Orchard St. between Houston & Delancey Sts.
Sunday, October 15, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
pickleday.nyc
“A naughty pickle is how I’d best describe myself. I think fun and laughter is the whole point of life,” Olivier Award-winning actress Celia Imrie told Woman & Home in 2009. Indeed, pickles are all about fun and laughter, which should be available in abundance at the annual Lower East Side Pickle Day, being held Sunday on Orchard St. between Houston and Delancey. Among those participating in the festivities, which include food, fashion, and family-friendly games and activities, are pickled purveyors Guss’ Pickles, Pickle Me Pete, Backyard Brine, Grillo’s Pickles, Crisp Pickles, Messy Brine, the Pickle Guys, Rick’s Picks, Horman’s Best Pickles, Adamah Farm, Brooklyn Brine, MacDonald Farms, Epic Pickles, Brine Brothers, City Saucery, Brooklyn Whatever, Kilhaney’s Pickles, Anomaly Season, and Pickals Foundation in addition to Melt Bakery, Saxelby Cheesemongers, Sweet Buttons Desserts, the Meatball Shop, Shi Eurasia, Macaron Parlour, the SKINny Bar & Lounge, Georgia’s BBQ, Pop Karma, and Roni-Sue’s Chocolates. There will also be live music and a home pickling contest. Pickles have a long affiliation with the Lower East Side, and the annual Pickle Day only adds to that pickled history.
The extraordinary story of beloved Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas is intricately documented in Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi’s warm and intimate Chavela, opening at Film Forum today. Chavela’s life might seem an all-too-familiar archetype, the tale of a powerful female vocalist, a lesbian performer whose career was wrecked by the lethal combination of a heterosexual macho society, personal demons, and addiction, but Chavela avoids stereotypes and instead delivers a very human portrait. Born in Costa Rica in 1919, Chavela had an unhappy childhood and ran away to Mexico when she was fourteen to pursue a singing career and live a freer life, able to explore her sexual orientation as she grew older. “Her own parents saw her as a strange girl. They realized she was a boyish girl,” composer Marcela Rodríguez says. “Her movement, her hands, and her body language were manly.” Her longtime partner, human rights lawyer Alicia Pérez Duarte, adds, “Chavela created her persona in a very macho world.” Chavela dedicated her life to her music while keeping much of her personal life private — the film drops little more than tantalizing hints about her relationship with artist Frida Kahlo and an evening with Ava Gardner — and her commanding presence and powerful vocal style quickly made her a star in the 1940s and ’50s. “Hers wasn’t a sweet, crystal clear voice,” says cabaret owner Jesusa Rodríguez. “And she always sounded like she’d been torn apart, as if she’d been born with the wounds of life and death.” But at the height of her fame, those wounds started catching up to her as she began drinking heavily, resulting in a fifteen-year hiatus during which many people thought she was dead. The film centers around a never-before-seen 1991 interview Gund conducted with Chavela upon her return to singing, as she speaks more openly and honestly about her sexuality, her family, and her career. She’s a riveting figure, confident and determined, ready to face the world again. “We all have to live in the present. Don’t think about yesterday or tomorrow. Today,” she says.