Category Archives: Actions

Day eight of the K.I.D.S. work week: Picnic, mudpies, kite-making

We closed out the week of actions with a picnic in the park near the base of the Queensboro bridge, Queens side. We had a lot of good snacks: saltines with sardines, fluffernutters, homemade cookies, chips, stuff like that. Some of us ate strange concoctions of various foods while blindfolded. Always good for a laugh. […]

Day seven: Blow-Up Sale in Queens

On Friday, we set up a card table near a high school in Long Island City Queens, around the time school let out. Eva had prepared a bunch of hybrid multi-user balloons by cutting and pasting balloon parts together with rubber cement. People came along and blew up the balloons: you had to work together […]

Day six: the Great Bedford Styuyvesant Balloon Parade

We met up at Diane’s place on Thursday for a balloon parade along Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy. You can get helium-filled balloons at lots of dollar stores for about 50 cents or less, just f.y.i. We played around with the balloons removing our hats and filling our umbrellas and such. Then on the way back […]

Day five: Blindfold peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

On Wednesday, we did another pop-up action in midtown at lunchtime. We set up a card table and offered to make PB&J sandwiches for people passing by. To hold up their part of the bargain, folks just had to direct us as to where to find the needed ingredients on the table, since we were […]

Day Four: Text Me Theater in Midtown Manhattan

We did a pop-up action at lunch time on Tuesday, May 20th, right outside Grand Central Station on 42nd Street. Text Me Theater was all about dramatically performing our old text messages from our cellphone archives, and performing new messages sent to us by passersby while we were on “stage” (milk crates).   We took […]

Day three: Monday morning NYC workforce pep rally!

We threw a pep rally in Herald Square from 8 to 10 a.m. Monday morning. We greeted and cheered people coming out of the subway on their way to work. Surprisingly, very few people looked annoyed, we actually got a lot of smiles and some folks even joined in on the cheering! Diane made some […]

Day two of the K.I.D.S. work week: neighborhood sing, jumprope, more ice cream, sliding down bannisters.

On Sunday, May 18th, we joined Elizabeth and friends for a neighborhood walk and sing on the upper west side. As we walked around singing songs by composers famous and not who lived in that area, we made more kick-the-can ice cream along the way. We discovered that the tin can telephone worked great for […]

Day one of K.I.D.S. week: Handshake demonstration, public costume party, ice cream kick-the-can, and other hijinks

We kicked off Kindness and Imagination Development Week in Union Square, Manhattan on Saturday, May 17th. Several of us showed up with a few duffel bags full of costumes and snacks and we proceeded to have a good old time. EMT started things off by displaying his encyclopedic knowledge of handshakes, high-fives, and hugs. He […]

The Tire Swing Story

In September, 2007, two boys and a dog set out on an adventure that would change the face of the world. One stood bent and weak, a broken collarbone on one shoulder forcing one arm into a sling, a dog leash in the other hand. The other was dressed in jeans and a collared workshirt, he carried a giant suitcase, salvaged from the streets. Within this suitcase lay coiled the rope, pulled from the navy yard in broad daylight, eaten by time but strongly made, and thick as Popeye’s arms. Between the boys rolled a single tire, found in a vacant lot, discarded for its utilitarian purpose, reclaimed for its joyitarian purpose.