This evening I was walking around Greenwich Village with a friend who is visiting from Europe. The weather was perfect, so there were many people around and about.
At some point we passed by three young women on Bleecker Street wearing identical long black robes with matching hoods. The look was not so much Wiccan as it was Satanist fashionista. Or maybe that should be “Satanista”.
My friend and I tried to figure out whether we had just witnessed a sincere display of collective religious conviction, or an attempt to create a Hollywood style fashion moment on the streets of New York.
Just then a fairy flew by. On a bicycle.
I mean, a young woman dressed in a little white fairy outfit, complete with delicate white wasp-like wings out of a Brian Froud illustration, peddled downtown on MacDougal Street at breakneck speed.
This raised all sorts of new questions. Did the witches and the fairy know each other? Was some sort of epic battle between good and evil playing out on the streets of New York? Were they in fact mortal foes, or was the fairy working with the witches?
Maybe it has something to do with August 17. Or maybe it’s just a typical weekend evening in Greenwich Village.