Luxe Loitering

The lobbies of 5-star hotels are ideal locales for fulfilling many of my exigencies as a Manhattan flâneuse. On a practical level, they provide hyper-clean ‘public’ bathrooms with elegant Molton Brown soaps (when the line at Starbucks is daunting). The wireless internet access is especially helpful to me since I am no longer able to tap into the wandering wireless in my maid’s quarters.

Right now I am sitting in a little salon in the Peninsula Hotel off of 5th Avenue and enjoying its luxuries. For New Yorkers dealing with cramped quarters and seedy apartments, the plush furniture, intimate lighting, and prettily framed art provide an idyllic refuge.

The people-watching is an added diversion. Foreign tourists mill about, dressed in their extreme takes on what’s chic in Manhattan. They clutch bloated Bergdorf Goodman shopping bags and are often in intriguingly ecstatic or irritated moods.

Lindt chocolate truffles and Granny Smith apples are additional perks. If you need something mailed, postage is free when you drop it with someone at the front desk. If you’re truly dressed to the nines, you can fudge your way into procuring a hard-to-get restaurant reservation from the overly accommodating concierge. With enough lurking, you may even meet an exotic stranger to foot the dinner bill.

New Yorkers have an obsession with cupcakes. From the over-sized candy-flavored ones at Crumbs, to the homespun buttercream-frosted ones at Magnolia Bakery, to the coconut-encrusted ones at Sugar Sweet Sunshine, to the gluten-free agave-nectar-infused ones at Babycakes, there seems to be a cupcake for every different Manhattan persona: the uptown gourmand, the decadent diva, the sweet-toothed hipster, and the high-maintenance neurotic. Even though I'm not one to frequent these bakeshop hotspots, I am intrigued by a particularly kitschy one that I always walk past on my way to Tasti D-Lite. It's called Bruce's Cupcakery and has a really divine neon cupcake in the window.

Pastis & Empty Promises

During a late-night dinner date at Pastis with my vivacious red-headed friend from prep school, we were enjoying our champagne cocktails and feeling particularly unwilling to pay for a third round. After re-locating to the bar, a pair of deranged thirty-something bankers eventually insisted upon buying two bottles of champagne for us and our two girlfriends.
In my red-headed friend's sudden tipsy haste, she managed to separate the top of her champagne flute from the stem in one clean break. Only twenty minutes later, the odd phenomenon happened again. I am a firm believer in signs, and it seemed symbolic on some level.

Outside for a breath of night air, my Swiss friend and I chatted with two other gentleman strangers. They were European, so my Swiss friend remarked on the American-girl penchant for hopping off to the bar with no cash or credit card in tow, expecting to be showered with les boissons gratuites upon arrival. The Swiss girl doesn't engage in this rather dated behavior evocative of AMC's period drama Mad Men. She prefers to pay for her own cocktails and forego the accompanying awkward feelings of obligation to strange, as in "unfamiliar," men. Of course, some women simply accept a free drink and deflect any of the drink's potential symbolic value. Maybe these are the truly modern women who are willing to use their feminine wiles to their advantage (?).

And maybe a champagne flute is just a champagne flute. Broken or not.

The Gleaner

During a jaunt away from Manhattan last week, I was on my way to pick up my father's car at Pat's Towing Services in Somerville, Massachusetts (I am notoriously negligent when it comes to vehicular matters), and I encountered the most delightful little graveyard of old radiators. I imagine that these "Radiator Gardens" exist all across America. It reminds me of Agnès Varda's famous documentary, Les Glaneuses (The Gleaners)--it's all about people who make a life out of salvaging discarded food and objects for sustenance or simply to imbue them with new aesthetic charms. Re-contextualization is one of my favorite aspects of art history bull shit. However, I am loath to pick up anything off the street in New York City, due to my paralyzing fear of infesting my Park Avenue residence with bedbugs--that would truly terminate my "pro bono publico Manhattan maid's quarters situation."

Massive Hello Kitty

Here is the above- mentioned shirt. I look a bit like a deer in the head lights, but I am standing on one of the very exciting oversized white sculptures of Hello Kitty by Tom Sachs. They are currently installed in the courtyard in front of Lever House on Park Avenue. I would love to do a performance piece in that space. It's corporate but sexy in an old-world Manhattan glamour kind of a way.

Maid's Quarters in Manhattan

"Haley's problem is that she's addicted,
she's addicted to strangers!"

This quote is intended to be read aloud in a Dashiell-Hammett-esque tone. My twin sister, "Tuna," recently had an epiphany about the primary problem I face by living in New York City. I moved there temporarily in June and am now staying indefinitely. I don't have a job or any prospects, per se, but I have procured myself free accomodations of a similarly indefinite nature (in a maid's quarters tucked away in one of those art deco lobbied doorman buildings on Park Avenue). My living situation alone epitomizes my "stranger situation," as the maid's quarters where I reside belongs to my mother's interior design client's Chinese art dealer's ex-client, a man who remains a stranger to me, as I have never even seen his face and only heard his voice once, distantly, as though off-stage.

While there are strangers and new faces in any small town or large city, Manhattan offers a certain something extra, and is therefore a "danger zone" for my curious and BPD self. I am a bit too quick to invite new people into my life and to accept invitations to partake in novel events. I always seem to use the excuse of doing "research" for an upcoming piece of writing (this blog, case in point). Aside from run-of-the-mill strangers, this urban center offers the fancy variety, in the form of A, B, and C-list celebrities who frequent the streets and darker underbellies of New York. I recently designed this t-shirt as an homage to two of my favorite "stalkable" and intriguing icons. I am still awaiting their arrival into my life.