One girl’s journey
from Naive Nerd ---> Model in Milan ---> Writer in Manhattan.
Attempting to bring you
fresh, witty, and often
poignant stories.
BENVENUTO
Many New Yorkers like to nurse their hangover with more liquor, the logic having to do something with ‘keeping you liver working.’ The exact science of this theory I cannot explain, but it’s popular among Manhattan’s expat crew: Italians, Frenchies and Brazilians who all seem to body surf their way into Felix Sunday afternoons to keep daylight just as jovial as last night at the club.
Felix, located in SoHo on West Broadway and Grand, is the thumping heart of a much larger Sunday circle of sin. The rounds include nearby Novecento, Café Noir, Diva and Cipriani’s Downtown. And for the Expat crowd, there’s a zero percent chance of not running into someone you know. It’s an exercise in incest so be prepared to hear a lot of joyous shouts of recognition in a lot of foreign languages.
I’d stopped through Felix on a handful of Sunday afternoons, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I engaged in ‘the Felix tradition,’ a full day’s worth of productivity lost inside this French bistro/bar. Below I’ve documented my experience.
2:15 – I arrive. The place isn’t a mosh pit yet because the hardcore partiers are still sleeping. Every table however, is booked and the wait spills out into the sidewalk. Great. 2:18 – I wiggle toward the bar and see some French friends. They suggest I put my name down for a table ASAP as they were just told it’s a forty-five minute wait. I think to myself ‘that’s absurd’ and decide once my friends arrive to convince them we should go to one of the eighteen other perfectly delicious brunch places in SoHo. I approach the intimidating female maitre’de (she’ll scream at you just for darting a hopeful smile her way) and in the bar crowd almost trip over someone’s small dog.
2:20 – As I avoid nose diving into someone’s drink, I hear the owner of the leash I’m entangled in calling out to the dog I almost killed, ‘Cocoa. Cocoa’
I slowly double-take. I know a dog name Cocoa...
I look up to see the leash leads to the hand of my uncle who’s at the bar next to me enjoying a scotch. WTF?
It took a really rough night last Sunday with a lot of bad decisions involved (the first of many being drinking on antibiotics) to make me stop for a second and think about the amount of alcohol I consume on a weekly basis.
I soon realized I’d never thought about this before because it’s too terrifying to contemplate. It’s one of my mind’s “don’t go there topics” along with my parents divorce, Requiem for a Dream’s ending, and visuals of needles.
The culprit in this drinking frenzy?
The bottle service system.
More specifically, the free, promotional bottle system.
We’ve been preprogrammed not to be wasteful. Wasting is bad. It contributes to the polar ice cap melt and makes Al Gore lose precious hours of sleep. This mentality has somehow crossed over to unfinished Ciroc vodka and half empty bottles of bubbly. If it’s there, you drink it. Hell, we’ve all seen the 4 A.M. classic ‘waste-not’ move of men passing around liquor bottles and depositing the contents directly down their throat. Belvedere? A baby bottle? They’re essentially the same thing. Watch ‘em slurp it down.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m a champagne-whore. And if people are mixing vodka drinks, I’ll inhale whatever is handed to me through six of those little straws. I think the last time someone asked me my mixer preference, “orange or cranberry?” I shrugged with a sad smile and responded, “like it matters.” After four plus years of passively accepting and consuming drinks, I’m beginning to realize that there might be a mini problem here.
I haven’t fully formulated my exact thoughts on the topic yet. As an experiment however, when I went out this Saturday, I didn’t drink.
OK, lies.
I had two beers. But we all know that beer’s like alcoholic water, and only two from 11:30 P.M. to 4:30 A.M.? I was a sober chick. And you know what? I still had fun. Perhaps I didn’t feel like as much of a superstar as I do after seven champagnes, and perhaps Bob Sinclair didn’t make me as outrageously happy as he does when vodka’s swirling around in my brain, but I had some good, old-fashion fun. I danced. I talked. I knew what people looked like. I even felt like I was part of some conspiratory secret club: ‘the sober ones.’ Watching the retard-ettes jumping around like orangutans off-beat to Timbaland was both amusing and humiliating. Amusing because they looked like they needed leashes, and humiliating because I’m sure I’m usually one of them.
And my sobriety didn’t go unnoticed.
“Why aren’t you drinking?” I got asked repeatedly from table managers.
It wasn’t until then that I realized when I’m out, I ALWAYS have a drink in my hand. There’s photo proof of this. I almost had to re-teach myself how to dance not having a drink in my hand. It was that big a shock. My body balance was off. So much so that after I was tired of getting harassed, I poured myself a cup of cranberry just to fit in. And as I swooped down to get my juice I caught site of our three-quarters full Grey Goose bottle and the ‘waste not’ mentality started to creep over me.
I fought off the temptation, kept my resolve, and it was an interesting experiment. Best perk: the next morning I felt fabulous instead of an extra from the Planet of the Apes movie.
I call Christmas Stress-mus. And my Holiday wish it that would cause us angst every other year instead of every eleven months.
Wouldn’t that be great?
If Christmas came every other year it might help the season actually feel ‘authentic’ and ‘special.’ The idea of gift shopping might evoke emotions of love and charity instead of nauseating visions of shoppers sword fighting each other at Macy’s and even worse – trying to find parking at the mall. I realize some people like the inevitable strain, travel, traffic, fake cheer, financial exploitation and family time that comes with Christmas, but I’d even vote for celebrating it every four years. Like the Olympics! Then I’d get really excited about it!
It’s my belief the hullabaloo that comes with the holidays is just too much for us frail human beings to handle every single year. I think medical authorities would back me up on this. Don’t we deserve a break? If Christmas came less often, heart attacks and other stress related illnesses might go down over twenty percent! Who needs Christmas every year?
My life’s frankly quite fulfilling without spending hours locked in my family’s basement like an Indonesian child laborer wrapping a stack of presents higher than the fire’s mantelpiece. My life’s fulfilling without pretending to enjoy decorating a perfectly good fur tree that belongs in a forest with chirping birds and sun. Ultimately, it’s the shopping and commercialization of Christmas that gets to me – not any of the Holiday’s underlying values. And then we get to the worst part of all…Pink Elephant’s attempt at December decoration:
Is this really necessary?
Even a miserly, non-charitable establishment like Pink Elephant had to get on the Holiday bandwagon?
Is there no sanctuary?
Karaoke
On Wednesday, I hustled myself into the cold, intent on reporting what was to be the SoHo club’s Upstairs’ first Karaoke night. Sound like a carbon copy of Giuseppe’s ingenious idea to turn Sunday nights into a festival of alcoholism and embarrassment at Cipriani’s Upstairs?
It is.
Those you who’ve watched my video footage / soundtrack of Cipriani’s on karaoke night can understand why I kept my iPod buds handy while climbing the staircase to Upstairs – karaoke in New York clubs is like audible shit. If you’re eardrums aren’t completely desensitized from drunkenness hearing it may make you shriek. Yet as I entered the club, I saw a DJ, heard normal music, and saw no one slobbering over a mike. The karaoke screen hung at the very far end of the bar, stark white and barely visible.
Apparently, Upstairs had experienced “technical difficulties.” Karaoke was nixed and it was a night like any other. I let out an audible gasp of relief.
Sure I’d been lured out of my house on a Wednesday night under false pretenses. But Cipriani’s is bad enough. The last thing this city needs if for the clubbing karaoke idea to spread like Christmas decorations.
Oh! And are you short on Christmas gift ideas? How about getting your favorite douche or douchette this delightful Pink Elephant snow cap?
Karaoke rarely sounds good, but it’s usually not this bad.
You guessed it. This time around at Cipriani’s Upstairs’ weekly Sunday night shit-faced singing shebang I had the genius to videotape what was going on. I wanted visual and auditory proof of the ridiculousness because I don’t feel anyone who reads this blog can fully understand what an embarrassment this entire establishment is to the human condition.
For juicy background details on Sunday’s at Cipriani’s Upstairs check out my previous article.
The brief 411: models, modophiles, creepy Italian men, Giuseppe, gold diggers and extremely drunk partiers gather together on Sunday nights in this private club to enjoy spending a few thousand on tables while singing along to karaoke.
DON’T EVEN WALK UP THE NARROW STAIRS TO CIP’S IF YOU’RE GOING TO STUMBLE.
You must attend this party entirely inebriated. Not doing so will result in death, as I’m pretty sure any sober person would hang themselves with a tablecloth from the rafters mere moments after having to endure this adult sing along.
Bartok and I prepared appropriately. We consumed an entire water bottle full of Bacardi and Diet Coke on the walk from my place to West Broadway. Then we jumped around like apes at Diva as the lounge was celebrating its Four Year Anniversary with a Euro dance party starting at 8 P.M. The Diva party was noteworthy, and I’d like to take the time to write about the fabulous Enrique look alike DJ, the relaxed vibe, and the delicious aromatic seafood at another date. For now, just know that Diva served at the perfect vodka heavy pre-gaming event to our eventual arrival at Cipriani’s across the street at 12:30 A.M.
So here you go. It’s dark, my camerawork sucks, the visuals are bad. What’s more noteworthy is the singing – or lack there of. What’s amazing is that when you’re standing on top of a table at this party, you actually feel like a superstar. Looking at these videos, in retrospect, you can barely even decipher what song is playing. Even the karaoke machine sounds like it’s on crack.
Observe my drunken genius in Video 1, as I attempted to create a lighting system for my movie with a candle.
Observe the cocktail waitresses slithering together on the bar in Video 2.
My girl Bartok’s in town and after half a liter of sake and two bottles of champagne, our evening was off to a promising start. Around 2 A.M., after we all got bored of watching YouTube videos like these while inebriating ourselves, our group of friends decided it might be appropriate to detach our asses from the couch, detach the liquor from our hands, and actually do something of theoretical worth with our evening.
Everyone tossed around plans, and shot them down, texted our partiers already out on the scene and looked up addresses on the web. We’d settled on an acceptable game plan when half of our friends realized it was Saturday night (they’d been under the impression it was Sunday this whole time) and we had to start the whole planning pow-wow again now keeping the fact that it was unfortunately a weekend in mind.
Weekends equal crowds.
Weekends equal competition for cabs.
Weekends equal Sixth Avenue traffic.
Somehow we ended up at opening night of what someone claimed was a “new” New York nightclub, The Madison, where there was an IMG Modeling Agency party. Gross. But our guy friend insisted on attending.
Inside the bowels of The Madison, which by the way is large and cavernous like the old school clubs of the 70s, I remembered that drunk and baby-model-drunk are two completely different levels of inebriation. I found myself surrounded by sloppy, sloppy, sloppy baby-model-drunks and the perverted modelphiles that stalk them. There was no escape. I couldn’t even maneuver myself to an empty area, because this club had no empty areas. The entire situation made a Thursday at Pink Elephant LINK look classy.
That’s saying a lot. I spent most of my time trying not to get drowned in vodka as PR’s on top of tables would occasionally let it rain down Kettle One on the eager, open-mouthed baby models below. I watched in disgusted awe as the models then slithered around with one another in a group orgy, as they were too wasted to properly pair off and grind. And I guess this kind of behavior’s to be somewhat expected when waltzing into a club full of seventeen-year-old posers at 2:30 A.M., I guess I just thought considering it was their agency party and therefore theoretically a work event, people might have stopped drinking when they could no longer see straight.
WRONG.
After we planted our coats down in the least violated area of the club available, I realized we’d landed at the boys’ section of the dance floor. I was dead center in the middle of a male model clusterfuck. While amusing, this kind of situation is not enjoyable. None of these chiseled hotties were a day over twenty-two. Most were socially awkward and impressively bad dancers. Many floated through the crowd lost, aimless, unable to talk or even move their mouths. I think most would’ve been relieved if their mother suddenly showed up from Germany, grabbed their hand, and escorted them to the nearest exit for fresh air. And half of these guys were wearing flannel.
Newsflash! Apparently, 90s flannel is back. I was outraged that my friends had forced me to dawn a dress for this event. Clearly, if I had worn flats and assembled a grungy Seattle look I might have had a chance at blending in. As I mulled over this thought, an ano-baby-male model abducted me with what was apparently the club’s outdoor red velvet rope, which he was using as a leash. Having swung the rope over my head and down to my waist, he thrust me toward him, forcing us to dance. Then he reached the rope over Bartok’s head and drew her in as well. Once he realized we weren’t seventeen and on ecstasy, he let us go.
Trying to make the best of the situation, Bartok and I picked favorites. I liked a scruffy, blonde, greasy-haired model in jeans and a green t-shirt, who could have easily passed for Christian Bale’s younger brother. His arms were hugely muscular without being obnoxious and he was tall but not skinny. He wasn’t dancing, which was much appreciated, and looked like he could still probably recite the alphabet without having to pause or ask for help. All signs pointed to that he might be an okay time. Then a fat chick, presumably his booker, suddenly started trying to make out with him. She succeeded in getting one kiss. Disgusted, Christian Bale-boy quickly fled the premises, returning twenty minutes later on the other side of the table. I guess he thought he’d escaped, but the fatty found him again soon thereafter. Sad story.
The other male of note was a flannel wearing James Dean look-alike. At first I couldn’t decide whether he was hot or not. He seemed like the sexy Mexican plumber type who’d guess star on a show like Passions. Then we ended up sitting side by side on a banquet couch, me to rest my feet, him to enjoy a cigarette, and I realized he’s the face of at least a dozen city billboards, I’m thinking Hugo Boss. He had the dark hair and eyes I appreciated and I found myself wildly attracted to him, even hoping that we might dance (gasp! Gross, I know).
We were wearing almost identical brown bracelets (yes, this guy was hot enough to pull off flannel and man jewelry) so I tried to use this as a conversation starter. I got shut down. Then he stood up and it became evident that he could barely walk. I bumped into him ten minutes later and he fervently gripped my shoulders and asked:
“Where’s the Danish guy? Where is he? ”
I guess they’d lost a younger, Danish, baby boy model they were supposed to be chaperoning.
“There’s a Danish guy over there,” I said pointing one of my friends who is Danish, “but I don’t think that’s who you’re looking for.”
“No. No it’s not,” he admitted sadly. He seemed heartbroken.
We proceeded to have a brief conversation in which I learned his name and that he was from Amsterdam. Then a very feisty baby girl model wearing what looked like a backless thong as a top, grabbed my shoulder, shoved me off Amsterdam James Dean cartoon style, and started grinding with him.
Possessive. I get it.
I think she was on E.
I realized I was officially in Hell.
Models too drunk to find their coats had taken out their aggression by vigorously flinging our jackets around as hard as they could. Nice. Somehow we recouped all our belongings, and with my feet soaked in vodka, I managed to stomp out there before the 4 A.M. last call with some dignity. James Dean and I said bye on my way out.
As we’d anticipated at the beginning of the evening, Sunday later proved to be a much better night.
It happened. I haven’t even snarfed down my annual butterball turkey with extra stuffing when I was confronted at a dinner party last night with one of my least favorite questions on the planet. Right up there on the same level as, “How many people have you ever slept with?” is:
“What are you doing for New Years?”
As if I’ve even thought about that! I still haven’t even worked out the details of what I’m doing for Thanksgiving and it’s a week from today. I haven’t even started mentally preparing myself for the disgustingly glossy, commercial ‘cheer’ that is Christmas – a holiday I find not only stressful, but vomit inducing.
New Years conversations? Really? Already?
Ironically enough, I don’t find New Years vomit inducing (although I think January 1st may be our country’s national high for people puking). New Years instead is an annoyingly tricky holiday, and it doesn’t help that people (especially people in Manhattan) are obsessed with it. Everyone wants New Years to be a good time, but ultimately the pressure to have fun undermines the holiday. Plus it’s an opportunity for every bar, restaurant and half-decent club to rip off the American public.
Some of the abuse people have to look forward to on New Years Eve includes:
1. Buying three hundred dollar ‘tickets’ a month in advance to enter your typical douchey club on 27th street.
2. Being forced to hitchhike, hire a limo, or take the bus, since finding a free taxi in the city will be more competitive than purchasing a Hermes Birken bag.
3. Should you venture outside of Manhattan, being subject to drunk partiers irresponsible behind the wheel judgment.
And last, but perhaps most importantly:
4. That dreadful awkward ‘after the ball drops’ moment. I feel pretty confident that the first few nano-seconds of 2008 are inevitably the most uncomfortable of the entire year. I’d like some sort of award-winning psychologist to develop an informational pamphlet on how to handle those theoretically ‘joyous’ after midnight moments.
Technically, you’re supposed to embrace/kiss/slobber on your significant other in a state of euphoria as confetti swirls around you like in an uber-cheesy movie. So if you’re a serious couple at least you have a game plan. The out of control drunken nature of New Years however, has been known to cause fights between even the most stable couples. So even if you’re hitched, there’s no guarantee you and you loved one will be on speaking terms by the time the clock hits midnight, in which case you can pretend to mack on each other as the ball drops and welcome in the New Year secretly hating each other. Not fun.
Even less fun, is surviving this entire situation with someone you’re in a ‘grey relationship’ with. Suddenly, what you do together when the ball drops serves to define your entire relationship. Like if you kiss in front of everyone during those chaotic New Years moments (as if anyone’s watching…or cares) you suddenly run the risk of morphing into a ‘real’ couple. You could just pull each other into a joyous hug, that’s very grey appropriate. Or you can avoid eye contact all together. Or hide under a table with a bottle of champagne and wait for the moment to pass. Grey relationships thrive on grayness. The smog is the relationships fuel. So any social situation which calls for a clarification of your status is probably best avoided. Yet another reason why New Years often sucks.
Single and spending the holiday with friends is probably the least stressful option. Then you can spend the moments between 12:00 and 12:01 A.M. squirting champagne in one another’s faces and jumping around like apes. Unfortunately, a New Years level intake of alcohol usually makes people hornier than an in-heat hippopotamus on estrogen medication, so you run the risk of hooking up with one of your friends, or worse, some predatory sleazo at the bar.
So a New Years game plan where you don’t end up pissed, an embarrassment, insanely emotional or full of regret?
If someone comes up with something let me know, because apparently I have to start planning now.
***
Thank God the bras have still not caught the fashion bug. The ailment is limited to handbags and jewelry and anything else that is visible. That of course means no more buying from wholesale jewelry.
Yes, I realize this sounds like one of those douchey Cosmopolitan headlines. FYI, I hate those girl magazines. Who needs the folks at Redbook to teach us how to NOT have an orgasm again? Instead, I’m writing to commemorate an especially interesting conversation that took place over a recent night of sushi and way too much sake, a night in which our dinner party girls ganged up our dinner party guys and started asking some I’ve-drunk-way-too-much-to-censor-myself questions. Since we were all ‘just friends,’ no one felt the need to hold back. Here I’ve documented our evening’s ramblings, what I hope is an unbiased analysis of the two sexes and how they interact.
Somewhere around dessert, as I unabashedly bemoaned my romantic situation with comments like, “It’s just such a pity because if Mr. Grey just did X, Y, J and Double Z Squared, I think we’d both be so much happier,” when a male dinner party companion interrupted me with a solution:
“Why don’t you write all the things you wish he’d do on a piece of paper, give him the list, and tell him if he complies he’ll be rewarded with random, bonus blowjobs.”
Me: “That’s the kind of logic I’d use when interacting with a small child or pet.”
Him: “Exactly.”
Now I’m staring like a nitwit into my sake glass hoping I didn’t hear him correctly.
My friend continued: “Guys aren’t stupid. They just don’t think about all the things you girls think about. Guys forget stuff, easily! So keep it simple, write it down, and create a reward system. I think you’ll find he’ll be more than happy to comply.”
I smiled, realizing while this strategy may function for obedient American boys, my friend clearly had no idea what it was like to date the highly complex, spoiled, Lucifer-like love animal that is an Italian man. No way were lists going to work.
Next, the ladies at the table wanted to know how sex well…felt different with different women.
“How can a man claim Miss so-and-so is the best sex of his life? Aren’t all women just…well…holes?”
Gross, I know. And this statement received a strong negative reaction. The table erupted in chaos at which point I, a writer who’ll use any interesting social situation for my professional gain, instructed the boys to tell us the tangible specifics aside from chemistry that make a woman great in bed. Chemistry, pheromones, and the psychologically adrenaline inducing games couples play with one another can’t be properly explained. The inexplicable, enigmatic nature of these things is what constitutes lust. Setting these mysteries aside, the male half of our table came up with four tangible qualities that ‘the best sex of their lives’ invariably possessed.
1. Going at it HARD. Consensus from the men made it clear that the best sex was hard sex. They preferred girls who liked to pound and play rough rather than the romantic, soft, immobile, ‘dead starfish’ types.
2. Getting on all fours. According to those who possessed a penis around our West Village dinner table, men get off on doing it doggie-style. They claimed this has been man’s favorite position since the Stone Age and that any man who denied their intense fetish-like desire for women on all fours were point-blank liars. Translation: the girls who qualified as ‘the best sex’ liked to time travel to the Stone Age as well.
3. Doing it in public places. This one went a little over my head, but I think the underlying point was that men crave an adventurous partner. The guys claimed that while women may initially have inhibitions and be resistant to the idea of getting spread eagle in an H&M changing stall or bar bathroom, they grow to love it. One friend recounted a story of an ex-girlfriend who was initially terrified of the public fuck and after giving in became addicted to the insane adrenaline rush. What I took away from these comments: Be active, get creative, suggest raunchy things – it definitely won’t hurt.
4. Having an orgasm. Easier said than done. For all the boys at the table, ‘the best sex of their lives’ included a partner they could make come vaginally. “If the girl can only come clitorally, it gets complicated,” one man said. “Guys get off on knowing they made their woman come. Having her come vaginally is a massive ego boost.”
So there you have it, straight from some dudes’ sake filled mouths. Men: please feel free to correct or add onto to your drunk peers’ insights. Women: I’d take all of this with a grain of salt.
I’d like to take a quick moment to ridicule Tenjune’s failed attempt at Halloween décor. See below: What is that stuff? Bubble gum? Strewn cotton candy? An effort at spider webs? If so, why is it the color of Pepto-Bismol? Note that the crowd seemed generally happy. No one seemed disturbed by this plentiful pink nastiness but me.
This week I finally got myself to Jane Street and West Side Highway to check out Socialista. Was I excited? Not really. I’d just had one too many people ask me ‘Have you been to Socialista yet?’ and was sick of replying in the negative. My underlying motivation for going however, remains that the place is co-owned by my favorite Mafioso Italian in the city, Giuseppe Cipriani along with former Bungalow 8 doorman Armin Amiri. I felt I owed it to Giuseppe to check out his latest creation of exclusivity and frivolity. Just for fun.
On the cab ride over, my friend warned me to lower my expectations.
“They sort of pride themselves on the place always being empty,” he said.
Sigh.
Now I was bracing myself for a sight worse than Rose Bar on a Saturday night – the pool table gathering dust and the place so quiet you can hear scurrying cockroaches. I feel the whole ‘exclusivity’ by keeping a place empty tactic is kind of like cheating. It takes a lot more hard work, energy and talent to keep a club full than it does to just turn everyone away. But then again, that’s assuming these establishments want to make money, which for Socialista isn’t the case. It just exists as Giuseppe and Armin’s ‘pet project.’
Upon ascending the rickety staircase to the main bar my first thought was: “Really? So much freakin’ hype for this?” The place looked like a frail haunted house, and that’s without Halloween decorations. As promised, it was empty. Eight other patrons. Two bar tenders. A DJ. That’s it.
But after ordering a drink and settling into one of the many plush and available mauve couches, the place began to grow on me. The design is minimal, Cuban-style. I felt like I’d landed on the Hollywood set used to shoot Casablanca, which is actually pretty cool. The lounge’s relaxed vibe suggested that a Rick type character might push through the kitchen’s wooden shutters at any time and serenade me with “As Time Goes By.” The fans, the white washed walls, the quiet. Socialista felt like our living room away from home. Which wasn’t what I was expecting at all. As we got increasingly drunk, we became mesmerized by this Van Gough-like painting to the right of the bar. At first I thought it was a cat with bound feet, but then I starting noticing and counting all the geese.
So there’s everyone’s weekend homework. How many geese do you see?
I’ve been a bad blog poster this week, but I’m chalk full of excuses, none of which are particularly interesting except one:
I drank an entire bottle of absinthe and recovery time was slightly longer than expected.
Okay…
I didn’t drink an entire bottle. I shared a mini bottle with a close friend. But considering that stuff in like 300% alcohol and I’m a lightweight, the result was still hallucinatory. We’d been drinking rum and coke for two hours when my friend remembered she had a stash of absinthe left over from a recent trip to Prague. It was then that I announced we were going to drink all of it.
“Why?” She said cocking her head. This was just a normal, rainy, New York City night out. There were no great reunions, birthdays or charity events to crash ahead of us.
“Because tonight,” I replied, already tipsy, “I want to be one of those people. Those people who can’t properly walk, those people others look upon in disgust while being secretly jealous because they’d pay cash money to be as outrageously drunk and elated as us.”
I’d been sick and housebound for over a week. I was finally going out, and like a caged animal, was running on overdrive since I’d been bed bound for so long.
I also have a theory that planned party nights tend to fail. Anytime someone says, “tonight’s going to be a wild night,” prepare for mediocrity. Once the expectation for debauchery has been set up, a subtle pressure creeps in and ruins everyone’s sense of carefree relaxation. Predicting outrageous fun is like shooting yourself in the foot before even strapping on stilettos. Because in my experience, the best nights always occur at random. When you’re utterly relaxed, in good company, with no high profile plans and zero expectations. It’s then that you realize you have a bottle of unopened absinthe in your desk drawer. That it’s raining, but you don’t care. That there’s no need for concrete plans when you can just follow wherever the sparkles and Green Fairies you’re now hallucinating happen to take you.
The last time I’d drank absinthe was at age seventeen in Italy. I’d ended up naked on a city rooftop with a bunch of friends screaming obscenities at the Milanese skyline. I passed out in a sleeping bag on the apartment building’s garden terrace. At some point the next morning, my friend and the previous night’s host stole the keys to his dad’s Lamborghini and drove me home.
We’d done absinthe that night the proper way. With sugar (or salt?) – the details are blurry – lighting it on fire and consuming the liquid in warmed shot glasses. This time around, my friend and I forewent all such formalities. We just swigged the whole bottle passing it back and forth – no sugar, salt, or fire aiding the consumption process. We’d scream at regular intervals at the immense disgustingness of the taste. It was like drinking gasoline. It’s a miracle one of us didn’t puke right then and there.
Needless to say, the rest of the night we bounced around like teenagers on ecstasy and my entire prophecy of being those people was fulfilled to the highest extent. We went to D’Or and fueled our inappropriate state with vodka. By the time we went to a club at 2 a.m. I was craving champagne and was sure that a glass of bubbly would help all the liquids I’d consumed that night magically blend together.
Again, how I didn’t end up as one of those people who’s carried out of a club unconscious or one of those girls who randomly begins throwing up on herself remains a mystery. I just danced like a machine all night. And according to texts and phone calls from the next day, I’d apparently run into a bunch of friends and going-out regulars that I know and had failed to say ‘hello’ or make eye contact with any of them. Jumping up and down elated sporting a sloppy grin seemed to be the only activity on my agenda. Or as my friend put it: “We were in our own little Absinthe bubble.”
I almost wish I had gotten sick so I wouldn’t be so blatantly re-craving the experience.
* * *
In other local news, this Wednesday was Goldbar’s doorman Jamie’s birthday bash at Cain. I initially didn’t even recognize Jamie at the party since he wasn’t wearing a scowl and generally announcing, “We can’t accommodate you,” to every non-regular in line. It’s always fascinating to observe door people away from their door, and come to find out, inside a club Jamie is charming, generous, hospitable and frighteningly attractive. Especially, with his British accent and tuxedo (second from the right).
Cain had been completely redecorated for the event with glistening chandeliers (that looked legitimately expensive) and brothel-like red velvet curtains. The safari theme (which we’re all a little sick of after three years) had been stomped out. I appreciated the change and thought the decoration staff deserved whatever a Chelsea nightclub workers version of an Emmy is.
Adding to the already vibrant festivities were the tuxes, pre-mature Halloween costumes, and fabulous flapper girls. Even as a Halloween hater, I take my hat off to the flapper women whom I believe did a noteworthy job of balancing sexy and chic in their costumes.
This should be a big weekend for costume taunting.
Am I the only one who completely missed the fact that this was a long weekend? Only on Thursday was I clued in that Monday is Columbus Day and a legitimate day off for most institutions. I had no idea. Can someone please invent a calendar in which these random long weekends are highlighted with stars or pulsate in flashing red? Having missed the Holiday memo, I’ve now spent all weekend thinking about the places I could’ve traveled had I known the universe had blessed me with an extra holiday. Seesh.
On Nightlife
You don’t need fly roundtrip across the Atlantic anymore to party it up Euro-style. After a summer hiatus, the notoriously good-looking Italian man duo behind Made In Italy NYC are again hosting Friday nights at Room Service. While Room Service may be a location as douchey as the rest, I appreciate it if only for the fact that it’s not on the 27th street strip. The club provides a needed physical and mental break from the Chelsea mobs. So while technically you’re still clubbing, at Room Service you don’t feel as guilty about it since you didn’t enter the disco-fever Hell around Pink Elephant, Cain, and Marquee. Another plus about Room Service is its convenient proximity to Tens, so if you’re ever bored you can just swing a building over and shake your thang with strippers. I personally enjoy partying at Room Service because I also know the unlock code for the pleasantly clean and spacious staff bathroom, so I never have to go downstairs and wait in the sweaty ladies room line.
This Friday I forced my usually high expectations for a fun-filled evening down a notch, figuring most people would be away for the long weekend. Imagine my surprise when I rounded 21st street at 12:45 (almost an hour earlier than I normally go) and found the door an absolute madhouse. Pink Elephant on Roberto’s birthday level madhouse. And it wasn’t even 1 am? When I walked inside, the party wasn’t just in full fledge, the place felt like it was overcapacity. “How is this possible?” I asked myself. The word on how delightfully fun Made in Italy’s guido-chic parties are has definitely spread. That or there’s been an influx of Europeans who are actually flying into New York to experience the best Euro house party on this side of the Atlantic.
While I was pleased Made in Italy had become an international phenomena, it sucked that it had to happen in an October in which we’re experiencing 90 degree weather. Room Service’s puny air-conditioning system could not battle the throngs of perspiring Mediterraneans. The place was a sauna. I’m surprised someone didn’t suffer a stroke. I tried to cope with the heat by locating the few air conditioning ducts in the ceiling and standing on an elevated surface directly below them. The club was seriously short on space, so the only elevated surface area I could find to stand on was a makeshift table right next to the DJ booth and in frighteningly close proximity to the club’s main speaker. So I had house music infused into my brain at pulsating, mega-decibels. Two days later, I’m still amazed my hearing is intact.
On TV
Did the a cappella version of Fergie’s “Glamorous” at the beginning of Wednesday’s Gossip Girls make any one else nauseous and outraged enough to stab puppies? The lovely girls choir rendition of the pop song sounded so unnatural that it interfered with the characters’ dialogue on screen – literally to the extent that I couldn’t understand what was going on. I also don’t think they sing Fergie (a capella or otherwise) in private school chapels. I’m beginning to think that under that glossy, Park Avenue, big budget exterior, Gossip Girls is revealing that it’s just as uninspired as every other CW program for tweens. Only so many outrageous Upper East Side fashion statements can disguise that fact that we’ve seen every storyline on this show at least a zillion times.
Now I realize most of you have already watched it online, but I finally saw the Pushing Daisies premiere. My Internet often stalls and I usually seem to be missing one the twenty necessary plug-ins to watch TV effectively online, so I tuned in with the rest of technologically unsavvy America to catch it in real time this Wednesday. First off, I commend the show for daring to be different. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen on television before. On the downside, I felt like I was watching some flowery version of BeetleJuice, and the narrator’s wizard-like voice bugged me to the point where I wanted to throw stuff at my plasma. I guess I was expecting something more sophisticated than a show where the central tension is that the ‘in love’ protagonists can’t touch each other. This just felt a little second grade. But who knows? Maybe Pushing Daisies will become fantastically complex and garner a Lord of the Rings-like following. I
