Equinox

As a celebration of the equinox, we had purchased tickets to one of our favorite bands that started it's tour in NYC on Thursday. Ravenboy was back in town for a week of rehearsals before his company travels to the west coast. He was happy to be able to join us.

We had some business to take care of in the morning but met Ravenboy for lunch and gave him his ticket. He had to work until just an hour before the concert and was going to rush uptown to meet us after he showered at... The Equinox (of all places on that special day, ok it's not that funny, he showers there almost everyday.) We knew he would be cutting it close but he thought he could make it in no time when he learned the concert hall was just off of Times Square.

After sitting in the sun in Union Square, we walked Ravenboy back up to work and then on to his place to drop some stuff off. We trotted down to Utrecht, right across from Halloween Adventure, to try to take care of some more business but failed. Back to Union Square, we caught an express up to UWS to check on a couple of our letterboxes (more on that below). The journey between our two UWS letterboxes was intersected by one of our all time favorites, Harry's Burritos! It was too chilly for outdoor seating to have opened up but the jolly maître de sat us in a cozy two seater where we could people watch all of Columbus Avenue as we noshed on chips and salsa. It was just like old times having a meal at Harry's. I swear I am going to get up the nerve to take a photo of that bizarre lenticular photo of Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and a riding crop someday. It's almost like shrine in there and I will be crushed if they ever remove it.

We wandered downtown to where the concert would be. Times Square was absolutely unnavigatable! Almost everyone was stopping to take photos and it made for a human traffic jam. We sought refuge in Heartland Brewery. It was just a block off of Times Square and packed. The long bar that bragged of many exciting micro brews was packed 3 deep. We struggled to the far end, I laid my hand (clutching a $20) on the corner of the bar and we got served within 5 minutes of entering the place! Things had been like that all day for us; each time we entered a business the staff saw to our needs with extreme speediness. It was an extremely satisfying experience to have had so many potentially stressful errands to run behind us. We raised an equinox glass and darted next door to the concert.

Ravenboy made it with 20 minutes to spare. He said the express trains were super speedy and I saw why he had been unconcerned about making it to the show on time. We hugged and visited and went down to our seats in the front row. Granted, we were well right of center but this concert was less about the visual show than the music. EVOC describes itself as "a powerhouse five-piece band, a string quartet, and two outstanding vocalists—brings the towering emotion and timeless musicality of opera into the 21st century." You have to hear them to believe that they are better than rock, better than opera. Truly, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts you are imagining. By the end of the show, my cheeks were wet from bawling at the beauty and passion of the vocalists and my throat was raw from cheering. I had never imagined screaming "More Puccini!" at a rock concert but it happened.

A brief time was left for visiting and catching up with Ravenboy that night because he had to work in the morning. We all laughed over chai, he showered me with birthday goodies and then I cut his hair at midnight. We crashed and slept soundly in his lovely brownstone building. The day was equal to the night and both were pretty near perfect.

Thinking back on letterboxing, we did find Miss Moon's Poor Clark Kent. It straight up admits to having no log but the placement and carve are worth the visit even to those purists who will not consider it a "letterbox" proper. RGBisMe hammed it up at the location (only one of 4 like it left in Manhattan) but the photo looks more like he is being abducted by aliens than turning into Superman.

It was pleasing that Imagine was doing well. Not to be ungrateful but I wish the person that had swapped out the last logbook for some scraps of paper would have offered to send it to us or just told us the log needed to be replaced. We would have paid postage or gotten Ravenboy to do it within the week. I love seeing the myriad signature stamps and I have specific logs for each letterbox.

We also checked on Peter the Fisherman. The box was not hidden under a ledge behind a wall but was hanging in the bush near it. It probably got hung up when the last letterboxer tried to replace it. That made it a challenge to find as we were groping around two feet lower than where the box was hanging. In the 3 months that it has been hidden, it has managed a couple visitors a month. Sadly, the ziplock bag for the logbook was already gone. We swapped it for the one the stamp was in and will replace that as soon as we can. Again, a heads up would have been nice. We had no idea a bag was missing from this box.

Through a series of discussions, the Crayola Posse have concluded that our expectations of quality control and respect are different than mainstream letterboxers (or at least those who are more vociferous). We promise to continue to treat any letterboxes we find with the utmost respect by handling them in ways that will insure their integrity. This includes having our victory celebratory snack well away from the letterbox and handling the box without food on our hands. We will also do our best to contact the placer if there seems to be any problems or concerns with the box, it's contents or it's location. We would hope the same from others but have concluded that we can not expect it. Because we feel the direction letterboxing is taking is markedly different from how we wish to participate, we will choose different outlets for many of our personal creations. Some of our creations will remain as letterboxes, many others will be similar and will still have the option of being logged as letterboxes. The main difference will be in our expectations of how they are created, presented and handled. Most are now works in progress. We are very excited in how they make us feel like we are stepping out of the darkness and into the light.