Nuff Ting Gwon: Photography, Film & Adventure: August 2006

Unorthodox brand of parenting

2 Comments Published by Ster on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 at 2:32 PM.

Sammy, Subby, Christina & Benji

Christina and Benji just left my place in Toronto, to head back home out east. We had a blast while they were here. They pretty much take care of themselves. They are like the kind of kids I want to have; independent, can cook, clean themselves, pay their own way and don’t do drugs. I did realize that I think I’m going to too laid back of a parent though. If ever in doubt about things like bedtimes I would simply ask them what I should do. I would ask them “when do you feel like going to bed”, which they responded “about 2am”. I think it’s fairly reasonable for an 9 year old to stay up until 2 on a Wednesday!

We had a great time though, we strolled around downtown, Kensington market, queen st, skydome. We even went to a busker festival to watch some really entertaining performers eat fire and make gay jokes to crowds of kids. Pretty unacceptable humor for 4 year olds, but they all seemed to get a kick out of it, so who I am to say to say when kids should start to be exposed to adult humor.

Sammy and Sub and I also took the kids swimming at the pool in my building. Sam was teaching Benji how to swim. He already knew how to do the doggy paddle, but she wanted to teach him the overhead stroke. Here is the somewhat successful result.

Sammy teaching benji how to swim: He's so cute, but look at how afriad he is.

Labels: Toronto

3 Very Srange Men: A pictoral essay on Krups, Thano & Cream

0 Comments Published by Ster on at 12:25 PM.

Me arresting Jon for smoking

I wake up to the sound of racial slanders being thrown around outside Jon’s 8th street apartment. “f!@k you crazy nig!@’r” one man’s shouts at the other. Only a half second later the exact same insult is echoed back. I groan, rub my eyes, and make my way out of bed to peek out the window to what, juding by the language being used, is going to be some black and black agression. To my surprise I was wrong. It was a 70 year old white man yielding a cane vs. a young black man using an 8 foot 2x4 as his weapon. As if I wasn’t already surprised by the fact that this is how some people start their day at 8am in the morning, I was even more surprised to find that the small 3 foot wooden cane was actually doing a pretty good job of fending off the 8 foot 2x4.

So naturally, instead of calling the police to break up a fight which seemed it may be a bit uneven (considering the weapons and descrepency in age), I opened the window and took my seat on the fire escape with my camera and helped show my support for old man underdog.

Yes. I was back in New York. A city I am in love with. Not just because you can see people take their anger at the heat wave out on each other at 8 in the morning, but also because you can see them do it at throughout the day! The city is crazy. Even our friend Jon who professes to be Canada’s craziest citizen doesn’t come close to the craziest in New York. He just looks on with jealous eyes. After an old man with a fishing vest and no undershirt passes us signing and dancing to “material girl” (a Madonna song), Ruby looks over to Jon and says “you don’t even scrape the tip of the iceberg Jon” to which Jon quickly snapped back “I’m not competing with crazy people rubes”. But you could see it in his eyes. He was disappointed in himself for not thinking about the fishing vest, Madonna combination himself.

Rubes on the roof trying to descretly protect himself from Jon wandering hands.

It’s the individuality that turns me on to this city. Standing out is paramount. The result is the creation of a city which celebrates differences, tries harder than most, and has a lot of fun. My cup of tea!

We all tried to do as much work in the day as possible, But we would constantly call each other to see who would be the first to stop doing work so we could all hang out. Someday’s we’d work until 11pm, but we usually tried to make it much earlier, or we’d take breaks in the day to eat, hang out or work out.

I’m not going to take you through the entire play time itinerary but I will tell you about a couple of the highlists. First of all, all of us in New York spend a lot of money. Only in New York can you spend $30 per drink at a lounge. Only in New York can you get your brunch bill and have it $500. Brunch! And only in New York can you find yourself back in front of an ATM more often than you’re in front of a meal. Only in New York.

Rooftop bar on 5th ave.

Jon’s law firm held a party at cool rooftop patio on 5th ave, that we all had a blast at. As you enter out onto the roof, you see the empire state building just next door as well as the rest of Manhattan. A beautiful experience. For the next few hours, Jon, Ruby and I all told our usually assortment of bad jokes, which were even less well received than they usually are. Then when it was our time to go Jon got upset with us because he didn’t say bye to anyone yet. Unbeknownst to Jon, everyone he knew left. It was just us and strangers. But our lecture to Jon did nothing to deter him from looking. So as he stood in the middle of the bar, upset he realized we were right and as he looked back and saw Rubes and I bent over laughing at him, decide to throw us a curvball. He approached a table and sat down. But we quickly realized by the dirty looks Jon got upon his arrival at the table that these were not his work mates or friends. There was no doubt he wasn’t welcome. For those of you who know Jon, dirty looks don’t really do much to stop him. Don't let his impressive vocabulary and life experiences fool you. He as about as mentally developed as a baby squirrel. So as we approached to save the table from Jon, he got up and ran. It was kind of like approaching your dog after the dog realized that they did something wrong. You know that moment when you look each other in the eyes and as you start approaching the dog smiles and takes off? We’ll that’s what this was like, but our dog was a 200 pound man in a suit. For whatever reason he thought he would be able to camlifouge in with a large group of women. He made himself a seat on a couch full of women. As we approached to grab Jon all we heard him say in his “Jon feminan voice” was “I haaaate men”, to which one girl gave him a high five and replied “totally”. Altough it sounds like the conversation may have had potential we decided to save the poor girl from Jon’s divorce story and grabed him. For those of you who don't know Jon's divorce story, I'll sum it up very quickly. Jon married an older wall st worker, brought her to canada to live in his dorm room, married her and she soon left him for a videographer of adult content who lived in his parent's basement.

As the days progressed, our need to amuse our selves started to increase. At a club one night Jon and I invented a new type of party called a "slap party". The slap party is not to be confused with Jahnke's "pajama party" (email Jahnke if you want to know the rules of the Pajama party. He'll be more than happy to teach you). Take a look at Kirsten's face after I introduced her to the idea of a slap party.

Really not impressed

At 3 in the morning, we all decided to go to another bar Jon "knew about" and has "been to before". Needless to say, no such bar existed. So instead we ran around the streets of NY until 5 in the morning having a slap fight.

Jon Robes and I held our ground. But in the end we all learnt an important lesson; While guys won't fight with full strength.... girls will. Jon got a fat lip in this fight sceene.

Even though we were out really late every night, we all still woke up relatively early to get our work done. Rube, Mya and I all managed to even take a meditation class in the west village one day. I think meditating is something I'm going to incorperate into my daily life. I know my hippy mom is probaly the only person who wont make fun of me for this, but I had a some really interesting experiences in the meditation studio, so I want to keep it up.

All in all, I would say it was some of the best hanging out we've all done in a while. We would make it to great summerside concerts in the day, cruise around the city during the heat wave and try not to die, hang out with Jon's family at restaurants at night, take off to Brooklyn at night to hear good music, visit street festivals, work out, eat a lot of great food and enjoy many random laughs.

Before I went to New York, I went to Philly to see Rubes. Below are some more pics of Rubes and I in Philli and all of us in NYC.