The Curse of Dracula

Last night I had a very surreal Brooklyn evening.

I was invited by my friend, Jake to attend a screening in prospect park of 'Dracula' with live underscore performed by the Kronos Quartet composed by Phillip Glass.

The great things about these screenings is that people bring blankets and food and have little picnics while watching the show. We were sitting, eating sandwiches and berries with Slavic Soul Party serenading.
I somehow chose the part of the blanket that had been thrown on top of a pile of twigs, which have quite possibly forever damaged my tender parts.

My favorite thing about this version of dracula is that it was back before special effects, so you know that the bats were tied to a string on a twig and there's some guy whose job it is to bounce them up and down to make it look like they are flying...Absolute brilliance.

{cut to Dracula's Castle}

It started thundering and lightning in the movie. It also started thundering and lightning in the park. ooh, cool. I think a lot of people were stoned and like...Far out, man...Which I mean, hey, it was pretty cool. I on the other hand was looking up at the tree we were sitting under, wondering how long it would be before a bolt of lightning would split it right down the middle.

I decided to leave during the part of the movie where the characters are on a ship bound for England during a terrifying squall and was about 3/4 of the way out of the bandshell area when the torrential downpour in the park coincided with the movie and they stopped the film. Of course I wasn't all the way out, so I was suddenly in a crowd of hundreds of people trying to evacuate and avoid electrocution.

It was so weird to see so many people huddled together in the rain, running out of the park.
I ended up under an awning between 8th and 7th avenues on 9th street with a small group of people, waiting for the rain to let up. I feel like we were united for a few moments by the magic of real life and cinema colliding perfectly. We had all bonded in some weird way. We had similar stories, but wanted to make sure that our individual voices could be heard. I overheard a girl telling her friend that she had seen a bolt of lightning crash down a block away from the park.

The rain eventually let up. As I passed the bars, I noticed that most of them were so full that the people were spilling out into the streets. I guess when you find yourself bonding with so many people over lightning, rain, and the curse of Dracula, you want the connection to keep on living....to live forever.

Photo Credit- of course it's the lovely Carrie Thomas