Mia's Workshop at Shag

A few years ago I experienced a kind of revelation about myself, or at the very least, a moment of self discovery that had been buried beneath the surface my entire life but for whatever reason.

I came to realize that my feelings and thoughts about love and sexuality and relationships were a lot more broad than I knew. That I'd always been this way but hadn't given myself permission to open up.

Caveat, for some of you may find this might be TMI. I'm going to do my best to reveal enough to be clear and not enough to scare anyone off.

I like some kink in my sex...it's not a deal breaker necessarily, but I strongly prefer it...and there are certain things involving rope and a willing subject that really work for me.

I also more and more believe in open relationships. This, you likely already know about me from previous blog entries but there it is nonetheless.

I believe that the greatest threat to love/marriage/relationships is rigid rules that have more to do with societal expectations and standards than they do with the human drives for love, companionship and sex. I've even half heartedly defended jerks like Mark Sanford on this blog...(However, John Edwards is indefensible. He's an ass of the first order and I am embarrassed beyond belief that I wanted him to win the Democratic Primaries over Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But that's another story.) I believe that if we had more realistic understandings of the human heart, human desire  we would be able to love eachother more honestly, with more compassion and more understanding and more maturity.

A few years ago I started attending a monthly meeting of polyamorists in New York, but not long into that I started working nights and so my involvement in the community faded.

One of the blessings of my recent unemployment is that my time has freed up and I've been able to attend some events that have enabled me to reacquaint myself with the "alternative" communities that interest me. I've also been lucky enough to win a LOT of freebies lately which I take a sign that I'm on the right track on a personal level.

One of the things I won was a free ticket to attend Mia Martina's workshop on open relationships at Shag, a new sex positive shop in the trendy section of Brooklyn known as Williamsburg. (Some of you might remember my walk over the Williamsburg Bridge last year into a part of this area and Greenpoint.)

I've been listening to Mia's podcast almost since the very beginning. I think at her third entry. It's been about 2 years or so I think. To me, it's an incredibly brave podcast. I think anyone that writes about their sexual exploits and adventures and mixes it with the bittersweet experiences of love and relationships are among the bravest people that can be. When I got onto Twitter I started following her there too.

A few weeks ago I actually got the opportunity to meet Mia at In The Flesh  and was thrilled to discover that she is as sexy as her voice suggests as well as very sweet. She bought me a drink and we had a great talk. I've seen her twice since at other events and even got to meet her boyfriend once, who also strikes me as a rather excellent human being.  So when I lucked out and managed to win a free pass to her workshop last night I was thrilled.

Shag is a terrific little shop. It's not like other sex shops you think of...if you don't look carefully as you pass by you would think it was just a nice little shop of hand crafted art and chachkes. A closer look or a glance at the wall where large graphic pictures of anime sex fantasies will clue you in rather suddenly though. I met Sam, one of the owners, a very nice and sexy woman herself and she led me downstairs where the workshop had already started (thank you VERY much G train for sucking even more than I had planned on).

Mia gave us handouts with brilliant recommendations on reading, podcasts and thoughts. She spoke about the nature of the communication one needs in open relationships and she defined the different types (with help from Tristan Taormino's book). She also handed out a sheet of questions regarding our own feelings and beliefs about relationships, emotions surrounding those beliefs. It was fun to see Mia read off some of the answers and discuss them.

There were a few other folks I know from Twitter there. And one I didn't realize until this morning. This made it even more fun.

I won't go into too much detail on the workshop itself...you should go to Mia for that and if you're in NYC you should attend her workshops which I am sure will be happening more frequently. Suffice it to say that it was great to meet others who are interested and to share experiences and notes and knowledge.

Mia's in open relationships of one kind or another for some time and she had great tips gleaned from her successes and misses and very funny stories about her own sexual/relationship journey.

If you're in New York, go to Shag...it really is marvelous and unique...and if you have an opportunity to hear Mia read her material DO SO. Subscribe to her podcast or listen to it from her website...But start from the beginning because there's an arc to it.

Below are books that are part of Mia's recommended reading. I concur. If you are at all curious about open relationships, whether casually or more personally, these are great books to read.

My Sunday Walk, Part 4

Clearly on the Brooklyn side and past the river, the signs of "gentrification are impossible to miss. As you descend the walkway onto Broadway this stamp is frequent. It's a little late for the sentiment, the hipsters took Williamsburg over awhile ago. Some of the improvements have been just that, others have taken the personality out and turned Brooklyn into Greenwich Village Lite. But at least there's some place you can find a semblance of the Greenwhich Village that was. In the meantime, the city gets more and more expensive to live in.

The southern walkway descends quickly and you can see the exit signs for the southern roadway as we sink below rooftops. The cupola of the HSBC Bank ahead, I believe was once the actual Williamsburg Bank before the downtown Brooklyn clocktower.


Here we are...the odd rooftops and unique Brooklyn attitude. Fuckin aye, you name it, we got it.

You get to the bottom and here you find this awesome statue of George Washington off of Roebling Street. It's really strong and stunning to behold. Here is the NY Times article from its unveiling in 1906. It's a PDF, so you will need Acrobat Reader.

And now...on to the journey to Mexican Coke...

My Sunday Walk, Part 3

Blogger, apparently, insists that pics and text lay out so that it looks like comments are supposed to be above the picture. Fuck that, I don't work that way. I like pic comments on the bottom, so bear with me on the spacing in the wrong place.

Looking north into midtown Manhattan. It is really mind blowing to see it all out there and the vast sky beyond and above it. The East River is much more interesting and windy than most give it credit for. Technically its not really a river, but who cares.

The walkway FINALLY opens up and you can see the Tower fully and the sky above it. If you click on the pic you can get a better sense of the incredible steel work and its impressive height. Some might say that the reveal after all that overhead beaming is meant to be dramatic. If they do....they are wrong. I wasn't filled with a sense of dramatic awe. I was relieved to finally see what should be visible from the get go. I really would have ended up disliking the walk intensely over all if this hadn't happened.

These are southern views. The first shows how sharply the river turns west. At a certain angle, it seems that the river is stopped suddenly. Oddly beautiful, especially when crossing the bridge toward Brooklyn at night when its all lights and darkness. Then you turn and see the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges in the distance. I love this aspect of the view.

The J Train on its way to Williamsburg and eventually Jamaica Queens. When I was a kid living in Bushwick, this was my train home, though at the time it had a different letter designation to it. It remains elevated the whole way. When we used to take class trips to museums in Manhattan, the bridge had a lot of boarding that blocked the view from the train. One of my friends said they were building a new tunnel because the river water was rising so high that the bridge would be underwater in a few years. Being 6 or 7 years of age, we bought it and were terrified. That memory cracks me up.
The now abandoned Domino Sugar plant. Soon to become abandoned Condominiums under the present economy. Another childhood memory, crossing this bridge and smelling the thick scent of sugar, much like when we used to smell baking bread from the Silvercup Bakery when crossing the Queensborough Bridge.

Two more views of the plant as we venture further into the Brooklyn end. I took these because there's such a beautiful and creepy gothic feel to this structure along side the early 60s addtion that I was fascinated and charmed and thrilled by it. I am glad that they will be keeping the signage, as they did with Silvercup and PepsiCola.

A final look at Manhattan, taken from my iPhone.

To be continued...

My Sunday Walk, Part 2

The incline on the walkway is quite merciful. Takes a while to get up there and with my hip issue it worked nicely for me. But I found the sense of being caged rather annoying. The view, which is really good, is marred by making me keenly aware of what its like to be a hamster. I wasn't thrilled.

See what I mean? For me, most of the walk was a mix of enjoying the beauty of the view and day and wanting to take bolt cutters and remove every inch of this wire fence so I could actually enjoy the expanse and beauty the bridge reveals. I will show you more on the Wednesday post where sometimes I managed to get the camera between wires, but it limited the angle I was able to get.

Here too, the overhead beams, which later disappear and make me suspect they are structurally unnecessary, entirely block what would be an amazing view of the western tower of the bridge. Williamsburg Bridge, for all its bad structural history, is a beautiful example of late 19th century industrial revolution architecture. But you can't really admire it on this walk going toward Brooklyn and that's a real shame. Also the red paint is odd and very out of place against the battleship gray of the bridge itself. Also it contrasts the view.
Poor KB. She's going to think I hate this walk. I don't, I'm just somewhat disappointed by aspects of it.
Here you can see the Western Tower at last. The walkway splits into northern and southern paths and you can look beyond to see it. Still fencing in the way, but really cool.

Again my feelings are split on this one. This is the construction plaque that names the bridge and the date it opened (December 19, 1903), as well as the Board of Bridges and the mayor of New York at the time (Seth Low).
The grafitti both delights and annoys me. I assume it was kept in this condition as a kind of marker of the neglect the bridge received for so many years, which I appreciate. It is a bit like the rectangle of still dirty ceiling at Grand Central Station to demonstrate how extensive the restoration work was. It reminds me of my youth in NYC when it was dirty and crime ridden and in some ways desolate. I know I know, I'm one of the sickos that misses skeevy Times Square too. More on that another time.

The frustrating part is that of course, you can't read the damned plaque and the colors are just as jarring as the red walkway.

To be continued.....

My Sunday Walk, Part 1

KB_in_NYC has been telling me to walk the Williamsburg Bridge for awhile now on Twitter and this Sunday I finally had time to do it.

I integrated the walk with a plan that I'd had to locate Mexican Coca Cola which had been rumored to be sweetened with cane sugar and the closest thing you could get to the original formula without actual cocaine in it. A friend at work had told me about a place in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn that had it.

So, cross the bridge, walk through part of Williamsburg and into Greenpoint, acquire said Coke and head home...a fun urban hike of a Sunday.

So, I put on my shorts and a light shirt, my Teva sandals and took my sumac root walking stick and got onto the F train to Delancey street in Manhattan.

Blogger was doing odd things to my post today and I had to run to work...so I begin briefly:


My home street in Brooklyn before getting on the subway. Seemed a perfect place to shoot the sky to give you a sense of what a beautiful day it was. Ahead is Fulton Street.


The Essex Street Market just off Delancey Street. This is about the only thing left of the old Delancey area. Delancey Street has become what I think of as an urban strip mall of cookie cutter shops. Gone are the picklers and clothiers and wonderful ethnic restaurants and bakeries. New York, the city of reinvention has lost its imagination.

Having said that, this building does display some imagination and engineering innovation, though it is atrocious looking and completely out of place in this neighborhood. I look at it and expect Harrison Ford to fly down in his cop car and knock me over while chasing Joanna Gleason.

The Williamsburg Bridge, looking toward Brooklyn from Delancey Street. The red walkway seems so odd and out of place, but inclines well and adds dimension to this historically troubled but to my mind beautiful bridge. Up until a few years ago, there was not a day in the existence of this bridge in which it wasn't under some kind of repair work. Seriously, from its opening there were so many things wrong with the construction of the bridge, it was in a constant state of reconstruction and repair.

A brief view looking north from the walkway while still over Manhattan. You can see the Chrysler building among others. The view is great though I found the "chicken wire", presumably meant to prevent "jumping" to be an annoying distraction from this amazing view.

To be continued.....

Sunday Almost To The Park With John

As is usually the case with New York, we went from early spring straight into summer with near 90 degree weather today.

I was going to spend the day doing laundry but it was too good a day and after yesterday I needed to just do a kind of nothing, so to speak.

Here are pics of the walk a took. A shortened walk because I left with so much enthusiasm for the day that I left my wallet, and thus my ability to snack and water in the part, in my room.


Two more of the several Victorian mansions in my neighborhood. It really makes me happy knowing that they are still intact and in communities that want them. Not as elaborate as the one from my previous blog,but very beautiful.




A very interesting entrance. In need of TLC, these kinds of places make me wish I was rich.



These are the greatest sandals in the world. Kamiks. Incredibly comfortable and the next best thing to being barefoot. Got them out of storage yesterday and my feet are born again. That's my cane in there too.


The Brooklyn Museum, where I realized Mr. Wallet was sitting on my desk at home and it was time to turn back now or my hip and knee would make me suffer the consequences. That's my stupid finger just above the shooting fountain. It was glary and I haven't quite mastered the lense on my iPhone yet.

I then went down Eastern Parkway, back to my street.

You rarely see these old black glass and neon signs anymore in New York. They go back to the 30s. I was thrilled to see this on an otherwise unremarkable street. So nice to see a pharmacy in the city that isn't Duane Reade, CVS or Rite Aid.

I love Bay Windows and this row of apartment buildings charmed me. I also loved the small, very homey entrances. It felt almost storybookish to me.

After that I was getting tired from the heat and no water and indeed, my hip and knee were expressing their displeasure with me. So I went back home, rested a bit and got to some laundry eventually.

All in all, a good Sunday and a pleasant end to an all too short weekend.

By the way, this last episode of DOLLHOUSE, entitled "Haunted" was the best yet. Ok, that wasn't so by the way. But hey, its me.