I met Pamela Galvez in 2016 at a Victorian ball event in Manhattan. Pam knew about it because she hosted an AirBnB in the Upper East Side and two of her guests were going to the party, so she bought a last-minute costume and went along with them. She hit it off right away with my friend Kalyn and me, and we started planning on doing more costume events together when we were still at a Sherlock Holmes-themed bar down the street after the ball.
As excited as she was to be friends with us, it took Pam a long time to get on social media with me, and she was initially struggling with getting to events on time. Before a Mermaid-themed boat party, I jokingly asked her if she wanted me to drop by her Upper East Side apartment about an hour before the party to keep her on-task and less anxious about going. We still left her apartment late, and the result was the most manic, adrenaline-inducing, yet hilarious taxi ride all the way across upper Manhattan with a car full of people in full Mermaid attire telling the driver that “the boat’s about to leave!”
(Note the view of One World Trade Center in the Background– we went all the way around the island that night!)
Throughout the rest of the year, every event that I went to with Pam was something with a costume theme…
One day in the fall of 2016, Pam told me that she tried to go to an event that was not costume-themed and had a panic attack choosing clothes to wear!
She told me she had it all once– a fiance, a high-paying job, an apartment all to herself in the Upper East Side. Then she suffered from a nervous breakdown that made it nearly impossible to be on social media, be places on time, or work a regular job. She was staying afloat by renting out the AirBnB, but felt like she hadn’t even been able to socialize in years.
Somehow, the costumes plus my personality made her able to dissociate from her problems for long enough periods of time to feel well again. I didn’t know it that summer, but every time we went out on the town together, I was saving her life and bringing her back into society.
This went on for years, up until the last weeks before all of New York City became recluses. In February of 2020, we were still going on our flights of fancy together, wearing Rococo gowns for a dance party at the Mount Vernon Hotel and Museum for Washington’s birthday.
After that party, I wouldn’t see her for several months. When I did see her again, I was the one having a nervous breakdown, and she was the one saving my sanity by trying to make life “normal” and social again. There were no events to wear costumes together anymore, but we could dress up fancy and meet for drinks with her friends at a restaurant uptown that had moved all the tables into the bike lane. Even with her interventions though, I couldn’t carry on in the city with my industry still closed and my relationship with my boyfriend falling apart in a tiny apartment in a dead Theater District.
As tumultuous as the following years were, Pam and I found each other again in early 2024 after she’d been through another breakup and we talked on the phone for eight hours straight!
Pam was now hosting a comedy show called “Don’t Diss My Ability” in New York and other cities. She brought together comedians with various disabilities in a community where they could laugh together and not feel discriminated against. She told me how so many disabled people felt like the people around them never showed them respect or dignity like they’d been cast aside. Within a few days, she had booked a flight to South Dakota to visit and did a standup routine at Full Circle Book Coop!
I also told her about my project, “Out of Lockstep,” an art installation about the events that had turned my life — and billions of others around the world — upside down in 2020.
We were both pursuing something creative and powerful while continuing our recovery journeys. I told her that an art gallery owner in New York wanted to put “Out of Lockstep” on display next year, and I’d be in the city on business soon.
She reacted by deciding to book a space at Off-Broadway where she could do her comedy set and I could show my art on the weekend I would be in New York. She also asked if I could design a logo for the space– “Pamela’s Comedy Club.”
The only detail she had time to give me over the phone was that she wanted it to be pink.
I had some ideas based on Pam’s personality, our history together, the theme of “comedy,” and the style of Midtown and the Upper East Side.
When I think of Midtown, I think of the sleek, modern, elegant lines of Art Deco skyscrapers, lit-up signs that are practically visible from space at night, and the most glamorous fashions in the country. It’s all upscale, sans-serif fonts begging for attention on block after congested block.
I found the perfect font for a comedy club run by a woman who loves to be glamorous:
It somehow reminded me of the Metro Cafe near Times Square and the marquis on Radio City Music Hall.
All it needed was a few tweaks:
I added the star cutouts to the letters because they’re reminiscent of the lit-up signs all over Broadway and symbolic of the dream of becoming a star. They say to be successful, you have to “dress for the job you want,” and the same mentality can apply to logos– have your business “wear” a logo that exudes the kind of success you want your business to see.
The hardest part of this design was getting the stars spaced evenly and consistently, so I used a lot of guides in Illustrator to get it perfect:
Although it looks like it was an intuitive process, it was actually quite challenging and precise!
The next stop for this project is Off-Broadway! I’m excited to promote the upcoming collaboration with Pam and our new friend Rachel, who will be sharing her poetry!