For once in my Manhattan-centered life, I began to regret that I don’t live in Brooklyn. I ambled down the spookily uninhabited streets of Park Slope a few Saturdays ago, hoping to catch a glimpse of Heath, Michelle and baby Matilda. Instead, I found myself three times charmed at my new favorite outer-borough bar Loki Lounge.

Pronounced “low key,” the spacious spot does the work of three bars in one. Upon entering Loki’s door on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Second Street, night crawlers first find a pub with polished red oak bar and friendly bartenders serving several drafts on tap, including wheaty-delicious Hoegaarden. A bit farther back, playful partiers find a pool table and dart board that derive meaning from Loki’s namesake, the Norse god of mischief.
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A performance art program by a company I had never heard of in a faraway land called Flatbush? Indeed. As New Yorkers tend to do, I trusted my instinct that this was an event I didn’t want to miss. I jumped on the downtown 3 train in a blind leap of faith.

Thankfully, the L.A.-based troupe Diavolo was on my schedule and began just as I arrived right on late at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. They performed three dances, gracefully climbing, flipping and stunting on each other atop three different six-ft high structures. The first structure, a variety of tall doors that acted as props in a musical of a couple chasing after each other and finally falling in love. Cute and whimsical, the abstract movements provoked thought among audience members. Joy quickly transitioned to defeat as the next piece began. The conditioned athletes sprinted vertically up the second structure, a spiked wall, then slinked down grimly as morose music played.
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New York is a place with so much going on and so many choices that sometimes it’s easy to feel like you don’t quite know where you belong. Yet people still find themselves trying to fit their life into a cookie-cutter lifestyle, never to venture out of it.

How fucking boring.

Sure, it’s easier to stay in my comfort zone, especially if, like me, you feel great in your own skin and know what you like. But sometimes everyone needs a little touch of color in their lives… I just happened to get mine with a sassy pair of sneakers on the side.
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Counting this past weekend’s ING New York City Marathon, I’ve now completed four of the 26.2-mile beasts and realize that I’ve covered 104.8 miles and 16-plus hours in doing so. It’s a lot of miles and a lot of time and quite frankly looks a little crazy to me on paper. But I have to say that there’s no other place I’d want to run the distance than New York City.

Samantha, Carrie and the girls did it. Now it was my turn. Though I am in no way proclaiming Brooklyn to be “out,” I must admit that it wouldn’t be my first choice to take in a musical extravaganza. I went with fellow Glamourite Lauren to see The Gallery Players perform Urinetown, The Musical, an off-off Broadway performance of the offbeat musical set in a townwhere “Rich folks get the good life…poor folks get the woe!” I was excited to see what The Gallery Players, who are celebrating their 40th anniversary this season, would do with a Tony-winning show about… well… pee.

Art has the power to make viewers smirk, feel anxious, cry, even question life itself. Contemporary art, in turn, frequently makes them put their elbows on their knees, lean forward and wonder, “What the fuck are you doing?”

With this in mind, I made a cameo at the White Waves Dance Festival in DUMBO, Brooklyn, this weekend for some good old-fashioned “What the fuck?”-ing. As my friend and I walked shoulder-to-shoulder, passing body heat from one to another amid fall’s wind-tunnel effect, I realized the show fit perfectly into the neighborhood’s sophisticated, artsy vibe.
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