Category Archives: living in new york sucks so hard

Gimme Some Money

Posted by plumpdumpling on April 1, 2009 – 10:32 am
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard
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It’s a funny thing, being an intensely poor lady who spends all of her time in her boyfriend’s richie-rich, circa-1920, hand-carved Italian stone apartment building with its own gym, laundry, and convenience store. Walking out of the lobby this morning, I followed through the revolving doors an older, classier woman with a Blanc de Chine shopping bag. And not, like, the paper bag they give you at DKNY or even the vinyl bag they give you at Scoop but a legitimate canvas bag that can be treasured and flaunted for years and years to come.

Now, that name wouldn’t have meant anything to me a few years ago, but you may remember back in 2007, when I hardcore coveted this Blanc de Chine cape that cost over $1600:

but instead bought this cape, which cost me $9:

I’m telling myself there’s no way that woman bought anything but a pair of cashmere socks, but I don’t think they hand out canvas bags for that.

Bitten in the Ass by the Economic Downturn

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 19, 2009 – 1:24 pm
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I have never in my life owned a proper pair of jeans. I wear jeans to work literally every day, so my closet is full of them, but they’re all Levi’s, American Eagle, Old Navy, even K-Mart. About a year ago, I was in the Manhattan Mall (which I’m pretty sure most New Yorkers don’t know exists and which consists of approximately eight stores) and walked into a Steve & Barry’s store simply because Sarah Jessica Parker had pushed her Bitten line (“available exclusively at Steve & Barry’s”) so hard on the episode of “Project Runway” in which she was a judge. Not to, you know, buy anything but to gawk at all of the rhinestone-studded tank tops with the “Sex and the City” logo on them.

I ended up with three pairs of Bitten jeans in various cuts and have never looked back. I love the fit, I love the wash, and I love that laundering them doesn’t make them shrink or change color, even after all this time. At $8.98 per pair, if I only wore each 50 times, it’d cost me about 17¢ for each wear. And I’ve probably actually worn each pair more like 500 times, so they were essentially free. AND ALSO THE BEST JEANS EVER.

When Steve & Barry’s stores started closing across the nation, I was like, “Noooooooooo sweat. Nothing closes down in NYC.” But oh, the humanity! When I went into the Manhattan Mall recently, my store was being liquidated, and the only Bitten jeans left were the freaky zipper-at-the-ankle kind. And I’m not a zipper-at-the-ankle kind of girl.

So I got the next best thing. That’s right–jeans designed by this girl. Sure, it’s a little embarrassing that in a city full of sample sales where designer jeans are 80% off, I’m buying $8 jeans made somewhere like the Republic of Mozambique, but it’s better to be a cheapskate than pay someone hundreds of dollars to rip fashionable holes in my pants, right? R . . . ight?

And now I’m off to eBay to buy my $8.98 jeans for a hefty mark-up of 400%.

This Would Never Have Happened in Ohio

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 14, 2009 – 6:01 pm
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality, no i really do love ohio
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So I have food poisoning, right? Which is sort of a joy right now, because while I was home in Ohio this past weekend, I tried on my bridesmaid’s dress for my best friend, Tracey’s wedding in March, and it turns out that I’m about five inches of torso away from getting the thing zipped. (She found THE dress discontinued and on sale and thought she could guess my size but no doubt bought it too small in an attempt to not offend me.) So I vomited about eighteen times yesterday at work and stayed home today, which is sort of great because I managed to lose four pounds in 24 hours thanks to not being able to keep even water down but sort of sucks because the meal I was vomiting up was grilled chicken and steamed vegetables instead of something I felt guilty about and wanted to purge, like pecan pie and maple ice cream.

At 3:30 this afternoon, I finally got to a place where I thought I could successfully stand up, and the pepperoni and pepperjack cheese in Kamran’s refrigerator didn’t sound so delicious, so I walked down the street to his Gristedes to buy some Jell-o and soup. I had been in front of the Campbell’s for maybe ten minutes, trying to find something, anything, without starch and sugar and tomatoes, when this stylish Nordic guy on a mobile phone dropped his box of pasta while walking in front of me. I excused the fact that he hadn’t excused himself before blocking my view of the soup and said, “I got it,” though bending over in my state of sickliness seemed like the worst idea possible. The guy kept chatting in his foreign tongue as I placed the box on top of his other items, and then he simply walked away.

While he was well within earshot, I said in my most monotone voice, “No problem. Glad I could help. Say no more.” The woman beside me shot me the dirtiest look and obviously scolded me in some language I didn’t recognize, so I turned, puked the last of the contents of my stomach all over her droll little fur hat, and went home to enjoy my Jell-o.

THIS is New York. Assholes.

Am I the only one who completely accepted it when Walmart took out the hyphen in their name and added a star to the end?

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 7, 2009 – 5:14 pm
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, no i really do love ohio, politicking
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Usually when I return to NYC after a holiday in the motherland of Ohio, I feel a huge sense of relief. All of my stuff is here: my apartment, my restaurants, my boyfriend. I don’t have to drive everywhere here, everything and everyone is cooler here (best friends not included, of course), and I don’t have to worry about having to make smalltalk with all the girls from high school who now work as grocery store cashiers in our hometown here.

This time, though, I made the huge mistake of spending my last night in Ohio with my best friend Tracey and my college friend James, who organizes unions for a living (OMG, best link ever, right?). He brought along two friends who used to hang out with us, one of whom is an Antarctic explorer, and one of whom is a boycott organizer. Naturally James’s first question to me was, “So when was the last time you shopped at Walmart?” And then we didn’t stop talking about labor, abortion, religion, and racism for the rest of the night.

It’s rough going back to the vacuousest city on Earth after that, you know? Suddenly the old man at the gym leaning back on his elliptical machine to stare at the ass of the girl next to me seems not just slightly annoying but actually detestable. And suddenly working at a $700 million software corporation seems a little bit more sell-out-y than I already knew it was. And suddenly all of my Democrat-because-they’re-young-but-just-waiting-to-turn-Republican-the-moment-they-make-their-first-million-dollars friends seem a little bit lamer.

But, you know, being surrounded by half-progressive friends is better than sitting in church next to fully-conservative gay-haters, and at least no pharmacist will ever deny me my daily Plan B here. Sigh.

I WILL CUT YOUR THROAT

Posted by plumpdumpling on September 16, 2008 – 10:06 pm
Filed under fun times on the subway, living in new york sucks so hard
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This morning at Grand Central, there was a hold-up going through one of the turnstiles into the subway, and I couldn’t figure out why. The people in front of me kept getting in line behind this one guy, pausing for a second, and then stepping into another line instead of, say, punching him in the spleen and catapulting themselves over his crumpled body. So I waltz up all pardon-me-ladies-while-I-take-care-of-bizness, and then I hear the guy say, “I’ll call the police on you, I swear.” And I see that he’s face-to-face with an angry girl on the other side of the turnstile, neither of them getting out of the way to let the other through. I naturally side with the girl, both because I want to keep up this strange chivalry thing society has going and because I’ve been shoved aside by one too many businessmen commuters from Jersey in the morning. He’s wearing a brown tweed blazer with mismatched olive pants and has a pretentious leather bag slung over his shoulder, while she’s some greasy-haired teenager in a t-shirt, probably on her way to school. He might try to play the Respect Your Elders card if he was five years older, but it might not matter, because this is the kind of girl who mocks back, “Did you really just say you’d call the cops?” He gives up that angles and instead tries, “I already swiped!”, and at first I’m pissed for him that she’s trying to make him waste his $2, but then I figure he probably saw her coming and swiped his MetroCard anyway just to ensure he’d get in before she could come out. Because that’s how commuter businessmen from Jersey roll. Especially ones that then say to young girls, “Move, or I WILL CUT YOUR THROAT.”

Awesome!