Author Archives: bmwendel@usc.edu

Nutcrackers, Alcoholic Drinks, on Coney Island

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Montreal, Canada
Performance Date: 04/18/18
Primary Language: English

Context:

The subject is a white male and a lifelong New Yorker from Manhattan and Queens. He is my twin brother and we attended the boarding school Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut. Before this we were discussing what New York had begun to mean to us when we moved out to school, how we always heard stories and how it became a party location that we returned to when school was let out. I love this idea of New York teen folk culture because we could not have a overculture because what we were doing was illegal. The knowledge of nutcrackers was folklore because it was passed on through person to person because it was illegal and the practice of making nutcrackers is also folklore because there is no formula recipe.

 

Piece:

“Nutcrackers are, oh this is totally folklore yeah. On Coney Island there are guys that walk around with big garbage bags full of small bottles of what is obestinbily juice and alcohol, I think it’s Capri Sun and rubbing alcohol, if I was to guess. But yeah it’s like 5 bucks and you give ‘em 5 dollars and you get fuckign wasted on Coney Island so yeah. Teens generally do this, cause you, we aren’t 21. Thats-that’s definitly how I go wasted first few times I did. That’s how it went down, pretty easy way.”

 

Why Dahlia’s, a Bar in New York, got Shut Down for Underage Drinking

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Montreal, Canada
Performance Date: 04/18/18
Primary Language: English

 

Context:

The subject is a white male and a lifelong New Yorker from Manhattan and Queens. He is my twin brother and we attended the boarding school Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut. Before this we were discussing what New York had begun to mean to us when we moved out to school, how we always heard stories and how it became a party location that we returned to when school was let out. I love this idea of New York teen folk culture because we could not have a overculture because what we were doing was illegal. The knowledge itself was folklore because it was passed on through person to person and it changed based on who knew what and sometime they were wrong. And then there were stories about the places we went because there was so little formal knowledge about them.

 

Piece:

“Theres like certain places, that people like, like everyone knows the places that don’t card. You know what I mean? Its sorta the same thi-way a bunch of people know this thing. You learn from other people, from.. I think – I had friends who were older than me and its sorta passed down like that. So there’s this place called 212 Hisae, or just 212, on 2nd Avenue and 9th Street I wanna say but I could be inaccurate, you can google map it, uh. They don’t card, I’ve been there!…sometimes. There was this place called Dahlia’s, but I think they got shut down because they ended up serving middle schoolers ‘cause that’s how much they didn’t card. I assume what happened was that college kids were doing it, high schoolers found out and started doing it, and then middle schoolers found out and started drinking at Dahlia’s. I heard this, maybe senior yet of high school. I don’t remember who told me, I’m sorry, I think it’s just like a thing people were like saying, you know what I mean?

 

Orb Watching Over Baby After Grandmother’s Death

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/19
Primary Language: English

Context:

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York. Before this, the subject and I discussed ghost stories for sometime and I asked them if they had ever had a ghostly experience. It was very hard for me to collect much that we think of traditional folklore, ghost stories or myths, but this piece stands in such stark contrast to that.

 

Piece:

“Oh, my mom. Alright, my mom used to say that one night she say like a giant light floating above my bed after my grandmother died. She thought it was my grandmother in orb form. Uuum, personal experience I don’t think I’ve ever had any, but my mom used to say that all the time. Cause it was right after my grandma died.”

 

Killer, a High School Folk Game, and Legends About It

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

Context:

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York.  They attended Hunter College High School, a specialized high school. Basically, it’s a public school and thus free, but one must test to get in. I also attended this school for sometime and also know the game. I have always been fascinated where the game comes from and have played similar, although less violent, versions elsewhere.

 

Piece:

“Killer is..uh.. So its like everyone’s on a team, I don’t know if this is how it started, but it’s how it ended, everyone is on a team. There’s like freshman girls, freshman boys, sophomore girls, sophomore boys. And you have to like assassinate — it keeps going beyond sophomore, its all. It’s not really separated by gender either, you can have sophomore mixed too, it’s whatever, there’s teams. I think that just happened because people do it in friend groups, so it’s like if your friend group is girls, if your friend group is boys, if your friend group is mixed. Um… There also were two junior girls teams, so yeah, I dunno, they end up with titles too. Like, uh, one year every team was named after a different album. So anyway Killer is uh, you have to kill — whichever team has a person still alive at the end of the game is the winner, so you have kill people on the other teams. And you do that with tracer guns, which have little plastic tracers inside them so pew pew [they mime finger guns]. Um, you shoot other people and if they get hit by the tracer then they’re dead. Um.. you kill a whole team, they’re out of the running. Whoever wins, wins the whole pot, which is usually like a thousand bucks. And there were like legends that like someone in the past had slept on the roof to avoid being killed because if you were like in the block of the school you can’t get killed. So he slept there the entire time and people brought him food and stuff. Uum, just slept on the roof. And there was another story were um, so this one kid was like “I know how I’m going to get this other person is I’m going to dress up as a homeless person, I’m going to disguise myself as a homeless person. I’m going to paint m-my tracer gun black. I’m gonna sit in the subway station, wait for him to show up”. So this guys stands up, pulls out his GUN and the police ALSO do that. And I dunno how it ended, he lived, everyone lived. I don’t think the police even shot, probably because the guy was whi… Nothing happened but like jesus christ, could you be stupider? I remember those were two big stories that got passed down from year to year. The administration were not a fan of it at all. They sent out emails every year being like “DON’T PLAY KILLER”, but it had not affect.

 

Abandoned Subway Entrance

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

Context:

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York. This legend is interesting because it begins online but then enters the real world.

 

Piece:

“There was an abandoned entry to the subway that was like near my house, it looks like all the other brownstones because it’s like.. But it’s boarded up, like all the windows are boarded up. And if you go in you can go — you can go from that building right into the train station which is wild because if you walk by it, you’re like “oh it’s another brownstone”, like you won’t even notice. I think I googled it, I think I was on the internet and was like New York City secrets and some sketchy website and I was like wow that’s right near where I live.