Today was the day of the annual Bay Ridge “Third Avenue Festival” and this event brings hundreds upon hundreds of vendors to the area and several thousand visitors to our streets all in search of bargains, good eats and entertainment. Depending on what you like to eat, you can find pretty much of everything along the two mile span that the festival runs based on the area’s own restaurants and if you are a fan of the standard sausage and pepper hero that you find at every single festival well there were plenty of those folks as well selling the stuff as they are apt to do time and time again. There are plenty of bars and many offering up music that spanned the Rock and Pop genre while hair salons and clothing stores seemed to cater to having DJ’s in front of their establishments. Today’s adventure for me was based on my learning that Suicide City’s own Jennifer Arroyo or Ms. Jenncity to use her nom de guerre, would be hosting a fashion show down at the What’s Next show store located on 3rd Avenue between Bay Ridge Parkway and Ovington Avenue. It was a nice afternoon and I felt it would be fun to see Jenn acting as emcee instead of throttling her bass guitar for a change, so I wrapped up the PiercingMetal camera and headed on down to the store.

I arrived to the store just in time to find Ms. Jenncity preparing notes for the models that were already changed and ready to rock the socks of the festival attendees.

What’s Next is a shoe store and while I am not a study of what is good and bad for that kind of stuff I had to say that everything I saw looked pretty nice. My guess is that any number of my female friends would have a field day in the place and spend some cold hard cash. Joining them for the fashion show would be Wicked Threads, a company that offers up some really interesting designs on their shirts. The girls and guys would be wearing both the Wicked clothes and the What’s Next shoes out on the runway that had been set up.

Our next photo shows the lovely Jenisa and Monica. Jenisa is sporting one of the “Seven Deadly Sins” in white and Monica was apparently on the MTV Reality show as one of Paris Hilton’s potential BFF’s to be.

Here’s Angelica V. who not only is a fan of that which be Metal, but also sings in a band herself and even recognized the name of the group whose shirt I was wearing today. That was impressive since it wasn’t something super famous yet. The shot captured her displaying the PiercingMetal.com business card which she had just been given, so thank you Angie for the free commercial spot. I will check with accounting on your commission as soon as they return from the outer space mission that they were sent on 🙂

Two more of the ladies with Alexis T. and Gina. The angle is bad but I believe Alexis T. is wearing a “7 Deadly Sins” tank, while Gina has a cool Skull emblazoned upon her garb. These Wicked Threads are pretty darn cool if you ask me. I might have to get a couple of them to wear at the shows soon.

The next shot here finds all of the models minus one who had not yet arrived giving me a little bit of their Metal side. They are joined by Roberta Thompson and Ms. Jenncity and by now everyone was raring to go out and strut their stuff. in case you are wondering, Roberta is the creative force behind Wicked Threads.

We snapped one more shot because it was around this time that “Shock Star” (dressed in the hot pink) and Magnolia Blossum (the blonde next to him) joined in for the fun as well and now it was showtime.

Next up would be John Tinaz, one of the only male models present this afternoon. He was wearing a Wicked Threads “Prey” shirt. It cool that WT makes stuff for us guys as well and that we are not left out in the cold.

Jennifer was really doing a great job at rallying the passerby attention and getting them to check out what she was talking about, and this afternoon came across as half carnival barker and half product pitch person. She was tricky to lock into one place and paced back and forth and around like some kind of panther. After seeing her perform a number of times, I had to say that this was the mellowest that I had ever seen her. She would introduce Monica and let everyone know about her being on the Paris Hilton show to be one of the girls BFF’s. Having never sat through an episode of the shows numerous runs I was unsure whether this was an inside joke or had really been the case. Either way, I think Monica is one pretty lady.

Gina Dimant and Danielle Aronsen came up next. Gina was wearing that cool skull logo shirt while Danielle was wearing another version of the lines popular “7 Deadly Sins” shirt.

Jennifer announced to the audience that Danielle was a puma, and that meant she was a cougar in training so watch out boys. Make sure you look up the reference if you don’t get the joke right away. She was also wearing a pair of the Wicked panties which as you can see are in fire engine red. Hot stuff to be sure.

The fellow in the photo above is “Shock Star” and he arrived with Magnolia Blossum and each of them really livened up the already interesting afternoon. I didn’t realize that Shock Star was modeling the shoes but sure found his head gear to be something unique. It was like some kind of tinsel, wire, tiara sort of thing but I dunno to be quite honest. When I asked him about it, he said he put it together in about ten minutes.

Jenn would now introduce the sexiness that was Angelica Valkyrie and this Metal chiquita seemed to know how to handle the stage (obviously from her performing shows). Her interest in the Metal stuff and my work for the genres proliferation made her one of my favorites of the day.

Angie was sporting a shoulder bag that the store apparently sold as well, and I know some of you ladies love your handbags so bear that in mind that they are also available for your purchasing dollars. Next up came Ally who was running a little late to the fun and hence missed being in that massive group shot we showed you earlier. She struck me as having a real Punk chic style to herself and damn what a smile.

Ms. Jenncity would close up the festivities by bringing out all of the models and the designers at once and everybody got up on the runway platform for bows and smiles. By this point in the show there were a lot of other people taking photos and videos with their cameras and that was nice to see happening. Everyone up there was getting some nice response from those who watched and I liked seeing that be the case since it was deserved for a job well done.

I checked with Roberta about the actual designs showcased this afternoon and was told that the rundown was like this: 7 Deadly Sins tank, Skull Corrupted halter, Skull Infected grey tank, the new PREY tee, PREY hoodie, WICKED camisoles LUST, SINNERS N SAINTS camisole and some men’s shirts that sported similar designs. As far as the shoes went, all of the female models wore shoes by What’s Next which included Pirate boots in black & purple, biker/cowboy boots, platform sandals and dress shoes in black and silver.

Readers who want to see a whole lot more from the Fashion show and the models just being themselves and enjoying the camera’s attention can click HERE to see a full gallery. We’ll provide a link for Wicked Threads at the close of the narrative, and sadly there does not seem to be an online presence for the What’s Next store at the time of this writing. They appeared to have a friendly staff so if you are in the area and stop in, I am sure that one of the charming young ladies like the one pictured below will be glad to help you find something that suits your particular style.

After the show was done, Ms Jenncity stopped to let a couple of candid and fun shots be taken of her and the models who had just strutted their stuff. Below you can see images of Jennifer who is joined by Alexis T., Gina and Angelica V.

Jenncity and the models wrapped things up quickly at the 69th Street store location and headed up Third Avenue to 79th Street where the What’s Next store has a second location. I didn’t stay for that demonstration since it was going to be the exact same as the one we just had commented on give or take a design. I had to admit it was interesting partaking in something like this but its not too odd since Metal and Fashion are working hand in hand these days. Not only do we have Wicked Threads which Roberta runs but we also have the Lander Sisters of Kittie running their Poisoned Black clothing line, as well as Metal Couture and Heroin Clothing. Each of them catering to the Alternative or Metal scene for the most part. We also find many stores like Hot Topic and Wal-Mart selling vintage band t-shirts which while new are bearing older designs that are long ago from the past. I like that since all of my own original band shirts have gone away in the sands of time and washing machines of decades past. That thought led me to the following observation.

An Observation: In The “Old Days” of my 3rd Avenue Festival jaunts with friends that lurked in the musical circles with me, the typical shirts that would be seen were your standard band ones like Metallica, Guns ‘N Roses, KISS, Van Halen and so on. There were many more of course but we cannot run down the entire roster right here for brevity’s sake. So based on this recollection of mine, I wandered today’s affair wondering just how many of the Metal or Hard Rock tee shirts I would actually see sported by the newest keepers of the faith and those remaining old schooler’s. Being honest, it would not be as easy as I had surmised. After about ten blocks or so of walking I happened by a young lady in an AC/DC shirt but that’s a band one expects to see a lot of folks wearing since they are still touring their asses off and just released a cool album in “Black Ice”. The surprises that came up afterward were Whitechapel and Deicide of all bands because they are not something I have ever seen in my region, but I had to admit that it was cool to see something super heavy making an appearance. That sight caused me to train my eye and try to find any Slayer shirts but I am sad to report that none were observed anywhere. There was an Evergreen Terrace shirt viewed and that’s a band whose music I still have yet to hear and sadly someone proudly wearing a Hollywood Undead shirt (great visuals guys but really disappointing tunes in my opinion). There was a dude wearing a Lamb Of God shirt and I did not get to notice what his friends were wearing but had hopes that it would have been of equal Metal importance based on their colleague. Spotted one Metal youth wearing an Iron Maiden shirt so I tossed him the horns and yelled “up the irons”. He just stared at me and smiled politely so I guess that he has not made the connection between the rallying cry and the band yet. That was pretty much it, because I didn’t see any other shirts during the time I spent wandering around. In the event you are wondering what I was wearing myself, well today I chose to don my Phoenix Reign shirt and they are an independent Power Metal group from nearby Astoria, Queens. The design appealed to me and as I mentioned earlier, one of the more Metal focused of the models recognized the name and where they hailed from. That’s never a bad thing.

As I headed up the avenue back to PiercingMetal.com HQ I happened upon Mr. Ray West who was formerly the lead singer of NYC’s own Spread Eagle. Ray was with his girl, and their pug Lola so we snapped a shot of them for good measure. While it might appear cliche, it was at my suggestion that Ray tossed up the Metal horns. Sadly, Lola would not have any of that for the shot.

Ray has a new musical project which he calls “All Points West” and he has a release coming out on 10/6/2009 and he is releasing this independently to my knowledge. Here is a shot of Ray and I.

It was fun to see Jennifer doing something outside of the Metal/Punk bassist role that I was accustomed to and it just does to show you how many musicians are getting involved in numerous other kinds of things to keep themselves out there and that is never a bad thing. We covered Jennifer’s band Suicide City when they performed an album release gig a couple of months ago over at the Highline Ballroom, and to enjoy our thoughts and many images from the show just click HERE

Fans of the rocking bassist can see a few more candid shots of her by clicking HERE.

Important Links:
Wicked Threads: http://www.thewickedstore.com
Ms. Jenncity (Jennifer Arroyo): https://www.facebook.com/JennCity/