{"id":15,"date":"2004-08-16T22:05:23","date_gmt":"2004-08-17T02:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/2004\/08\/16\/from-01450-to-10031\/"},"modified":"2011-11-26T23:16:09","modified_gmt":"2011-11-27T03:16:09","slug":"from-01450-to-10031","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/2004\/08\/16\/from-01450-to-10031\/","title":{"rendered":"From 01450 to 10031"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

“It was a great party — if you’ve never been to a party before.” Several though not all of the following recent excursions brought to mind those words by Truman Capote.<\/p>\n

Lakeside barbecue in Groton, Mass., at a plush and cozily posh house at the edge of the woods, rented for the year by a trio of graduate students living the rustic writerly life. An impressive though not all covetable existence. Pleasant as intrastate tourism, even if socially we never left Cambridge. Neat-o New England trivia of the sort I’ve come to take for granted: a great-great-grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson owns the house. Party population: c. 16.<\/p>\n

Keg party of baffling decency in Livingston, NJ, in the company of recent Brown graduates and twentysomething Goan-Americans. The suburban wilds of New Jersey were still all new to me, and the experience felt distinctly cinematic, faintly B-moviesque. In effect a college reunion for many, it hosted small pockets of rekindling drama at the pool table, by the beer-pong table, along the carpeted stairs. More ethnography. Party population: c. 60.<\/p>\n

Harlem block party on Hamilton Place, where a couple of hip-hop DJs rocked the streets well into the evening hours and during which, not surprisingly, even (or especially) elementary-school kids danced better than anyone getting down at, say, Redline. In spite of steady gentrification and gorgeous brownstones — townhouse prices have nearly doubled<\/a> in the last three years — Hamilton Heights seems to remain primarily low-income. No non-black, non-Latino residents showed up at this event, anyway, although I spotted one white guy looking on from an adjacent block while talking on his cell-phone — ever the reliable prop. Harlem Week<\/a> occasioned concurrent festivities elsewhere uptown. Party population: c. 150.<\/p>\n

In lieu of catching Talib Kweli and Kurtis Blow at Hot 97’s Harlem Week live broadcast<\/a>, however — not to mention Nas for free at Summerstage<\/a> — I spent yesterday afternoon watching India Day performances on Madison and 23rd. Model-turned-actor (and ex-beau of model-turned-actress Bipasha Basu) Dino Morea appeared alongside composer A.R. Rahman as guest of honor. Dressed head-to-toe in distressed denim (why o why), Morea bounced about the stage shouting “I love you all!” until asked to freestyle to a song from one of his movies — whereupon his usually choreographed-for feet fidgeted and ran out of ideas. Rahman, on the other hand, was stingy with stage time and barely addressed the crowd: furnished with a Yamaha keyboard, he launched into \u201cVande Mataram” at the top of his strained lungs, then reluctantly, half-heartedly, sang a signature snatch from \u201cDil Se Re\u201d<\/a> only after the audience begged for an encore. As usual, youth performances were more memorable; the finale featured the most graceful bhangra dancers I’ve ever seen. Flag-waving and rallying cries (“Bharat mata ki jai!” “Hindustan zindabad!”) filled the gaps between acts. Party population: c. 800.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“It was a great party — if you’ve never been to a party before.” Several though not all of the following recent excursions brought to mind those words by Truman Capote. Lakeside barbecue in Groton, Mass., at a plush and cozily posh house at the edge of the woods, rented for the year by a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5752,39,2145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-music","category-scenes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":895,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}