bananas for ‘Bronx Zoo’

Figure models in lingerie, heels and … ape masks? “Bronx Zoo,” which opens at GhettoGloss in Los Angeles on Friday night, is the “best of the best” of the inspired folly that took place Saturday afternoons all summer long on the back patio of La Cita bar in downtown Los Angeles, where serious students of anatomy, cool kids in search of a cool beer and a hot scene, and just about everyone in between, converged.

Check out GettoGloss’s blog for over-the-shoulder photos of artists at work and the models in action, like these ones here. There are also some great shots of people watching people (see “behind the looking glass (part 2)“). Unless GhettoGloss makes plans to bring these little beauties east, this may be the most we be see of “Bronx Zoo” from afar. For now. 

Through December 1.

halloween retrospective

I love Halloween, gratuitously and unconditionally. And Halloween in New York City is spectacular.

courtesy geekologie.com

Between the hours of 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. it’s as if the children from Where The Wild Things Are (with a couple trick-or-treaters from The Nightmare Before Christmas thrown in for good measure) take over the city, then after sundown the big kids shut down Sixth Avenue for the Halloween Parade, arguably the best in the country, and then, and then … and then somehow the sun’s up. It’s the closest the real world gets to Burning Man.

So paging through my Google Reader today I was thrilled to come across these costumes. First, geekologie’s post, “Eff It, I’m Going As an IPhone” (click the link for a dozen other photos), and secondly, L.A. artist Jubilee A. Horn’s interpretation of Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama poster, courtesy Eyeteeth blog. Until next year … 

courtesy eyeteeth.blogspot.com

behind the looking glass (part 2)

And then there are the people. Half of what’s so fascinating about looking at animals is observing people watching animals.

i see you (green frog at Bronx zoo)

The things they say: “Eww look at that one, he’s sniffing the other’s poo!” (a child at the warthog exhibit at the Bronx Zoo). “Is that real?” (an elderly woman approaches the rabbit display at the Village Petstore with some trepidation.) “It is!” (she concludes).

The things they do: The whistles, the clucking noises, the ridiculous postures, energy expended, all to momentarily capture the passive gaze of some animal. (An exception was a gorilla at the Bronx Zoo who sat next to the glass, bemusedly inspecting us, sticking her tongue or putting her hand flush up against the glass over where a child’s hand pressed against the glass from the other side). And then there’s the faux hunting, donning camouflage or safari gear (an excess of pockets, tan and olive tones) and crouching low behind bushes so as to not disturb the wildlife, but get the best shot (as in photograph) of “nature in action.”

behind the looking glass

  those stripes actually work
What does the Bronx Zoo, the Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill, a Banksy installation in Greenwich Village, and an actual pet shop with sweet pups in the window have in common? 

Well, yes, they all have animals—albeit exotic, domestic, and “other.” But that’s not the thought that kept knocking around in my head, while tracking down the giraffes, the gorillas and the big bears at the zoo, or while marveling at the ingeniousness of the Banksy installation, or while cooing over puppies tumbling around in shredded paper strips. The shocking realization was how we observers (myself not excluded) expect, demand even, some sort of performance from the animals. To happen upon a zebra grazing in a non-African-looking environment is startling.

she files her nails at the village petstore

Where’s the set? What about the children, I mused, is seeing the zebra here, like this, going to mislead them to thinking that zebras roam free in the wilds of upstate New York, when they see a like habitat? Elsewhere, crowds clustered around a gorilla sitting against the glass. She sat there, bemusedly inspecting us (with a little too much self awareness, I thought), sticking her tongue out, occasionally putting her hand flush up against the glass over where a child’s hand pressed against the glass from the other side.

At the Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill, the “pets,” per se, are putting on a show—they’re acting human. A chimp watches animal shows on television, surrounded with the litter of human