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The All-New Adventures of an Aging Urban Elf

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BY REVEREND JEN (rev-jen.com) | This morning, I had a conversation with my boyfriend, Joe, which went something like this:

Me: I would really love a burrito from Puebla Coffee Shop.

Joe: It’s closed.

Me: We could go to Benny’s Burrittos.

Joe: It’s closed.

Me: A falafel from Bereket?

Joe: Closed. I wish we could go to Olympic Diner.

Me: Closed. I wish we could go to Jade Liquor.

Joe: Closed.

Me: I know! Let’s go to the bank! They’re all still open.

(We both fall back asleep.)

No doubt, the city is changing. I moved here when I was 18. I’m now 42 and a lot of the things I once loved in New York City have vanished (including dudes), replaced with banks, unaffordable bars and luxury housing. Don’t mean to overstate the obvious, but every day that I walk into my bathroom, it amazes me no one’s installed an ATM next to the toilet. But what am I gonna do? Move? Hell no! As a New Yorker, it’s my duty to stay here and bitch about pretty much everything.

L to R: Reverend Jen Junior, Reverend Jen and Tina Trachtenburg defy age while doing their part to keep NYC weird. Photo by Joe Heaps Nelson.
L to R: Reverend Jen Junior, Reverend Jen and Tina Trachtenburg defy age while doing their part to keep NYC weird. Photo by Joe Heaps Nelson.

I’m also changing, physically and philosophically. I realize that due to medical science and advanced cosmetology, 42 isn’t that old. However, when you are a female and in showbiz, the world treats you as if you age in dog years. Maybe, if they do a remake of “Cocoon,” I can get a job as an unpaid extra and that’s actually about it. But really, I’m not that vain, though I would like to have my face Botoxed to a point where I look like a plastic Mattel version of myself. I’d like to have ass fat removed and used to make prosthetic elf ears, then have my ass remodeled to look like a Kardashian’s. I want teeth whitening, laser facials and all grays eradicated from my scalp. But I can’t afford any of these things so I remind myself that lions don’t dye their hair and they are the most beautiful animals on earth. Of course they’ll all likely be extinct in 40 years, and I write this while staring at a bottle of hair dye on my vanity.

Aging is confounding but the payoff is in sight. When I was younger, I thought the world owed me something. Now that I am older I realize I owe the world something. This is a sentiment shared by four of my best friends, all of whom recently turned 50. So this is a column for them, about transformation, aging and the wisdom that comes from realizing that, even if you live to be 100, your life is already half over!

Tina Trachtenburg, Bruce Ronn, Tom Tenney and Faceboy have all reached this pivotal year, trudging through the shit-show of life with aplomb, creativity and grace. All are involved in projects that make New York City fun despite the fun police (landlords) trying to ruin everything.

Let’s start with Tina Trachtenburg — who I first met years ago when she came to my open mike with her daughter, Rachel and her husband, Jason. They were the “Trachtenburg Slide Show Family Players,” the first unsigned band to ever perform on “Conan” and three of the coolest people I ever met. They invited me to be their opening act because, as Tina said, “You are so weird you make our family look normal.” We traveled the country together and eventually London, where I was gossiped about even more than I am here. All three are animal rights activists who don’t just talk the talk; they walk the walk. Tina spent the winter building cat shelters out of storage boxes, which she insulated and provided with tunnels so the kittehs could enter and exit. She also just took a course on trap/neuter and release to help control the stray population and thus save many a kitteh from doom.

I met up with Tina in Washington Square, where she’s turned her passion for animals into art, selling handmade, felt-fabricated pigeon replicas of the winged New Yorkers to park-goers, thus garnering a bit of income while raising awareness about the oft-loathed species. “I always loved pigeons,” Tina said. “Ever since I moved here in the ’80s. I didn’t understand the hatred. I have 20 pigeons on my roof. Some I’ve rehabilitated and released. Some I feed every day.” If you think of pigeons as “rats with wings” you might wanna Google “Cher Ami,” a female pigeon who saved more than 500 men in World War I. Or, just visit Tina in the park and she’ll school ya.

(Note: Tina’s pigeon-themed art installation is mobile so check out her Twitter: @motherpigeon, her website: motherpigeon.com and Instagram: @motherpigeonbrooklyn for info on where she’ll be.)

On to Bruce Ronn. If you read my last column, you know that he and I just started our own publishing imprint: Art Star Scene Press. We did this because we didn’t want to deal with big publishing companies who, today, would reject “Catcher in the Rye” or “On the Road” because they are stupid. The first title we put out is my filthy S&M novel, “June.” The second, soon-to-be-released novel, “Talking About the Weather,” is by Bruce and focuses on a character suffering through Chicago’s ’95 heat wave. Check us out on Facebook. (We don’t know how to make a website!)

For Bruce’s 50th birthday, I threw a 1965-themed party at the Troll Museum, where we listened to sixties music and dressed like Beatniks. (Oh wait…we always do that…) Anyway, several guests hopped into the bathtub, which draws visitors because it’s in my kitchen. They then regaled in a sing-along to “Eve of Destruction” — which was written in ’65 along with pretty much every great song ever composed, including “Satisfaction.” Can I please time travel to ’65 for undiluted acid and the absence of “American Idol?”

Actually, ’65 wasn’t exactly a trip to Cancun. Lyndon B. Johnson was in office and the Vietnam War was getting started. However, it’s appropriate that the party was held at the Troll Museum because Lady Bird Johnson was a troll collector.

Tom Tenney: Yet another of my friends who just turned 50 and ages like fine wine yet never slows down has launched a new, ambitious project along with Robert Prichard, producer of “Radical Vaudeville” and former proprietor of Surf Reality. The Bushwick-based Radio Free Brooklyn is an online station being broadcast from their studio in the basement of the Brooklyn-Velo Bike Shop on Dekalb Avenue, and can be heard on radiofreebrooklyn.com and mobile devices.

RFB offers both live and pre-recorded original programming created by the community of artists and performers that Tenney and Prichard have been a part of for decades. Some of the shows lined up for the first season include “Live from the Hipster Triangle,” hosted by comedian Liam McEneaney, “Lunch with Legs,” a live bi-weekly talk show hosted by burlesque artist Legs Malone, and “The Brooklyn Curmudgeon Hour,” a weekly round table on community issues, featuring a rotating panel of borough residents.

According to the station’s mission statement, “Radio Free Brooklyn aims to build a communication infrastructure to strengthen the community of artists who have been driven from the Manhattan neighborhoods we once called home before being scattered to the corners of the outer boroughs.” Note: I am still trapped in Manhattan. However, I made the trek out to Brooklyn for the RFB launch party at Lucky 13, where it seems more and more Art Star events are transpiring.

Radio Free Brooklyn will also feature a show hosted by Faceboy, my friend of over 20 years, who hosted the infamous “Faceboyz Open Mike” at Surf Reality and helped me start my own open mike. “Art Star Scene Radio,” an hour-long weekly talk show with occasional musical guests, broadcasts live every Saturday at 7 p.m. In addition to promoting the many wild and wonderful things birthed from the Art Star Scene, Faceboy will also focus on serious topics like healing (ourselves, others and the planet).

Bonnie Hall and her half-century-old son in Washington Square Park, at  Faceboy’s happy, healthy, family-oriented birthday party. Photo by George Courtney.
Bonnie Hall and her half-century-old son in Washington Square Park, at
Faceboy’s happy, healthy, family-oriented birthday party. Photo by George Courtney.

This past week we celebrated Faceboy’s 50th birthday with a shockingly non-debauched picnic in Washington Square Park.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in drinking, smoking and screwing, we forget the simple pleasures in life — like sitting on the grass and noticing a round ball in the sky that provides us with a strange phenomenon called sunshine. Also, some of our friends actually have children now, so we can’t be bad all the time.

At said family-friendly picnic, I had the opportunity to borrow a football from a group of bros and teach two of my friend’s kids (Walter and Miranda) to play. Then we played Frisbee, played with water guns and walked Reverend Jen Junior.

Rev. Jen plays football with Walter, adorable spawn of Art Stars Tia and Warren. Photo by George Courtney.
Rev. Jen plays football with Walter, adorable spawn of Art Stars Tia and Warren. Photo by George Courtney.

It was so much fun, I almost forgot the contraband rum and soda I’d snuck in. As Faceboy pointed out, if you’d asked him ten years ago how he wanted to celebrate his 50th, it would have been something “unprintable” — but the entire day made him supremely happy. Face also noted that Earth Day was founded in 1970, which officially makes him older than dirt.

To all my wonderful friends who are now older than dirt, I salute your creativity and drive.