Fiction

History Comes Alive at Colonial Williamsburg, Brooklyn!

See the past come out and say, “Hey … what’s up?” at Colonial Williamsburg, Brooklyn!* Here are just some of the too-cool-for-the-museum attractions:

“Ye Olde Vintedge Shoppe”
Visit one of the first establishments of its kind! Pick over hundreds of cool castoffs from decades past! Assemble and purchase the perfect faux-serious and ironic outfit from the 80s … the 1780s, that is! Behold the protopunk-esque feathered caps and full skirts of the post revolution era. Don’t forget the shoulder pads!

“Obscuroons”
These spitoon-like containers sat on the floor at the ready to catch any obscure reference “dropped” by a speaker. Remember the days before phrases like “Hegemony or Survival” and “Levi-Strauss” sailed right over our greasy heads and sank to the ground like a stone? Me neither!

“Friar Fyllyp’s Falafel and Fake Fowl Fortress”
Throw away those Tofutti Cuties and get with the real meal deals at Double-Triple-F’s! Long before desperate anemics began scarfing vegan meat substitutes and eating their soylent greens, Friar Fyll was serving the best exotic delights from the colonial Orient, as well as no-mutton mutton, or “nutton,” as the locals called it. So what if it’s supporting oppression? Order a side of sweet potato-flavored stalks that are totally not made of animal products like rat tail and unpasteurized goat’s milk! You can’t get this stuff at Whole Foods!

“Mumster”
Don’t be scared, nerds, this mummy could barely throw a javelin in its prime, to be sure! Witness the first hipster ever to lope the streets of Brooklyn (actual origin disputed, possibly Lower East Side or London). The flesh is weak, but Barry Gibb’s haircut never dies when shrouded in the protective cloak of irony! Osteoporosis didn’t kill this guy (despite the evidence), but an ill-advised performance-art piece involving a boar and one of the first guitars ever made did! Read the tattered pages of his funeral guest list to find the name rumored to be that of his true love: a barmaid that he wooed and then totally intended to call on but didn’t because he got hung-up playing Grand Theft Horse and then got into this really interesting conversation about metallurgy with his roommate and then they figured they’d just get dinner since they were hungry and close to their favorite tavern way across town so it wasn’t at all, by any means, a conscious effort not to call on her and she should really just stop being so weird about it.

“Musick Collection”
We all know the state of technology at this time didn’t exactly lend itself to portable, widespread music by the most cutting-edge bands. But the denizens of Colonial Williamsburg still listened to the rocking sounds of bands so underground that no one knows them even today! Letters from the era mention groups such as the Plagues, Brian Boston Massacre, lo-fi trio Plymouth Rock, singer/songscribe Wolfgang and early dyke-punk pioneers Goody Bushe, but all sheet music appears to be have been used to roll a popular type of cigarette filled with “medicynal herbe” (thankfully, the advent of “Dust for Nasal Physick” eliminated this problem).

With so much to be coolly indifferent to, how could you not saunter over today or whatever?