Fashion for Life

Prim & Proper-Kadeem Johnson, Bronx, NY



The Great Gatsby-Linda Lunstedt, Goteburg Sweden

Lookbook.nu with its fashion pics from around the world is seductive, cool and a little addictive.

Dawoud Bey after dark

Another night of MAM After Dark has come and gone. It’s the Milwaukee Art Museum’s way of getting people to come to museum under false pretenses. I suspect they don’t really care if you like the food or the entertainment so long as you see the art. The food and entertainment are the bate. That’s fine with me. The night featured old school hip-hop. True Skool brought the breakdancers and graffiti art. The movie “Beat Street” played in the Lubar Auditorium, and by DJ Tarik Moody of 88Nine Radio Milwaukee brought the music.

The crowd was large and energetic although there were moments when I sensed the event needed a little more direction. People needed to be told what to do, instructed on how to party. I spotted quite a few wall flowers standing around or sitting on the floor. And being that I’d already scene at lot of the art on display I quickly ran out of ways to occupy myself between breakdance sessions.

One display I had not seen was a group of portraits called Class Pictures taken of high school students from around the country by photographer Dawoud Bey. He’s been a photographer for over thirty years and a professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago since 1998. The purpose of the project in Bey’s own words is “to create a compelling and significant contemporary portrait of American youth in its various social and human dimensions.”

Each extra large, color portrait is accompanied by a description of the subject written by the subject. We see the image of the tall, handsome teenage boy, with steely eyes and read that he is really a mama’s boy and misses his family. We see the “pretty girl” who speaks for languages. Bey creates, by including the teens own statements about themselves an opportunity to view and understand the individual; and possibly relate through the memory of what it was like to be a teenager full of plans and expectations, but lacking life experience.

I just wish Bey could have gotten more of the teens to let their guard down physically. Except for a few they all appeared to me as angry teenagers at first glance, which of course they weren’t. Bey seemed to mainly capture a hardness, and standoffish air teens tend to carry in their body language. And of course what’s missing is the teens who aren’t in school, the drop outs and the runaways. The show runs to July 12, 2009. Examples of Bey’s other works can be found at his web site www.dawoudbey.net.

It's Sat night and I need a beat

So I finally got up off my ass to go out on a Saturday night and hear some local music. I want to see and hear what Milwaukee really has to offer. For years I been putting it off and for years I’ve heard the complaints that Milwaukeeans don’t support the local music scene.

Thanks to 88nine Radio Milwaukee I’ve heard more and more local bands get air time. Which is a good start. The results are mixed. Some of the groups are headed in the right direction. Some need to end their suffering now and just break up. But what I really want to experience is the live music.

My first night out in a long time I dragged my boyfriend across town with two options in mind, Code Breaker and Those XCleavers. We headed to the Stonefly Brewery first to check out Codebreaker. They’ve gotten respectable air time on 88nine with “Fire” and “Riviera On The Moon.“ Their music is a cool and breezy throw back to disco, laden with funk and danceable beats, so I was prepared to get up. The show was scheduled to start at 10pm. We got there at 10:30pm and the band was still sitting up. I had a feeling they’d get a late start as that seems to be the norm around here. But when you’re pushing forty and used to getting up and going to work five days a week going out on a Saturday night is a major operation. I don’t want to sit and wait for a band to start. So we got up and walked around the neighborhood to see what else was going on at the other bars.

We followed cool crowds of black clad twenty-somethings until they disappeared into nothingness. I wanted to cool like them and not care about were I was going or when I’d be home, because only the moment mattered. But it was 11pm and I was pissed and tired and still needed to justify being in a bad neighborhood late at night with a middle-aged white man who’s sweet, but not nearly tough. Only live music could justify me and there was none to be had.

We soon realized there was nothing to see but a couple of fully krausened drunks mumbling to themselves and made our way back to Stonefly. Code Breaker still wasn’t set up. I must admit my expectations were low for Code Breaker as I’d witnessed them walk off the stage mid-song once before when they suddenly decided the sound wasn‘t up to their standards.

As the night was wasting away and we still hadn’t had the chance to hear any live music we headed off to the ever crowded and lively Brady Street to the Up and Under Pub. Brady Street is like a cool dream and a nightmare. I drew energy from the crowds of younger women who remind me for myself when I was in my twenties running around in the middle of the night trying to get high, look good and searching for the secret something that only existed in clubs, beats and cigarettes smoke. The nightmare is driving in circles looking for a parking space, vaguely worrying about getting hit up for money by a homeless guy or mugged.

We were lucky enough to find a parking space after only ten minutes of driving in circles, strolled down to the spot only to find that
Those XCleavershad cancelled. I have a vague memory of this band from the eighties. I was expecting to see a bunch of middle-aged punk rockers trying to make a come back. Maybe they were too tired to play. I did manage to dig up some very worn videos of “Confusion(Do The)” "Mondo Commando" and they sound better than they look.





I was fighting sleep, but didn’t want to give upon the night just yet, so we stopped in Rochambo for a game of Operation and a soda. We called somewhere round midnight.
I will not give up. I want to see what the musicians and performers of this city have to offer.