Second and St. Mark's Place

I found these mannequins on 2nd Avenue, just around the corner from St. Mark's Place, near where Love Saves the Day used to be. I lived on St. Mark's Place with my art school friends during our summer break, when I was 19. We had a seventh floor walk up apartment and loved to dangle our legs over the fire escape and watch the world pass by below. This walk, down St. Mark's Place and around the corner to 2nd Avenue, is the one Madonna took in Desperately Seeking Susan.

I'd discovered Madonna a few years before that movie came out, when she was a model in a fashion magazine. I was in awe of the way she wore black fishnets under ripped up jeans. I remember painstakingly copying her photograph in pencil in my sketchbook. I'd never seen anything like her. She made sense to me, and I began to wear pearls and black lace with my flannel.

When Desperately Seeking Susan came out I asked my dad to take me. I was in high school, not yet old enough to go alone. As the screen faded to black, we left the theater...my dad mortified, me feeling fully alive.