Hidden among warehouses, there are tons of galleries and hidden treasures. Above a normal Laundromat on Melrose, things weren’t any different. There was art everywhere, Friday night. Conceptually, we were drinking art, finding art in filing cabinets, called the “Flat File,” and of course, the walls were adorned with various pieces, many of them picturesque and romantic.

The Laundromat – 238 Melrose St., 4th fl.

                          

Today is suppose to be a nice day, but the L train is undergoing construction this whole weekend. I might be stranded here… in Brooklyn. You might need to send a search party for me. I’ll be the one covered in peanut butter reeses chips.

For the past three weeks, my days have been spent, going to work, and bringing the food home. No real late nights or outings after work. Perhaps a dinner in the neighborhood. There’s a pretty new bar near the Morgan stop called Narrow Bar with wonderful cocktails and a tequila sol combo for $6. There’s also a great Japanese place called Momo, by the same people who did Bozu, with creative “sushi bombs.” I’ve been spending ALL of my money on food and booze, literally. And then passing out to random netflix selections, like last night… I opened a bottle of rose and passed out to “American Werewolf in London.”

                          

It was a scavenger hunt, offering us some curiosity, we called the number with a cryptic message asking us to find wormwood tied by pink ribbons. The recorded voice on the line invited us, “Come have tea.” I wondered if it would be a found art project full of people found at the block party. My companion, being savvier than I, she found the bundle of wood after some scouting. We followed it to an iron stairway path lined with green bags full of dirt.

We. Found. A. Hut. It was made with other found objects. And “found people,” sitting inside a faux fur-lined structure. They were having an impromptu discussion on waste, having entered the structure through a curtain of pristine white hanging plastic of tampons. We didn’t have any desire to talk to these people, but we wanted to sit in the hut.

After thought: I guess a lot of people in Brooklyn have iMacs.

                          

Anyway, my actualy point is that it’s interesting for me to think about online personas. You see, I have a huge history of dealing with them. For one, I was MUD-ing and playing all sorts of text-based RPG games on the internet… oh 10 years ago. From then, I’ve met a lot of people, some of who I am still friends with this day. I’ve been to their weddings, met their families, and it all started with some weird encounter in some made up fantasy tavern at 3am. A lot of people would consider that to be odd, but for me, it was a whole different world. This is just to say that I am experienced in the world of needing to escape, fake identities, and real people being nothing like their online personas. This is how I expressed and dealt with a lot of teenage angst.

I also remember the subworld of camgirls, stileproject, internetgossip, and that whole shebang that popped up around 5+ years ago. There were a lot of friendships, internet mysteries on weird personalities, and people coming together to discuss that. I don’t think I can really convey that whole sphere in a few paragraphs here, but there are lots of small internet phenomenons that a lot of people in the popular culture missed. (Survivor cam, anyone? I was an advent voyeur of people like Chelle.)

So, for people like me who probably spent way too much time on the computer in their youth (you know, with the advent of AOL and communities), stories like Catfish doesn’t really raise any goosebumps. I probably had a completely different experience than most people whose first foray into internet intimacy was/is Facebook.

The internet is a great place to build fantasies close friendships full of intimacy that doesn’t necessarily need to be anchored in any truth. I feel that the fantasy can very much feel and … even BE real, because it involved real emotions. I think people who pretend to be who they are not and fool other people, are creating a suspended alternate world… which unfortunately cannot come into full fruition. i think fantasy can be a window into someone’s heart.