Sweating on a Bench in Coney Island

I was so hot I did a photo project about how to stay cool.

I’m a very busy girl. I know it, you know it. The whole world knows it! When you’ve got big dreams and an attitude, you have no choice but to be a very busy girl.

For the past four hours I have been sitting in the upstairs Starbucks area of the Union Square Barnes and Noble. I am wearing all white, sunburnt, and staring down at the Van Leeuwen ice cream cart in Union Square pondering whether or not it would be okay to visit them twice in one day.

Despite yesterday being Wednesday, I was out partying and shaking my booty to Mac Demarco’s instrumental music. Not really. I was at the concert, but I was not shaking my booty. He wasn’t really playing shaking your booty type music. I was scurrying around the venue taking photos though. Then I was up very late eating a Cuban sandwich and editing the pictures alone at the kitchen table.

The pictures needed to be edited last night so that today, at this very Barnes and Noble, I could write a 500-word review of the concert and turn in the ten best pictures for my editor. I am currently doing a concert photography project during the month of July for Parsons, but the way I am able to get into most of these concerts is by working with a music magazine, Melodic Mag, and requesting press passes under that regard. The Mac DeMarco concert was one of those scenarios, and now in addition to presenting my photos at our first project critique tomorrow in class, I also have to turn in my pictures and review to my editor by 6 p.m. tonight for posting.

All work and no play makes Calihan a dull boy! I also regularly say that I need 10 hours of sleep a night to function which I definitely did not get last night. In addition to all this big girl work, it was not a good day to stay up late though, as today my class spent the entire day in Coney Island.

If you’ve never been to NYC in July, good for you! You have probably sweat a whole lot less than me. After five hours of sleep I awoke like I was rising from the dead to pull on white gym shorts, a white tank top, and put my hair in two space buns on the top of my head so I wouldn’t have to worry about sticking by head under the faucet to activate my curly hair like I do every other morning. We met in our classroom then when everyone arrived (and we waited 15 extra minutes for the boy from LA who obviously is a conspiracy theorist that doesn’t believe in the sun as he thinks the world revolves around him), we all got on the subway together and took it until we saw the ocean.

The mission for the day was made clear to us by our professor wearing a pair of baggy capris. Every other day he wore black skinny jeans. Although I am a hater of skinny jeans as much as every other Gen Zer, I appreciate the commitment to the uniform and they fit his vibe, so I was alright with it. The LA boy once again proved he had a conspiracy theory about the legitimization of the sun as he wore all black and about three layers.

But alas, I had a mission and therefore had no space in my brain to be contemplating either of their wardrobe choices. We were to use our day to come up with a photo project and complete that project, which we would then present to the class when we got back to our computer lab at the end of the day. My friend Azura chose to focus on the color red. In this highly commercialized place, red was a very easy find. Another girl, Abilene, decided to just take pictures of people swimming in the ocean. I’m pretty sure she got yelled at once because she doesn’t really understand the idea of personal space or that someone wouldn’t want their picture taken. She just walks right up to someone and takes their picture without fright.

As we walked up and down the boardwalk, the heat outside quickly rose on the list of things I was thinking about. By golly it’s not even humid outside but it is so hot! Azura had to lend me her sunscreen multiple times, as I am still an irresponsible child when it comes to putting on sunscreen. I had to venture into three different establishments and beg them to fill up my water bottle as I was religiously chugging the water. I decided that my project would be centered around exactly that – different ways people stay cool while enjoying their time at Coney Island.

This involved channeling my inner Abilene and taking pictures of people swimming in the ocean or walking down the beach with their feet in the water (though I took them from the pier so that they wouldn’t see me), catching shots of people buying drinks, and others of people riding their bikes down the boardwalk taking in any kind of wind they might find from going fast. I was projecting about being hot, but isn’t that what art is all about?

In reality I am actually a very big fan of the heat. When it got to be April and May when I was living in Phoenix it would be over 100 degrees most days and I would bike to the river park in the middle of the day after classes and then go for a run. I generally had the entire park to myself at these times.

For a late lunch we stopped at Nathan’s Famous, where the hot dog eating contest happens every year on the 4th of July. To the disappointment of my family, friends, and professor I decided to opt out of having a hot dog and instead eat a hamburger. The last time I ate a hotdog was when Lennon and I were driving across the western USA for a week and we decided to get some protein instead of our normal diet of Cheerios, oranges, and peanut butter sandwiches. We bought some hot dogs at the store and cooked them over a fire on sticks we found on the ground, and since we did not think to buy buns we also ate them right off those same sticks. It was a good vibe at the moment but not a good overall hot dog experience. I now have what psychologists call “taste aversion” to hot dogs.

I have a friend who is oddly obsessed with hot dogs though. I’m on his Instagram close friends story and every single day I can expect to see a post about hot dogs. His name is Zaiden and he was the editor in chief of the student newspaper last year while I was a section editor. Every time I saw the man he had a different important question for me. 

“Tell me, A or B. Challenge A, you have to eat one hot dog an inning for the entire game. Challenge B, you have an entire day to walk a marathon but you have to eat a hot dog after every mile.”

I would respond to him, “I would do neither, I do not like hot dogs.”

“But listen, I said one hot dog every inning, which means if the game went over you would potentially have to eat more than 9 hot dogs.”

These were the kinds of questions I would have to field every Sunday morning when I walked into the newsroom at 9 a.m. partially hungover and wholly stressed out every week. Blakely, who was also an editor, claimed that she thought it was his weird way of flirting with me.

The Saturday before the Super Bowl he made us all stop working and turn our attention to the white board where he had erased all our pitches for the week and instead put up six different columns. Each column detailed the food offered in different restaurant’s meal packages and their price. He made a bracket for them and had all the editors vote on where he would get the best food for the least amount of money until we all came to a conclusion.

Anyways, I sent a picture of Nathan's Famous sign to Zaiden. He had never spoken on the hot dog eating contest before in front of me, but using the context clues he has previously provided me, I figured he must be a fan. I also sent the picture to my high school friend, Verena, who had a period of her life during one field hockey season in which she was obsessed with hot dog eating competitions. She is the reason that I know competitors dunk the dogs in water before eating them so they slide down throats easier, which is not something a person needs to know about or know how to do!

The hamburger was good though. After we ate Azura, our friend Echo, and I convinced the entire class to ride on the ferris wheel with us even though everyone was tired and wanted to get on the subway back to Manhattan. A glorious view they got to see because of us!

Back in Manhattan we were given 15 minutes after exiting the subway at Union Square before we needed to be back in the class. Azura, Echo, and I took this time to run over to the Van Leeuwen ice cream cart and stick our heads into the ice cream containers. We all got vegan chocolate in a waffle cone and were happily licking it as we walked back into the computer lab for class.

“Generally I would say no ice cream cones in the computer lab, but I’ll make an exception today, just don’t ruin the computers,” our professor said laughing. He could not bear to rid us of our happiness.

We edited our photos and presented them to the class. My project came out as follows:

That brings us up to almost the present moment. After getting out of class I ran back to our apartment to eat some grilled chicken before heading to the Barnes and Noble I am sitting at now.

I have been nursing a cold green tea for the past four hours so I am able to continue sitting at this table that is situated right at the window and directly below an air conditioning unit. For the first time all day I am feeling… slightly chilly?

Yours truly,

Calihan

P.S. If you don’t get the joke in the title you probably aren’t listening to enough Taylor Swift.