dressed for the party

friday, 11 a.m, headed towards Soho, i detour along my favorite Bleeker Street, intimate and charming and fully dressed for Halloween. it happens to be about an hour before all open for the day and i am catching a behind the scenes take on familiar haunts....

black crows and bats in the windows at marc jacobs, a scarecrow with a vintage sugar sack at RRL, and a clever line up at Jack Spade - take out meets astronaut meets banana for a kind of Project Runway display.

little marc teases with a full size web made of elastic cable cords, and at Ralph kids, a Jack-O-lantern on a grand scale lighting up the street by sheer virtue of size and color alone!

at Mary's Fish Camp on west 4th, staff on counter stools folding oversize white cloth napkins.  quiet, industrious, they share their own pre opening moments.

Silvano signs for his daily produce outside on 6th Ave. there he is, green glasses, green scarf and green jeans, leaning on the cartons on this crisp fall morning, yellow and orange mums neat in a row beside him, colors ablaze in the trees above. visions of pumpkin ravioli race through my head....

i turn the corner onto west 4th and walk a few yards, hair blowing wildly in the high wind. a man calls to me from the sidewalk. earnestly and emphatically, he says, " Nice Afro. THANK you, for keeping the Afro alive."   i smile and thank him and carry on with my day, curls on parade, my own accidental costume du jour...