Tag: writing

Experts Only Music Festival

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A couple of months ago, my mother called me up and asked me if I wanted to go to this “music thing” that she heard about in her neighborhood that weekend. I said yes, unaware that this “music thing” was the New York City music event of that weekend. 

It was the inaugural Experts Only festival, a music festival hosted by DJ John Summit on Randall’s Island. The DJ played house music the entire afternoon. 

Experts Only was the whole nine yards: food stalls, merch stands, beach balls bouncing off the top of the crowd, a woman dancing on stage at all times, and someone who was clearly on ecstasy and therefore not dancing at all to the beat. The whole thing was like a big high school football game, only instead of tailgating you’re eating from a food truck in the middle of a field surrounded by 300 strangers and instead of showing off your school spirit you’re showing off every inch of your body that you’re legally allowed to show.

I was entirely unprepared for the music festival that I walked into, wearing a long sleeve black shirt and jacket. I was the most fully clothed person there, aside from my mom. I looked like a narc.

Everywhere I looked, there were sheer body suits and crop tops. Ass crack and butterfly tattoos were also very much in, as were pashminas and chainmail waistbands. Influencers and wannabe influencers posed for pictures in their outfits. The event was in full swing.

We danced our way to the front of the crowd, squeezing through the mesh of bodies, and when we needed a break from the dancing, we sat in a field drinking vodka lemonades and eating street tacos. 

My mother nodded along to the music. I jumped up and down like a lunatic.

We got there in the early afternoon and then stayed late into the night, technically morning. At the end of the night, we caught the ferry, with me limping from how hard I danced. I ended up pulling a muscle in my leg and then freaking out that I had a varicose vein, because of how it was bulging out of my calf, but it was worth it to experience such an awesome music festival.

It’s not often that I get to be pleasantly surprised when an impromptu weekend hanging out with my mother turns into a wild night of drinking and dancing at a New York City music festival. My mother, despite having a good time, has decided not to join me next year.

This was my first time at a music festival, but I am determined for it not to be my last. This year, I will be sure to return to Expert’s Only in a crop top with my friends, ready to have more vodka lemonades and street tacos, like the twentysomething that I am. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Going to the Zoo

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Most zoos are underwhelming and disappointing. You bake in the heat, walking around a heat-baked, concrete zoo, only to see a handful of animals who look about as miserable and overheated as you do.

The Singapore Zoo is not such a zoo. The animals are actually on display, front and center, feeling close enough for you to touch them. 

At some point, everyone goes to the zoo

Unlike all of the zoos I’d been to in the past, there often was little to no barrier between the animals and the zoo patrons. This is as cool as it is terrifying. The animals are right in front of you, not hidden behind glass or cage bars. 

The tigers and lions roamed around their enclosures. The elephants sat around, their ears slapping the sides of their bodies.

I felt like a little kid again, thinking about what kind of animal I would be if I had to choose, and always picking one of the more exotic ones, like an elephant, giraffe, or a cheetah. 

You could see every type of monkey swinging in its enclosure.

Amusingly, the zoo has monkeys that are not part of the exhibits. Because the zoo backs up to a wooded area, monkeys from the jungle, but not the zoo, hang around. 

The people who work at the zoo handle this by shooing away the monkeys with the same energy that New Yorkers shoo away rats or pigeons. 

My aunt got into a fight with one such monkey who had gotten hold of a plastic bag that had been left behind by a tourist and my aunt was trying to pry it from its hands. It is hard to convey to a monkey that you are acting in its best interest by not letting it play with a torn plastic bag that it is wrapping around its head. 

Overall, we had a fun time going to the zoo. The Singapore Zoo is considered to be one of the more ethical zoos in the world due to its focus on conservation and restoration. All throughout the zoo are signs outlining the status of the animals as endangered animals on the brink of extinction and where they can be found– if they can be found– in the wild. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about the Singapore Botanic Garden

A Moveable Feast

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“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.”

–Hemingway, “A Moveable Feast”

After my couple of days of art museums, opera, and a cemetery, I decided to focus on purchasing two of the main things that I love: books and paintings.

Together, my aunt and I went in search of art. I’d seen enough movies and tv shows that romanticized the Parisian art scene to make me believe that there would be a starving artist on every street corner, hawking their wares to only the truest of art lovers (I’ve seen Titanic). That is a pretty old brochure for the city of love, as I learned when I walked the streets not seeing any intrepid young painters with easels sketching in the streets.

Undeterred, we ventured up Montmartre, one of the most picturesque parts of Paris, in order to get a view of the city from the basilica on top of the hill. We didn’t find any art there, but continued on throughout the city. 

No trip to Paris would be complete for an aspiring writer without making a pit stop at Cafe De Flore, an old stomping ground of Hemingway, Simone De Beauvoir, and Sartre, among others. 

Despite what other people will tell you about how the cafe is stodgy, overrun with tourists, and Instagram-famous (the biggest cardinal sin) I am willing to defend it. 

It is still a cute, charming French cafe with a lot of history. And, most importantly, it remains a good place to get a glass of wine.

After lunch, we walked down the street to Shakespeare & Co., an English-language bookstore that supported the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Joyce back in the day. It sold Hemingway’s first novel and still maintains a line out the door most days. It sits across the street from Notre Dame Cathedral right along the Seine. 

Walking down the street in the late afternoon, my aunt and I found an art gallery, which is how I wound up buying a nude painting of a woman. It is an incredibly beautiful piece of art that I want to hold onto forever and pass on to my family members once I die.

It was a good day of shopping, drinking, and art purchasing. My new books are on my shelf. My painting will soon be on display in my apartment. The day left its mark. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: For more ideas about what you can do in Paris, check out my previous blog post about my trip to the Musée d’Orsay and Opéra Bastille.