BKTX BLT

Look, if you know us, you know that we take our bacon-based cuisine really seriously. Whether it’s to go inside breakfast tacos or to supplement a bowl of granola, bacon is really an important staple in the BKTX diet. Whenever it comes to BLTs, Olivia is the master. She makes a truly sexy sandwich. Due to her latent fear of conventional mayonnaise, she usually makes her own. Add in some tomatoes, slow roasted for a few hours with plenty of olive oil and garlic, and all you need is regular grocery store bacon and a fluffy roll to put it all on.

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Slow Roasted cherry Tomatoes

You can do this with any kind of tomatoes, but cherry tomatoes have a sweetness that I (Olivia) just love! This time I used 2 pints of cherry tomatoes. The extras can be stored in a jar filled with olive oil in the fridge — this makes a great snack! Put the whole tomatoes (slice them if you're using bigger tomatoes) in a bowl and toss with olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste (you can also add any herbs if you have any lying around, rosemary and thyme work well). Once the tomatoes are well coated, dump them out on to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and spread them out so they have some space. Cook at 225°F for 2.5 hours. 

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Homemade mayo

Makes about one cup / takes about 10 minutes

•1 egg yolk
•1 spoonful of Dijon mustard
•1 cup of olive oil
•1/2 lemon
• salt 

In a bowl, whisk together yolk and mustard. Slowly and gradually whisk in the olive oil until thickened. Whisk in juice from 1/2 lemon and salt to taste. It will last in the fridge for about a week. 

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BKTX BLT

Makes one tasty AF sandwich 

•slow roasted tomatoes (see above)
• homemade mayo (see above)
•3 to 4 strips of bacon
•a few leaves of lettuce
•some kind of bread (we used the pretzel buns from Union Market)

Toast your bread of choice in the oven or toaster. Cook the bacon in a pan on the stove. Spread your homemade mayo on the inside of both pieces of bread. Add two spoonfuls of roasted tomatoes, bacon, lettuce and top with bread. Enjoy!

Go to Auspicious Phoenix Productions' Rolling Revue!

BUY TICKETS: http://bit.ly/APRevueNY This is the only chance to see these movies because they will never be released again. Join us for 5 short films and a drink on the house: August 20th at 7pm at The Living Gallery, 1094 Broadway, Brooklyn.

Attention Brooklyn! Attention, Texas! uspicious Phoenix Productions, a group of award-winning independent filmmakers and friends of BKTX, are throwing the Rolling Revue, a traveling roadshow showcasing their films. They’ll be screening 5 short films from their 2017 slate, with a mix of formats and genres from sci-fi/comedy to contemporary dance (the approximate run time is 1 hour, with drinks and conversation after). You can catch the 16mm movie projections, slide photo carousels, and practical effects movie magic in Brooklyn this Sunday and in Houston next Thursday. We’re especially excited to see Blood Highway, an action/horror film about about two bikers hell-bent on revenge who discover a terrifying undead secret...

Blood Highway

Directed by Joseph Dwyer

Quietus

Directed by Joy Song

Ladia

Directed by Álvaro Congosto

The Literal Lens

Directed by Jim DanDee
 

Craniac!

Directed by Paul Villanova

For more information and to see the full lineup, please visit: https://www.auspiciousphoenix.com/tour

Sunday August 20th, 7pm, Brooklyn, The Living Gallery BK
Thursday August 24th, 7pm Houston, TX Apama Mackey Gallery

PSA: Shipley Donuts Secret Menu

We lived in Houston for over two decades and, while we’ve always been fans of Houston staple Shipley Do-Nuts, we JUST learned about their secret menu. Did you know? Apparently it’s so secret that when we called a few Shipley locations, they had no idea what we were talking about. But they exist! Olivia discovered it at 4:30am last Sunday, after a long night playing poker with her friends. They were deep into a game of Texas hold’em and no one was winning or losing, when suddenly her friend Peter said, “Oh! If we stay up we can get the secret kolaches from the Shipleys nearby!” (if you don’t know what kolaches are, start here. If you do, you know how exciting this news is).

Apparently, the Heights Shipley location (and a few others) has secret boudin kolaches which are NOT on the menu and which are only available on Saturdays and Sundays from 5am until they sell out, which can be before 9am. Olivia’s mind was completely blown. Since you either have to stay up all night or wake up really early to get them, Olivia obviously stayed up all night and at 5am, they ventured out to see if this was really true. Between three friends, they got 8 boudin kolaches; 2 sausage and cheese kolaches; a bag of chocolate donut holes; and a coconut donut. The kolaches, a crazy mix of Czech, Texan, and Creole cuisine, were warm and fluffy like only bread fresh out of the oven can be, and it was a little sweet, which perfectly balanced out the spiciness from the pork (?) and rice. The center was hot and dense which contrasted nicely with the sinfully buttery dough surrounding it. It sounds extremely amazing to the 50% of BKTX that didn’t get to try it...if only we had these in Brooklyn (cough cough Olivia bring some back!)

Shipley Do-Nuts
3932 N. Main St
Houston, Texas 77009
open 24 hours

Lavender lemonade

Summer is hot and your drinks should be cold. Make some lavender lemonade, splash some gin in, and call it a day. Some of us are ending our jobs this week (Emily) and some of us have been funemployed for a few weeks now (Olivia). In any case, purple lemonade is a fast, easy way to get drunk right now.

How to (serves 2):

First, make the lavender syrup: boil 1 cup of water and add 2 lavender stems of lavender. Let the mixture steep for 10 min. Mix in 1/2 cup of honey and stir in until completely dissolved. In a shaker, combine 2 oz of cooled lavender syrup, 1 1/2 oz of lemon juice, and 2 ounces of gin. Shake fiercely over a lot of ice and pour into two chilled glasses — top with soda water if you like!

Call Me Bougie But I Really Love Hotels

Earlier this year, I had to go to a conference really far from where I live, but really not-that-far from a party that everyone in my family was attending. I was stewing over with FOMO as I considered the cruelty of being a mere 635 miles (instead of my usual 2897 miles, it’s all relative) away from all my favorite humans and dogs having fun together without me, all because I had to sit through 8 mind numbing sessions about sending emails every day, when I arrived at my cold, lonely, dark hotel room. I was on the edge of throwing the biggest pity party for myself that I’ve had all year when I sat down on my bed, turned on the TV, and realized: I can make this better, because I’m in a hotel. You can do anything in a hotel! I put my pants back on (oh yeah, step one of a post-conference pity party is putting on your pajamas at about 5pm), walked past 4 people peeing on the street (San Francisco), got some take out tikka masala, brought it back to my room, put my pajamas BACK ON, and then ate it in bed while watching Wayne’s World. And it was the best, because they change your sheets every day so you don’t have to worry about naan crumbs! Staying in a hotel freed me from the restrictions that I put on myself in my own house, or that I put on myself when I stay in someone else’s house, so I could soothe my FOMO by indulging the decadent, lazy slob inside me.

Growing up, I never really thought about hotels. I am lucky enough to have parents that really valued taking vacations and who really hate the Houston heat, so we tended to leave for long chunks of time in the summer. Getting out of town happened often and it could mean anything: sometimes we took rather luxurious last-minute trips to a hill country resort or we were adventurous and stayed in  freezing tent cabins in Yosemite National Park. Sometimes we camped out in soggy motels on a  Washington State Indian Reservation or rented a posh apartment in central London. For the most part, we’d go on 2 month long road trips across America — we drove from Texas to Montreal or Vancouver multiple times. Even though we’d have plans to see family, visit new cities, hike in national parks, and try new foods, I always had one most favorite day of the whole trip. Our ritual on the first night of vacation after a long day in the car was parking at the La Quinta Inn in Amarillo, TX, where my brother and I would jump in the pool and then spend the rest of the night eating pizza in bed and watching Spongebob on Nickelodeon. Just staying in a crappy hotel somewhere different than normal, where we didn’t really have anything to experience or explore or expect felt so freeing and luxurious, even though it was one of the least fancy hotels in one of the least fancy towns in all of Texas.

I have been a pretty avid fan of Airbnb, mostly for the reason that I think where you stay has a big impact on how you experience a new place. If your goal, like mine almost always is, is to pretend you live in a different place for a few days what better way is there than to live in someone's actual apartment? Even if my studio in Prague was across from the largest brothel in Europe or my flat in London smelled a little like stale cigarettes, it all added to the experience. That is, until, earlier this year when I got locked out of my too-good-to-be-true Paris chambre de bonne (literally translates as maid’s chambers — I thought it was romantic, with a room tucked underneath the roof, a view of the Sacre Coeur, a shower in the kitchen, and a price tag of less than 50 euros a night!). Turns out, it’s important to have the toilet actually in your rental, not down the hall, because if your hungover butt forgets to grab the key and the door locks behind you, there are not a lot of options for a person with no shoes, no glasses, no money, no phone, and excellent restaurant French but not a lot beyond that (Le cle...n’est pas ici?). Thank God I chose to wear my matching J Crew pajama set that night *praise emoji*.

Anyway, after paying a French locksmith more money than I had rented the apartment for to get back inside, I started questioning my whole thought process behind renting apartments. Was staying in a cheap Airbnb really helping me experience Paris as a local? It made me think that maybe I just want … a front desk. A key card. A bathroom INSIDE my room. Clean towels every day.

The truth is, there is one major thing about hotels that gets me every time: the towels. I’m a recycling tyrant at home, and have no problem shaming housemates for wasting water when they take 90 minute long baths, re-sorting other people’s garbage, and compulsively turning lights off in rooms when they are empty. When I stay at a hotel, all of that goes out the window. Eco friendly hotels that allow you to reuse towels? No thank you, please replace these babies with freshly laundered fluffy soft towels every day. Even if i steal them for the day to take to the beach or use them for a picnic, I LOVE that there are always clean towels to use at the end of the day.

Hotels are a total luxury, don’t get me wrong — I know that this is the basis for the entire concept of staycations. But maybe sometimes it’s OK to admit that the point of traveling can just be to hang out inside the place you’re staying. Even when you have nothing planned but to walk around a city and get lost, there’s still pressure there to get lost enough. To have some kind of adventure or be absorbed in something you can’t grasp. As a traveler, I can get stressed when I feel like I (or my traveling buddy) is sleeping in too late or not taking advantage of our brief time of attempting to immerse ourselves somewhere, but I found that finally admitting that it’s ok to enjoy being away, even if that just means hanging out in your hotel or your Airbnb or your yurt rental, you’re not wasting your time at all. Because honestly, watching cable on a real TV and eating curry in a bed that will have clean sheets on it tomorrow? Nothing's better.

BKTX Summer Bucketlist 2017

Inspired by this.

• Go to concert at Prospect Park 
• Eat a hotdog at a baseball game ✓
• Go to Shakespeare in the Park
• Eat smores at Olmsted
• Go to the beach (in Rhode Island)
• Binge watch Jane the Virgin
• Get too drunk
• Get eyelash extensions
• Go to the Catskills ✓
• Get a little tan ✓
• Get a boyfriend
• Get an apartment
• Get a new job ✓
• Hug all friends
• Get drunk in the park
• Get drunk at the beach
• Go for a run (1 time) 
• Make korean ribs and eat them
• Eat pasta and pink things at Pietro Nolita
• Hook up with someone in the park
• Fix leaky ceiling
• Watch the Beguiled
• Drink 45 Aperol Spritzes
• Figure out what a head darty is
• Convince a male friend to wear a romphim
• Remember to wear sunglasses
• Ride a roller coaster at Coney Island
• Take pix in a photobooth
• Be shameless
• Hook up with Jacob (first time)
• Drink beer at Circa
• Spend a day in a bikini for no reason
• Use a snail mucus face mask ✓
• Figure out what shape boobs I have because I clearly do not know
• Pet a dog ✓✓
• Jump into a lake (or river) ✓
• Host a poker tournament
• Go to Spain ✓
• Giant water balloon fight
• Sleep until 2pm ✓
• Eat the chicken and frites at Made Nice
• Eat pho at Hanoi House
• Eat ice cream from Salt and Straw
• Go to the US Open

✓ — Emily or Olivia has done this
✓✓ — Both Emily and Olivia have done this

BKTX Explains How to Call Your Senator

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s that calling your reps is actually really important. Being from Texas, I always thought that it didn’t really matter, but then the first time I ever called my congressman it seemed to work. Remember in January the House was secretly going to pass a law gutting the ethics committee? People (I) freaked out, called their congresspeople, and they decided not to make that particular bad choice. If you’re still not convinced that calling is better than emailing or faxing or tweeting, read this. Here at BKTX, we’re no strangers to calling our congresspeople and shouting at them, but we are embarrassed to admit that we’ve been lagging in recent weeks. However, we’re charging up our phones in preparation of a major call storm today given the news that after weeks of secretly developing their TrumpCare bill, based on the horrifying load of hot garbage that passed through the House last month, the Senate is going to reveal it sometime this afternoon. No one knows what’s in it, but healthcare is an issue that touches so many other issues close to our hearts and the only way to try and prevent it from cutting the insurance from millions of people is to call your senators. Whether you’re most concerned about defunding Planned Parenthood, losing protection for preexisting conditions, or everything in between, it’s important to call your senator, even if he is Zodiac Killer Ted Cruz. We wanted to share some pro tips and scripts for calling your senators and slowing this thing down — it doesn’t have to be confrontational or scary.

First things first. Here’s what to say when you call your senators

If your senator is a republican (like Ted Cruz or John Cornyn, for example):

If your senator is a democrat (like Chuck Schumer or Kirsten Gillibrand, for example):

Here’s what you should expect when you call your senator: sometimes, no one will answer. Sometimes the voice mailbox will be full. This is infuriating, but that sometimes happens. If you can leave a message, do it, MAKE SURE TO LEAVE YOUR FULL ADDRESS, and then call back the next day. If someone does answer, in my experience they are usually extremely kind and patient, so even if you have steam coming out of your ears, try not to yell at them and be sure thank them for what they do at the end. It's not the same thing as yelling at Ted Cruz (I do condone yelling or otherwise emoting at a voice mailbox). They’ll usually ask for your name and zip code, and tell you that they’ll pass your message along.

These templates will work with any issue, just swap out the name of the bill and include the specific things that piss you off about it (like denying coverage for preexisting conditions).

We hope the fire under your asses has been rekindled and you’re feeling prepared to participate in some democracy! If you’re feeling really jazzed, you can also call these senators’ offices too — these potentially swingable Republican votes matter a TON with this issue. Even if you’re not in their constituency, they’ll sometimes still record your call.

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Phone numbers

TEXAS

Ted Cruz: (202) 224-5922
John Cornyn: 202-224-2934

New York

Chuck Schumer: (202) 224-6542
Kirsten Gillibrand: (202) 224-4451

If you’re not sure what your senator’s phone number is, the US Senate switchboard can connect you: (202) 224-3121

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Another important resource we’ve used since November has been this evolving google doc, the 2017 Rage Checklist, shared to us by our friend Andrea. It doesn’t look like it’s been updated since January, but there’s some gold in there and has some really clear scripts and important resources that empowered me to make my first phone call to congress.

More phone script resources:

For republicans
For democrats
For governors and more

Ice Ice Baby

Finally, New York has emerged from under its soggy cloud and overnight has transformed into glorious summer! We’re so pumped to overdose on ice cream now that it’s finally hot enough to eat it (not that we didn’t eat a lot of ice cream this winter, but now we have even more of an excuse). One of our favorite things to do when it’s nice out is walk up Prospect Park to Ample Hills, but we’re not loyal – we’re pretty seasoned ice cream eaters. Here are some of our favorite places to get ice cream and our regular orders.

1. Ample Hills Creamery
Usually go expecting to get the Munchies but actually get Strawberry every time.
600 11th Ave, New York, NY 10036
73 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014
8 Joralemon St Pier 5, Brooklyn, NY 11201
305 Nevins St, Brooklyn, NY 11215
623 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238

2. Daily Provisions
Go here for the scoops of Salt and Straw! This is the only place we’re aware of where you can access this magic.
103 E 19th St, New York, NY 10003

3. MELT Bakery
Best ice cream sandwiches! Get the mint ice cream and chocolate cookie combo.
Chelsea Market, 88 10th Ave, New York, NY 10011
132 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002

4. Van Leeuween Artisan Ice Cream
Honeycomb, Sicilian Pistachio, Earl Grey Tea.
48 E 7th St, New York, NY 10003
152 W 10th St, New York, NY 10014
620 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222
204 Wythe Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11249
81 Bergen St, Brooklyn, NY 11201

5. Superiority Burger
This veggie burger place actually has some of the best ice cream in town. It’s the daily gelato and sorbet, and the first time Emily had it she teared up it was so good.
430 E 9th St, New York, NY 10009

6. Butter Lane
This is technically a cupcake store (owned by a Rice grad!), but they have bluebell ice cream and LOVE to sell (and sometimes give) it to Texans.
123 E 7th St, New York, NY 10009

7. il laboratorio del gelato
Coming here makes our already weak decision making skills fail even further. It takes forever to decide. Just pick something. This is where to go if you’ve ever wanted to try ice cream flavored like cheddar cheese, wasabi, three different colors of peppercorn, or mastic (yeah, it’s tree resin).
188 Ludlow St, New York, NY 10002

8. L&B Spumoni Gardens
There are SO many reasons to trek out here, but it’s not summer until you’ve had the three color spumoni (it’s pistachio, chocolate, and “cremolata” which is vanilla, almond, and cinnamon). It’s so green you think you’re eating melted alien, and it’s SO tasty.
2725 86th St, Brooklyn, NY 11223

9. Mr. Softee
Flamin’ Merlin (ie red dipped with rainbow sprinkles - and always swirl).
always rolling around the streets of NYC

MAD SKILLZ

Do you have a secret talent? This weekend, BKTX was invited to a talent party, where we’re supposed to perform stuff we’re good at doing. WTF?! Who has talents? We realize we’ve answered a version of this question before, and while menu ESP and a penchant for organizing brunches are perfectly acceptable talent show fare in our opinion, we dug deep to try to find some mad skills we can show off on Saturday. There are a few things we can do really well that aren’t exactly obvious. Not all of them are performable, but  we’re still pretty proud of them. As for the talent party, Emily’s going to perform one of her talents below (guess which one?!) and Olivia’s not sure yet, but she’s been heartily encouraged to chug a beer, because that is always impressive.

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EMILY: (1) Finding The Best Deals on Things I Actually Want

When I was a teenage employee of Anthropologie, I realized that I am a master at finding the stuff I want for crazy percentages off. My favorite thing to do on a break was to head to the onesie section, which was where weird one-off returns would go, or where we'd put the last unit of a style that we couldn’t put alone out in the store. Clothes in the onesie section would sit and just get more and more on sale as time went on, so I’d rifle through and find dresses I wanted earlier in the season for crazy low prices. I got a few hundred dollar dresses for $5. I’ve always been a little crazy about shopping, and for me the only way to really justify buying all the fancy new stuff I want is by getting it SUPER on sale. Last week, I found $500 Ulla Johnson dress that I’d been lusting after for weeks on sale for over 60% off, and it was still full price everywhere else! I had to return it because it fit weird, but it’s the thrill of the hunt sometimes, you know?

Olivia: (1) Falling Asleep In Public

I am an insomniac, so falling asleep at night in my bed can be really hard for me. However, the second I rest my head and close my eyes on any OTHER kind of flat surface, I totally pass out. I fall asleep on planes before they take off, I'm a frequent subway napper, and on Tuesday this week, I fell asleep during lunch at my office. In less than two minutes of resting my forehead on the lunch table, I was snoring. Oops. I don't know if I acquired this skill from years of practice or out of necessity, but when it comes to falling asleep in public — I'm really a pro.

EMILY: (2) Hula Hooping

The breakdown of the weather in Houston is thus: 9 months of summer, 1 month of extreme summer, 1 month of fall, 1 day of winter, and 1 month of light summer. Thus, there was a lot of time to play outside when I was a kid. I used to hang out for hours on my family’s cement driveway jumping rope and playing four square, but it wasn’t until the hula hoops came out that I realized I really had a talent. I can hula hoop for hours on end without it falling off: I can speed up, I can slow down, I can move it up and down (I used to be able to get one up over my arms to my neck and then down really low to my knees, but I haven’t tried that in a while), I can send texts while I’m hooping. At one point, I had dreams of being a belly dancer and thought that hula hooping would get me there, so I did it non-stop. Thankfully I’ve let those dreams go, but my hula hooping talent still remains.

OLIVIA: (2) Making Whipped Cream

I’ve always loved having dinner parties, and berries and whipped cream is my go-to dessert. It’s so easy,fresh, and tasty, and it presents well even though it’s not fussy. Some people find it really hard work to whip cream up, but it’s something that I have always been really good at doing quickly by hand without a recipe. Because I never measure anything the best way to get it to my liking is by taste testing it often. In a large bowl, pour one a one cup carton of heavy cream into a bowl and whip with a whisk until soft peaks form. Add a dash of vanilla and a few pinches of sugar. If I'm feeling fancy, I sometimes add a splash of bourbon. Continue to whip the cream until stiff peaks form — you want to be very careful not to over-whip. When you are done, the cream should still be silky and smooth.

EMILY: (3) Recognizing Any Face She’s Seen Before

When I see a face, I can recognize it later, pretty much no matter how much time has passed or if I even interact with you at all. If I see you in a restaurant even from far-away, and then I see you a week later on the street, I will remember seeing you in the restaurant. One time when I was in grade school, my family took a road trip to go to some of the national parks in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. I realized that there was another family that was on the exact same trip, because I had seen them on a hike, at a cafe, and at a hotel throughout the week. Finally on the last day, I told my parents that I was pretty sure that the family sitting near us had eaten at the same restaurant as us the day before, and they made me go over and tell them that I recognized them. It was true: we were on the same road trip! They thought it was great; I wanted to die. I think it’s a pretty cool talent most of the time, but I often have to pretend I’m meeting people for the first time — it’s pretty awkward to try to convince someone you’ve had a 5 second interaction with 5 years earlier that you have actually met them before, so I just pretend we’re meeting for the first time. Sorry for being creepy!

OLIVIA: (3) Parallel Parking

When I was in middle school, I was obsessed with The Fast and The Furious. I was convinced that as soon as I was able to drive, I would be a street racer. My street racing dream was pretty short lived, but my vision of myself as being an awesome-super-cool-bad-ass driver never died. In reality, I'm a pretty reckless driver. But after much practice and three years of having a car in New York with a car, I have become an awesome-super-cool-bad-ass parallel parker. I can squeeze my Jeep (with Texas license plates, of course) into tiny street parking spots that look too small for even a Mini Cooper. Sometimes, I even take pictures to commemorate my accomplishments.

Museum of Modern Yachty

Earlier this week, Olivia sent me this link with no context, partly because it was so ridiculous it didn’t need any, and partly because almost exactly a year ago, we had an experience with Lil Yachty that we’re still trying to explain to ourselves. It was one of the most surreal evenings of my entire life.

It all started, as many great stories do, with breakfast tacos. I was eating brunch at Guero’s, my personal favorite breakfast taco spot in Brooklyn, with my friend Jessica. “Oh, my company is doing this ticket giveaway to this party at MoMA on Friday — let me know if you want to go!” she said between bites of queso. “I can’t go, but it’ll probably be cool.”

As a former MoMA intern, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that MoMA’s parties are always great (also, randomly, they seem to have parties every single night). I was totally down, so I got tickets for Olivia and me to attend. We were so excited to spend a Friday night being classy at the Museum of Modern Art!

We knew things weren’t going to be what we expected before we even got inside the museum. At about 9:45pm, there were about a hundred 19 and 20 year old kids swamping the outside of the museum, apparently in line to get in. “Is there...a bouncer? At a MoMA party?” I asked. We waited in line, in our Chelsea-gallery appropriate black dresses and heels, while we sifted past art school-looking kids (and high school-looking kids?) wearing mini bandage dresses and John Deere Hats and copious, copious amounts of Supreme.

In the main atrium, by the stairs where you’d go up to the second floor and against the exit to the sculpture garden, a big stage was set up. People were crowded around it and were dancing, but to songs that were popular in like 2010. There was Drake, but there was also like, Flo Rida music being played. It wasn’t exactly edgy, per se. The lights were off except for some crazy colorful lights we’d expect to see at da clerb.

In quick succession, five things happened:
• The line for the bar got very, very long
• We realized that whether you got a cocktail or a beer, you only got it in a tiny plastic cup
• We split up to go to different bars to maximize our drinks *double fisting*
• We each spilled one (or most of one) of our drinks upon ourselves
• The bar ran out of alcohol

Once that was sorted, we took a second to look around and ask each other, “What the hell is going on?” A small, very tan blonde woman in front of us was wearing a giant orange long sleeve t-shirt, 5 inch tall stilettos, and no pants (we realized later it was Yeezy merch, but at this point we were still very much behind). I looked at my phone to actually read what the event was that we were currently at: Pop Rally presents Yung Jake. Ok. Where was the art though? Where was Jake? Why did this feel like a dorm party? It wasn’t bad, it was just so, so far from what we expected.

At some point, Olivia went to the bathroom. Then the lights turned on — all the regular fluorescent lights — and the music turned off, and nothing really seemed to be happening. I was dying to tell Olivia when she came back about the guy I saw blatantly smoking weed in the crowd at THE MUSEUM, but she one upped me: she had seen people doing WAY WORSE in the bathroom.

So, we spent from about 10:30 to 11:30 in the bright, regular museum light doing some of the best people watching of our lives, while the DJ, who we later learned was ILLROOTS, shouted things like “MOMA WE MADE SOME FUCKING ART RIGHT NOW!” and MoMA staff periodically shouted “GET OFF THE STAGE.” The main issue was that to exit from the bathroom, you had to walk down a staircase that’s last step was the stage. You literally had to walk across the stage to leave the bathroom, and once people were onstage, they realized their Snapchats looked way better from there. This article refers to this as a “pregnant pause,” which is extremely amusing. The whole event felt like it was specifically curated to discombobulate and amuse us. We kept asking each other if we were unwitting participants in a performance artwork.

Finally, at about 11:45, the lights went back down again, and a thick vapey smog hung over the museum’s priceless collection. Lil Yachty came on stage and people went fucking bananas. Everyone knew the words to his song and just started screaming them. We danced. “Was he saying… it’s cold like Minnesota over and over? I can get behind a song about being cold,” I said, as we walked our confused butts out of there. After the one song was over, so was the party.

As we got into our Uber Pool, we held our heads in our hands.
“What was that!?” I cried.
“Can you please just...tell us what happened?” Olivia asked our Uber Pool partner (is there a word for this?).
“Oh yes,” said our Uber Pal, in a thick Russian accent. “That was Little Yatch-ity.”
“Little WHAT!?” I said.
“Little Yatch-ity. Like the boats!” our Uber Pooler said.
“Ok, but like...what was that? Why is he so popular?” asked Olivia
“Well, he was in the Kanye West Fashion show!” he said.
“Ahhh, Yeezy Seezy Threezy. That...pretty much explains it,” I said. “Well, what do you do? Do you live in New York?” I asked, riding that Lil Yachty adrenaline.
“I am a famous photographer,” he explained.
“Oh really?” I asked. “What do you photograph?”
“Well I am extremely famous on Instagram,” he said, and proceeded to explain that he took pictures at some club called Ecstasy known for its EDM music. He was extremely offended that we didn’t know his (also famous) friend whose handle was something like @Electrobot69. Things actually got pretty awkward when we couldn’t stifle our laughs at that, and he actually jumped out of the cab early even though that is strictly forbidden in Uber Pools. Our driver was not pleased.

We spent most of the rest of the night googling our new famous Russian friend, but we spent pretty much the rest of the YEAR Googling Lil Yachty. This, we quickly learned, was not remotely difficult because Lil Yachty is indeed internet famous, unlike our Russian Uber Buddy (who actually only had like 1,000 followers…). Lil Yachty’s mixtape, Lil Boat, had come out just about a month before (so OK he was pretty fresh!) and he was getting a crazy amount of press. “He calls his friends the Sailing Team!” Olivia would yell at me from her room, months after the fact. We’re obsessed. We love that he doesn’t know that a cello is not a flute and a flute is not a clarinet. We love his rainbow grill.

That night changed us, and we’ll never be the same. Neither of us, now, can pass a boat without yelling LIL BOAT!