TOUCH: International Pleating

Once you start looking, you’ll start seeing pleats everywhere in the city. In the plastic awnings on Queens rowhouses. In the air filters stacked at a Brooklyn auto-repair shop. In the curtains at the Metropolitan Opera. In the folds of a bulldog’s nose, and in the metal wall at Erie Basin Park in Red Hook (below).

But on the fourth floor of a building in the West Thirties, above a garage for hot dog carts, you'll find International Pleating, the last remaining pleating factory in the Garment District. You’ll also get to shake the deft hands of Leon and George Kalajian, its father-and-son owners, who are carrying on their family’s 150-year tradition of textile manufacture and manipulation.

George, who recently released the only extant textbook on pleating, is gradually taking over the business from his father. Leon is officially retired, but “you can’t stop him,” say George. Leon declares that no one knows anything about pleating anymore except the Kalajian family. At one point there were almost forty pleating factories in the Garment District; since then, most of the work has moved to China.

In the house in Lebanon where Leon was born, his mother kept a secret room for her couture sewing work. Leon was in charge of placing hot irons outside her closed door. “Then one day, she let me in,” he says. From that moment, there was no going back. As his mother taught Leon the basics of hand-ironing, he began to come up with new ways of doing it “my own way.”

He started to experiment with fabrics, and began selling garments on consignment at a local shop. By the time he was fifteen, his business was going strong. His goal was—and remains—to create something new with each project. He claims he’s made twelve thousand different patterns since then.

The factory’s single room, with large windows framed by pleated curtains, is a clutter of machinery and paper. There’s not as much fabric as you’d expect. Most of it is sealed away in molds—tubes, cones, or flat stacks—being pressed into its final pleated form.

Pleats are a symphony for the senses. Running one’s fingers over the springy crenellations, the heights and shadows, creates a satisfying tactile rhythm. Pleats are precision, edge, and depth.

Perhaps equally satisyfing is the sound of a paper pattern unfurling from its mold—bump-a-bump-a-bump—revealing a tricky pleated shoulder cap for a sleeve.

As I tour the factory, fingering silks and cottons and synthetics, I learn that there are only four types of pleats—accordion, box, sunburst, and side—and also that the world’s oldest woven garment is pleated, dating back five thousand years to ancient Egypt.

Photo from https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2017/11/worlds-oldest-dress.

How do you pleat fabric? For straight pleats, you use a machine: International Pleating's green behemoth is a German model so old that one one except the Kalajians knows how to repair it anymore.

Other types of pleats require a mold. You spread the fabric over stiff cardboard, which is shaped into the pleating pattern, place the mold in a rack, and place the rack in an industrial oven, which effectively irons the pleats into the fabric with heat, pressure, and steam, then let the fabric dry on racks. George has developed a code for each form. There are many things to consider before pleating: the direction of the fabric grain, the fabric weight, whether a pattern is preprinted or will be printed after pleating, the direction of the pleats.

“Even today I always say to George, ‘We are not working for money; we are working for quality,’” Leon tells me. Passing on their family’s knowledge of pleating is the Kalajians’ contribution not only to the fashion world but also to their adopted city. “I want to do something to save the city,” Leon says. “Not the world—the city.”

TOUCH: Mother Pigeon's touchable street pigeons and rats

Mother Pigeon, a.k.a. Tina Trachtenburg, makes soft sculptural pigeons and rats out of fabric and wire. You can sometimes find her in Union Square Park, sheathed in her handmade feathered oufit, with her “flash flock” pecking at the pavement around her. As she adds whiskers to a rat’s nose or wraps a pigeon’s foot in yarn, she receives visitors—both human and avian—who are alternately fooled, startled, repulsed, charmed, and intrigued by her lifelike creations. For Mother Pigeon, an animal activist focused on the rights of urban pigeons and rats, this is all part of a day’s work.

Crafted from acrylic felt, fake fur, and fabric scraps, and stuffed with recycled clothing and polyester, her handcrafted birds and rodents are, unlike their living cousins, touchable—even cuddly. Customers cradle them in their arms, nuzzle them against their shoulders, stroke their heads. Often, New Yorkers’ love-hate relationship with the animals transforms on the spot.

A few weeks before I met Mother Pigeon, I encountered one of the objects of her activism at one of New York City’s free Rodent Academies, also known as “Rat Trainings,” where community members learn how to combat the city’s rat population. Held in a Hunts Point coffee shop after-hours, the seminar—which offered free wine and free rodent-proof trash bins to attendees—provided tips for making your building and neighborhood unwelcome to rats. “Stress the pest” was the mantra. One technique that definitely wasn’t suggested was snuggling with the pest.

“It would be nice if we weren’t constantly torturing them,” Mother Pigeon told me. “I can’t bear to see them suffer.” She admires street animals for surviving under extreme circumstances, in the shadow of popular disgust, and facing unreliable food sources (though some New Yorkers might beg to differ). 

Mother Pigeon’s animals are born in her Bushwick home workshop, where I visited her just before the December sales rush: it turns out velvety vermin are a popular holiday gift. As we talked, two rats nibbled on a slice of felt pizza, a sight that would likely horrify most apartment dwellers.

Mother Pigeon creates three styles of rats—the roughed-up Pizza Rat and Subway Rat (above), and the more-refined Park Rat,

as well as two types of pigeons: the Times Square Pigeon (downtrodden and grouchy) 

and the rakish Park Pigeon.

She also feeds live pigeons in her neighborhood—one hundred pounds a week of organic Amish pigeon food. She knows all the regulars, just as she does in the park.

Once or twice a week, her husband helps her transport her suitcase of sculptures by subway to Union Square, where she holds court, fielding questions, smiling for photos, and greeting customers, while advocating for her cause. 

Some typical comments: “That scared the shit out of me!” “Look, the real ones are confused.” “I hate pigeons—but I like yours.” She tells me, “My favorite is when people come by and say they hate pigeons, and I give them ‘Adoration of the Pigeon’ [her screed], and they come back and say they are now feeding the pigeons.” Often, people purchase the sculptures to convert an intractable friend or family member. “I still wait for the day when someone buys the whole flock,” she says.

There’s even a soft sculpture of Mother Pigeon beside the donations box. So far, though, no one—not even the pigeons—has mistaken her for the real thing.

TOUCH: Three minutes in a -230 degree cryochamber

I shed my bathrobe and step into the -230 degree chamber, closing the door behind me. Instantly, my breath crystallizes, clouding my view of the single small window to the world outside this four-by-four-foot closet. I can barely make out the face of my guide, Milla Jouravleva, the owner of the Fuel Stop, smiling and waving three fingers at me through the glass: three minutes to go.

The Fuel Stop, which bills itself as “Your urban anti-spa,” is a bright and cheerful facility located in a basement suite off Central Park South. Its cryochamber, where I’d come to freeze myself for 180 seconds, is New York City’s only natural-air, nitrogen-free, full-submersion cryochamber; other places have a tank that leaves the head exposed and use nitrogen to chill the air. People use cryotherapy to strengthen the immune system, reduce pain and inflammation, build endurance, increase collagen production, and improve mood and energy. Since this was my first time, I had signed up for the Refuel Intro Circuit, which includes time in the cryochamber, a cryofacial, and a shot of “brain floss,” a brain-enhancing nonalcoholic cocktail. Having just come off a transcontinental red-eye, I was hoping for some of those salubrious effects.

After a brief tour, a man named Fernando handed me a plastic tote with the necessary supplies for my experience. Besides these protective covers for my extremities, all I’d have on was underwear, since the cold, dry air is supposed to make contact with the whole body to work its magic.

I am not a dancer, much less someone who dances in front of a stranger, while standing half-naked in a -230 degree closet wearing fleece earmuffs, wool mittens, a paper face mask, and tube socks under red rubber slippers, so I cringed when Milla presented me with a playlist of dance songs to accompany my time in the chamber and perkily suggested Taylor Swift. But once I stepped inside, I realized I had no choice but to dance—vigorously—in order to maintain some semblance of circulation. The chamber consists of two small rooms: a pre-chamber, which is slightly less cold than the main chamber, and the cryochamber itself. The door opens easily (I tested it), and Milla had said I could let myself out at any time, but I was determined to stick it out.

I also hadn’t realized how poignant the song I chose would be: Angie Stone’s “Wish I Didn’t Miss You.” Though I’d thought I would feel self-conscious having a spectator, I clung to the image of Milla’s encouraging face through the clouds of frosty air and to her three fingers disappearing one by one until only one remained.

It’s safe to say it was the longest three minutes of my life. The first minute passed easily enough, but halfway through I felt frost collecting on my eyelashes, and my skin began to feel like gelatin, or as if the entire surface of my body had fallen asleep and was no longer connected to me. I couldn't feel myself touching my own skin. In fact, this is what is supposed to happen: the extreme temperature causes the blood to retreat from the surface of the body to protect the internal organs. I didn’t think I’d make it through the final minute, but once Milla's last finger disappeared, I fled through the door and she was waiting with my robe and a mug of dandelion tea. She led me, as I trembled violently, to a vibrating platform, where I stood for a few minutes to get my blood flowing.

With tingling skin and a very red nose and ears, I went into a small room for my “cryofacial,” which began with Milla smearing purified snail goo on my face. Then she took a hose connected to a machine filled with moist air chilled with nitrogen. She covered me with a fleece blanket and aimed the nozzle of the hose at my face. At -280 degrees, this air was even colder than the air in the chamber, but because it was moving around, it felt like skiing downhill, leaving me slightly out of breath but refreshed. Between these cold blasts and the aftereffects of the chamber, my pores were dancing.

Finally, I got dressed and made my way to the bar, where Fernando had prepared a shot of “Brain Floss,” which allegedly acts as a brain detox, slowing down cognitive decline, increasing altertness, and protecting neurons from oxidation, among other things. I’m not sure about all that, but it tasted like lemon and ginger and turmeric and honey and was the perfect warming antidote.

As for the effects of my cryotherapy experience: My jet lag and faint headache disappeared, and I felt awake and clear-headed. My skin had a dewy glow. As I made my way through the Midtown winter afternoon, I continued to tremble, but in a new way: the cold was coming from the inside out.

The Fuel Stop is located at 200 Central Park South, https://thefuelstop.com/. Thanks to Milla for the photos.

TOUCH: The Wrecking Club

As the door closes behind me, I adjust my helmet and goggles and consider the options: crowbar, baseball bat, or sledgehammer? Before me is a roomful of furniture and household objects that I have half an hour to smash to pieces—and the clock is ticking.

I’m at the Wrecking Club, a new business in the basement of an anonymous Garment District building, where you can spend thirty exhilarating and exhausting minutes destroying stuff. The room, for up to two people, costs $20, and the items—from a bucket of glassware to a computer to a desk—cost an average of $20 each; you can also bring objects from home that could use some therapeutic destruction. Each session includes protective gear (helmet, ear plugs, goggles, dust mask, optional coveralls), implements, access to a sound system, and cleanup, as well as a courtesy mannequin for beating, if the mood strikes. A typical setup, around $100, includes a large and a small piece of furniture, assorted housewares, and an electronic device. Each item creates a different tactile sensation when hit, from the shattering of plates to the crunch of plastic to the splintering of wood. Each implement has a different effect: the baseball bat beats, the sledgehammer smashes, the crowbar digs in. The room’s graffitied walls make an artfully grungy backdrop for photo ops. But from the outside of the building, the only sign that demolition lurks within is a cluster of Dumpsters on the curb filled with carnage from recent wreckings.

Owner Tom Daly, a former financial analyst, founded the Wrecking Club in early 2017, when he realized there was an unmet need for a safe, no-holds-barred place where New Yorkers could go to break things, release energy, and have fun. The Wrecking Club is the only business of its kind in the city (though there are several similar businesses around the country and the world). Daly was inspired by the adrenaline rush he always got from smashing stuff to throw away. “Aside from the fact that I’d always wanted to start my own business, this was something fun, weird, and I’d get to do it all day long,” he told me.

“Aggression isn’t something you’re encouraged to express—it’s a taboo thing,” he adds. Needless to say, customers have to sign a waiver acknowledging risks that range from flying debris and collision with fixed objects to hearing loss and “emotional injuries”—though no one has been hurt so far and most clients handle themselves responsibly. At five foot six, in a backward baseball cap and hoodie, Tom acknowledges he doesn’t make for much of a bouncer; he gives customers their privacy but keeps an eye on things via closed-circuit cameras. He’s vague about his material sources (“Let’s call it treasure hunting”), but his goal is to find things that are aesthetically normal but dysfunctional.

A friend and I visit the Wrecking Club one recent weekday night; we are the only customers, though it’s often booked weeks in advance. Daly says the typical customer is raring to go, but I guess we seem a little intimidated: “You guys don't look like my usual clients,” he observes, giving us the once-over. The violence required here feels unlawful; I am someone who plays by the rules. Also, I’m surprised to feel a rush of pity for the items in the room. (When I ask Daly if he ever anthropomorphizes the objects, he pauses, then says, “I can honestly say that thought has never crossed my mind.”) I pick up a sledgehammer and swat tentatively at a chair. It skitters across the floor with each blow, and it’s hard to connect with the spindly rails. The seat, however, splits neatly in two with a crack, and I feel my first rush of satisfaction.

Decidedly more tantalizing is a multifunction printer. The initial bash through the plastic casing leads to depths of glass and finally to the groan of the innards splitting apart. Ink cartridges and electronic components sail into the air and scatter around the room in a spray of destruction. The noise is deafening. After about two minutes, the machine is in shards and I am panting. I hurl my sweater into a corner.

Finally getting into the spirit, I decide to take a baseball bat to the dummy, whose battered face has the most despairing expression I’ve ever seen on a rubber human.

I swing, and he bends obligingly on his pole; his pinstriped jacket slides off, and he bounces back in the nude for another hit.

There’s a knock at the door: Daly tells me to put my sweater back on for protection to protect my forearms (all participants are required to wear long sleeves and pants). Sweating profusely now and out of breath, I decide to tackle the bureau. As I punch the sledgehammer through the cheap wood into the hollow drawer, I feel like I’m quenching a thirst I didn’t know I had.

Crouching down and surveying the havoc I’ve wrought, I realize that the Wrecking Room satisfies a primal human urge: the desire to have a direct impact—on people, on objects, on anything—and how rare that opportunity is in modern urban life, mediated by technology and social norms. As Daly tells me, the Wrecking Club is not so much about releasing anger as about unleashing the tension and inhibitions that we don’t even know we have—that is, until someone gives us a crowbar and permission.

Daly says that after a few smashes, the first sound to come out of a wrecking room is usually laughter. Maybe the brute physical connection forges human connections. And maybe all this destruction creates something that will last, at least for an evening.

For more information, visit The Wrecking Club. Many thanks to my friend and wrecking companion Michael Hsu, who took most of the photographs for this post.

TOUCH: Brooklyn's hands-on biblical taxidermy museum

“Oh my god!” exclaims a visitor in a yarmulke, stepping into the first room of what is arguably the world’s largest hands-on biblical taxidermy museum. Strolling through the sleepy, largely Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn, one might be surprised to stumble across Torah Animal World, a water-stained row house emblazoned with banners and even a toll-free number (the museum is open by appointment only).

Arrayed before today’s visitor is a menagerie of taxidermied specimens of every animal mentioned in the Old Testament (leviathans, behemoths, and Nephilim notwithstanding), all free for the petting. Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch, the museum’s creator and curator, shuffles across the room toward a bisected giraffe erected in the corner (the ceiling wasn’t tall enough), kicking aside a pile of bones and a baby lamb. And that’s all OK; the specimens here get a lot of wear and tear because Rabbi Deutsch firmly believes that touching brings learning to life.

As the rabbi and his guest meander through the room, yanking horns and stroking pelts, a TV plays an introductory video. In a bizarre mashup of Hebrew, Brooklynese, and the BBC, the video features Rabbi Deutsch explaining which horns are suitable for ceremonial purposes and what makes an animal kosher (FYI: kosher animals chew cud and have split hooves), intercut with images of the creatures in the wild, set to a pulsing electric guitar soundtrack, followed by spliced-in footage from British nature documentaries of dueling ibexes and buffaloes fending off lions. As the video plays, Rabbi Deutsch picks up a long, twisted horn from the floor and raises it to his lips, his pate beading with sweat as the sound bellows through the room.

Besides its unique niche in the New York City museum world (the Village Voice voted it “Best Museum” in 2015), what sets Torah Animal World apart from the city’s other displays of creatures alive and dead is evidenced by two little boys cuddling up to a lioness, cradling her cubs in their arms. At the American Museum of Natural History, the lion is behind glass; at the Bronx Zoo, it’s behind an electric fence. Here, you can put your hand in its mouth.

“If you touch history, history touches you,” Rabbi Deutsch is fond of saying. Portly and balding, with a frizzy beard and wire spectacles, Rabbi Deutch is nothing short of passionate about his multisensory approach to education, and he obviously delights in children’s curiosity and fearlessness. Growing up with dyslexia, he realized the power of hands-on learning, and eventually decided to open what he initially called a “biblical zoo,” purchasing his first specimens from hunters about a quarter century ago. (No animals are killed on behalf of the museum.) He continues to expand the museum through donations and by selling old specimens to fund new ones. In addition to the complete collection of biblical animals, the museum has animals that are not mentioned in the bible but that are just cool to see up close. Rabbi Deutsch opened Torah Animal World in Brooklyn in 2008; there is an outpost in upstate New York as well. The museum serves tens of thousands of visitors each year, many of them school groups.

Experiencing these animals up close helps visitors understand their natures, which can provide a fresh perspective and deeper reading of the bible. You can stroke the soft fur on the lioness’s underbelly, cuddle with the baby sheep, fondle the ridges of an ibex horn, touch an elephant bird egg (the biggest egg in the world), stare down goats (who are arranged in a pseudo barn, complete with hay), touch the tips of the wolf’s teeth, wrap your arms around the neck of a bisected giraffe or wrap a king cobra around your own neck, and get up close and personal to a face-off between a deer and a leopard, who has been captured mid-swipe as he lunges for the deer’s groin.

Because of the museum’s hands-on mission, some of the animals are bedraggled, hastily mended, and repurposed. Ears and paws have been reattached with a glue gun; horns serve as impromptu light bulb holders; electrical cords are draped over antlers. Rabbi Deutsch is indifferent to the mess: what’s important is accessibility.

It doesn’t matter if you trip over a stray hoof or want to try blowing into a shofar. Here, the lion really can lie down with the lamb—and you can lie down with them both. Rabbi Deutch wants you to know which fur is soft and which is coarse, which teeth are sharp and which are dull, which ears are stiff and which are floppy, which manes are flowing and which are stiff.

On the second floor of the same townhouse is Rabbi Deutsch’s other project, the Living Torah Museum, which houses biblical artifacts, many of them thousands of years old, in wall niches. Astoundingly, the same “touch-me” philosophy prevails. Here, Rabbi Deutsch will personally cuff you with a Roman slave collar, plop a gladiator helmet or Cleopatra-era gold crown on your head, and let you pound gold with a two-thousand-year-old hammer.

But despite the appeal of these relics, I found the life force of this phantasmagoria in the animals. This is undoubtedly the only place in New York City where visitors young and old, with or without yarmulkes, can plop down on the floor next to an amputated giraffe foot and cradle a baby lamb while a wolf tail brushes them on the ear, and behind a pile of bones, a gazelle—and a zealous rabbi with a sense of childlike wonder—looks on. After all, a taxidermied elephant rhino is due to arrive in Borough Park in three weeks, and you never know what other beasts might line up to board this ark.

Torah Animal World is open by appointment only. It is located at 1601 41st Street in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Call 877-752-6286 and leave a message to arrange a visit.