Joni Mitchell wrote about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot and it was very strange to walk by the Limelight Marketplace on 6th Avenue and 20th Street in Chelsea. I had read that they had turned this former church into a shopping arcade and wanted to just go in and see for myself. I got an odd vibration that was not spiritual.
The place is full of coffee and pasta and cute rubber rain boots and probably candles and some handmade $7 greeting cards, but no batik. Lot of wee stalls that I will probably never need/use. But that is me. (If you want a tin of biscuits for $36 dollars or a handmade tailored shirt to get you over the hump until you finally get a job go here I guess. )
It was not weird because I use to worship here, but because I used to dance here! Okay, I danced here once.
Long before it was a shopping arcade this deconsecrated church was a popular nightclub called The Limelight. And long before I knew I was gay, I remember dancing here with my shirt off. And this was long before I knew I should not dance with my shirt off ever. It was full of disco music and sweaty men and probably Grace Jones. Much like my ipod is today.
Now it sells gelato. Which is far better than it being torn down for parking.
But boy looking up at the vaulted ceiling and remembering sipping a madras on a pew, I thought "What was I thinking?!"
1 comment:
Did you know that they use church towers to put wi-fi antennas? I know, you are thinking, "Who are 'they'?" Anyway, "they" pay the churches to use that space. When I was a child, I thought that was where G-d sat and eavesdropped when he visited a church or a temple; now there are all these wires and things, and perhaps a mall below!
How can he find any space to sit?
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