When I got off the subway last night in Brooklyn, there was a Latino man in a velour Statue of Liberty costume singing along and dancing to the Spanish-language music on his headphones in the middle of the street.
Tag Archives: living in new york is neat
New Jersey = Ohio
I learned this weekend that the difference between having a car and not having a car means having Cheesecake Factory or not having Cheesecake Factory. My car-owning friend Beth has been inviting me to ride to Jersey with her to go shopping for months now, but something has always stood in the way of me going. This weekend, though, the stars aligned, and she picked me up at 4 p.m. with the promise that she and her friend Sylvan would wear out my Sauconys.
I sort of expected the same kind of shopping experience I used to have in Ohio, when my best friend, Tracey, and I used to spend the day shopping at DEB, Claire’s, and Maurice’s. It was a major thing when a Hot Topic went in, though we were already past our wallet-chain-and-skater-jeans phase by the time that happened. (Okay, so maybe I was the only one of the two of us who went through that phase.)
But no! This mall had a Gucci store and a Louis Vuitton, and instead of shopping for silver holographic Converse flip-flops like Tracey and I used to do, Beth was shopping for a pair of Yves Saint Laurent stilettos. The food court had a Wendy’s, which there are only, like, two of in Manhattan, and everyone there looked like a cast member from “Jersey Shore”. What fun!
When we got hungry later in the evening, Beth mentioned that another mall nearby had a Cheesecake Factory. I was like, “Excuse me?” Because, um, I would’ve pretty much given up every other activity and risked my neck on the snow all of those times before had I known that was part of the deal. Our meal was delicious, of course, and hugely-portioned and super-cheap and everything else that restaurants in Manhattan aren’t, but it felt so wrong, because
everyone in the place looked like they could’ve been from Ohio. The only time I see people who look like they could be from Ohio here is when my friends and I go bowling at Port Authority and have to pass through Times Square, but I had to sit amongst these people and digest food while looking at them. You can imagine how hard that is.
No, I’m kidding, but it was weird. It’s like I can’t bear for things to feel too familiar.
Only in NYC
Filed under living in new york is neat, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as living in new york is neat, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as living in new york is neat, living in new york sucks so hard
Only in NYC would I need my friend Beth to pick me up after work last Friday and drive me to my apartment with my new TV that should have been small enough to carry but would’ve taken up an entire subway car with all of its packaging. Only in NYC would I know approximately three people who own a car and would the one who drives an Alfa Romeo convertible agree to haul my new flatscreen around.
And only in NYC, after a second viewing of An Education (OMG, just as good the second time) with said Alfa-Romeo-convertible-driving friend, would I return to my boyfriend’s apartment to find a Christmas tree simply pushed out the front door into the hallway when its duty is done. And a full two weeks after Christmas, no less.
It’s kind of neat, and it’s kind of awful.
New York Magazine’s Brooklyn Top 40
Filed under living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend
Tagged as living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend
Tagged as living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend
This weekend, instead of properly paying attention to me, Kamran combed YouTube for all of the songs listed in New York magazine’s Brooklyn Top 40, the top 40 songs coming out of Brooklyn and defining what it means to be indie right now. He made a playlist of them, which you can enjoy here:
I feel so close to all of these artists somehow. Both physically, because I live down the street from them, but also . . . not spiritually, because that’s lame, but somehow like spiritually, because this sound is so distinctly Brooklyn to me, and I feel so distinctly Brooklyn myself.
While we sat on Kamran’s loveseat, him reading cases for law school and me scanning blogs as we listened to the playlist for the second time, he looked over and said, “We should be doing this!” I said, “Oh, um, I don’t know if we could do this.” He said, “Well, not THIS. This is good.”
This is the song he was talking about:
We decided that when we need to feel better about ourselves and how easy making music is, we’ll listen to this:
I forget sometimes that I’m so freakin’ lucky to live in a city where this stuff is being made and is readily available to me. I saw Crystal Stilts open for Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, saw Amazing Baby open for Cold War Kids, saw MGMT play in an abandoned pool, saw The Dirty Projectors play on the Williamsburg waterfront. Remind me of this when I say I can’t be out at a show until 2 on a weeknight.
The Do-It-Yourself Public Restroom in Times Square
Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york is neat, potty mouth
Tagged as good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york is neat, potty mouth, times square
Tagged as good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york is neat, potty mouth, times square
Last night at 8 p.m., Kamran and I exited a movie theatre in Times Square, accompanied by our friends Jack, Beth, and Nik, Jack’s friend Chris, Jack’s friend Alex from Romania, and Alex’s Romanian girlfriend, Simina. We were walking down 42nd Street, trying to decide which is scarier: the flesh-sucking monsters we’d just seen in Zombieland or NYC tourists. Mid-conversation, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone bent over with liquid spilling all over her legs and the ground. She was out in the street, facing traffic, with her back to the sidewalk we were on, and I just assumed she was vomiting. She had wavy, shoulder-length black hair and a black suit jacket on. Her bottom half was nude-colored, but I just assumed she was wearing peach leggings. I couldn’t imagine a middle-aged woman wearing leggings without a long shirt covering them, but that seemed much more likely than what was actually happening, which was that
IN THE STREET.
In Times Square. Which, if you’ve never seen it, is basically the center of the world. We’re talking thousands of people milling around a few blocks at all hours of the day and night, with enough lights on every building to make it seem as if the sun never sets. And mostly people who don’t live in NYC, which means a woman with her pants down in the street is about the most exciting thing they’ve ever seen. Traffic was stopped right in front of her, so people in cabs had their noses pressed to the glass not two feet away from her bare bits. The lights glared off the urine clinging to her flabby backside. People stopped and pointed her out to each other, and Kamran yelled for me to get my camera out.
But it was too late. She finished, pulled her pants up, and walked into the subway unashamed.
