First Warm Night

I went to First Warm Night a week ago, but haven't had a chance to write about it. It was supposed to be an impromptu celebration of the first night of spring, although it was only semi impromptu (they sent out notices to those who had signed up on their site two days before) and not all that warm (because it's just not been a very warm spring. I heard about it through someone at my yoga class, it was just a word of mouth thing.

The email said come to a location on Houston at 6:27. There was a brass band (which turned out to be the Hungry March Band) and a couple of hundred people with no clear idea of why they were there. We were all told to take the subway to Brooklyn (at which point my friends Sharon and Cheryl both dropped out because they had things to do later that night) and got off and were lead to a park. Some people were very colorfully dressed with angel wings and bunny ears and the like, others were just dressed in whatever. At the park they tried to run a hundred-person game of spin the bottle, which resulted in amusement but no kissing, some people played twister and the band played while the band's sexy dancers jumped around (these girls were very energetic and apparently leather-hided, since they would do sommersaults on cobblestone streets). Colored chalk was passed around so people could draw on the park pathways and people played catch with beach balls and an inflatable shark.

It was like something from the 60s, although the mainly under-30 crowd probably is a bit vague on the whole hippie thing. Unlike the 60s there wasn't much evidence of drugs, although there were a lot of people lining up to buy ice cream cones from a vendor.

After an hour we marched off again to the pier where there was more dancing and slides projected on the walls. Then some people jumped in the water and the police closed the pier and as I was leaving police and fire trucks were heading their direction, although I later learned the party relocated to a free club and continued on.

On the way home the subway ride was livened up by a guy with a guitar playing Madonna songs while his companions (or complete strangers who had just struck up on quick acquaintance) sang along. It turns out Material Girl is a much better sing-along song than Like a Virgin.

All in all it was cool, although I got a little bored due to my inability to start conversations with strangers. I probably would have found this more fun 20 years ago, but now I'm a bit more difficult to excite. Still, a neat thing, and you should put your name on their mailing list because they promise to do it again someday, although a guy with a bullhorn announced setting up this one took several months and a couple hundred people (mainly a core group of 50) so don't expect something real soon.

I found a couple of pictures of me at the event: