I was sitting across from two men on the subway today. It was early, I had overslept and dragged myself to the bus just in time to watch it speed away. I thought about chasing after it and then, looking to the flask of coffee in my hand (I’m bringing now since money is tight, pls. refer to 3/22 posts for more info.) and opted against it.
When I finally did make the bus and then the subway, I found myself, (sunglasses on so that no one would see that my eyes were closed), sitting across from two men. They got on at 66 and immediately rushed up in front of me to eye the map behind me. They were talking quickly in a language I couldn’t quite catch being as it was still too early for my brain to properly function. One of them was tall and skinny with glasses and a face like Christian Slater (remember him?). He had a sport coat on with light blue pants that looked as though they were to be worn only when painting a house or something large that needs painting. From the looks of them, it appeared as though that’s what he had already done.
The other one was shorter and stockier, with an angry looking rough face with jagged teeth and a scar that ran from the middle of his cheek along the jaw line, down to the bottom of his chin, probably from an encounter at a bar after too many pints of dark amber wheat. He was gesticulating wildly and was angry, or least it sounded like he was angry, but then I realized he was speaking German, and people speaking German always sound as though they’re put out about one thing or another. I caught more than a few shizer’s in there, and when he noticed me looking up at him, his face hardened and I looked away quickly.
He tied his shoes on the inner corners in double knots, he wore a thick wool coat even though it was 70 in the city, he was German, he was yelling, he was scary.
Now I’m not saying that all German people are scary. I’ve never been to Germany and know someone (International Girl, pls. refer back to Dirty Water) who spent quite a lot of time there and came back boasting of great people, great sausages and great beer. I personally don’t really know any German people, but it seems to me like they’re doing pretty well after that whole incident that that mass-murdering psychopath and that little problem with that wall in Berlin. But we helped out a little bit though.
It was, after all, the great John F. Kennedy who stood on that wall and proudly said, “ich bin ein Berliner!” Which, of course means, I am a jelly doughnut.
Well. Just goes to show you can’t win ‘em all.
March 31, 2006
March 30, 2006
Kissing in Manhattan
I’ve been asked to post. So here I am, making a post because apparently waiting from Sunday to Thursday, “and it is literally almost Thursday,” is “no good.” Thanks for the tip. And for caring. Really.
Okay so let’s talk about a few things. Firstly, and most importantly it’s that time of year again. Purchased my first iced coffee of the year as it’s in the sixties here in Manhattan and I can already feel a shift in the city. Of course there was still the same pushing on the subway, the same woman with the oversized Vuitton bag always asking which stop it is because she can’t see through the thickness of her equally oversized Gucci sunglasses.
On another note, they’re filming a movie over near West 72nd which I noticed as I was waiting for the bus yesterday. Probably some romantic comedy about how some quirky girl who aspired to be more (and they always do) wins the heart of the guy whose heart no one thinks can ever be won (and it always can, but not until the very end). Throw in a gay best friend and a colossal misunderstanding that gets corrected in the last ten minutes and you’ve got yourself a winner.
Do you ever notice how people in soap operas (come on, admit you’ve seen at least one episode) and romantic movies are always kissing on street corners, especially in New York? Loretta Castroini and Ronny Cammereri, Harry (did he have a last name?) and Sally Albright, Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak (with a cat no less). I know I haven’t been here all that long, but I have yet to see anyone kissing anywhere let alone on 72nd and Amsterdam. That sort of thing must just be frowned upon above the park.
Someone told me recently that when she was living in New York she “made out on street corners all the time. It’s fabulous, you should try it.” Maybe she’s seen too many movies or I just haven’t been here long enough, but I guess the next time some guy asks to kiss me on the street (it happens all the time, naturally, and is typically a man in five faded shirts sitting on the sidewalk swigging Marker’s Mark out of the bottle with a cat eating his face) I’ll let him, instead of asking him to get back to me after he’s checked the temperature in the general vicinity of hell.
Only, of course, if I can keep the cat.
Okay so let’s talk about a few things. Firstly, and most importantly it’s that time of year again. Purchased my first iced coffee of the year as it’s in the sixties here in Manhattan and I can already feel a shift in the city. Of course there was still the same pushing on the subway, the same woman with the oversized Vuitton bag always asking which stop it is because she can’t see through the thickness of her equally oversized Gucci sunglasses.
On another note, they’re filming a movie over near West 72nd which I noticed as I was waiting for the bus yesterday. Probably some romantic comedy about how some quirky girl who aspired to be more (and they always do) wins the heart of the guy whose heart no one thinks can ever be won (and it always can, but not until the very end). Throw in a gay best friend and a colossal misunderstanding that gets corrected in the last ten minutes and you’ve got yourself a winner.
Do you ever notice how people in soap operas (come on, admit you’ve seen at least one episode) and romantic movies are always kissing on street corners, especially in New York? Loretta Castroini and Ronny Cammereri, Harry (did he have a last name?) and Sally Albright, Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak (with a cat no less). I know I haven’t been here all that long, but I have yet to see anyone kissing anywhere let alone on 72nd and Amsterdam. That sort of thing must just be frowned upon above the park.
Someone told me recently that when she was living in New York she “made out on street corners all the time. It’s fabulous, you should try it.” Maybe she’s seen too many movies or I just haven’t been here long enough, but I guess the next time some guy asks to kiss me on the street (it happens all the time, naturally, and is typically a man in five faded shirts sitting on the sidewalk swigging Marker’s Mark out of the bottle with a cat eating his face) I’ll let him, instead of asking him to get back to me after he’s checked the temperature in the general vicinity of hell.
Only, of course, if I can keep the cat.
March 26, 2006
"That's just like, so abstract..."
I’m trying to experience Manhattan on a budget since money is currently considerably tight. So yesterday I ran outside (free), made coffee at home (free) and went to the MET (again, free).
The couple standing next to me in front of Cezanne's “Still Life with Cherries and Peaches,” are talking as they gaze intently at the painting: “...and it’s just like him too, I mean that’s how he was, Cezanne, just like totally into the whole abstraction thing, like as a way of creation, like with multiple meanings and like you never knew what he meant, it’s just so, wow, like so abstract.”
I look to them and then back at the painting and make a face of "what?" Abstract? I might not know much about art but I know it’s a painting with fruit. Isn’t that all it’s supposed to be? According to this couple it isn’t about fruit at all, it’s about the male and female, the female cherry and the male peach living together in harmony on a table, I mean in a relationship, which I guess is what the table signifies, the base on which their relationship sits on. Right.
I think I shake my head and move on because they’re cramping my style, which was trying to be very cultured by spending three hours walking through the MET with no one to say profound things to like, “yeah I mean it’s so textured, the depth here, the meaning is just, I can feel what he was feeling when he painted this” (girl speaking of Monet’s Haystacks). That’s the one thing I hate about museums, it’s all of the people who, upon entering, think they’re art experts.
For a while I followed around a High School Art History class visiting from Ohio or Illinois or something, I didn't really catch it, and melded into their walking tour because their teacher had a lot of great things to say. At one point one of the boys who didn’t seem to care about art at all and was hanging in the back of the pack (as I was) looked at me and asked me as we stared up at Washington Crossing the Delaware, “are you even in this class?”
I promptly left the American Wing and went to Frank Lloyd Wright’s living room to hide.
When the exhaustion and pangs of hunger hit it was time to leave. I didn’t seen half of what I wanted to and will have to return at some point to see the rest. I walked outside into the warm night and bought a hotdog from the street vendor on 81st and walked down 5th Ave alongside the park while I ate.
That’s the great thing about New York, you can have a great day, and all it will cost you is 75 cents.
The couple standing next to me in front of Cezanne's “Still Life with Cherries and Peaches,” are talking as they gaze intently at the painting: “...and it’s just like him too, I mean that’s how he was, Cezanne, just like totally into the whole abstraction thing, like as a way of creation, like with multiple meanings and like you never knew what he meant, it’s just so, wow, like so abstract.”
I look to them and then back at the painting and make a face of "what?" Abstract? I might not know much about art but I know it’s a painting with fruit. Isn’t that all it’s supposed to be? According to this couple it isn’t about fruit at all, it’s about the male and female, the female cherry and the male peach living together in harmony on a table, I mean in a relationship, which I guess is what the table signifies, the base on which their relationship sits on. Right.
I think I shake my head and move on because they’re cramping my style, which was trying to be very cultured by spending three hours walking through the MET with no one to say profound things to like, “yeah I mean it’s so textured, the depth here, the meaning is just, I can feel what he was feeling when he painted this” (girl speaking of Monet’s Haystacks). That’s the one thing I hate about museums, it’s all of the people who, upon entering, think they’re art experts.
For a while I followed around a High School Art History class visiting from Ohio or Illinois or something, I didn't really catch it, and melded into their walking tour because their teacher had a lot of great things to say. At one point one of the boys who didn’t seem to care about art at all and was hanging in the back of the pack (as I was) looked at me and asked me as we stared up at Washington Crossing the Delaware, “are you even in this class?”
I promptly left the American Wing and went to Frank Lloyd Wright’s living room to hide.
When the exhaustion and pangs of hunger hit it was time to leave. I didn’t seen half of what I wanted to and will have to return at some point to see the rest. I walked outside into the warm night and bought a hotdog from the street vendor on 81st and walked down 5th Ave alongside the park while I ate.
That’s the great thing about New York, you can have a great day, and all it will cost you is 75 cents.
March 22, 2006
Low Budget Lifestyle
For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently holding down two homes. Yes two. I’m a fabulous multi-homeowner in my early twenties. One place here in the city naturally, and when I’m not too busy working all hours in Manhattan, I try to jet set up to Boston where I am currently paying rent on yet another apartment.
Of course side note is, that I haven’t been up to Boston to enjoy the greatness of this other apartment, and I’m still paying for and the sad fact that the sub-letter who moved in the morning I moved out, has since decided to move out.
So right now, funds are tight, and living on a shoe-string budget is something I’ve started to really adapt to since I got here. However this is a bit of an extreme and as I currently have roughly $20 in my checking account (because of the two rents, naturally) I barely have enough to split between my addictions. Coffee (you guessed it) window shopping (which in Manhattan means buying something) and vodka sodas.
Friday night, with money tight I went to Merchant near 14th St with a fellow co-worker to indulge in addiction no. 3. Headed then up up uptown to 125th street for a party hosted by an old Boston co-worker, where the drinks were free, and right now as a two-apartment-holding-classy girl, free is the word d’ jour. Made it there and back successfully without any muggings, stabbings, etc. I’ve realized that anything above 85th St. is a whole other world, and even on the express train it seems to take forever.
The rest of the weekend was spent doing things that didn’t cost me anything, like sleeping. I did however find out two interesting things by the end of the weekend. One, that I’ll only be a two-apartment-holding classy girl until the end of the month, which is wonderful news as I will be able to indulge more in addiction no. 2.
Also, wandered around the city for the day on Sunday (really making that grande bold last) and ended up around 46th and 5th and found that, upon looking twice and feeling a sort of heart wrenching loss, that my favorite restaurant in the city from years ago, has gone out of business.
I guess not having a lot of money in Manhattan is only okay for some of us.
Thankfully that will all change for me soon…well, somewhat.
Of course side note is, that I haven’t been up to Boston to enjoy the greatness of this other apartment, and I’m still paying for and the sad fact that the sub-letter who moved in the morning I moved out, has since decided to move out.
So right now, funds are tight, and living on a shoe-string budget is something I’ve started to really adapt to since I got here. However this is a bit of an extreme and as I currently have roughly $20 in my checking account (because of the two rents, naturally) I barely have enough to split between my addictions. Coffee (you guessed it) window shopping (which in Manhattan means buying something) and vodka sodas.
Friday night, with money tight I went to Merchant near 14th St with a fellow co-worker to indulge in addiction no. 3. Headed then up up uptown to 125th street for a party hosted by an old Boston co-worker, where the drinks were free, and right now as a two-apartment-holding-classy girl, free is the word d’ jour. Made it there and back successfully without any muggings, stabbings, etc. I’ve realized that anything above 85th St. is a whole other world, and even on the express train it seems to take forever.
The rest of the weekend was spent doing things that didn’t cost me anything, like sleeping. I did however find out two interesting things by the end of the weekend. One, that I’ll only be a two-apartment-holding classy girl until the end of the month, which is wonderful news as I will be able to indulge more in addiction no. 2.
Also, wandered around the city for the day on Sunday (really making that grande bold last) and ended up around 46th and 5th and found that, upon looking twice and feeling a sort of heart wrenching loss, that my favorite restaurant in the city from years ago, has gone out of business.
I guess not having a lot of money in Manhattan is only okay for some of us.
Thankfully that will all change for me soon…well, somewhat.
March 13, 2006
To the girl at the corner store on Lexington
I know it’s tough, it has to be. Every day it’s the same, the same people asking for coffee, asking for change, asking for your number. They’ve been coming in with their large coats and pressed suits knowing that every day it will be the same, that they will come in, and you’ll be here.
I know it won’t be long, and soon they’ll be coming in with their flip flops and tanned faces from their weekends at the Hamptons and they’ll find you’re gone. You feel your life is on the other side of the world, that no one here understands you, and you wish you had someone to count on.
Count on. Count faces, count names, count Burberry scarves and Dior sunglasses, count missed chances and glances and lost lives.
You think that in time, they’ll remember, once you’re gone, once you’ve taken the chance to start your life somewhere else, out from behind the counter of this city that moves too fast for you.
But you don’t count on it. You’re tired of counting, so you smile and say good morning and good afternoon and good bye.
Because you know it is easy to love people in memory, the hard trick, is to love them when they are there, in front of you.
I know it won’t be long, and soon they’ll be coming in with their flip flops and tanned faces from their weekends at the Hamptons and they’ll find you’re gone. You feel your life is on the other side of the world, that no one here understands you, and you wish you had someone to count on.
Count on. Count faces, count names, count Burberry scarves and Dior sunglasses, count missed chances and glances and lost lives.
You think that in time, they’ll remember, once you’re gone, once you’ve taken the chance to start your life somewhere else, out from behind the counter of this city that moves too fast for you.
But you don’t count on it. You’re tired of counting, so you smile and say good morning and good afternoon and good bye.
Because you know it is easy to love people in memory, the hard trick, is to love them when they are there, in front of you.
March 7, 2006
Play it again, Sam
Listen, this is what I have to say about New York. It's the same thing I would presumably say to anyone thinking about going to Casablanca: don't go to Casablanca expecting it to be like the movie. Casablanca is the armpit of Morocco and being 23 in Manhattan is nothing like being Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City. This piece written by a fellow (albeit irritating) young female in New York, is least reiterating my thoughts, (somewhat) as a poor, entry-level female trying to get a sense of reality about what it’s like to live in New York.
"Essentially, I think it's fair to say that for a young woman there is more fun to be had in New York City than anywhere else. But beneath the vodka sodas, the great bars and clubs, and the entertaining flirtations with men, are deeper issues about independence, friendship, relationships, and sex. Whether it's what Carrie Bradshaw would have been doing at 23 will remain a mystery. It is, however, what my friends and I are doing at 23."
Right. Vodka soda. My thoughts exactly. But at 23 Carrie Bradshaw was probably still getting money from her parents so she could afford to live in the West Village and was waiting tables to afford writing classes at NYU. After reading this I don't think the author has much understanding of any “deeper issues” at all, as her idea of a “low-key night” is $14 mojitos at 60 Thompson, while mine is $1 beers at the bar on 84th and 1st. And if what she says is true and phone calls to guys are “so 2002,” then the outlook for where her next drink is coming from is bleak. Come on, it's what any self-respecting classy girl would say.
In this city you know you’re going to be buying your own drinks, paying for your own cabs, waiting for tables and walking, feet hurting, long distances in less than fabulous shoes. Because when the latest Jimmy Choo costs as much as March rent, you pass.
And anyway, in the end of Casablanca Rick says goodbye to Ilsa after they’ve finally been reunited, shipping her off on a plane, saying he loves her too much to let her stay. In reality? He never would have talked to her again after she lied to him all those years ago, after she never showed up at the train station and left him waiting in the rain with Sam, As Time Goes By humming softly in the background.
That’s why we have television and movies, to get a glimpse of the way we would like things to be, far removed from harshness of reality, wishing rather than hoping that a kiss is still a kiss after all.
"Essentially, I think it's fair to say that for a young woman there is more fun to be had in New York City than anywhere else. But beneath the vodka sodas, the great bars and clubs, and the entertaining flirtations with men, are deeper issues about independence, friendship, relationships, and sex. Whether it's what Carrie Bradshaw would have been doing at 23 will remain a mystery. It is, however, what my friends and I are doing at 23."
Right. Vodka soda. My thoughts exactly. But at 23 Carrie Bradshaw was probably still getting money from her parents so she could afford to live in the West Village and was waiting tables to afford writing classes at NYU. After reading this I don't think the author has much understanding of any “deeper issues” at all, as her idea of a “low-key night” is $14 mojitos at 60 Thompson, while mine is $1 beers at the bar on 84th and 1st. And if what she says is true and phone calls to guys are “so 2002,” then the outlook for where her next drink is coming from is bleak. Come on, it's what any self-respecting classy girl would say.
In this city you know you’re going to be buying your own drinks, paying for your own cabs, waiting for tables and walking, feet hurting, long distances in less than fabulous shoes. Because when the latest Jimmy Choo costs as much as March rent, you pass.
And anyway, in the end of Casablanca Rick says goodbye to Ilsa after they’ve finally been reunited, shipping her off on a plane, saying he loves her too much to let her stay. In reality? He never would have talked to her again after she lied to him all those years ago, after she never showed up at the train station and left him waiting in the rain with Sam, As Time Goes By humming softly in the background.
That’s why we have television and movies, to get a glimpse of the way we would like things to be, far removed from harshness of reality, wishing rather than hoping that a kiss is still a kiss after all.
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