12th Annual Bus Festival

In the mid-1950s, America fell in love with a television program about working class New Yorkers called The Honeymooners. Ex-vaudevillian Jackie Gleason starred as blustering Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden; 50 years later, the actor and the character he portrayed continue to occupy a special place in the hearts of New Yorkers and the New York Transit Authority. In fact, a statue showing Kramden in uniform stands outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal (New York City’s largest bus station) and a major bus depot on Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue is named in Jackie Gleason’s honor.

Today the New York Transit Museum held its 12th annual bus festival at the foot of Borough Hall, drawing bus aficionados from far and wide. And naturally, Gleason’s presence was felt. As they walked along the avenue of historic vehicles, visitors were serenaded by the series’ familiar, brassy theme song issuing from loudspeakers. One of the highlights of the day was watching people suddenly stop, smile in recognition and happily exclaim, “Hey, they’re playing the Honeymooners’ song!”

From the official festival announcement:
September 17, 2005, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Join us as we celebrate a century of motorized bus service in New York City at the New York Transit Museum’s 12th Annual Bus Festival. More than a dozen vintage Museum buses, dating from 1917 to the 1980s, support vehicles, and more recent examples from the MTA fleet of buses will be on display in Columbus Park. The star attraction of this year’s festival is “Betsy,” the Museum’s newly acquired closed-top, double-decker bus (no. 1263), originally operated by the Fifth Avenue Coach Company from 1931 to 1953. Throughout the day visitors to the Festival may enjoy guided tours of the fleet, live musical entertainment, hands-on children’s workshops, story-telling, and complimentary rides around historic Brooklyn Heights on a horse-drawn omnibus. And everyone can shop for unique bus-related gifts and transit memorabilia in the Transit Museum Store tent. This event is free and open to the public.
Vintage double-decker bus 

New York Transit Museum Bus Festival 

Parked in front of the State Supreme Court 

Bus 303 (circa 1917) 

New York Transit Museum 

Getting ready to tow a bus back to the depot 

Jackie Gleason Depot, 871 Fifth Avenue (July, 2005) 

Transit Museum

Transit Museum Store

Museum of Broadcast Communications on The Honeymooners

The Honeymooners

The Honeymooners

The Honeymooners Theme Song

Ralph Kramden statue

Red Dress Running

A quiet, calm afternoon at City Hall Park. Suddenly, without warning, a horde of … are they men? are they women? performance artists? political activists? monks? … comes running around the corner, heading up Park Row towards Broadway. They are all dressed in red robes. Or, perhaps in … red dresses?

I jump up to get a closer look. Yes, those are definitely dresses, all kinds of bright red dresses. For moment, my view is blocked by traffic. Three more red-clad runners appear. They stand on a traffic island, waving, screaming and drawing chalk symbols on the pavement.

Seemingly in response to the shouting and waving, the first group of runners in red dresses turns around and comes roaring back, rounding a corner, startling drivers and pedestrians and hurrying into a dark lane at the edge of Manhattan Island. I run after them and snap a few photos.

Later, when I get to a computer, I google “red dress” and learn about a worldwide (but previously unknown to me) subculture called the Hash House Harriers that dates back to a running group founded in Kuala Lumpur in the 1930s. What I’d witnessed was announced on the local chapter’s Web site as the:

Red Dress R*n 2005
Trail start will be 3:00 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10th at The Patriot, 110 Chambers St,, off Church. There will be a 2:00 p.m. celebrity makeover hour preceding the start of trail.

Running up Park Row 

Turning the corner by J&R Music 

Who are they? What are they doing? 

Booger’s Hash Primer

Half-Minds on Hashing

Hash Heritage Foundation

Go To The Hash

Harrier.Net

Hasher.Net

New York City Hash House Harriers

Red Dress Run 2005 flyer

Wigstock 2005, Part Two: Offstage

At Wigstock there is no line dividing the performers and the audience. It is all a show; everyone is both a performer and an observer, an artist and a work of art. The personal is the political. Fantasy is made flesh. Dreams are made visible.

Heads up! 

Glamour at twilight 

Her roots are showing! 

Read all about it 

Blues in the night 

Lara Flynn Boy? 

Smiling 

Superhero 

Doris Dazed? 

Blowing a kiss 

It ain’t easy being queen 

Redhead 

Orange you glad you saw us? 

Blue lips 

Red boa 

Wigstock 2005, Part One: On Stage

The Wigstock festival is an homage to excess and over-the-topness. Inspired by a night of clubbing about 20 years ago, the festival has evolved into a more-or-less annual summertime celebration of drag, art and good, dirty fun.

Lady Bunny in blue 

Lady Bunny in a geometric print 

Lady Miss Keir and a prisoner of war 

The glamorous Candis Cayne 

Jimmy James is Bette Davis.  

Mr. Murray Hill 

Linda Simpson singing  

Jackie 60’s version of Les Mis 

More Mis-ery 

Jackie 60’s Les Mis 

Lady Bunny in black and white 

John Kelly as Joni Mitchell: “By the time we got to Wigstock …” 

Wigstock

Lady Bunny

Mr. Murray Hill

Jimmy James

Candis Cayne

Lady Miss Kier

Linda Simpson

John Kelly

HOWLing in Tompkins Square

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl is now 50 years old. When Lawrence Ferlinghetti published and tried to distribute the epic poem, it was seized by U.S. Customs authorities as obscene. The courts eventually found that the poem (laden with words that still have the power to shock) was not obscene, but the headline-making trial brought Ginsberg fame, notoriety and a permanent place in the pantheon of hipsters.

In honor of Ginsberg’s contributions to “the countercultural heritage of the East Village/Lower East Side”, The Federation of East Village Artists named their annual arts festival the HOWL! Festival of East Village Arts. This year, to commemorate its 50th anniversary, the third annual Howl Festival is hosting a celebration of the poem.

From the official festival listing:
Tompkins Square Park – FREE
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 2005, 6:00 PM
ALLEN GINSBERG POETRY FESTIVAL
50th Anniversary of the HOWL! Poem
The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Festival celebrates the spirit of the renowned poet, world traveler, spiritual seeker, founding-member of the Beats, champion of human and civil rights, photographer, songwriter, community activist, teacher, and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Featuring Anne Waldman, Antler, John S. Hall, and Ed Sanders; HOWL will be read in seven languages and 16 voices.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked …

Ed Sanders reading an excerpt from Howl! 

Reading Howl from a copy of Beat Voices 

Anne Waldman reading: “Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch!”nbsp;

Antler reading Howl in a Walt Whitman t-shirt 

Reading Howl  

Singing Footnote to Howl: “Everyman’s an angel!” 

John Hall reading a portion of Howl 

Playing music inspired by Howl 

The Federation of East Village Artists

Howl Festival

Howl

Footnote to Howl

Wikipedia entry for Howl

New York Times Book Review special section on Allen Ginsberg

Literary History entry for Allen Ginsberg

The Beat Page entry for Allen Ginsberg

Interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti on Howl’s 45th anniversary

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Speaks on Howl and Banned Books (click the link under his photo)

Ed Sanders

Anne Waldman

John S. Hall

Steven Van Zandt