things I have been told are not actually considered perks elsewhere and are either “things to take for granted” or “things which are not normal” but which I cling to, desperately, as major perks

• Almost 400 square feet for less than $1200 a month
• Location less than two blocks from train!
• Lack of bell or intercom, but location on third floor means running downstairs to let people in is not unnecessarily difficult
• At least 12 restaurants which deliver to my location
• Numerous bodegas nearby, including an option of “the ones that sell Newman-O’s and organic peanut butter” and “the ones that sell Oreos and Kraft Mac N Cheese” within a three block radius
• Landlord and superintendent with at least conversational command of the language I speak
• Thugs who hang out on stoop are relatively benign; sell only marijuana, do not attempt to peddle residents their wares, do not hit on me or make lewd comments, even when I am wearing Possibly Inappropriately Small Running Shorts
• Windows which face courtyard/alley permit decent light but protect from weather and street noise
• Neighbors have repeatedly ripped alarm and lock off door to roof, permitting roof access with Actually Amazingly Nice View of Manhattan
• No mice, probably partially due to really cute building kitties!

Part one of this ongoing meltdown can be found here.

I’ve been trying to make an effort to cook at home and bring lunch to work more often,  and as a result I’ve been spending my Sundays preparing giant bowls of salads that I can grab and go in the mornings.  This lentil salad is one of my favourites — it’s spicy, sweet, refreshing, filling, and ridiculously easy to make (well, if you like chopping, which I totally do, OH GOD YOU GUYS I COULD JULIENNE PEPPERS ALL DAY THE BEST STRESS RELIEF EVER IS DICING CELERY I LOVE KNIVES.) We also already know about my near-obsessive ongoing love affair with fresh mint — and this is just another option for it before summer’s over.

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“But what do people do on boats?” I asked.  ”I just don’t get it. How long do you stay on the boat and am I going to get sick and do people bring food or am I going to have to help make the boat work or do you just like float around and am I going to get wet and what do I talk about with the kind of people who own boats? Who owns boats anyway? How much does a boat cost?” 

A coworker had invited my girlfriend to go sailing on their yacht after work, an invitation which had been extended somewhat tersely to “partners” — a word which, coming from people who are old and straight and rich and conservative but at heart still genuinely “nice people,” has always sounded uncomfortable to me, a politically correct and sanitized way to acknowledge nonheterosexual relationships without the embarrassment of explicit reference to gender.  A self-consciously magnanimous attempt at generous inclusion of that other kind of people, a well-intentioned but tight-lipped tolerance without wholehearted acceptance — something nice, something I give people credit for, but that always leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  Would it be un-partner-ly of me not to go, or would I ruin their boat party simply by merit of being that, a partner? But more importantly, what was this even going to entail?

My friends assured me that it would be nice — calm down, they said! It’s just a boat! They invited you, you crazy person!  It’ll be nice!  ”But what do I do?” I asked them frantically. “What do people do on boats? Do I compliment them on their boat? Do I need to bring champagne? I can’t afford champagne until I get paid Friday. Can I wear Converse? I don’t have boat shoes. I’ve never been on a yacht, what are yachts even like?”

“Take a Xanax and don’t talk about politics,” my friend advised. “Maybe wear a floppy hat. There will be booze.”

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