You can wear the most absurd, outlandish outfit your little hear desires and prance down our streets with hardly any attention. We’re used to crazy, ugly ensembles. But walk down the street with a glass vase of flowers and you’ll get more stares than a super model. We’re not used to seeing a tangible manifestation of kindness on our crowded slabs of concrete. We can’t help but wonder: Was there an engagement? Are you pregnant? Is it your birthday? Did something really bad happen when your boyfriend went to that bachelor’s party last weekend?
You force yourself to “be active” and take advantage of the city during a heat wave, we know better than to waste time and effort trekking around the city to pointless antique fairs or food festivals. Hellloooo tabloids and bubble baths.
Yeah, that looks fun.
[Any other city] $$$$=$$ [New York City]
Nothing signals the start of warm weather like the yellow-shirted bouncer standing guard outside The Frying Pan.
You date people? We date neighborhoods.*
Brief flings with the dimly lit and scarcely populated bars around Sullivan and Prince, longer affairs with an unfortunate strip of liquor dens along MacDougal Street, an unflickering desire to inhabit the perfectly quaint shops or carelessly rustic restaurants by Perry Street and however that whole West 4th/West 10th thing works.
*Sometimes inspired by the people we’re seeing.
Stick to Pio Pio Hell’s Kitchen. It looks like an inconspicuous hole in the wall from the outside, but the insider reveals a bustling crowd, and two-story amphitheater of a sangria-haven. In fact, the first time we went there, we expected to walk through the curtains to find a dimly lit, intimate undiscovered nook, only to find it had a buzzy, night-club like feel with every 32 year old in Manhattan celebrating their birthday.
It’s Upper East Side location, unfortunately, shares only the sensuously-pleasing chicken (and astoundingly cheap at $16 for a whole chicken of $9 for a half chicken) in common with its south-west-west-west-of-west brother.
Montmartre…that’s in Paris?
Sorry, UES.
Gyms stay open. Until midnight. On Fridays.
Possibly because they resemble nightclubs. But more likely because nobody goes out until 11pm in this town anyways.
You may have a year of seniority on us, but we have a world of experience on you.
Nothing saddens us more than seeing our doorman a few blocks from our apartment in normal people’s clothes, smoking a cigarette, heading towards the subway.
Just because we’re from Manhattan, doesn’t mean we like “That Manhattan thing.”
“…but within the year we moved to New York —which is to monogamy what the channel changer is to linear narrative.” —Jay McInerney, Model Behavior
The first three times we read that as “…but within the year we moved to New York —which is to monotony what the channel changer is to linear narrative.”
And we agree.
At the end of a night of drinking, the $197 tab for 3 at Merc Bar seems completely justifiable given the excessive amounts of pretzels and popcorn you inhaled and/or dipped in your Cayenne (Spicy) from the handsome wooden bowls perched upon the bar or your cozy table.
February 10th, 2012. Also known as the last day of Restaurant Week. Also known as the first day that restaurants announce that “due to popular demand” they’ll be extending their Restaurant Week menus for an additional week.
Short of Dave Matthews Band performing there, we see no reason why we’d ever return to the abysmal land of Brooklyn.
