This week in the Village Voice, former Pitch staffer and VV columnist Annie Fischer writes about reliving Kansas City's 18th Street Mardi Gras traditions at a Brooklyn opening.
The God of Indulgence (and Anthropologie)
On the weekend of September 15, local artist David Ford, who owns YJ's Snack Bar and several 18th Street buildings in the Crossroads, flew a crew (or, rather krewe) for a performance-art-y opening at Jack the Pelican Presents in Williamsburg. The opening/party centered around a Latin-American deity known as St. Maximon. Attendees witnessed the out-jazz of KC combo Snuff Jazz and the guerilla antics of 18th Street favorite the Dirty Force Brass Knuckle Street Band. Costumes were worn. Drunkeness was attained. Bacon was cooked.
Bitch was owned, son.
Image courtesy JackthePelicanPresents.org
People were invited to leave offerings upon Maximon's shrine -- articles that represented their worst vices. For Ms. Fischer, it was vodka and receipts from Anthropologie.
She writes:
[Ford] received funding in 2001 from the Charlotte Street Foundation, an organization there dedicated to the support of visual arts; since then, "The Saint" has become something of a private tradition in Kansas City. Six years later, Ford was invited to stage Maximon at Jack the Pelican Presents, an attempt to replicate the sense of familiarity that's become a given in the Midwest. "In KC, there's such a plethora of space and this super-furtive underground ... we'd have these celebrations in flooded caves and abandoned warehouses, where you'd find out an hour beforehand where to go and then have to be picked up, etc.," he says. "For this, it had to be repackaged, obviously. But I'm really happy with the result."
Don't it just make you proud to live here? -- Jason Harper
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There's also a slideshow of the evening.
http://www.villagevoice.com/ga...
Evidently, Maximon was played by an actual person (i.e., not the man/thing in the poster photo, which was from a past year). I can't tell who he is, but I don't think he's the sort I'd be giving my booze to. I'm all for making offerings to the gods, but waking up beside one of them is a different matter.
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