Old-timey hobbies are new again with Covid lockdown

Letters from Home 1992-1993

I took up scrapbooking as a creative means to tell the stories around my plethora of photos – back when cameras had real actual film in them as a matter of course.

I’d take my film reel to the local drugstore and wait what seemed like an extra-long time (like an hour or a week) to get the shots developed. Then they would end up in a pile in a drawer.

At some point in the late 90s, I discovered what was then a growing company called Creative Memories, based out of Minnesota. They distributed their wares through a network of consultants who made money selling products. I soon joined their ranks and my collection of scrapbook materials got out of hand quite quickly.

So did the number of projects I had going at any given time!

Some of the albums turned out to be nice works of art, others were more for show at the parties thrown to hawk products. I wasn’t particularly good at selling products and my business as it were, did not really turn a profit.

At some point, life and time got in the way of my scrapbooking and I canceled the business subscription. I’d move all the supplies with me from California to Minnesota in 2010. I never even had the time to look in the bags or pull-out the supplies (the ones I didn’t give away when trying to pare down my belongings for the move).

Creative Memories went through a bankruptcy and practically disappeared as the changing landscape of digital cameras, cellphones and social media hit their bottom-line.

Fast forward to 2020 and a pandemic changed the world forever. We were all stuck inside and my distractions like events, curling, festivals, get-togethers, and bars were all shut down or canceled.

I moved into my own apartment again in October 2019 after several years in a practically homeless state. It was nice to start organizing and decorating, really making a home. As a result, I unearthed my scrapbooks and supplies from a toppled over pile in the corner and put everything away in cabinets. I took the time to go through my old albums and laugh at some of the stories I wrote to go with the photos. You really should read about that scary encounter with hikers in the Grand Canyon!

My only regret from making fancy albums from my photo collection was that I couldn’t easily scan the photos to share on TBT (Throwback Thursday) on social media. Still, I was looking for creative outlets now that I was home all the time. Could I get back into this old hobby?

That is exactly what I did. I started with one of my unfinished, 10-year-old projects. Another blast from the past was the collection of handwritten letters I received while on my Junior Year Abroad program at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. Other than physical photos, we also used to write on paper as the main form of communication, especially long-distance. We used stamps.

One night, I grabbed the album pieces, letters, and cards and just started adding them to blank pages with the occasional colorful decoration or sticker.

I found it relaxing and entertaining to read through the letters. I remembered the rather singular focus I had on making friends with recalcitrant Brits and all the boys I liked from afar because I was too intimidated to do anything about them. The usual immaturity of a 19-year old who was not as sophisticated as her peers.

Not all the letters were happy ones though. I got into a vociferous argument with my cousin in Canada. And my folks were often preachy about my drinking at pubs or plans I had for the future. Sometimes my friends at school in Santa Cruz, California would use the opportunity of the long-distance letter to give me a detailed, TMI account of their boyfriends and family spats. My mother was in nursing school at the time, so I learned a lot about anatomy and bodily fluids.

Nevertheless, letters from my now deceased grandparents and the almost forgotten art of letter writing – including but not limited to drawings on envelopes and enclosed glitter -- are a part of my story and my history. The format is perhaps sadly gone the way of the Dodo bird and I’ll never relive my teens or college years, so it will be nice to page through the albums as I grow older.

I am still working on the last few months of that year. Next up, completing the (also 10-year plus old) album of my time as a grad student at the University of Miami. Now THAT is a story! One bonus, I discovered during this process -- Creative Memories was in fact not dead, just reformatted. I can get supplies and carry on the tradition of scrapbooking.

If curling at the Saint Paul Curling Club does get canceled due to Covid in the fall, I can see I will be keeping myself busy on my projects.

#scrapobooking #personalhistory #photos #photoalbums #stories #journey #memories #creativememories #cameras #storytelling #authenticity #fun #hobbies #Covid19 #lockdown #stufftodo

Nine Houses: Lowertown SantaCons through the years 2012-2016

I attended my first SantaCon in December of 2012. SantaCons are held all over the United States with similar themes. A group of revelers dressed as Santa, reindeer and the like celebrating all things Christmas. Lowertown SantaCon became a tradition very quickly in St Paul. By the time I attended my first, it had been going strong for five years with no signs of demise.

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2012 SantaCon V

Author at SantaCon 2012 with Penguin Facepaint

The first year I attended, we crawled to bars and restaurants all over the Lowertown area, accompanied by an MC and a brass band called The Brass Messengers. From Gopher Bar with its surly bartenders and cash-only policy to Black Dog Café and the upscale Chinese/ Asian-Fusion bar Senor Wong’s. There we went traipsing through the snow. Snowflakes falling quickly, landing on noses and eyelashes. We shivered and sung carols between stops, warming up in one of the sponsoring establishments with friends.

Lowertown Loft’s Leasing Assistant, Allison invited us to begin our tour in the main room downstairs with a pre-party. I didn’t have an outfit planned so I wore my red penguin knitted sweater and tan cords. We got our face painted at Black Dog on our stop there. My new neighbors Doris and Dan joined us as well as a few other familiar faces from the building.

We’d had our first snow by the time Lowertown SantaCon arrived.

The nights were chilly but not unbearable. The glittery icicles and pristine snow glistened under the lamps. Christmas markets, work parties, decorations and twinkle lights covering the now bare trees all signified the start of the holiday season. Just a few blocks away at Rice Park, an outdoor skating rink was crowded daily with hockey players and figure skaters, family gatherings and people like me who could only skate in circles.

Unlike California, the weather reminded me of the Christmas movies I loved to watch. The snow gingerly falling on eyelashes and leaving wispy marks on coats. Yuletide felt so much more real in St Paul than anywhere I’d been other than perhaps my childhood home. Maybe that is what it invoked in me – a child-like wonder and inspiration to move beyond my everyday drudgery – work, money, work, getting to work by bus, standing in the cold for hours for a bus. Doing obligatory healing work and dealing with all the metaphysical and physical realities of my existence.

As luck would have it, at Bulldog I ran into the man I’d written the go away letter to. I was hopping around the joint to the brass band, singing carols and in control. I was having a great time at that moment. After all, if I knew anything, I knew I was right. I read situations correctly, I had it all down. I may have been enlightened or psychic and definitely clever. I ignored him on purpose to prove my point. I made sure to emphasize that by talking to his buddy sitting next to him.

Yea, I was right, he was wrong and there was no question. In the hours and days after this encounter, a gnawing dissatisfaction with my approach would develop. In the moment, my sensitivity to the pain I was suffering from being victimized or whatever it was I thought was going on was heightened. I was also pretty tipsy. It was easier to not care than care too much.

Neighbors and revelers at Lowertown SantaCon 2012

2013 SantaCon VI

Author at Lowertown SantaCon 2013

The second-year I went to SantaCon the organizers switched up some of the venues – as the landscape of downtown morphed, so did the available venues large enough to house a growing group of Christmas enthusiasts. Snow, snowflakes, carols, fire dancers and at least one Krampus. Golden’s Deli on 4th and Wall, would turn out to be a multi-year spot for us red-cheeked revelers.

Mr. Golden and his troupe of children, family members and friends-of-friends owned and ran this quirky deli with its bagel sandwiches, Peace Coffee and brunch on weekends. There was a stage, art on the walls and a relaxed atmosphere invoking the nearby artist’s lofts.

Krampus is fairly popular in the Twin Cities due to the eastern European influence. A horned beast with a furry body and menacing visage, who punishes children for misbehaving A far cry and more sinister, perhaps than a lump of coal.

I planned to go on one or two stops of the SantaCon and head into Minneapolis for a DJ night at The First Avenue Record Room. The powers that be had different plans for me that night, I would soon find out.

I dressed as an elf and used some boots that looked good but weren’t really made for ice and snow. I’d had some issues a few times on the crawl with slipping around. When I left the party at one of the venues, I headed up the darkened 6th St to the bus stop on Minnesota Street.

Lost in reverie, excited about dancing in Minneapolis and seeing the DJs, I felt a gust of wind blow out of nowhere. A dark shadow fell. A foreboding thought crept through my mind about having to deal with someone I disliked, who would probably be there too. I huddled against the chill air as I walked quickly so I wouldn’t miss the bus.

On an uneven piece of the pavement by US Bank, a phantom spirit swooped through my body like a slap to my back. Suddenly, I tripped and fell hard on my face, jarring my neck, my bones. People walked by me, as I lay prostrate, flat on the ground, dazed and shaken up. They didn’t stop or ask if I was OK. As I got back my senses and sat up, I felt heat rising and spilling from my chin. I wiped at my face, and away came blood – fast and furious. My hands were cut-up too.

I knew I had to make it back to the apartment, each step excruciatingly painful. Blood dripping from multiple places all over my white coat and onto the snow below my feet. I tried to hold my chin to coagulate the blood, and yet it kept dripping. By the next morning as I assessed the damage – the gash on my chin was at least an inch long -raw and deep. My body could barely move – bruised and battered as it was. I didn’t have health insurance so I did my best to cover it all with Band-Aids.

Doris brought me food from a feast she had hosted. I was supposed to attend. I never did make it out dancing. I wondered if the DJs even missed my presence. Significance, showing up, being there seemed the only way to make an impact. I didn’t think about what I might need. Forging ahead to catch the bus, in the dark, on the ice, with the wrong boots. Was I a friend or a fan? A champion or a nuisance. I never really knew.

The scar on my chin is hard and knotty, dark hairs like to grow there. A constant reminder of the moment the pavement and my body shared a hard and unfortunate bonding. A good thing I didn’t die on impact. I never will know how the night at the Record Room went or who attended. Something or someone didn’t want me to show up though.

Lowertown Lofts neighbors at Bulldog.

2014-SantaCon VII

Author Gina Micek as a "Naughty" elf, Lowertown Santacon 2014

My third consecutive SantaCon, would mark a huge shift in my thinking – whether from the consistent BodyTalk and healing work Kris and I were conducting or other mindset changes, I had moved away from much of the rigid viewpoints I’d previously held.

For SantaCon, I reworked the elf costume with better boots and didn’t plan to go elsewhere. I was knee-deep in my MBA by this point anyway. Too much studying. Never enough funds. I’d just started my full-time job as an Administrative Assistant with a start-up finance firm. I was a contractor. I loved the job but working full-time and school full-time became a consistently stressful event. I was waiting for them to make me permanent and the leadership was waiting for the New Year.

Dan & Doris and the other neighbors who stuck around joined each other for the crawl. The building didn’t really sponsor an event that year. Allison was either on her way out or going and not that into us anymore.

We ended up at the new Bedlam Theater – an event center with a hippie feel that had used a Million Dollar restoration fund to redo the structure and get it up to code. We were hopeful and excited.

The Bedlam was housed in a building with a long-vacant first floor, where a jazz club once stood. I was familiar with the building from my time at Citizen’s League – then housed in the CoCo space on the 4th floor-- it was nice to see the revamped theater. It had been a rough year – for the first half, I was jobless and looking. I started my MBA in February, almost out of desperation. Dived right into my back-to-back eight-week classes.

Our most difficult classes had begun to form my cohort into future business leaders, we were often depleted and running on empty or sick. I let go of my strong desire to move out of my admin career and took the job at Springleaf in order to have a stable job through my time at school.

My curling season had been short, I’d let go of regular teams to make classes and couldn’t do many of the events. The crawl for me was a respite in the sea of intensity.

2015 SantaCon VIII

Author Gina Micek dressed as a woodland fairy, Lowertown Santacon 2015

By 2015 SantaCon went through some major shifts in the route. Lowertown was changing. Big River Pizza had opened on the corner of Wall and 6th Street to take advantage of the revamped landscape of Lowertown with the opening of CHS Field – the Saint’s baseball stadium --and a growing number of new restaurants lined 6th street.

We dropped into Kelly’s Depot Bar – a legacy venue with the greasy kitchen, a connection to the now restored train depot and a dive bar feel. The place was crowded with Santas and Krampus and we stuffed ourselves into the venue for loud brass brand music, cheap cocktails and barely heard conversations.

Senor Wong’s continued to attempt to compete by renaming itself SW Craft Bar and Bedlam Theater remained on the list for a fun conclusion. I was preparing to finish out my MBA in the new year with a J-term abroad in Japan. I’d already taken the month of January off from curling because we were in class several times a week, plus the two weeks we’d be in Japan.

The semester concluded with a stressful event for me in which classmates on a group project had accused me of not working to deadline – a situation I contested due to illness. When I defended myself to their accusations on the basis of self-care, the teacher assumed I needed a mental health break, and removed me from the group project, and class. I had to make it up late and never did recover the grade.

I decided to go all out for the first time and create an entirely new costume for 2015. I reused a Halloween costume I’d made years before, added a crown and glitter, as well as fairy wings. I was now a Winter Fairy. I spent way more money than I had on dust, wings and the like but really wanted to show up with something fantastic.

By this point, Dan and Doris and others I was used to going with on the crawl – were now not going or had moved from Lowertown. I just went on my own but it wasn’t quite as fun or exciting as previous years with a large group from the building. Allison had moved on to run her own event’s business.

2016 SantaCon IX

The author dressed as a woodland fairy, Lowertown Santacon, St Paul, MN

The neighborhood just kept changing. Trattoria Da Vinci was gone. Bin Wine Bar was gone. Public and Green Lantern had opened in the space next to Barrio and Bulldog. The JAX building -one of the major contributors to the artist’s community, had been sold and the artists held a Wake.

While it would be years yet before the building was developed into anything – the artists moved out, the garbage containers in the back alley were filled with the remnants of once vibrant studios. One wondered whether Lowertown could still be called and “art’s district.”

Time waits for no person or city, and in the end, our sleepy little town was quickly becoming a bustling metropolis centered on redevelopment and high-priced luxury apartments. A new era of St Paul had begun whether we liked it or not. Bedlam didn’t last either. Turns out the quirky hippie theater just couldn’t afford the costs of the upgrades they’d incurred to open.

I attended in 2016, my MBA now complete. The wind had, however, gone out of the sails for me. My friends had moved. I was focused on other things and issues. It would be the last year for SW Craft Bar and Golden’s. They just couldn’t keep up with the changing landscape and increased offerings. The artistic, hippy joints and the older bars just simply didn’t have the élan of breweries, new hip eateries like Handsome Hog, the BBQ joint now occupying the Bin space.

In fact, it was the last year for me too. By 2017, I was burned out and struggling with my own issues. 2018, SantaCon almost canceled and went to a one- bar non-crawl event held in the Green Lantern. I didn’t attend either year. 2019, I'd just moved again and wasn't up for going out. What was once an amazing and fun-filled event that I couldn’t miss, had spiraled into decay from the gentrification of Lowertown and the changing landscape of my spiritual and physical existence.

Lowertown SantaCon had seen its time for me and the call of the wild spirit took me elsewhere. A sad effect of the story I have yet to tell about the final years of my living in Lowertown.

Santacon 2016 Santas and other revelers at Big River Pizza

#lowertown #stpaul #lowertownsantacon #NineHouses #LivingStPaul #lifejourney #journey #healing #personalmemoir #memoir #MSP #Minnesota #writing #journal #history #neighborhood #spiritualjourney #experiences #Santacon #Christmas #holiday #celebrations #barcrawls #downtownliving #neighbors

Day 16: It is just a restaurant job and more unusual synchronicities

Tonight, consisted of more interesting juxtapositions. And by that, I mean how you can plan to do one thing and end up doing something completely different (however, maybe more noteworthy).

I went for a walk – it is my last full week in the neighborhood on Grand Ave, which I have been residing in since April. I gotta be out of the student pad on Aug 31. School is starting, the third and final student is moving in and I am persona non grata. Probably as it should be.

Although I am not the example for 20-year-olds in the prime of their existence of a long-term trajectory. I only hope they are not currently contemplating this path. I certainly wasn’t. Hope and naivete should probably reign supreme a bit longer. If one of the three is actually on my path, they probably won’t know it for a while yet and can scream, jump up and down and talk too loud for another year or two. haha

Anyway, I went walking down Grand, only to find out that Red Rabbit was hiring for the October 2 opening. Heck, why not, I thought. Filled out an application and talked to the GM who was probably all of 25. Nevertheless, in his exuberant youthfulness, he thought the best I could do after 6 months of serving at Restaurant #1 was to be host for barely more than minimum wage. Granted, I didn’t get into my MBA in marketing or that sort of jazz. That does not seem applicable, honestly.

I left a bit annoyed -because ultimately, I was looking to consolidate restaurant jobs and find a serving job at the next level, maybe while I do my other job hunting. I’m not interested in hosting again. I got that down. It was there, I took a chance. Burst into flames. Kept walking.

Hung out at The Lexington for the evening, where I end up meeting the bartender who normally works the lounge, a guy named Patrick who works at The Local, in Minneapolis, talking to Joe (manager, who also curls) and otherwise having a fantastic experience.

Tried my first Aperol Spritz. A drink one of my customer’s at the serving gig asked for (unfortunately we didn’t have Aperol). The bartender mentioned at the end of the night that she had hardly any experience bartending when she applied to The Lex but a willingness to learn and she has picked it up. So, I mentioned my application to the other place and she said, “Oh no, if you have already been serving, go try the Marriott hotel or other places and talk your way in.”

See sometimes, you just need to hear that it is possible before you keep going. (she also is 24)

Although frankly, is that what I really want? Well, first off, clearly given my website and my job hunt, working restaurants is not what I want. Furthermore, restaurant #2 is dysfunctional in a way that is close to trauma and I’d like out. Still, quitting is problematic with my other stuff going on. **sigh**

At any rate, I may keep trying for an upgrade to the restaurant biz while I work on my clients and the real job. I often wish I could have gotten all this earlier in my life like 22-24. Nevertheless, here we are. I’d just submitted a resume via a recruiter for $17 an hour (with an MBA) and was thinking – geez…if that is the way it going to be (and really these corporations need to examine themselves) why’d I bother going back to school?

Anyway…life is weird. And no doubt, I can’t let that get to me – the contract job app is simply energy, movement, stuff happening. It probably won’t work out anyway (just read the resume, for given sake). And we are at the end of summer so the likelihood of having to wait another month for any significant further movement is high. (State Fair!)

Hey, if other amazing people in history and even currently have some rags to riches story to tell, I am not the only one. Plan to just keep meditating and persevering and working on my plan. Go me!

#2018 #sevenyear #frustrations #breakthrough #mind #Curling #innerwork #betterchoices #connectiontoself #soul #selfhelp #meditation #health #Transformation #bestself #Food #career #mindset #process #personaljourney #energy #patterns #jobsearching