When George Suchanek moved from his native Czechoslovakia to New York City in 1965, he sought a life of both opportunity and freedom from communist oppression. As many discovered before and since then, however, city life can be lonely for a newcomer — which is why the now 65-year-old Suchanek, a Prague native, says he was grateful to meet many like-minded Czech expats at the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden, located not far from his current home in Astoria, Queens.

“It used to be one of the most popular places for Czechs and Slovaks in New York,” recalls Suchanek, owner of Zlata Praha, a restaurant also located in Astoria. “I used to work there on and off. … There were wonderful, traditional events and plenty of famous people who visited.”

On a mid-October evening, however, Suchanek — who sipped a lager alongside his wife, Eva — was one of a few Czech natives in attendance at the Bohemian Hall, whose adjacent beer garden, which opened in 1919, appears both fixed in time and sprawling given the density of New York real estate. At present, the hall represents a rare juncture where the Bohemians (i.e., those of Czech descent) meet the bohemians, or the scores of students and young professionals drawn to Astoria in surprising numbers who now inhabit the spacious, if slightly gritty, tenements nearby; donning enormous hoodies, jeans and sneakers, they cling tightly to their pints which contesting impromptu games of poker and Scrabble on the long, narrow wooden tables filling the garden. Tonight’s crowd has braved the evening’s raw, rainy weather in honor of the vinobrani, a traditional Czech festival that marks the end of the grape harvest and is mostly notable for the speed in which the carafes of wines typically go down among friends. Yet I can’t help but notice how “un-Czech” the event is — for one thing, a vinobrani should technically be held in mid-September rather than October, and even so, there’s no wine to speak of (Suchanek informs me later the sommelier backed out of the event at the last minute, due to an interfamily feud).

The indifference to tradition doesn’t seem to bother the crowd, as true to form, the draw for most is the beer, or pivo as it is known in Czech. The owners keep two import brews — Staropramen and Czechvar, known throughout Europe as “Budweiser” but distributed otherwise locally due to an ongoing lawsuit with Anheuser-Busch, though the former existed well before its identically-named predecessor — on tap and free-flowing. The accompanying food is greasy, heavy and laden with pork and fried carbohydrates; however, the scent from the grill is beckoning enough to tempt even the most health-conscious of revelers. Here, when it comes to sausages, size matters — the kielbasas and bratwursts are far too large to fit on a standard bun and instead are served with a single slice of rye bread topped with mustard atop a bed of French fries.

While the days of the Bohemian Hall catering mainly to the area’s Czech and Slovak community may be gone, Suchanek isn’t fazed, instead calling the bar and its garden a monument to his nation’s legacy, which he feels is little-known even in the overall scope of Astoria, which is better known as being home to the city’s sizable Greek and Balkan populations.

“New York is a city of immigrants, like me,” he says. “Each nation contributes something to the city’s diverse and vibrant atmosphere, so it’s only natural that we … have such a wonderful place like this to exhibit what [our country] really means.”

By Nicola Shepheard

At 7:00 p.m. on a damp Thursday, the stairway to the East Village Yoga to the People studios is busier than the nearest subway station. Soon, all four studios will be full, mats toe to fingertip. The third-storey studio where I find myself funneled has the feel of a student cafe: wooden floors, exposed brick walls, music, people chatting; except there are also people with their feet in the air. None of the hushed, solemn preparations you get in some studios. What is most striking, though, in this age of yoga mega-chains and couture yoga-wear, is there are no fees. Instead, official greeter Jessie Barr stands at the door with an empty tissue box, its mouth widened into a guileless smile. This is where you put your donation – the website yogatothepeople suggests $10 per class, but no one’s counting. Jessie cheerfully averts her eyes from the five-dollar bill I drop in.

Donation-based yoga feels almost subversive. Last decade’s yoga renaissance sun-saluted the ancient practice out of draughty church halls and onto the cover of Time magazine. In 2008, Americans spent $5.7 billion on classes and products, 87 percent more than in 2004, according to a study by Yoga Journal. Yoga now has celebrity teachers, international chains, and merchandise by Nike. Marc Jacobs makes a $400 yoga mat bag; model Christy Turlington has a line of yoga wear. Critics have pointed out that yoga’s ethos sits uneasily with inhibitive pricing, militant ascetism and vigorous, slick branding. Some fear a Starbucks-style standardization that will swallow up community studios and gut yoga of its spirituality. Donation-based yoga is, you could argue, the ultimate rearguard action.

When Yoga To The People founder Greg Gumucio started teaching in 1996, yoga was as rare and esoteric as quinoa. Then, it was enough to simply have a studio. As more studios opened, to compete he had to choose good locations. Later, the edge came from good teachers.

“The next evolution from that was you had to have a studio that was connected to more than the business of yoga, you had to have a yoga that was connected to the community and the people,” says Gumucia. He adopted the concept of donation-based yoga from a friend, Bryan Kest, who teaches power yoga in Santa Monica, California. The East Village studios were opened February 2006, followed by a Berkeley, California studio last year. Some 800 people a day now go to the East Village classes, which run year-round. Gumucio says a Brooklyn studio will open in coming months. He won’t divulge the average donation, but says the income is enough to keep the studios running.

Donation-based yoga sits within a mesh of cultural movements such as slow-food and simple living that emphasize community over pseudo-individualistic brand-identification, simplicity over complication, and frugality over excess. Canadian yoga writer and instructor Roseanne Harvey started teaching a donation-based yoga class at a local community mission in 2007. “I saw that yoga was presented with very little diversity: the predominant images were of white, fit women between the ages of 25 and 35. So I wanted to offer an alternative to the dominant cultural story.”

Harvey, who writes a yoga blog, says a second, pay-what-you-wish class attracts more students and artists. “I was just responding to something that I saw around me. I follow and am familiar with the slow food and simple living movements, though I’m more influenced by the anti-consumerism and DIY movements.”

Yoga To the People’s manifesto could come from the pages of anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters: “There will be no correct clothes There will be no correct payment…No glorified teachers No ego no script no pedestals No you’re not good enough or rich enough This yoga is for everyone.” Explains Gumucio, “Not making it about teachers is a big deal. You’ll find no profiles of teachers, no teacher schedules, the idea is to get people commited to their own practice.”

The class lives up to its anti-hype. The teacher coaxes and guides and coos us into our practice. Nick Drake and Paul Simon ease our minds. We’re told to close our eyes so we can’t compare ourselves to the person in front. We work hard, but softly.

Afterwards, I ask stage actor Carl Danielsen, 47, why he comes here. (He averages five times a week. “I’m insane about it! It’s a little obsessive.”)

He’s been to many other yoga classes, here and abroad, but this is unique, he says.

“It’s the energy, there’s a seriousness but at the same time it’s fun. During svanasana [hands and knees] today I heard someone say ‘fuck.’ That’s so great, I love that! Why are we getting all religious and sacrosanct and serious?”

Danielsen is reflecting another important facet of this nascent movement’s appeal. The demand for work to be fun and informal is often tagged to the Gen Y cohort, but it runs much wider than that – check out ads targeting Baby Boomer. Strip away the pricey pretentiousness and the faux-asceticism, and yoga becomes serious pleasure that anyone can enjoy.

Namaste.

]]> http://othergroundny.com/2009/12/01/the-peoples-yoga/feed/ 1 http://othergroundny.com/2009/11/30/its-halloween-anything-goes/ http://othergroundny.com/2009/11/30/its-halloween-anything-goes/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:58:31 +0000 Abigail Drachman-Jones http://othergroundny.com/?p=420 By Abigail Jones

The window displays at Ricky’s on 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue are a tidy mess of pirate hats, impossibly blond wigs, and feathered masks in lush golds, reds, and blacks. On the checkered floor, boxes of fake eyelashes and double-stick tape are scattered around a Michael Jackson kit, and up above, placed on a small black table, are packages of fishnet stockings and a Little Red Riding Hood costume (the adult version).  In one window, a gigantic poster of a blond model looms above the paraphernalia. Dressed in a short, white nurse’s getup and red lace-up boots, she clutches a syringe and tilts her head to the right, luring pedestrians inside with thick lips, smoky eyes, and manufactured sexual perfection. Behind her, in black and orange script that drips like blood, a sign reads, “It’s Halloween, Anything Goes.”

The narrow aisles inside Ricky’s prove that fact. Row after row, fetish after fetish, walls are covered in French maids, Playboy bunnies, sailors, wenches, and superheroes. On the front of each costume, a woman poses and pouts, selling to shoppers the proposition that sex is expected, beauty is buyable, and instant gratification rules.

“You can’t wear this crap,” barks a fortysomething man in a Yankees hat and sweatshirt, his belly protruding and eyes wide with panic. “Look at this shit!”

He and his daughter, a short, plump, ponytailed brunette who looks no more than eleven years old, are surrounded by breasts, thighs, and orgasmic facial expressions — by women dressed as scantily clad prisoners, sheriffs, and FBI agents. Shoppers squeeze by the pair, some holding babies, many seeking out the very costumes Dad is trying to avoid. Suddenly, two girls, both around nine or ten, appear in the same section. The girl with frizzy hair laughs, pointing at a costume called Armed and Dangerous — and the accompanying picture of a model in short shorts and handcuffs clasped around her waist. The girl dances in place, shaking her hips until her friend pulls her toward another costume, which they examine closely, squealing as they sound out the words: “Rehaaaaab Reeeeejects.”

“This is what we went through last year,” the father continues, looking down at his daughter, whose baggy white sweatshirt, black leggings, and faded Converse stand out amongst the exposed body parts. “Let’s go to a different section.”

“We have a section for teenage girls,” a saleswoman says with impeccable timing.

“Where’s that?” Dad asks.

The young woman leads them to the tween aisle, which offers a diminutive collection of costumes deemed “age appropriate” by companies such as Leg Avenue and Drama Queens. Father and daughter examine the options. The girl pictured in the Hot Devil costume sneers in a slinky red dress, her hips cocked, nose raised, face full of makeup.

“How about Dorothy?” Dad asks, pointing to the most modest costume on the wall.

“No,” his daughter says. “I don’t wanna be Dorothy.”

He suggests the bumblebee and then pauses, possibly debating the viability of a costume called Super Bee Hornet Hottie, complete with thigh-high black socks, a short black tutu, and a strapless striped tank top.

Nearly an hour later, they settle on Little Miss Mouse, a mildly demure confection of red and black polka dots.

“Don’t worry,” the saleswoman whispers to the father, “I told her she can’t get the fishnets.”

Twenty minutes later, after a plea for glittery red lipstick (Dad says no), father and daughter leave in detante, costume in hand and conflict avoided, at least for another year. Walking out into the fresh, damp air, they pass the tantalizing blond nurse in the window and head down 72nd Street toward Broadway. Had they gone shopping the very next day, Dad might have turned around before even entering the store, because there in the window, pasted in line with the nurse’s voluptuous breasts, appeared a gigantic red sign: “50% OFF ALL KIDS COSTUMES.”

I first heard of Martini Night at the Church of the Ascension, not surprisingly, over few beers with friends. The event is held on first Sunday of each month following the 6PM Jazz Mass. With the introduction of snazzy music at the evening service a parishioner complained to the pastor, Rev. John Duffell. She told him she felt as though she should “have a martini glass in her hand” and violá, a response to the traditional post-Mass coffee clutch was born.

“How could you have coffee at seven at night,” Father Duffell asked rhetorically.

A recent visit to the Upper West Side parish on an average Sunday night had an intimate atmosphere, filled with parishioners who sang along knowingly with music director Peter Hartmann’s original compositions. This was not what the British call a “happy-clappy” service. The music, while uplifting, is hardly evangelical. However, by comparison, the Jazz Mass that preceded the martini event was a standing room only crowd and a touch more jovial. After the service, the crowd overflowed onto 107^th Street and waited to enter the basement reception hall. Volunteers having anticipated the rush passed in the opposite direction with trays of martinis in little plastic tumblers, making the wait to get into the hall all the more bearable. Downstairs, a potluck dinner of hamburgers, chips, salads and soft drinks were also served. A church’s basement is often like a community rec room and this one is no exception: florescent lights, pale yellow walls, folding chairs and tables. The crowd looked much like the neighborhood, which is to say multiracial, multigenerational, some gay, mostly straight. While, I stood in line to get a refresher, little kids cut through to get to the burgers while their moms scolded them for not saying ‘excuse me.’ From a distance, I studied a chatty group of young men. I struck up a conversation with a music teacher from Jersey. We talked musical theater as my friend discussed Vatican politics with Father Duffell. Suddenly, it seemed, tables were being broken down and brooms were sweeping.

“God speaks in many different ways,” Duffell explained. “Some may say that I’m an incarnationalist­­––whatever that is. But in a city like this people are strangers and this is a good way to bring them together.”

Duffell’s liturgically nuanced riff deals with the incarnate, or the pleasures of the flesh, of which alcohol is one.

“Everything is basically good,” he said, “it just depends on how you use it. I’ve never seen anyone inebriated here.”

For many Americans the notion of having a drink after church is sacrilege, likely an outgrowth of a puritanical heritage. However, wine is a sacred element of each Catholic service. In Europe, where drinking alcohol is part of the culture there are no such concerns. For generations the Catholic Church has been an extension of that culture. But while the Martini Night may have some ties to the old country, outreach is more to the point. With concerts, cushy seating and me-centric sermons on offer at other churches, to say nothing of New York nightlife, Martini Night offers cultural significance, but instead of heading the bar, parishioners just go downstairs.

Racers in Prospect Park on Saturday, October 24, 2009.

I was going to be late. I didn’t get up early enough. My half of a whole wheat bagel with peanut butter and banana felt like it was lodged in my esophagus. I didn’t make one last bathroom stop. It was 7:50 a.m. The race was starting at 8. I was half of a mile from the start and I still needed to drop off my backpack at the bus that would meet us at the finish. My backpack contained a dry shirt, a water-resistant shell and extra goo, all post-race necessities. “Goo” comes in palm-sized rectangular foil packages that are impossible to tear open with sweaty hands. The anxiety this can provoke in the middle of a race – I need fuel right now, RIGHT NOW – makes me feel instantly faint; the relief and stamina that the sugary, slippery substance can provide might as well be on the inside of Gramercy Park’s locked gate, so close and inaccessible. The trick is to make a tiny tear in the package before the race, but not big enough to allow it to leak into the pocket of my lined running shorts. Goo is the consistency of the gel frosting that Carvel uses to write “Congratulations!” in cursive on its ice cream cakes.

This particular ten-kilometer running race was sponsored by Nike and held in Prospect Park on Saturday. Nike calls it the The Human Race. It’s an annual event with races taking place in 25 countries on the same day. Instead of passing out Tyvek race numbers, Nike provides Human Racers with identical, synthetic, sweat-wicking t-shirts. Our individual numbers were printed in yellow on the shirts. The race date, “10-24-09,” was also branded there, like a reminder of apocalypse or a horror movie release.

Not surprisingly, Nike had done lacquered marketing for the race, pointing entrants to an unhelpful but beautiful website that featured photographs of toned runners mid-stride in Milan or Berlin. (Read: We are all part of the human race and we are all running the Human Race!) I picked up my race packet at Niketown on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, the juice-colored gear cooing promises of better split times. The pre-race presence of Swoosh was grating.

But then I was running. I was in the race. The morning had been rainy and it was still overcast. The foliage popped against the gelatin print sky. Ahead of me were the backs of hundreds of runners all wearing the same primary red t-shirts. They streamed around the curve in the road. We looked like Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates, set in motion and fluttering in crimson instead of saffron. We were in bas-relief to the park.

Running races are like therapy sessions held en masse and outdoors. Running is largely a sport defined by the individual. Its fuel – its “goo” – are personal rituals, neuroses, preferences, wishes. Its boundaries are defined by an individual’s weight, height, muscle tone, mood, attitude, genes, training, and ability to convert fuel to energy and maximize oxygen. Normally, all of this becomes a slurry of one’s own making: 6 a.m. or noon, a glass of water or juice and half of a banana, a threadbare cotton t-shirt or compression tights, the Dirty Projectors or an inner monologue about an argument the night before. Runners indulge specificity and the self. At a race, neuroses get a stage. We observe each other’s ticks and read anxieties. We take part in a false battle, charging ahead as group in order to feel part of a group, but with as many individual enemies as we are runners. For 46:32 or 1:06 or 3:36 we are alone together, spitting, or breathing loudly, or imagining we are water over stone, water over stone, like the Tao says. After the finish line, public catharsis and coffee. Or Gatorade.

Beneath a canopy of trees shading a makeshift dance floor, Justin Carter spins disco music that carries over the Gowanus Canal’s murky water, down Carroll Street, past the brownstones, tricycles, and misplaced luxury condos, until it reaches the sidewalk, pulling me closer toward a Brooklyn summer afternoon. It’s Labor Day weekend. It’s also the conclusion of the Sunday Best series, a weekly dance party held all summer at the BKLYN Yard, a ramshackle, verdant lot on the banks of the canal. Every Sunday, huaraches, sangria, and hours of daytime dancing attract hipsters, house-heads, and wannabes — and, this time, me.

A security guard glances at my ID, studies me noticeably longer, and then nods. I’m in. Ten bucks later, I enter a sprawling, disheveled world that is miles (and at least ten subway stops) from my usual stomping ground. Loud, pulsating music reverberates off the brick buildings that tower around the lot. Most are covered in graffiti, and to the left, a rusting blue bridge hovers above water that has grown toxic after decades of sewage and industrial sludge. Here among the wreckage — countless fold-up chairs arranged in misshapen circles, beat-up, torn-open furniture, sticky picnic tables — the scene comes alive.

The crowd is thick with girls in oversized sunglasses and outfits I didn’t even know could be outfits. Boys sport skinny jeans and checkered shirts — or forgiving jeans, potbellies, and checkered shirts. Burgeoning hipster families tote babies and mutts. There is every race, color, and tattoo imaginable, because anyone belongs here, even me, my running sneakers, and boot-cut jeans (circa 2002).

From within this colorful human palate, disco music rises. At the mouth of the dance floor, Carter hovers between the turntables and records. He is short, soft, and bearded, wearing Nantucket reds and a striped t-shirt. He manipulates the music with ease, a wordless stream of beats and crescendos. His head bounces, and as the song intensifies, Carter’s shoulders lurch forward, his spine bending into a gentle C.

The dance floor is nothing more than a slab of concrete beneath trees, Christmas lights, and a dangling disco ball. Yet it heaves with people, and as I watch from a brown leather chair, the mob grows genderless. All I see are arms shaking. Floral patterns spinning. Shaved heads and anorexic bodies (on both guys and girls) pulsing. Someone wearing a bracelet made of bullets gyrates against anything that moves. And there, two guys light a joint, sucking hard and exhaling towards a barefoot toddler.

Unexpectedly, I hear words. Words! “I’m in…into your love.”  Beat. Beat. “I’m in…into your love.”

Everyone chants along, including me, and as the afternoon bleeds into evening, I start to feel what they’ve felt this entire time: an intense desire to dance. I abandon my chair and submerge myself into that sandpit of sweaty strangers. Carter may be the main attraction, but we feed his music, and as the disco ball twirls above our heads, the song beats louder, harder, until just like that, it’s time to go home.