new york's hottest club is the spirit halloween next to the trader joes in williamsburg
speaking of spirit halloween, can someone help me get out of there? i've been lost inside since thursday ...
Hello, witches, warlocks, and theys! Happy Halloweekend. Did you dress slutty? Sorry, typo — I meant feminist. Did you eat candy? Did you throw up at the Irish pub and go home an hour later? Did you still keep up with your Wordle streak? I did all of these things, so I was just wondering if they were all normal and, like, every one of us had the same experience. If you didn’t have that experience, me neither. And if you did have that experience, so did I.
I would like to clarify that when I threw up at the Irish pub, I had not had anything to drink and simply just had a very bumpy Citi bike ride getting there that caused my tummy to turn over. This was last night. The night before, we had a party that did not have me throwing up and simply had me having “a good time.” I prefer house parties over bars on Halloween, especially in New York. There’s too much going on and too many people in masks. Very Scream vibes. But when you have a party at your own house, you get to walk to your bed after and dream little dreams or even nightmare little nightmares.
CAUTION - the smell of trash lingers in NYC because it was 80 degrees yesterday and now it is 50 degrees and rainy. It feels like something can about this, but truly, nothing can be done. And that’s what Halloween at the bars feels like to me. Things can be done to not make it so smelly and overwhelming, but nothing will ever actually be done about it. Ugh, I love it when I write poetry.
What’s everyone’s favorite scary movie? Raise your hands, and I’ll call on you. Actually, how about I go first? I think my favorite scary movie is Carrie (1976). It has everything you could ask for: incredible special effects, a psycho mother, a Sissy Spacek-type (Sissy Spacek) with supernatural tendencies, and really fun lighting. I feel like a lot of you thought I was gonna say that my favorite scary movie was The Nun, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. But I do love it. And The Nun II? Also love it. I had that playing on mute in the background of my Halloween party.
The best scary movies are one of three things:
campy and silly and gory all at the same time
really well-written and terrifying and, honestly, Oscar-worthy
Catholic propaganda
I stand by all three. Here are examples of each, in the same order:
Carrie (1976)
Hereditary (2018)
The Conjuring cinematic universe
Catholic propaganda scary movies are so funny and fun because they’re the only reason why we’d be scared of something like a cross being upside-down. And when there’s something so terrifying, like a demon in the disguise of a nun terrorizing a Romanian convent, the only way you could possibly defeat it is by spitting the blood of Christ in its face (because, of course, the blood of Christ would be available at that moment, even if it’s the 1950s or whatever). And we’re all afraid of dolls because of Annabelle and the need to keep her in a glass box in Monroe, Connecticut. I never owned an American Girl Doll because they used to blink at me when I would walk through Water Tower Place in Chicago.
Having gone to a Catholic, all-girls high school for four years, I do think I take the Catholic propaganda scary movies a little more personally, and I will also say that I watch them as real-life stories. To me, The Conjuring Universe is history. No. It is herstory.
I was so surprised to go to college and then move to New York and not really meet a single person who also went to Catholic school growing up. My whole life before those time periods, I was able to use that as a way to relate to others, and I haven’t been able to do that with any new people. Either way, saying you went to Catholic school is a great conversation topic. Like, one time in seventh or eighth grade, a boy in our class asked the teacher if Zeus was gay because of the myth that Athena was born out of his head — and since we went to a Catholic school in 2010, we weren’t taught about terms like gay or queer — and she got so mad and screamed at him for saying that and was pacing the room so angrily and as she was pacing and screaming she tripped over all of these projector cords and faceplanted. I don’t think that would have happened at a public school.
Also, when I had to get confirmed in seventh grade, we were supposed to learn about what it means to be confirmed and what type of confirmation names we should be choosing, but we didn’t get any of that information. I told my mom I was gonna choose her name, Michele (with one L), and she said aww that’s so sweet. Little did I know that I was supposed to choose the name of a saint. My mom, who is also confirmed and chose the name Francis after Saint Francis of Assisi, I’m guessing, did not correct me. And neither did the school.
There were so many things about growing up in Catholic schools that made going through life way different than if I went to nonreligious schools, I think. I really do feel like whenever I tell people that I did, they often say, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” And I believe it does. It does make sense. My name is Kerry Suzanne Michele Cunningham, and I went to Catholic school. And I’ll shout it from Mount Sinai if I have to. And no, I don’t mean the one from the Bible; I mean the teaching hospital in New York. It’s way closer, and I could Citi bike there when it stops raining. Way more convenient. Catholocism is all about making sure things are convenient. For Catholics.
SOMETHING I HATE
When people scream on the train. It was pretty quiet on the A train — just the sounds of the tracks and the wind. Some guy just shouted HEY super loudly to get everyone’s attention so that we could watch him dance. When he did that, I saw a mother react by grabbing her young daughter’s head and pulling it closer to her. Everyone jumped, but seeing a mother going right into protective mode because anything sudden like that could mean the worst really made me SAD. STOP SCARING MOTHERS let them just get to their destinations. And let me get to destinations. And if you want to dance on the train, please dance, but do not scream at us; simply tell us at a level 5, maybe, that you would like to dance on the train.
I know this was very off-topic, but it just happened, and it was so annoying. It will never be brought up again. Unless? It happens again.
Final Halloween thoughts:
I love a Spirit Halloween. I love the vinyl banner that gets thrown onto an abandoned building and uses its magic to create a large space behind it, with a thick, popcorn ceiling and has the smell of a haunted house. I go there, and I instantly see potential. You will always find a costume there, if you don’t make one yourself. You will see your next four Halloween ideas in the first two rows. You will feel like you gave the same energy to those 20 minutes in the warehouse that you would to a Lower East Side nightclub. New York’s hottest club is the Spirit Halloween, but not just any Spirit Halloween. The new one. The one in the same building at the Trader Joes in Williamsburg on Kent. It is so randomly placed, but it feels like it was always meant to be there.
I can’t even remember life before Spirit Halloween … What came first: abandoned buildings or Spirit Halloween? What a question! I love that I thought of it.
Final thoughts in general this week separate from Halloween:
I am sleepy.
I am excited for the weeks to come and to tell you all about them.
My PillowCube pillow has really improved my slumber.
I am still sleepy, though.
I’ve really been getting back into pretzels. They’re so good. How could I forget?
And here is a link for all of you to click on: DEMAND A CEASEFIRE IN GAZA
Have a good rest of your Halloween, goblins and ghouls and goldilockses. See you soon!
movie rec: the Halloweentown franchise
book rec: IT by Stephen King
music rec: Monster Mash by Bobby “Boris” Picket and The Crypt-Kickers
Life would be so boring without Circle Back
Cool