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Vintage Shopping Like An Internal Grandma
As an introvert in a new city, I've found Meetup to be a really fun, useful app for finding people to hang out with and to exp...
As an introvert in a new city, I've found Meetup to be a really fun, useful app for finding people to hang out with and to explore new places around town. A new Meetup group in my area, dubbed The Internal Grandmas, caught my eye recently, and I had to click to find out more.
The description couldn't have fit my interests better: 'for people who like antique stores, going to the movies, and museums.' Count me in, homie! I joined without a second thought and attended our first event earlier today. Obviously it went well since I literally said my goodbye's and immediately drove to a coffee shop to document our 3 hours together.
We met at a local diner for brunch, then visited two vintage shops in a popular area of town known for its bevy of Mid Century Modern shops and stylishly re-done apartment complexes. Everyone meshed really well and it was super fun. Not to mention it's so nice to be around people that appreciate 80s sequined tops and a good Segway Tour joke.
Here are too many iPhone snaps of our vintage treasure hunt. I managed to find a few things which I'll share sometime in the future, unless I forget. Peace!
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Thoughts on Bad Feminist
I'll admit: I stopped reading this book around page 196. I did eventually come back and read the rest—I literally finished it 5...
I'll admit: I stopped reading this book around page 196.
I
did eventually come back and read the rest—I literally finished it 5 minutes before typing this—but only months later, after it had been sitting on my "Currently Reading" Goodreads shelf for what felt like too long. Contrary to her self-identified state as a feminist, Roxane Gay is (clearly) not a Bad Writer.
In fact, I blew through the first several essays in this collection simply because I found her opinion/point of view on everything from teaching to fucking
Sweet Valley High
to be nothing short of riveting. For a week, I carried my copy with me everywhere, receiving a strange, secret pleasure every time I pulled it out on public transit (I feel like anything with
Feminist/m
in the title carries an air of defiance). Her prose is inviting, and her writing style feels almost conspiratorial—like she assumes her reader is not only on the same page (ha) with what she is saying, but would, if given the opportunity, have several paragraphs of reasonably informed opinion to add. That is not to say that Gay assumes her readers will agree with everything she has to say, or even understand where she—an American woman of Haitian descent—is coming from. Gay simply writes with an air of relatability that is reflective, I think, of the current cultural climate.
Everything and everyone is subject to a think-piece.
This relatability is what makes
Bad Feminist
so interesting overall, but somehow made the final quarter of the book slightly tedious to wade through. I like that Gay seems like she could live in the apartment next door to me; she has a tumblr; we are friends on Goodreads. At the same time, it sometimes seemed as though 140 characters would suffice and an admittedly sharp analysis of, say,
12 Years A Slave
just felt a little, eh, overgrown.
I think, really, I should have let the book breathe. In fact, I'll suggest this book works best when given time to simmer. Read a few essays at a time. Skip around, dammit. Resist the urge to swallow these words whole (or in two very separate parts, like I did). Hell, page 196 is in the middle of a particularly astute/juicy review of E. L. James'
classic
Fifty Shades trilogy. How could I have stopped there?
Bad Feminist
is not perfect, but it is—and I'd like to emphasize this, in case I've made it sound otherwise—very, very interesting. Gay's tale of how she joined the world of competitive chess is fascinating, as if she's describing someone's gradual initiation into, I don't know, the Yakuza. I added at least three titles to my "To Read" shelf because of this book. Reading her writing makes me want to read more. To write more. To be willing to dissect the things I think are great
and
awful. To consider myself, as a woman and as a feminist.
This is a fine collection of work and I look forward to reading whatever comes next.
/
I also posted this review on
Goodreads
, which is my new favorite thing.
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