If I weren't me I'd wish I was
So as I lean lurched over this keyboard, desperately trying not to vomit (my keys are sticky enough now that my brother uses my computer), waiting on Indian food and its debilitating spice to purge my system I can't help but think to myself: I love my life.
This weekend was amazing. As much as I, being your typical cognizant blue-state person with an ego larger than my wardrobe (which contains more than your fare share of ironic clothing) love to poo poo 1st world living and the cost it has on the rest of the world, when when it comes to having a good time, neither Olsen nor Lohan can compare to the pricey but hip shenanigans I choose to get myself into.
Friday started out cheap enough, but by Sunday I was blowing wads of cash like it was no one's business. This high living is infectious. I felt like a child experimenting with finger paint. I started out with a couple dabs on each digit, and before I knew it I was engulfed in the shiny, hipster lifestyle. And then it was all over the room. My bank account is in total disarray now, and now the painters have to come out and everything and it's just a hassle. I'm not really sure what I'm talking about anymore.
But in any case Friday was the first day of my internship with MyOpenBar.com. My internship consisted of me looking around in tight jeans and an American Apparel-esque (it's actually from Mandees) shirt, drinking free booze, occasionally asking the door people if they needed any help, which they never did. Louisa came by to visit and soon we were as highly wasted as my jeans, which are still (as I'm still wearing them 3 days later) leaving red lines squiggled a good 5 inches above my belly button in a way that makes them look like the kind of worms that live under your skin in a bad acid trip.
I was under the impression that the person in charge of me was an Indian girl name Seva (as is Cee-Va). For some reason I pictured her in long pig-tails with a naive understanding of what it is to be cool. The reality made a lot more sense. He was actually a tall, skinny shaggy-haired man named Seva (Seh-Va) who speaks Russian fluently and whose jeans were tight enough that I could see the capillaries of his legs, which were thinner than my arms. He was wearing one of those ironic wolf sweaters with the arms too small. I garnered this pic of him and the editor in chief, Becky from myspace:
Yes they're both on bikes. Typical, no?
I got this one from the NY times after a quick google search:
The caption was:
"I'm totally mooching," said Seva Granik, far left at an East Village bar, about attending open bars. "I'm exploiting corporate greed for the collective good." Somehow he managed to mention "corporate greed" and "collective good" in one phrase, I could only hope to be that pretentious one day.
Within the first 30 minutes I was smoking a cigabowl with Becky. Earlier she asked Seva if that would be appropriate to do in these people's house. With a haughty laugh he replied, "People are fucking doing coke in here!" The other girls I interned with were really nice, but token hipsters: American apparel wardrobes, jet black hair, bangs, vocabularies too high, pants too low, and endless tales of cool things they had done/are doing (touring with Block Party, going to Art School in L.A., smoozing with the owner of Animal skateshop/clothing company, etc etc). We all got along splendidly. Probably because we were all from New Jersey. (In fact, everyone was originally from New Jersey. Even the bands) Our conversation fueled the fire of my already hot air balloon sized ego. They seemed to idolize me: first because they were only 20 and I 23, which makes me an elder by default and secondly because I was from Essex county and they were from Monmouth, which pretty much makes me practically a New Yorker while they're wanna-be shore trash. They recognized my hierarchy on the Jersey totem pole right away. Thank god no Hobokeners showed up and stole the show with their Bergen county prowess.
We mused over "my new haircut" for a while before me and Louisa pushed through the boring, stand-around hipsters with cigarettes balancing precariously on half-open lips so we could join the cooler "I dance crazy and I don't care what people think of me" hipsters, some of which were employing moves like the crypt walk and the mashed potato. The venue was amazing. It was an old schoolhouse where 8 people were living. The downstairs was mostly big open space with the upstairs overlooking the space. A strange balcony/walkway hung over the first floor, connecting one side where rooms were to the other side where more rooms were. It looked as though it could not hold more than a house cat before collapsing.
After a couple drinks Louisa turned out to be a much better intern than I could ever be. She would grab the girls drinks, ask them if they were ok, and she even drunkenly smoozed Seva on my behalf. She grabbed my arm tightly and gave me a fierce look which frankly frightened me. "You belong at Gawker." I'm assuming she was complimenting me about my skill as a writer and not insulting me about my giant ego. She dragged me to Seva and drunkenly told him my interest in writing pieces, claimed I edited all her work and Seva seemed to take note, maybe because Louisa is one of those hipsters who you look at and want to become your best friend. She consistently looks elegant without looking pretentious. She wore a long black sweater and tight jeans, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She looked french. Her and Seva could be laid side by side and put into a Vice photoshoot. The two were on the same level. Not just fashion-wise, not just on the imaginary hipster scale that everyone in the place not-so subtly judges everyone on, but also on levels of intoxication. After drunkenly selling some of my most important, most made-up skills to Seva for half an hour he was sold. Let's hope he remembers that conversation.
The few other hipsters helping out were mostly the down-to-earth, thick-brimmed glasses types, the kind that propound the merits of Edmund Wilson in the most self-deprecating way possible. The type I would marry if I could. While me and Becky smoked, one leaned over her shoulder while she spoke of this or that Vice party or some thrift store in LA where she got her sweater, which was black with hundreds of tiny neon ribbon bows all over it. I yelled "watch out lurk!" which made said lurk laugh much longer and harder than I expected. In my mind I said to myself "I made them laugh, soon I will dominate them all." The other one who looked similar kept hauling large bags of trash and ice, but for some reason kept asking if I was ok, if I needed any help. I wondered what exactly he would think I would need help with. Like I would say to him "well all this standing around and looking cool business is getting too rough for me. Can you take over while I haul hipster ruffage up and down the three flights of stairs?"
The rest of the night was mostly a blur. Somehow we called a car service and made it back to her place, which was in Carroll Gardens- an extremely bougie neighborhood in Brooklyn which contrasted greatly with the neighborhood the venue was in, off Broadway and Flushing, also known as the corner of the hood and the ghetto. It was flanked by projects and car parts stores- the kind where you assume most of that shit is stolen, the kind with Rottweilers and barbed wire to prevent people from restealing shit. On the other hand Carroll Gardens is like Park Slope but with slightly less designer baby carriages, which I hope means slightly less designer children.
In the morning I woke up and went downstairs to Corrine's, my other good friend from high school who happens to live in the apartment building right next to Louisa's. We went to this bougie cafe around the corner called Le Petit Cafe where the decore was mostly cabin lodge chic and where a giant rusted metal tree took up a grand amount of space in a room with a huge skylight. It was serene. The only noise was pretentious brooklyn fodder, Spanish guitar softly playing from speakers and the rustling of water from 2 waterfalls that flanked both corners of one side of the room.
Pics:
We mused over the cheapness of corn meal while I munched on my 12 dollar polenta platter before heading back to call Alex (another close high school friend) who mentioned something about Dancefest at Tompkins Square Park. We headed over there and met up with Alex at this cheap dive called Doc Holliday's, where the Bloody Marys were so good I wanted to cry. The place really reminded me of Tallahassee. There was graffiti scrawled all over the table, Big Buck Hunter, cowboy boots nailed to the ceiling and a jukebox filled with classic country.
Again, Pics:
Poor Pauls, Leon Pub much?
While listening to Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Patsy Cline, Alex regaled us with tales of people losing fingers at the carpentry studio he works at, all the while scribbling the most impressive picture of a cowboy on the table. I drew a pig that had "Phat Ass" written on it which I pretty proud of. Earlier Corrine had mentioned that her and Alex started dating, which I guess means she's no longer a lesbian (she was a total LUG, but hey, she went to Rutgers which can be expected). I was getting kind of jealous as she rubbed his hands, which were the hands of a craftsman but also an artist so they were calloused but not too calloused. It's hard to tell which one I was jealous of, but I guess the proper answer is both of them. He looked back into her ice blue eyes while smirking in that Alex way and asking about 'her kids' which of course are the special needs children she teaches at her inner city pre-school. I think they might be too perfect. Like Children of the Corn perfect. We reminisced for a while, me and Alex teased Corrine over the merits of the south side (of Glen Ridge), we talked about how people are doing, how things have changed, who has kids, who got married, is engaged, who's addicted to what drugs, who's in rehab, etc. Happy hour came and we got wasted on cheap booze and ended up missing the Dancefest, which was crappy Boom-Chick music anyways. When Alex complained about all the country I feigned pushing him out the door and said, "then go where you belong then!" referencing the affinity for bad techno which I hope he has gotten over since high school.
Somehow we managed to stumble a few blocks to this bougie microbrewery called Blind Tiger Ale House for their friend's b-day party, where only hipsters lined the walls of tiny bar.
Pic:
I don't remember much, but I do remember tugging on their friend's kaffiyah and asking "Fashion or political statement?" He gave me a confused look and owned up to its fashion purpose. At least he was honest. I replied "I had to ask" before giving him an earful about its role as a symbol of Arab solidarity. He looked somewhat defeated, like he was wearing the scarf to increase his hipster status, but actually lowered himself on the hipster ladder due to his lack of a social conscious. Alex and Corrine opted to go home so Corrine's roomie and I plus kaffiyah boy and the birthday girl went to this ultra-bougie place called Apartment 138
Pics:
It was the kind of place that had low lighting and delicate square plates. I had mozzarella and tomato with balsamic vinegar drizzled over it in a fancy way which I assume is supposed to distracted me from the fact that I paid way too much for too little food. Birthday girl had hair as dark as her thick rimmed glasses and we argued about something small in a friendly, playful manner before heading home.
The next day I woke up sleeping on top of the pillows at the top of Corrine's bed with an aching hip, which I hope is from sleeping weird and not from you know things like rape or worse falling and embarrassing myself. Me and Corrine's roomie (Jessie maybe?) sauntered (well I more like waddled due to my old lady hip) over to the cafe again for caffeine to nurse our hangovers. We watched Talk Soup for a bit before Corrine came home. I knew I couldn't really take another day of this (plus my pops is out of town and I needed to feed the cats) so I went back to Jersey to recover. I talked on the phone with Amy who invited me to see the taping of Inside the Actor's Studio with Dave Chappell on Tuesday. I made plans to stay over with her on Monday since she had off. Today is for hydrating and resting, tomorrow it starts all over again.
Yet the more I have fun, the more I find that the big stick that was my bank account has been wittled down to a tiny, tiny figurine by the giant knife that is New York. At least when I look back onto my life I can refer to that tiny figurine on the bookshelf of experience and say, "This is some piece of crap I spent way too much money for while on vacation. I liked it at the time but the more I stare at it the more it pisses me off. I don't have the heart to throw it away though."
I need to shower now. I'm still wearing the same clothes and the smell is starting to rise to my nostrils.
This weekend was amazing. As much as I, being your typical cognizant blue-state person with an ego larger than my wardrobe (which contains more than your fare share of ironic clothing) love to poo poo 1st world living and the cost it has on the rest of the world, when when it comes to having a good time, neither Olsen nor Lohan can compare to the pricey but hip shenanigans I choose to get myself into.
Friday started out cheap enough, but by Sunday I was blowing wads of cash like it was no one's business. This high living is infectious. I felt like a child experimenting with finger paint. I started out with a couple dabs on each digit, and before I knew it I was engulfed in the shiny, hipster lifestyle. And then it was all over the room. My bank account is in total disarray now, and now the painters have to come out and everything and it's just a hassle. I'm not really sure what I'm talking about anymore.
But in any case Friday was the first day of my internship with MyOpenBar.com. My internship consisted of me looking around in tight jeans and an American Apparel-esque (it's actually from Mandees) shirt, drinking free booze, occasionally asking the door people if they needed any help, which they never did. Louisa came by to visit and soon we were as highly wasted as my jeans, which are still (as I'm still wearing them 3 days later) leaving red lines squiggled a good 5 inches above my belly button in a way that makes them look like the kind of worms that live under your skin in a bad acid trip.
I was under the impression that the person in charge of me was an Indian girl name Seva (as is Cee-Va). For some reason I pictured her in long pig-tails with a naive understanding of what it is to be cool. The reality made a lot more sense. He was actually a tall, skinny shaggy-haired man named Seva (Seh-Va) who speaks Russian fluently and whose jeans were tight enough that I could see the capillaries of his legs, which were thinner than my arms. He was wearing one of those ironic wolf sweaters with the arms too small. I garnered this pic of him and the editor in chief, Becky from myspace:
Yes they're both on bikes. Typical, no?
I got this one from the NY times after a quick google search:
The caption was:
"I'm totally mooching," said Seva Granik, far left at an East Village bar, about attending open bars. "I'm exploiting corporate greed for the collective good." Somehow he managed to mention "corporate greed" and "collective good" in one phrase, I could only hope to be that pretentious one day.
Within the first 30 minutes I was smoking a cigabowl with Becky. Earlier she asked Seva if that would be appropriate to do in these people's house. With a haughty laugh he replied, "People are fucking doing coke in here!" The other girls I interned with were really nice, but token hipsters: American apparel wardrobes, jet black hair, bangs, vocabularies too high, pants too low, and endless tales of cool things they had done/are doing (touring with Block Party, going to Art School in L.A., smoozing with the owner of Animal skateshop/clothing company, etc etc). We all got along splendidly. Probably because we were all from New Jersey. (In fact, everyone was originally from New Jersey. Even the bands) Our conversation fueled the fire of my already hot air balloon sized ego. They seemed to idolize me: first because they were only 20 and I 23, which makes me an elder by default and secondly because I was from Essex county and they were from Monmouth, which pretty much makes me practically a New Yorker while they're wanna-be shore trash. They recognized my hierarchy on the Jersey totem pole right away. Thank god no Hobokeners showed up and stole the show with their Bergen county prowess.
We mused over "my new haircut" for a while before me and Louisa pushed through the boring, stand-around hipsters with cigarettes balancing precariously on half-open lips so we could join the cooler "I dance crazy and I don't care what people think of me" hipsters, some of which were employing moves like the crypt walk and the mashed potato. The venue was amazing. It was an old schoolhouse where 8 people were living. The downstairs was mostly big open space with the upstairs overlooking the space. A strange balcony/walkway hung over the first floor, connecting one side where rooms were to the other side where more rooms were. It looked as though it could not hold more than a house cat before collapsing.
After a couple drinks Louisa turned out to be a much better intern than I could ever be. She would grab the girls drinks, ask them if they were ok, and she even drunkenly smoozed Seva on my behalf. She grabbed my arm tightly and gave me a fierce look which frankly frightened me. "You belong at Gawker." I'm assuming she was complimenting me about my skill as a writer and not insulting me about my giant ego. She dragged me to Seva and drunkenly told him my interest in writing pieces, claimed I edited all her work and Seva seemed to take note, maybe because Louisa is one of those hipsters who you look at and want to become your best friend. She consistently looks elegant without looking pretentious. She wore a long black sweater and tight jeans, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She looked french. Her and Seva could be laid side by side and put into a Vice photoshoot. The two were on the same level. Not just fashion-wise, not just on the imaginary hipster scale that everyone in the place not-so subtly judges everyone on, but also on levels of intoxication. After drunkenly selling some of my most important, most made-up skills to Seva for half an hour he was sold. Let's hope he remembers that conversation.
The few other hipsters helping out were mostly the down-to-earth, thick-brimmed glasses types, the kind that propound the merits of Edmund Wilson in the most self-deprecating way possible. The type I would marry if I could. While me and Becky smoked, one leaned over her shoulder while she spoke of this or that Vice party or some thrift store in LA where she got her sweater, which was black with hundreds of tiny neon ribbon bows all over it. I yelled "watch out lurk!" which made said lurk laugh much longer and harder than I expected. In my mind I said to myself "I made them laugh, soon I will dominate them all." The other one who looked similar kept hauling large bags of trash and ice, but for some reason kept asking if I was ok, if I needed any help. I wondered what exactly he would think I would need help with. Like I would say to him "well all this standing around and looking cool business is getting too rough for me. Can you take over while I haul hipster ruffage up and down the three flights of stairs?"
The rest of the night was mostly a blur. Somehow we called a car service and made it back to her place, which was in Carroll Gardens- an extremely bougie neighborhood in Brooklyn which contrasted greatly with the neighborhood the venue was in, off Broadway and Flushing, also known as the corner of the hood and the ghetto. It was flanked by projects and car parts stores- the kind where you assume most of that shit is stolen, the kind with Rottweilers and barbed wire to prevent people from restealing shit. On the other hand Carroll Gardens is like Park Slope but with slightly less designer baby carriages, which I hope means slightly less designer children.
In the morning I woke up and went downstairs to Corrine's, my other good friend from high school who happens to live in the apartment building right next to Louisa's. We went to this bougie cafe around the corner called Le Petit Cafe where the decore was mostly cabin lodge chic and where a giant rusted metal tree took up a grand amount of space in a room with a huge skylight. It was serene. The only noise was pretentious brooklyn fodder, Spanish guitar softly playing from speakers and the rustling of water from 2 waterfalls that flanked both corners of one side of the room.
Pics:
We mused over the cheapness of corn meal while I munched on my 12 dollar polenta platter before heading back to call Alex (another close high school friend) who mentioned something about Dancefest at Tompkins Square Park. We headed over there and met up with Alex at this cheap dive called Doc Holliday's, where the Bloody Marys were so good I wanted to cry. The place really reminded me of Tallahassee. There was graffiti scrawled all over the table, Big Buck Hunter, cowboy boots nailed to the ceiling and a jukebox filled with classic country.
Again, Pics:
Poor Pauls, Leon Pub much?
While listening to Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Patsy Cline, Alex regaled us with tales of people losing fingers at the carpentry studio he works at, all the while scribbling the most impressive picture of a cowboy on the table. I drew a pig that had "Phat Ass" written on it which I pretty proud of. Earlier Corrine had mentioned that her and Alex started dating, which I guess means she's no longer a lesbian (she was a total LUG, but hey, she went to Rutgers which can be expected). I was getting kind of jealous as she rubbed his hands, which were the hands of a craftsman but also an artist so they were calloused but not too calloused. It's hard to tell which one I was jealous of, but I guess the proper answer is both of them. He looked back into her ice blue eyes while smirking in that Alex way and asking about 'her kids' which of course are the special needs children she teaches at her inner city pre-school. I think they might be too perfect. Like Children of the Corn perfect. We reminisced for a while, me and Alex teased Corrine over the merits of the south side (of Glen Ridge), we talked about how people are doing, how things have changed, who has kids, who got married, is engaged, who's addicted to what drugs, who's in rehab, etc. Happy hour came and we got wasted on cheap booze and ended up missing the Dancefest, which was crappy Boom-Chick music anyways. When Alex complained about all the country I feigned pushing him out the door and said, "then go where you belong then!" referencing the affinity for bad techno which I hope he has gotten over since high school.
Somehow we managed to stumble a few blocks to this bougie microbrewery called Blind Tiger Ale House for their friend's b-day party, where only hipsters lined the walls of tiny bar.
Pic:
I don't remember much, but I do remember tugging on their friend's kaffiyah and asking "Fashion or political statement?" He gave me a confused look and owned up to its fashion purpose. At least he was honest. I replied "I had to ask" before giving him an earful about its role as a symbol of Arab solidarity. He looked somewhat defeated, like he was wearing the scarf to increase his hipster status, but actually lowered himself on the hipster ladder due to his lack of a social conscious. Alex and Corrine opted to go home so Corrine's roomie and I plus kaffiyah boy and the birthday girl went to this ultra-bougie place called Apartment 138
Pics:
It was the kind of place that had low lighting and delicate square plates. I had mozzarella and tomato with balsamic vinegar drizzled over it in a fancy way which I assume is supposed to distracted me from the fact that I paid way too much for too little food. Birthday girl had hair as dark as her thick rimmed glasses and we argued about something small in a friendly, playful manner before heading home.
The next day I woke up sleeping on top of the pillows at the top of Corrine's bed with an aching hip, which I hope is from sleeping weird and not from you know things like rape or worse falling and embarrassing myself. Me and Corrine's roomie (Jessie maybe?) sauntered (well I more like waddled due to my old lady hip) over to the cafe again for caffeine to nurse our hangovers. We watched Talk Soup for a bit before Corrine came home. I knew I couldn't really take another day of this (plus my pops is out of town and I needed to feed the cats) so I went back to Jersey to recover. I talked on the phone with Amy who invited me to see the taping of Inside the Actor's Studio with Dave Chappell on Tuesday. I made plans to stay over with her on Monday since she had off. Today is for hydrating and resting, tomorrow it starts all over again.
Yet the more I have fun, the more I find that the big stick that was my bank account has been wittled down to a tiny, tiny figurine by the giant knife that is New York. At least when I look back onto my life I can refer to that tiny figurine on the bookshelf of experience and say, "This is some piece of crap I spent way too much money for while on vacation. I liked it at the time but the more I stare at it the more it pisses me off. I don't have the heart to throw it away though."
I need to shower now. I'm still wearing the same clothes and the smell is starting to rise to my nostrils.