Stacy Horn

I passed by the group pictured below on Saturday, on my way to the America’s Cup race. I asked someone what they had gathered for, it was very Russian-centric and clearly had something to do with WWII, but I couldn’t understand her answer. I was also terrified that I would reveal some gross lack of knowledge. (I googled it when I got home and decided it must have had to do with VE Day and Germany’s surrender.)

Whenever someone posts a video on Facebook where they ask people something very obvious, like the one I just watched asking people about WWII coincidentally, I feel pity for the people who don’t know anything. One person had never heard of WWII, another had never heard of Hitler, another couldn’t name the countries we were fighting against.

First, I panic when I’m put on the spot about what I know. My mind goes blank. Second, I’ve forgotten a lot of what I once knew. Third, I can’t think of a third. Oh. Third, I’m not very educated to begin with, except in areas that coincide with my various obsessions.

My big fear is someone is going to shove a camera in my face and ask me to name a supreme court justice and the only names I will be able to come up with, if any, will be the conservative judges.

So I sympathize with the people being questioned in the video, and not the know-it-alls interviewing them. Except, I don’t like that the people being interviewed don’t seem to care. I think people should be educated and informed, and if I learned for the first time that there was something called World War II that was bigger and deadlier than any other war and involved nuclear bombs being dropped, genocide, and fucking so on, I’d be shocked to the core. I wouldn’t be standing there going, “Nope, never heard of it, hahaha.” Except maybe that was just a defensive response.

I’m not sure if I’m going to head back downtown today to see if they race today. I kinda want to curl up and read. More than kinda.

I took this yesterday. This guy wanted to get an even closer view of the race.

I don’t know why, but the race didn’t happen today. I heard something about there not being enough wind? There’s another race tomorrow though, so I’ll head back downtown tomorrow. Here are three of the teams in waiting mode. The sky looks bluer in this photograph than it actually was. It’s been gray and dismal all day. Except now!

The America’s Cup has come to New York! (I wrote World Cup originally and had to come back and edit my post. Ah, aging.) For the first time in 96 years, I just read. And it will happen right in my neighborhood, so I’m going to walk over to the river and get pictures. Except, it will probably be a mob scene. Well, I will try.

I took this walking down Bleecker Street towards home. My neighborhood can be so quaint.

I forgot to write down what they were filming, but a few blocks in my neighborhood were transformed to look like some year in the past. More pictures follow.

Update: The signs are still up for this shoot, and it’s Rebel in the Rye, directed by Danny Strong who I will adore forevermore for his character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, he’s done a few things since …

I don’t know old cars so I couldn’t really tell from them what year this was supposed to be. I think I guessed 1940s, because to me the phone booth seemed more modern than the cars.

But this play premiered in 1935. Look at the ticket prices! So those of you who guessed 1930s, yay! You win!