Money is inescapable. People say there’s “no such thing as free lunch” but really what they mean is “there’s nothing in this country that isn’t motivated by and dependent on the acquisition of cash.”
On Black Friday, this mentality comes to a head, with seemingly all of America storming Walmart in the name of holiday cheer. Thanks to the internet, Black Friday and its bb capitalist sibling, Cyber Monday, can be partaken in from your couch, without facing the masses in a department store fist fight that really does sometimes end in death. Still though, the desire to hide from money on this most capitalist of days is understandable, and so we’ve compiled this list for you of some of the most removed from capitalism spaces you can go to wait out the soul-sucking day.
1. The Exponential Festival
109 Meserole St, Williamsburg
Vital Joint invites you to take shelter from the sales in their weird basement. It’ll be a low-key gathering of friends and leftovers with no cover, just a bunch of humans hanging around finding contentment without spending money. (November 24 from 8-11pm)
2. Take a hike
The Boathouse, Prospect Park
NYC Parks has a number of great post food and shopping coma activities planned across the boroughs. In Brooklyn, they’re offering to guide you down The Midwood Trail and chill with some of Prospect Park’s biggest trees for an hour and a half. Who wants half off things you don’t need when you can lean on some bark and contemplate the act of existing? (November 24 from 1 to 2:30pm.)
3. The City Reliquary
370 Metropolitan Ave., Williamsburg
While there is a $7 general admission cover charge, the Reliquary currently has an exhibit up about trash, which is what we are and what we will become, a fact especially obvious on Black Friday. NYC Trash! Past, Present, & Future provides a wonderfully morbid, relevant presentation of the aftermath of what is happening beyond the museum’s doors, in stores and on shelves across the country: the creation of trash. (Open noon to 6pm on Black Friday.)
4. Brooklyn Cat Cafe
149 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn Heights
Obviously, by being a business, the Cafe is part of capitalist society. But then, if you live in New York, you are also wrapped up in this big crazy economic ideology. Still though, the cats themselves have very minimal financial understanding, and once you’ve coughed up $5 you can enjoy their beautifully ignorant world for 30 blissful minutes. Or, you can watch them in their gloried lack of economic knowledge online through the kitten cam.
5. Your closet
Your street address & neighborhood here
Take what you need – some matcha tea, a copy of Be Here Now, your dignity – and head for your closet, which will of course remind you of capitalism because New York apartments are expensive and your closet may be little more than a crawlspace. Now, wait there, and sing along.