rushing the season – at the playland motel

Surely T.S. Eliot must have intended some deeper meaning other than a simple comment on the seasons when he famously wrote, “April is the cruellest month”. If (like me) you live in New York or elsewhere in the Northeast, you’re well aware that March is actually more cruel by far – it’s downright ruthless. Or rather it’s a tease. Though it was a gorgeous 65 degrees and sunny just a couple of days ago, today it’s right back to winter with lots of wind and the high temperature forecast to be only 28 degrees. After keeping a (relatively) stiff upper lip throughout the snow and ice of Jan/Feb, March adds insult to injury by throwing a few teasing glimpses of spring into what is basically yet another winter month.

All of which is a roundabout and only slightly poetic way of saying – ARE YOU GUYS READY FOR SPRING OR WHAT??!!? I always get a bad case of cabin fever…and wanderlust…and Coachella fever…and beach fever around this time of year. I find myself watching summer music festival videos on YouTube, Googling various beach and desert destinations, and generally doing anything that feeds into my denial of the winter-esque weather lingering just outside my door.

With this in mind, I’ve decided that for at least the next 5 to 7 days or so we’re going to rush the season here on Mr. Newton – it’s going to be all spring and summer street style all the time! I’m sure lots of you are as excited for the arrival of warm weather as I am…and I have lots of previously-unpublished-anywhere photos from Spring/Summer twenty thirteen that I’ve been sitting on…and I don’t have a boss to tell me that I can’t…so I figured, why not?? First up are these photos that I shot at the opening weekend of the Playland Motel in the Rockaways – July 4th, 2013. Here are a few brief thoughts –> Like the Rockaways themselves, I’m kind of meh on the Playland Motel. It’s a (long) block off the beach, with no pool and no rooftop scene/view – so you’re sort of left to hang around in the street level bar/restaurant – or head out back and sit in lawn chairs on gravel. Also – and once again, like the Rockaways themselves – it’s surprisingly not all that hipster. I’m a street style photographer…I live for cute scenes…”total pretentious hipster vibe” is a recommendation for me, not a dis…and the Playland feels more mixed bag/post-hipster/30-something/friends of the owners/locals who don’t know or don’t care that this is supposed to be for the trendy new crowd. Or maybe it’s supposed to be for anyone who wants to come – what do I know? The staff and owners could not have been nicer to me…and I’d go again just for their fried oyster po’ boy sandwich – which started out as a way to eat without standing on line at Rockaway Taco, but ended up being one of the best fried seafood sandwiches of my life! Really though, I’m just waiting for the beach scene at Fort Tilden to get going again. Without that, the Rockaways hipster hype is short on the hipsters, long on the hype. xo