another life-size post

You'd be a fool to mess with this woman. So i did.  To capture the six kinds of sass, the maxi glory and the bejeweled sandals, I once again threw caution to the wind and let the photo be really big. Blogger of course likes to put limits on photos. The only thing we can control is our reaction to this affront, right? We can consider this creative cropping, or we can activate our click finger to get the whole story. And by we, i mean you.  

summer solstice

Just because it's the summer solstice, you don't have to wear drum majorette shorts (girding my loins behind the camera).  Instead you could wear cute silvery jacquard shorts and a sheer Theory tuxedo shirt WITH appropriate undergarments. The idea and execution of covering all the bits and not looking like an escapee from a traveling show is just so novel to me, I had to document it. 

Also, I want to record my extreme pleasure, my great delight, in 15-some-odd (emphasis on the odd) hours of bright yellow and blue daylight and the ability to sit outside in the evening with some house red and birds and pots of flowers and dogs and balmy breezes blowing over six kinds of exposed flesh -- is this what it's like to be Angelina Jolie? Let it be known, I was over here in Minneapolis for several hours and did not hear a single gunshot.

spots of color

You want to see style coming at ya thick and fast?  Go down to Main Street on the summer solstice.  I would like to report that I did not trip on the damn cobblestones chasing after these two.  I would like to report that, and I will, by golly.  This is journalism, after all.  I like sheer polka dots and I like long skirts with layered tops. Actually I didn't, hadn't even thought of them, until I saw these two.  Then all of a sudden, I'm like, oooo, sheer polka dots and long skirts with layered tops.  I'm kind of hideous excellent that way.

Ok, where were the interpretive dancers and the synchronized kayaks and the boomboxes chained to the Stone Arch Bridge playing Bolivian recorder music that have helped me celebrate the summer solstice and our Mother Earth and her carotid artery, the Mississippi River in past years?  That, and dinner with my friend at Aster Cafe, got me across the river into crime-infested Minneapolis in the first place.  I have attended the solstice river fest for the last several years now, even though I do not have a little beard growing in my armpits. Nor do I own even one article of tie-dyed clothing.  That's the thing -- this is an accepting, nonjudgmental fest.  And you can stand there in the syrupy sunlight with the toxic spray from the river gently rearranging your DNA and think A) I interpret that scarf twirling to mean that she just farted and is artistically clearing out the evidence, and  B) I could do that, hell, have done that. It's not even hard.  I'm always effused with a feeling of being one with the universe.  But this year, no solstice river fest, no scarves, and I had to settle for being one with my bike saddle.

how to ride the bus, Colombian style

Don't try this at home, Edina white folks.  You're gonna pull something just looking at the photo. My experience as a Latin American is that subtlety is not appreciated. All that baggy linen J Jill shit in varying shades of mud? Why would you do such a thing?  Tight, bright and outre is what it's about. Of course you would wear a one-piece catsuit and white stilettos to Cub. Of course you would not leave the house without a mani-pedi. Of course you would patronize this sweating crone on a bike -- she's in the final throes obviously. Ole! Arriba! Yo all outta Colombian.

velo vet

I can't say enough bad stuff about wars. Ick. Pooey. Stupid. They make people dead. Or,  they make people traumatized so that they live at the Veteran's Home and cruise around on a frankly awesome moon doggie bike in coordinated blaze orange sportswear and some mini-blind glasses*. Blah blah, you've heard this story a million times, so I'd like to thank this guy for putting a face on the ubiquitous fallout from dumb wars that people who were not in danger of getting blown up don't want to see.

*Mini-blind is not quite accurate. I tried these things on and would describe the experience as almost completely blind. Maybe it's a matter of perspective -- I'd rather look at them than through them.

Barb's sandals

Making an exception to a rule sounds better than breaking a rule, right? I made an exception to my rule of not subjecting friends to the business end of my blog.  Obviously Barb had it coming -- feast your eyeballs on these adorable sandals she got for $8 in Vietnam. I know what you're thinking -- those are some good-looking arches. Foot fetishes aside, when you count in pedicab fare and  sunscreen and Lonely Planet's Vietnam For Nonmotorcyclists, maybe the sandals weren't such a great deal.

Jesse

Can you stinkin believe it? I asked Jesse if he was a "stylist" because I thought he might not realize he was a drag queen.  Shhhh, don't mention it.  One of us needs brain reassignment surgery, stat.

Lake Street is quite the locale for DIY hair, as evidenced by the previous post and Jesse, who was at Savers buying new hair.  String or yarn -- he braids it in. And he hand-painted the pumps and hand-rended his clothes. Handy guy.  He does drag and burlesque somewhere in Minneapolis, I think it was Oceanaire or the Woman's Club of Minneapolis. Somewhere I haven't been. I know it wasn't the Lex in St. Paul and here's how I know that -- I brought up the recent United-Health-insurance-executive pricing policy instituted by Savers in which they imagine that a Wet Seal piece of crap appreciates in value after having gone on a "date" with a sophomore from Roosevelt High School and rolled around in the dirt again at the bottom of a donation bin, thus worth $24.99 or exactly twice what it was at Knollwood Mall, and mentioned that his hair and wardrobe dollars might go further at the Goodwill on University.  Nothing doing.  Since that arrest for skipping at the Republican convention, St. Paul has seen the last of Jesse.  Word, University Club -- reaching out would do a world of good. 

P.S. This is a great big old picture but I can't get Blogger to offer a great big old frame. I'm going to have to ask you to click on the photo for full affect.

Rihanna who?

Underage stalking is not generally the way I roll -- I like my subjects' frontal lobes to be fully developed, as well as their reaction time with a firearm. But never say never. 

This red dye #2 has not even dented its half-life, thus still virulently radioactive. She did it herself, yesterday, achieving the atomic tone by first bleaching her hair, which is normally dark brown, to a spooky orange and then applying the semi-poisonous red. I love the look but it's probably best for someone whose DNA has not been compromised by decades of oxidation yoga.

sunset at the Goodwill

Don't you wish you were this guy's stepfather, or father-in-law (I forget which)? Because then, after he test-drove that leather vest to see if it worked ok, you would become the proud owner of that vest. That's nice. We're outside the Goodwill in St. Paul and the sun's going down on another magical junk store day and I dig this guy's mix of plaid shirt and mauve jeans and ultra-vintage boots and he's either real patient or riveted to the ground by a mixture of a gravity surge, horror and growing realization that I had indeed escaped and the authorities were not yet looking for me. Anyway, I took about a million pictures of him because I forgot to turn on my camera the darn camera wasn't working.  Apparently he does not have pepper spray, but he does have an interesting face...

And now he has pepper spray.

Wayfarers

Walking on the shade-y side of the street, this dude-panion gets his picture in the blog for what he is not wearing (the G.O.D. damn male uniform of t-shirt, khaki cargo shorts and flipflops sported by 99.9% of testosterone sufferers), and for what he is wearing (freak flag, brainwarmer, Wayfarers, a virtual party from the neck up).  I can't speak to the tragic accident that happened on the tank top -- I had the good taste not to mention it. I'm also grateful to him for sucking it up and risking a little heat rash for the sake of nice dark wash denim all smothery-like down to the ankles. Thanks man, 'preciate it. 

His partner in shades and dreds has washed the patchouli right out of her Indian top and rockabillied it up with great big cuffs and cute little flats. I don't know how they did it, but these two rebels managed to have a Grand Old Time despite not being able to smack three crying toddlers upside the head and shrieking, I said two hunks of fried dough and an inflatable assault rifle each and thas all yer gonna git.

florals, sandals, possum stew

New for spring! Flowers! And exposed elbows! And toes that do not look like pupae ...

 

These sandals, in their intricacy, remind me of those crazy twig fences that look like they were made by someone who fancies possum stew.  Did I mention I'm gathering the makings for such a stew fence even now?

Grand Old lines

Doesn't it look like the yellow paint from the road stripe colored her sandals? And the other line leads your eyeballs right to the asymmetric hem (the mullet of hemlines, thus, rockin), and from thence, zigzag back and forth like pinballs and shoot straight north, make a left at the crook in her elbow, talk to the hand briefly, which happily is not flipping you off, and squirt out the top of the orange straw as a little pinkberry flavored person.  What an effin great composition.  Photography is easy with the right drugs  subject.

in which i do a million things and all she does is stacks of foxy

Stripes! And they're going more than one direction! In the same article of clothing! My mind is blown! And then she had to go and be ironic with the fedora/sundress dichotomy. Like an automatron (just hatched that word, auto + matron = zombie-like pursuit of something while laboring under the added aesthetic weight of eye bags),  I could not stop myself from taking this photo. Also I couldn't stop myself from cutting off the tippy top of the hat. And I had to deal with a heckler, as my neighbor, a known cellist, happened by. It was a busy moment indeed.

tiny tim gets some bad-ass boots

With this waif, we finally transition from Retrorama to Nowrama.  Which is not a Hindu goddess. I just about never tire of that granite wall at the History Center (aka Centre) as a backdrop, do you? Nooooooooooope. She did not think a leg-full of layers was retro in any way. She wasn't even trying. So don't think that she was trying to achieve some kind of Ice Age retro thing and missed by an animal pelt, because she wasn't. I know that and she knows that and now you know that, so, good, we all know that. She didn't even want her picture taken but, between the high socks and the low bangs, I thought she nailed waif better than anyone I'd ever seen. (insert Cockney accent) Please sir, may I have some more? (remove Cockney accent, flush) I should have put a toothpick in this photo for scale because, man, she would have towered over that toothpick. By like 3".

oh beehive

All hail the queen of Retrorama! Her Hive-ness achieved that crown by watching a YouTube how-to and backcombing with a 3/8" drill and a sanding attachment. She is never getting that bad boy out, but that's ok because now she's got a built-in bike helmet that protects the part of the brain that enjoys beef jerky.  And Yahtzee.

But I was not just whistling between that big space in my teeth when I alluded to royalty.  I can spit through that space too.  I've been seeing royalty lately, the Queen Mum everywhere on her Gangstas With Gloves tour -- raving at the Hexagon, 3 a.m. creme donuts at the Holiday on Nicollet, running around Lake of the Isles in some mad tight lycra. She's a beast. But when she's on the clock, she rocks a matching coat/cape and dress in pastel tones with matching hat/hair just like the above monarch.  Sure, the Queen Mum has a horse guard and an art collection, but our Wearer of the Cones of the Realm has...

shoes made with real diamonds and...

dangling pink balls. 
Royalty are a subtle bunch, aren't they?

jackie black

Interesting the way folks interpreted retro at this rama. By far, the most iconic item was a hat. You pop a fedora or a pillbox over anything -- skinny jeans, a Miley Cyrus strip o lycra -- and instant vintage.  Gloves were another telegraphic article, favored by the ladies.  And another surprising one, as mentioned previously, is pose.  Yes,  jackie black above is rocking the hat, gloves and a simply 47-yards-of-stunning frock (as in, I don't know how in the name of hydraulic compression one could even mash the miles of fabric in the skirt onto that little tiny waistband), but she's also doing the Tricia Nixon-I've-been-to-church-8-times-this-week stance of purity. What, do we all stand like hoes now? Let's start seeing poses.

looking fine in Farah slacks

Oh for misleading post! Let me be poifectly clear, all these posts before, after and including this one are from Retrorama.  So, sick as these two look swathed in poly, this is not their everyday attire. I hope.
Mmmm, blue, the color of Bobbie Sherman's eyes. The shift dress with collar that reaches from here to 1962 is his mom's. Yer mom wears sandals.  But our man in the Farah slacks -- he's  in insurance, that's for damn sure -- is beyond awesome. Let's think about Farah slacks. Let's think about that fabric that was once a petroleum byproduct but instead of dumping it into a nearby wetland, some smartypants (ha) said, this sludge has the smell and feel of something I'd like to swaddle my lower half in. And if it gets creased in the mucousy birth canal of the extrusion machine, it will hold that crease throughout a three-day continuous drive across the American West in a non-airconditioned Ford Pinto while containing the 60 gallons of dope-tinged sweat excreted by someone named Vic. Yeah there's going to be a rash, but can that be attributed to the slacks or the Silver Saddle in Reno?  And speaking of packages,  these slacks are formfitting. Farah slacks never wear out. Every pair ever made is still in existence, most upcycled by the roofing industry.  Did you notice that this couple's long pointy collars are actually reaching out  and touching tips?  Poly love.

the red shoes

The ballet roughly follows the Hans Christian Andersen story upon which it is based. A young woman sees a pair of red shoes in a shop window, which are offered to her by the demonic shoemaker. She puts them on and begins to dance with her boyfriend. They go to a carnival, where she seemingly forgets about the boyfriend as she dances with every man she comes across. Her boyfriend is carried away and nothing is left of him but his image on a piece of cellophane, which she tramples.
She attempts to return home to her mother, but the red shoes, controlled by the shoemaker, keep her dancing. She falls into a netherworld, where she dances with a piece of newspaper which turns briefly into her boyfriend. She is then beset by grotesque creatures, including the shoemaker, who converge upon her in a manner reminiscent of The Rite of Spring. They abruptly disappear, leaving her alone. No matter where she flees, the shoes refuse to stop dancing.
Near death from exhaustion, clothed in rags, she finds herself in front of a church where a funeral is in progress. The priest offers to help her. She motions to him to remove the shoes, and as he does so, she dies. He carries her into the church, and the shoemaker retrieves the shoes, to be offered to his next victim.
So that's The Red Shoes in a nutshell.  Another hard-hitting documentary about the need for arch support. The above red shoes were made by the demonic shoemaker's lazy brother who stitched on the alluring ruffle but forgot to infuse them with Dance Frenzy.  The woman on the left may only get toe cramps. Did they call each other up and coordinate or what?