Fashion is my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Suzanne is in a fashion show and wants us all to go. As advertised on Gawker. Yay! Friend and I get there right at 10 and the lineup is around the block. Boo. I go to buy cigs and when I come back, friend has found some underage NYU students who have just realized they won't get in willing to sell 2 of their 4 tickets to us. We immediately get to the front of the line to join the other two people buying their tickets. Yay! The BITCHIEST GAY MAN IN THE UNIVERSE at the door tell us we can't use someone else's tickets and literally tries to use the velvet rope to sweep us out of the line. Boo. But the other door woman, whom we had checked with first, says that we can, and waves us on. Yay! But then some other door guy -- ok, I will just say that this was the worst organized event ever. While the fashion bitches argued, I quickly pushed friend through the door. (The other two people who had bought the NYU students' tickets never made it through.)

Yeah, that's way more interesting than the rest of the night. I drank. Suzanne's team made it to the second round of the Style Wars. She also sent me this SMS: "Im like fucking dying in these shoes lol!"

The Chinese take-outs are actually set up the same way

See, when I go get liquor in my neighbourhood, it's either at some affected wine shop (as this Friday, at 7:00) or the bodega (as this Friday, at 1:00). It's isn't, THOUGH IT SHOULD BE, like this:


all the booze, the money, and the humans behind bullet-proof glass. For the sheer suggestion of violence. The skids.

Patron saint of riding the subway drunk, midafternoon

Facebook strikes again - this time a 12-year reunion with a friend from high school in Brussels. She's a solicitor now (faithful readers will recognize that this perpetuates my inadvertent trend of only ever hanging out with lawyers), so I made her buy me drinks at the St. Regis hotel. When I arrived she was being hit on by some businessman hotel lothbario, and it occurred to me that I could probably drink $20 cocktails for free every day if I put on some mascara and hiked up to midtown and sat alone at the wood. But then every day I would have to go home and have a four-hour nap. Gawd damn!

In conclusion, New York is a land of contrasts.

Woke up at 2:00 pm today, either hung over or still drunk, and raced to work. I managed to squeeze a few hours out of the business day, and then battle the greasy rails and the steaming sewer grates and the slow-moving, polyestered behinds and the brumes of cigarette smoke and make it back to my clean, quiet hovel where I crank up the AC and lie on clean sheets and make people deliver food to my door.

photo source
I found this by accident but it turns out it's a famous artist who went to the New School.

The triangle above and to the left of me

In a city this dense, moving (eventually) just a few blocks west of where I used to live actually significantly changes my neighbourhood and day-to-day. Jubilee is farther away, so I go to Gristedes in Battery Park City, which I think is supposed to be kind of yuppie and upscale, but is dirty and annoyingly overpriced. Sometimes I take advantage of Jubilee's free delivery, but usually I feel too guilty making some guy ride over here on his bike to bring me cigarettes and a carton of organic milk.

Also, I now live just a few steps from Tribeca. I guess I did before, but I didn't really explore it much, because it was west of my path uptown, and whenever I did happen to stumble through it, it seemed kind of deserted. Now I've realized that it's cunningly that way - the streets are very quiet, but around every corner there is a fantastic dimly-lit bistro or wine bar or cucina with, nowadays, a spill of tables outside. No wonder the celebs hang out there.

Last night I went to one of those unassuming places and hung out with some lawyers - by coincidence the only non-grad student type I ever associate with here. Probably everybody around us was somebody, but what do I know. We drank wine and tequila until they put all the chairs up and turned the lights on and swept us out the door.

Yeah, don't

Don't go for beers with your ex-roommate in the East Village, even if it is sunny out and you can sit on a patio, before going to pallots, because all you'll want to do is lay back on that mat and exhale, and not do the part where you inhale and do the hundred.

In a few days, I will have an entirely different life

I miss my blog too, when I don't post. It's my very own internet diary.

Thursday or Friday: Drunken end-of-semester farewells in the dorm include an impromptu turn naming as many African countries as you can in three minutes (on pen and paper, each to his own). Oddly enough, all three of us came up with 24. I thought I had 25, but I named the same country twice, once under the colonial name.

Saturday: Brunch at a South African place in Fort Greene. I read James Michener's The Covenant in grade 9 in Belgium. I finally know how to pronounce bobotie.

Sunday: The nearly yearly ritual of sorting through everything I own - that is, my life - determining what is significant, what is worth remembering, what I will look at again, what heuristic ornaments I do and do not need. Programs from the Rockettes: out. Ticket stub from the ESB: in.

SMS highlight reel, vol. 2

Whoa, wait a minute. What is becoming of that pie?

This place is the bomb bomb bomb Holy shitness

Yo, that sucks. Btw, G train is running screwy

I just got out of jail.

Ew. I think I just finished my Gadamer paper...

Oddly mesmerizing, sleep inducing

Omg im drunk in long island.

Wanna do easter?!

Well, it's a very hip hipster queer bar in wilsbrg.

Drop that deuce yet?!

Hey babe. Drunk. Miss u. How u doin? Prob asleep.

I don't have any memory of like the last hour of the party AND i threw up IN BED (also dont remember that).

Shit girl lets ride.

Look left

I think i'm straight-up gay. Blink 3 times if you can hear me.

Give me 5 mins to finish this cereal

Easter

I ate Easter twice yesterday, first brunch at Ulysses in the Financial District, where your $20 includes a bloody mary or mimosa, coffee, and as many trips to the bacon, french toast, custom omelette, croissants, cakes, fresh fruit and cream, smoked salmon and raw oysters as you can fit in.

Then we kicked it in Bushwick, which I have mentioned many times before is the hispanic neighbourhood where they hate you white people, and with good reason because your presence means their rent is about to triple, and had ham and scalloped potatoes and salad and hard boiled eggs. Now, when a pulsing blast of Spanish music goes driving by on the street outside, guess what kind of car that is. Nova? Souped-up Civic? No, fool it's an Astro minivan. You know, cuz you can fit your whole crew in there. And you can get them at auction for like, $800.

Then we sat around and used Google Maps to show each other where we lost our respective virginities. New party game!

And by "drugs" I mean extra-strength Gravol

Went out tonight with some friends, Lower East Side, drunk drunk drunk, etc. Friend with the drugs tells us about the trouble he almost got into in getting them. He's from out of town - living in L.A. - and so had to call an unfamiliar pager number, and knew he wasn't going to recognize the deliverer. Apparently it's not a good idea, even in broad daylight, to stand on a streetcorner in the Bronx and say "You looking for me? You looking for me?"

There's no pitch-and-putt in Central Park

I remember working this hard. Well, not so much that, but working this hard and feeling shitty about it. That was last summer, when I was teaching formal logic every morning at 9 am. I hated waking up to the alarm, I hated finding new things to wear, I hated that I never had the discipline to leave the house early enough to walk, I hated the fact that the hour and ten minute lecture on a subject I felt insecure about at the time was only the very beginning of a long work day devoted to it - grading and website maintenance and constructing assignments and responding to emails and most of all, writing more lectures. Also kind of a shitty, stressful time in my life anyway.

And what made it bearable was a geniune partner in crime - one who worked even harder than I did at a much more stressful job. Almost every day at 4:30 we'd meet in the river valley, drink a few beers, smoke a joint, and take our hacks on the par 3.


Sigh.

P.S. I hope I don't get you fired.

[]

Saturday night I had some party to go to, blah blah, just a casual get-together with friends. When I was a bit late, I got this text message:

"PLEASE, PLEASE GET HERE SOON. PLEASE!!! PLEASE."

So I race over, inasmuch as one can race on the subway, to find four very enthusiastically inebriated friends. They were drinking Irish car bombs in honour of St. Patrick's Day, which involve Guiness, transmission fluid, and Irish cream. I had one. Half of one, actually, and I spent all of Sunday with heartburn like a fist in my chest.

So I lay low with my friend from YYC, of all places, and we made tacos and watched movies in the apartment she was housesitting. It's on the 29th floor, and has windows from floor to ceiling, so you can walk towards the city like you're going to levitate over it. In fact, it overlooks my building from a block away. Surreal.

By the way, I reeeeeeeely need my own apartment.

So Long, annoying party-goers

Went to a friend's birthday drink in Chinatown tonight. It was at some dive on Orchard St with a blank awning and no heat and a lone 20-something bartender playing tunes from his iPod. But okay, decidedly cosy when fat snowflakes are falling outside and So Long, Marianne comes on and I am eating the spare ribs and dumplings I just had delivered and talking with Friend (capital F) about that girl thing of needing to be good and needing to be kind and what ensues from that.

And then something happened that doesn't often anymore: we all came back to mine. Well, not my own dorm room but another in the building, with the very same floor plan but whose occupants were masochistic and charitable enough to mash the two beds into a corner and make one wing of the ell into a very congenial living room. Partying at home can of course turn a sober boredom into a willingness to socialize into the wee hours, except that friend and friend got into a REALLY ANNOYING whiny is your half bigger than mine? logistical dispute about drug and I and went to bed.

SMS highlight reel

"Do you have valentine's day in canada?"
"North side of the street, closer to 6th than 7th"
"Pouting verboten"
"You're my favourite Edmontonian."
"The 28th. Damn!"
"Yea that's my fault I guess. Are you having a good time?"
"God Bless America"
"Hey, sorry I missed your call yesterday. Pork WHAT?"
"Of course. It's very abstract"
"Writing is not happening."
"Have major debriefing to do with you!"
"Marginally"
"I did have fun. Thanks for throwing that shindig. Now, what is it you want to know?"
"Done. FUCK people there suck. Where u @?"
"Were in the corner. enter and turn left and left again"
"Lol. Actually, imma gonna make it riiiight now."
"At the Rockerfeller Centre. I'll be at Will Call, picking up the tickets"
"Hey I heard a nasty rumour there is something going on @ your place tonight. Care to comment?"
"Macy's. woot!"
"Haha I remember now hearing last night how your car got stolen and thinking that was no excuse for not coming out."
"YES! HURRY!"
"OMFG. How long does this Kierkegor paper have to be again?"
"That's perfect. [Redacted] has analysis until 1. Then we can all do lunch."
"107 row 6"
"On our way to the housewarming in a car service, as soon as we can get one"
"Same. WTF?"
"wrong girl!"
"Yeah i need a shower anyway"

Last night's audition

Just as the Village and the Lower East Side lie below Midtown, a class of waifish twentysomething New York hipsters lies below the fashionable fortysomething Manhattan gentry. These hipsters go out any night of the week - but not until after midnight - get spectacularly drunk, and do freaky New York things, all in the hopes of being seen. It's just like that FLL or Tijuana spring break crap, except the kids are much paler and better dressed, and instead of screaming and lifting their tank tops for Girls Gone Wild, they stare sultrily into the camera and have a nipple slip for blogs like Last Night's Party and the Cobrasnake.

Now, you know that my underfunded friends and I usually opt for a houseparty in Brooklyn or dollar PBRs in dive bars. But believe me that is not representative of the (white, middle-class) New York scene. It is all one big society page entry waiting to happen. And last night, I found myself in the midst of it.

It was for a friend's birthday party, and it took place in a former full-service massage parlour that had been shut down, only to reopen a week later (with minimal renos) as a club. There was a DJ, there was bubble wrap, and there was supposed to be an open bar from 11:30 until midnight. I ordered a G&T, you know because I was really thirsty and wanted something refreshing, and the guy charged me. Said the open bar only applied to vodka. I snorted.

Now, this wasn't the most happening party in the city, and I did have fun with my friends, but I realized, as we drank in a white-tiled sauna and listened to recycled New Order and watched people make out and occasionally had our picture snapped unrequitedly by a blog photographer, what this scene looks like live. When I was your age we had a word for this: tryhard. Wait, maybe it was two words.

Houseparty in Fort Greene

Hah hah! Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls, nigga shit ya drawers
(Where we from?) Brooklyn goin out to all
(Bushwick...) You don't stop
(Fort Greene...) You won't stop, niggaz!

Bushwick I've mentioned, but last night I was in Fort Greene, which despite what Jay-Z says is actually very hipster and cute with tiny restaurants (all filled with 30-somethings wearing black sweaters), and well-kept brownstones. As with almost every apartment I've been to, there were no internal walls or rooms, so all the partying takes place around the bed/kitchen sink/small open floor area. There's no storage space either, so it makes me wonder where they put all their shit when people come over. There was a GIANT bass case in the front alcove - apparently it belongs to the bassist for the SNL house band; he lives upstairs. I brought a tiramisu cake that I had bought at Ferrara, which is a bakery in Little Italy that is supposedly world famous. Meh. Cake was not that good.

The night before, well... The most dangerous thing in New York is to go out with people who actually have money. In this case it was to "Beauty Bar", which is set up like a beauty salon but is actually a bar, see! Although you can get a manicure for $10. It includes a free drink. Anyway, someone was buying us drinks all night, and roommate and I can't believe how much we imbibed and lived to tell. Also, Grace left her wallet and cell phone there and got both back the next day. I myself have left my (pre-paid) phone in the back of a cab and got it back. Had to find the garage in Soho where the cabs get fixed, but there it was, as promised.

P.S. I have discovered another New York thing: "giving someone a ride home" means splitting a cab with them and not making them pay their fare. Hee!

Bushwick, Bedstuy

A remedial post...

My first week back from the Thanksgiving Canada trip I was never, ever at home, such that my suitcase still lay on the floor, its contens strewn (ok, that's still the case - I'm holding out for Christmas), and some of that time was spent in Brooklyn, so I will tell you about it.

A couple we know has a loft in Bushwick, just off Knickerbocker. (Brooklyn is great for sui generis New York nomenclature: Canarsie. Rockaway. Flatbush.) Bushwick is a neighbourhood where you can't find Cheerios in the supermarket but there is an entire aisle dedicated to these (and not just Jesus, obviously - they have the saint candle for whatever ails you):

Another friend shares an apartment in Bedstuy (Bedford Stuyvesant). We bought 40s of Ballantine at the bodega for $2. Some guy who claimed to be a welterweight champion followed us back to our friend's stoop. Told Grace and me the next time we came around we should bring our cousins.

Wheeee! Gah!

So each of the three times I've made the trip from Calgary to New York, I have had the same US border guard. In fact, today I walked past one available guy and went straight up to my regular. Why? Because he doesn't care that I am incapable of dotting my bureaucratic i's and crossing my t's. He takes one look at my photocopies-instead-of-originals, at my nearly-expired passport, and sweeps my documents back across the counter to me with "You're all set, kid."

Then, each time I have arrived in New York, I have taken a different mode of "GTR". First, a flat rate $45 cab ride, then a $19 shared van service, and today the plain old subway. I recommend the latter. I don't even have to transfer to get to Fulton. Also, as I was waiting for the train (an interminable 25 minutes - that should never happen), a heavily-accented thirty-something brown guy asked me to confirm that this line goes to the World Trade Center. Hee.

Now I am coming down with my third cold in the space of ten days. Cold number two was my favourite: my glands got so swollen they bruised the outside of my neck, and I had to go to the doctor to get antibiotics. Tomorrow I have to turn in a grant application (as yet unwritten), not to mention reckon with the monstrous pile of work that accumulated while I was drinking in Edmonton and Calgary.

But seriously, what a great freaking time. A little brawl in the Garneau Pub, a cosy apartment on the North side, icicle fights behind the Black Dog, bummed cigs, free tequila, home-cooked meals, and most of all, weepy declarations of how it just ain't the same without me and Grace around.

Oh yeah, tomorrow the forecast here says "partly cloudy and 18 C".

Now you have it on authority

Another Friday night and another soirée in Brooklyn. Thank God parties here don't start until 10. Gives you time to get stuff done during the day. Like go to a brutalizing pilates (pronounced "pa-LOTS") class hungover, and have the instructor chastise you for not being flexible. And have grilled cheese and a milkshake at a diner. And go see the new documentary on Kazakhstan, which has a male nudity scene in it that I am still recovering from. Wawaweewah!

Yes, I have to post about something other than drinking and philosophy, but this quote from Hume will help explain why I keep doing so:

"I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd in the deepest darkness. Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hour's [sic] amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther. [And] at the time that I am tir'd with amusement and company, I feel my mind all collected within itself, and am naturally inclin'd to carry my view into all those subjects, about which I have met with so many disputes in the course of my reading and conversation."

In other words, it's literally methodologically necessary to drink with friends so as to emerge from the depths of philosophical skepticism. Just as it is impossible to stay away from philosophy once one has had one's fill of merriment.

The lowdown

Ok, so I *wish* I could punctuate this post with pictures, and I will certainly try to at a later date. I just always forget to bring the camera with me when I leave the house 'cause I live here, ya know?

Off the Wagon (McDougall and something or other): One of many lame college bars right around NYBoo, with a frat house atmosphere and fake ID crowd. But on Mondays, they have $1 drafts. And there's a foosball table. While outside smoking, I chatted with a homely blond firefighter from Fredricton whose firehall buddy had booked them all on an excursion to Jersey. He thought this place was the shit. Yeah. Don't go there.

Spain (13th btw 6th & 7th): A pitcher of sangria serves three and as soon as you sit down, they bring you plates and plates of tapas - and I mean good stuff: meatballs, fried potatoes, shrimp, chorizo... Of course, the waiters really are old, authentic, accented European guys, so sometimes they treat you like family and other times expect you to pay for your drinks, down your tapas and get the fuck out. But the best part is... last time we were there this guy walked in. Looked like the short guy from the Sopranos: mid-fifties, comb-over, expensive Italian suit jacket and tailored shirt, pot belly. Oh, and a giant spider tattoo covering the entire front of his neck. As friend said, "That man has killed more than a few people." When we left, we found a shiny, spotless black Lincoln right out front, a guy inside passing time reading a magazine. Presumably the driver. So weird that that crap actually exists.

The Library (Houston and A): A punk rock dive bar with the best jukebox in the city: Fugazi, Operation Ivy, Minor Threat, the Smiths, etc. etc. etc. Always playing B-movies on the back wall. Natty Lights are $3. That's short for some crappy, weak American canned beer but I forget what. Everywhere we go, we drink either that or PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon). That's right - the beer you thought was only for the mullet set is a fan favourite in Manhattan. Well, the parts we hang out.

There are so many others but I'll write about them when they're fresh in my mind. This has been my week so far.