This photo is the one we went with for the Photo Greeting Card. The rule was that when you smiled, both your top and bottom rows of teeth had to be visible. Otherwise it wasn't a true "Holiday Cheer" smile.
The Construction-Themed Holiday Shot. (At this point, we'd been renovating our loft space for the last 6 months and one of these seemed appropos.) Dzija with googles and expanding foam insullation, Amy with extension cord, Barlow with dry-wall gun and helmet, me with cordless impact nail gun.
Me and one half of the newly-wed couple that was staying at the same resort as us. The crown of leaves that I'm wearing signifies that I was the Asshole of that particular round.
After a day at the beach, we headed back to the couple's house (I've since forgotten all these peoples' names, doh!) to some dinner and hang out. Kate and I on their balcony. Their house was at the top of one of highest points of St. Thomas and overlooked the water and several other islands.
On our fourth day, we headed to our resort's sister hotel for some big beach party. Here's a picture of me feeding lettuce from the salad bar to a wild iguana. No, I'm not kidding. They have wild iguanas there. At one point there were like 6 or 7 of them around me clammoring to be fed. And then I got yelled at for feeding them.
Here's me back on shore being laughed at by Kate 7 mintes later because I couldn't even naviage the boat out of the cove I was in. (There was a cross wind! A cross wind I tell you!).
On our third night, the resort we were staying at threw a big party complete with alcohol (free), giant buffet (not free, doh!), limboing and kareoke. Here's me rocking my ultra tough limbo skillz. At first glance, it might look like the guy in the white shirt is trying to help me under...well, he's not. Look more carefully and you'll see that this evil man is pushing me so that I'll fall. (Evil Man! Evil "My Teeth Look Like Baked Beans" Man! Curse you!)
I was so drunk I almost threw up on her stomach trying to choke down a buch of spray whipped cream mixed with whatever it was that they poured into her belly button. But hey, FREE DRINKS!
Eveything was running on schedule right up to the last leg of our trip to the airport when we realized that the Belt Parkway was closed. We ended up having to take some crazy ass detour and as a result we didn't arrive in time for our flight's check in. I showed up at the gate and the woman at the counter starts shaking her head and goes "Uh-uh." I was like "What do you mean 'Uh-uh'?"...then I had a heart attack. It turns out there was another flight and she hooked us up. Here's us with our newly issued tix.
The denizens of the future indoor tiki village in Greenpoint.
photo: Michael Sofronski
Raw Loft in Factory Building
Toni Schlesinger
Tuesday, September 5th 2000
Location Greenpoint Rent $1800 (commercial) Square feet 1400 Occupants Amy (freelance producer, artist's assistant); Andy (musician); Andrew (Web designer); Brian (record company employee)
We can't say what your last names are, because you are living in a commercial space that is not for residential use and you are not supposed to sleep here, though you can be here 24 hours a day working on your Web sites and such and "taking naps," like hundreds are doing all over Greenpoint and Williamsburg these days. [Brian] That's correct. [Amy] If you drive around the neighborhood, every other building is full of artists living in commercial spaces, factory buildings. When Brian's mother came to visit from New Jersey, she said the hall to the loft looks like a prison.
It's long and skinny, five feet wide with a metal floor, and there are all the doors to the other cells - I mean lofts. Cell Block D.
But the most important thing going on here is the indoor Polynesian village that you are building. When it's completed, each one of you will be living in your own Polynesian-inspired, bamboo-covered hut that will have two windows and its own door. Two of you will be living in second-story huts. [Brian] And we're going to have 10-foot palm trees, a bamboo-bridge walkway, and a Hawaiian wet bar below.
For the luaus. Then, as you come in, there's going to be a common living room, a workshop-garage area for our bikes and tools, a linen closet . . .
Are you re-creating the suburbs?
Actually, I framed houses for two summers in New Jersey.
What is your budget? All said and done, $5500. It's divided between three of us. The fourth person, Andy, is just renting from us for $800. That means three of us are only paying only $333 each.
How did you arrive at the indoor-village concept? Most loft livers just make rooms. You're not architects from Rotterdam or something? [Andrew] No, we were trying to find an easy way to divide the space. We were going by Home Depot and we saw these sheds. They're only 500 bucks. Brian and I got to talking and the idea evolved into more than just sheds. It should be a structured village where everyone's home would look like a house, the computer area could look like a school, a library building—Main Street, USA! But then we ended up deciding on a Polynesian tiki theme. I guess Brian and I watched the Hawaiian episodes of The Brady Bunch too many times. They go to Hawaii. Mr. Hanelei traps them in a cave. The whole thing starts because Jan finds the Taboo, this eight-inch-tall wooden tiki man, that brings bad luck. When Peter Brady hears this, he says, "Bad luck, come and get me." Then this heavy wall decoration almost falls on Peter. Jan finds a spider in her beach bag. Every time they have these accidents, Hawaiian music in the background goes toodle loodle loo. You never saw that episode? It's a three-parter.
There's a lot of construction going on here. One of us lives on an air mattress. I live on a bed that was donated by one of the Polish construction workers who was here before us. It's a Battlestar Galactica mattress with little spaceships.
How fun. Not if you had to sleep on it. We're living in filth and we wake up with paint chips on our faces. I don't know how many mosquito bites I have. We leave the windows open and there're no screens. We've got factory windows.
When's the bamboo coming?The bamboo is coming much later. You can get it if you go to bamboopoles.com or something. I ordered a Hawaiian-lady lamp on eBay. But the dude never sent it.
BONEHEAD MISTAKE #2: In order to fit two levels inside, we needed to make the first floor ceiling's shorter than code...which meant we'd need to trim about 8" off of all of the pre-fab door we bought. I took my door off the hinges, measured it and cut it, only to realize that measure from the wrong side. So when I re-hung the door it looked like this.
I wish I'd been better about documenting the number of injuries we all sustained while building. I was ripping out a nail that gave way and the back of my arm caught on a sharp edge of a knot in the wood in the doorway I was standing in.
