nail party

Danyel and Noelle and I entered Jay Nails on 8th Street a little after 3pm on Friday. Armed to the teeth -- jumbo red velvet cupcakes and chocolate minicakes, party hats, pink napkins, champagne -- we burst in looking for our friend Andrea, who we were surprising on her 30th birthday. Only we had made Andrea up, because what we really wanted to do was get the nail technicians to party with us. We all know that celebrations bring people together, and many activists have come to view the right to celebrate life (and death) as a fundamental human right. We wanted to create some spontaneous community, spark a few minutes of workday fun, break up the stupid, silent and culturally stratified codes of the nail shop, guerilla style, but with baked goods and infectiously celebratory spirits. It was harder than we thought.

After wondering loudly about "Andrea's" absence and asking a few people if she had been there earlier, we made a show of calling and leaving her messages, finally discovering that she was at her boyfriend's house, which was too far away from the nail shop to come over in any reasonable amount of time. We moaned that we simply could not carry these cupcakes and bottles of prosecco around all day, and began offering them around the room. A few of the nail techs took minicupcakes, but only after much coercion. A woman getting a pedicure called me over and told me, incredulous, that it was in fact her birthday. Her name was Amy, and she accepted a big cupcake and a glass of bubbly so that we could all toast her.






Amy told us that Andrea has great friends.



The people who worked at the shop seemed to be getting a little pissed that we were loitering, so me and Danyel decided to get manicures in order to extend our stay. The interaction definitely changed the dynamic, shifting it into realm of the inherently oppressive capitalist transaction. We gave the shop many cupcakes and bottle and a half of sparkling wine when we left, and we did succeed in entertaining/wasting the time of the people who worked there for almost an hour. But dismantle the power structure that exists in the nail service industry, we did not. Tipped well, though.



I was happy that in the end our birthday celebration became the real thing for one surprised and happy client, and my oceanic blue nail polish is still pretty perfect, I must say. Still, days later, I am already thinking about how to make this better next time. I think a few of the women who worked at Jay Nails might have been on to our "invisible performance", and even if they weren't, they were definitely laughing at us much as they were laughing with us... But I tell you, it feels good to make an idiot of yourself when through that goofiness you are able to crack a smile in someone, just because you did something unexpected.


Making yourself a loony toon, acting downright zany for a laugh like that, it is as if to say --

"I know this system is all really fucked up, and I'm sorry you have to work this lame ass job all day, where half the people treat you like shit, or disregard you completely, and almost certainly never ask your name. It's a problem, and I'd like to do something to really fix it, but it seems so subtle and so wide I can't imagine how. I hope thinking about what you we did makes you smile later."

What we did was something, for sure -- it was small and awkward and almost clever, and kind of beautiful at times -- but it was also nowhere near enough.