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Some of Amy's Favorite Things....
Amy was a strict vegetarian who had a fetish for putting cayenne pepper in everything and appreciated any food eaten on a stick (her favorite secret food vice was veggie corn dogs). She loved hot wasabi peas too, and although she was a vegetarian the only fruit she really ate were bananas. Amy had this ironic combination of the completely Midwestern approach to living along with her own very specialized and particular tastes, all of which made her so unique. Her favorite candy was Skittles, though she rarely bought them.
Amy loved scrunchies. She was famous for her long curly red hair, and she owned dozens of scrunchies that she kept everywhere. They were on every door knob, throughout her sewing shop, and all over the house it seemed. She even kept a tall stack of them on the gear shift lever of her Acura.
Amy loved nature. Mountain biking and hiking were her favorite pastimes. She often spoke of how important the woods were to her, and how she took refuge in the trails that wound around the woods in her back yard in Kansas City when she was growing up.
Amy loved television dramas, madcap comedies, and scary horror films. Her favorite shows of all time were Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Dexter, Top Gear, Home Movies, and Firefly. She loved Rob Zombie films (well, all zombie films really...) but her all time favorite films were Alien, The Big Lebowski, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Amy's favorite music through her adult life was an eclectic mixture of 90's alternative and 80's pop, with a few odd things thrown in. She owned a lot of music, but among her favorite all time artists were Dada, Aimee Mann, Tears for Fears, Gary Numan, Everclear, White Zombie, Devo, The Church, XTC, and Mr. Bungle. She also loved comedy recordings and often listened to George Carlin, Steve Martin, Bill Cosby, Patton Oswalt, and Tim and Eric.
Amy had a way of naming and describing very personal things that was uniquely her own, and this was probably her most charming gift. Her favorite car was a red 1999 Mazda Miata convertible with a tan leather interior and a 6 speed that she had named Mr. Pants. She had bought it new, and it was the first big reward of her tremendous success as a Corsetiere. It was probably her single favorite possession of all time, but she had to sell Mr. Pants to move to New York, a fact that she often lamented over the years.
Amy loved her little red fixed gear bike. It was her favorite out of several bikes she owned. She had built it up herself from scratch, ordering the special welded magnesium frame from Czechoslovakia. It got stolen in 2007, which was very traumatic for her. But the following year she ran into a man on the street riding the bike, and she took it back from him on the spot by force. Amy was a little peanut of a girl, but surprisingly gutsy and sometimes boldly fearless that way.
Amy loved shoes. She had the greatest collection of shoes that I had ever seen. Not that she owned more than anyone else, but that every shoe she did have was perfectly suited for her. She obtained them by having the best shoe karma of anyone I had ever known. No matter where she went there was almost always a perfectly cute pair in her tiny size 6-1/2 just waiting for her, in the right color, at some stupendously affordable price. It never failed. As a result, her menagerie of footwear remains in my experience unprecedented.
Amy loved neatness. She was a stickler for the streamlined domestic life and took great pride in maintaining a somewhat obsessively compartmentalized and ordered manner to all of her things. I remember being handed a wall adapter that was enshrined in its own labeled ziplock bag that described its specific use. As Amy handed it to me she said with a grin - "Borderline obsessive compulsive."
Amy loved the natural look. Just lipstick suited her fine. Her favorite shade of lipstick was Revlon Black Cherry #477, and as far as I know it is the only shade she ever wore. She had the longest and fullest eyelashes of any human being, so she never wore mascara. If she had, everyone would have thought she was wearing fake eyelashes. Really!
Amy loved her dresses and skirts, all of which she had made herself. She hated pants. She never wore blue jeans, and seldom ever wore pants at all, even in the coldest of winters.
Amy loved video games. I mean, really loved them. Amy owned many game systems, and had been a gamer since her teens. She built her own PC just for gaming. On PC she mastered Portal, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, BioShock, Grand Theft Auto, Quake, and dozens of others. On PS2 she and I spent hundreds of evenings battling at Katamari Damacy and Gran Turismo, and she would sometimes go to her X Box, vintage Nintendo, or Atari as well. Suffice to say that it seemed not a day went by in Amy's world without some hint of gaming in it. I built a multicade in one of my vintage arcade cabinets and we had countless upright video arcade tournaments in our rec room. Whether it was Gyruss, Time Pilot, Dig Dug, or Galaga, Amy always won.
Amy loved toys, puzzles, and small tinkery things. Her main sewing machine sported dinosaur finger puppets and a Gumby bendy, and little trinkets could be found everywhere. She would buy bags of tiny toys at 99 cent stores and included them with the corsets she shipped to her clients.
Amy loved to draw, and she kept books of sketches she had done.
Amy loved corset history. She owned an impressive collection of historic materials about 20th century corsetry, which included rare books, corsets, and personal artifacts of famous tightlacers.
Amy loved strange art. She had an affinity for the work of naive artists, and collected unusual paintings. When we would flee market it was always the odd artwork that caught her eye. Her favorite painting was the one she had the longest. It was rendered by an unknown Missouri artist in 1965 and depicted a row of three androgynous people with drums gazing at a fourth holding an American flag.
Amy loved to paint things. All things. Her cell phone, her furniture, a door, anything. She had an extensive collection of nail enamels and relished in the evening ritual of doing her nails. It was one of those Zen like things that centered her world, and often something else within reach would then get painted too.
Amy was a very fast touch typist, and she often gloated the fact by looking at me and talking to me while she simultaneously and speedily typed away. I still don't know how she did that.
Amy Crowder's middle name was Renee, though she usually chose not to use it publicly.
At my parent's 40th anniversary, Nov. 2005
On the town, Aug. 2008
At home, Feb. 2008
In the east village, June 2009
4am, Veselka, 2006
New York Amp Show, May 2007
Halloween Fetish Ball, Oct. 2005