Summering

The concrete jungle that is Manhattan can be suffocating, to say the least, during the long summer months. On those days when the mercury reaches 96 and the humidity is over 80%, it is the dream of every Manhattanite to trade in the smelly, tourist-ridden city for a beach and two Mai Thais. It is to this end that East Coasters have invented “summering” – weekend getaways to beach houses that allow city folk to see stars, experience nature, and enjoy some much needed R&R.

Most Manhattanites have “shares” for the summer – assigned weekends where a group of friends share a beach house together. The very wealthy have full shares (they have the house every weekend), while most others have half or quarter shares. I fall into the latter category, which provides 6-7 weekends away from the city during the months of May through September.

Long Island tends to be the most popular summer destination for city dwellers, with The Hamptons being the most sought after address. Other beaches do exist, however, and not all require seven digit bank account balances for entry. For my friends and I that destination is Fire Island, located just off the coast of Long Island. It is slightly less pretentious than its Hamptons counterpart, though boasts some of the most beautiful beaches in the area.

While the goal of “summering” is to provide you with an opportunity to relax, getting to your summer home can be anything but peaceful. Friday evenings at Penn Station remind me of a Krispy Kreme grand opening. There are lines everywhere, people won’t stop pushing, and there are at least five children crying. If you don’t see an uppity Eastside woman screaming at some guy from Queens over god knows what then my guess is that you’re probably heading in the wrong direction.

The trip to Fire Island requires that you transfer trains at Babylon; this is by far the most stressful part of the trip. Passengers literally run from one train to the other to ensure they get a good seat. There is shoving, there is trampling, and last week three kids were lost in the gap between the train and the platform. (Those girls are lucky I heard their desperate cries for help or they might not be with us today.)

Upon arrival at your summer home it is customary to have at least one drink – this is needed to relax after the long, daunting trip. From there it’s beaches, pools, hot tubs, and parties. A favorite part of summering for many people revolves around group dinners. It is customary for each house to prepare a meal and eat it together, often including new friends (especially good looking ones) that were made on the beach. This is particularly exciting for Manhattan bachelors who rarely have a meal that doesn’t include a delivery person, waiter, or deli attendant.

By the time the weekend is over you should find yourself relaxed, a shade darker, and in fantastic spirits. Of course it’s then that you realize that you will soon have to make the treacherous trip back to that other, ever so slightly more crowded, island. Just be sure to mind the gap.

Supermarkets

For the average American, supermarkets are a crucial part of everyday life - we rely on them for the essentials like chips, cereal, milk, and beer, not to mention the occasional pint of Ben & Jerry’s. I, for one, have never been a huge fan – the linoleum floors, the depressing muzak, and the dirty carts have always made shopping a chore that I have reluctantly participated in. So it came as quite a surprise that one of the things I miss most about my West Coast lifestyle is the local Safeway, and even more-so my Safeway Club Card.

Supermarkets, in the traditional sense, do not exist in Manhattan. There are no spanning 40,000 square foot spaces to house such businesses, and thus most Manhattanites are relegated to shop at simple grocery stores, or even worse, delis (a.k.a. corner stores, or as some upper-crust New Yorkers call them, “bodegas”). Local grocery chains like Gristede’s, Food Emporium, and D’Agistino have locations throughout the city, but their selection is scarce – I recently couldn’t find pickles at one of these establishments - and their prices are ridiculous.

That said, I feel lucky to be only a quarter mile from the closest grocer. We all need to eat, and it is conveniently located for when I need a $5 box of Triscuits, $1.40 yogurts, or $6 boxes of cereal – not to mention the $4 soy milk to accompany it. Given these outrageous prices I have been known to try and hunt for deals in the city, though I have found the exercise to be about as hopeless as looking for Catholics in Israel. Visits to Rite Aid for sales on cereal are often unsuccessful, as the other thrifsters tend to beat me to the good boxes. And a trip to Trader Joe’s always sounds like a good idea until I remember that it takes about forty minutes and two Subway lines to get there. The reality of city life is that deal-hunting just takes too much time. Who wants to spend their day looking for cheap toilet paper when you could be at the theater watching Patti LuPone?

Manhattan’s high grocery prices, coupled with a general lack of time for food preparation, explain why so many New Yorkers eat out on a daily basis (not to mention the plethora of fantastic restaurants). You can get a $5 wrap from a deli or pay $8 trying to make one for yourself. And, with nearly every restaurant providing free delivery, you can have good Thai, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, or American food at your door within twenty minutes of dialing. This also explains why Manhattan refrigerators are miniature versions of their suburban counterparts - they normally only contain alcohol, a bottle of ketchup, some leftovers, a Brita purifier, and gruyere (don’t ask me why, but everyone seems to have gruyere).

Given that I have absolutely no talents in the kitchen - save for a mean Kraft Mac & Cheese - and that I have never invested in good kitchenware, I am making the adjustment to the eat-out lifestyle fairly well. Yes, I miss Safeway and the 2 for 1 deals on Tostitos. And I feel sure I will always have a soft spot in my heart for pints of ice cream that are under $5. But until my Club Card can be used in the city, I guess I’ll be eating with sporks and plastic containers. Now if we could only figure out how to make take-out more eco-friendly…

Brunch

Like many New York traditions, Sunday brunch is an event in its own right – an affair to be missed only if you are deathly ill or if you have found yourself naked, lying in a pool of your own vomit, below 14th Street (and even that excuse is questionable). It is the single person’s opportunity to re-connect with the urban family, the drunkard’s chance to have an early mimosa without any judgment, and an occasion for couples to live vicariously through the sordid weekend tales their single friends are destined to tell over eggs benedict.

Manhattan brunch starts at 1:00 (yes, people that’s PM) and ends by 4:00. Arrive any earlier and you will be seated next to couples with walkers and hearing aids or tourists from Alabama who are complaining about the absence of “moons over my-hammy” on the menu. Any later, and well, you probably fall into one of the two categories mentioned at the beginning of this post. Who isn’t up and ready for brunch by 4pm? Really hung over people, that’s who.

The key to a successful brunch is location, location, location. There are literally thousands of brunch spots in the city to choose from, but you must select carefully. Some restaurants try to lure you with tales of all-you-can-drink mimosas, though often these “mimosas” are nothing more than glasses of Tang with a splash of white wine spritzer. These restaurants are to be avoided at all costs; you must do thorough research on any establishment offering this type of incentive. Good, dare I say great, ones do exist but they are few and far between.

Also key to your dining experience is your attire. I know it seems like this shouldn’t be important, but it is Manhattan after all. Under no circumstances should you wear fleece to brunch. Instead, you must find clothes to wear that are both fashionable and extremely casual. It shouldn’t look like you spent time getting dressed up to eat your $20 plate of eggs and toast. No, it should appear that you rolled out of bed, picked your designer jeans, Diesel shirt, and Prada sunglasses up off the floor and sauntered to the restaurant without giving a second thought to you hair. (Of course we all know that you spent 15 minutes in front of a mirror styling those golden locks, and that you used half a bottle of Bed Head to make them look just the right kind of messy, but that’s beside the point). In short, you should look just like a modern fashion ad.

The most important part of the brunch experience, however, is the people you choose to dine with. Brunch is a meal to be shared with close friends, not just a random acquaintance. It is to the Manhattanite what Sunday dinner is to Middle America: a chance to re-connect, to talk about the previous week, and to look forward to the next. And, if you’re very lucky, it provides an opportunity to sit back and realize how fortunate you are to live in a fabulous city and to be with people you love.

Life is good.

Subway

Until recently, the word “Subway” most often conjured up images of fresh bread, deli meats, and that annoying guy Jared. It reminded me of going to our local franchise as a child, where Lina always cut a tube through the middle of the bread (remember when they used to cut the bread that way? I miss that!) and stuffed our sandwiches full of the best processed meats and thawed veggies that money could buy. Today, the word “Subway” summons a much different image - one that I wouldn’t necessarily want to associate with my lunch or dinner, but one that isn’t wholly negative either.

In my opinion, the New York Subway system is an absolute marvel. It is awe-inspiring, disturbing, and confusing all at the same time. I can’t even start to comprehend how it was built, or how it works. Sometimes I wonder what holds the city up, considering most of it is built over miles upon miles of Subway tunnels. But, the tall buildings stand and the roads don’t cave in, so I guess that’s all that matters. And for the most part the subway system works really well: it is normally the fastest way to go from one part of town to another, and it is much, much cheaper than taking a cab.

One of my favorite things about riding the Subway is people watching. The trains attract an eclectic mix of characters, people I fear I would have missed seeing had I moved to Austin or Minneapolis or Miami. Like the tranny I saw last weekend that looked like an older Tina Turner (I know: hard to imagine her even older, but I’m telling you it’s possible!) or the man who was wearing a grass skirt, flip flops and nothing else. Hey, it was a warm day – I think it hit 47 that Thursday. Not to mention the woman I saw carrying 34 balloons, a bunch of cotton candy, and a pony on a leash. (Okay, you got me there - she didn’t really have all of those balloons!)

Of course, the Subway does come with its down sides. Like the smell. I’m not sure what it is, but there is a certain Subway stench that exists that is unique to New York City. It doesn’t tend to be as bad in winter, but come summertime it’s difficult to ignore. The fragrance seems to be a mix of urine, feces, rat sweat (those rats really sweat!), body odor, and garbage. I often try to keep a small scented candle in my pocket that I can pull out and put up to my nose on days where the smell is truly overwhelming.

There are also often things that you see on the Subway that you wish you hadn’t - like the man I saw pull down his pants and vacate his bowels at the 50th street stop. That was truly disturbing. It was enough to make even the most jaded New Yorker turn his head, and to cause some not-so-jaded New Yorkers to leave the station completely. I felt bad for the WASPy tourists from Colorado; I have a feeling they booked a flight home that very day and will never come back.

But that’s the thing about New York. It’s real. It’s gritty. It shows you the best and the worst of America in split-screen views – the super-rich right next to the devastatingly poor. It serves as a good reminder that we still have work to do in order to eliminate poverty in our country and to deliver on the American dream. But I figure that if we can figure out how to move hundreds of thousands of people a day via underground/underwater tunnels, fixing the poverty problem isn’t beyond our grasp. Right?

Goldilocks and the 547 Jobs

This one was too tactical. That one had a crazy lady. The other one didn’t pay enough. Finally, though, after months of searching, I have landed a job that’s juuust right. I now understand how Goldilocks felt – what euphoria she must have experienced at finding the porridge at the right temperature and the bed at just the right level of firmness. It’s as if all of the stars have come into alignment and are smiling on you from above. It’s lovely. But it takes some time to get there.

Anyone who thinks that looking for a job isn’t a full-time job in and of itself is diluted. I spent hours refining my resume, grappling with major issues like whether it was Arial or Lucida Grande that said the most about me as a candidate. Not to mention the lost nights spent massaging each and every word on that silly piece of paper, asking myself, “Should I say managed or coordinated? No, I think it’s best to go with led – that’s definitely more clear.”

Add to that the stress of interviewing and it’s no wonder the unemployment rate is skyrocketing. I mean, who has the energy to go through this process? You show up at the office on time, after running three blocks and barely missing being run down by a bus, only to find that the person interviewing you is running 20 minutes late. And when the interview finally starts, you have to feign an interest in the interviewer so that they think you’re likeable. “Oh, you have a toy poodle?! I love toy poodles. In fact, I was one for Halloween last year!”

By the time you finally make it to the meat of the interview, you’re being asked questions like, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?”, and “How many red cars cross the Brooklyn Bridge every day?”. Um, what?! My most memorable experience was when a hiring manager told me, two questions into the interview, that I wasn’t qualified because, “I don’t want to hire a boy. The last boy we hired f*&ked us.” How do you over come that objection?

So, it is with little remorse that I leave the job hunt behind me. It’s been an interesting and at times entertaining process, but one that I don’t hope to repeat anytime in the near future. On Monday I start work at a large advertising agency just two blocks from my apartment. It’s truly my dream job, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have landed it. I guess it pays to try all of the porridge – you have to wait for the one that’s juuuust right.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me during this process – I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it!

What's In a Zip Code?

Until a couple of days ago I was completely unaware of the importance of my zip code. Sure, I cared about it enough to make certain I got all five numbers right on my credit card applications and on those cute puppy dog return address labels that I have, but never thought twice about what those little numbers said about who I am as a person. I had always thought that’s what Prada labels were for. Of course, all of that has changed now.

Apparently, on the island of Manhattan, your zip code is a powerful asset that says as much about who you are as the family you came from, the job you hold, and your wardrobe. It tells others whether you are new money, old money, young and hip with money, middle class, gay, straight, Jewish, or Italian. For example, if you live in my zip code (10036) it means that you are likely young and gay and can’t afford to live in the more affluent gayborhood of Chelsea (10011). In my case, it’s more accurate than a recent astrology report.

I found out the importance of zip codes while on an awful date with a man I now refer to as “West Village Guy”. We met for a drink in the Village at a hip underground jazz club. Things were off to a great start when I began talking about how much I love the Village – my first mistake. Within moments I was hearing all about how tourists, uptowners, and bridge and tunnel folks (people who live in Jersey or one of the other New York boroughs and thus access Manhattan through a bridge or tunnel) are ruining the Village vibe. He complained of long waits at restaurants, overcrowded bars, and too many investment bankers. His solution: every establishment in the Village should require patrons to provide proof of zip code when entering; if it’s not 10014, you’re out.

I was incredulous. True, the Village attracts a number of people from around the city to its quaint restaurants and tree-lined streets, but it’s not a gated suburban community. It’s a vibrant and culturally important part of the city that should be available for all to enjoy. West Village Guy disagreed vehemently: "I never come to Hell’s Kitchen and eat in your restaurants", he said, "why should you come to the Village and over-crowd mine?". Needless to say, the date ended quickly and there will not be another. It wasn’t meant to be – 10036’s just aren’t compatible with 10014’s (or so says the latest numerology report in the Enquirer).

As I talked to friends about this experience I found that apparently I was the freak in this situation. How could I not know the importance of a zip code? One friend is in the process of buying an apartment and said he only looked at places in 10014 - he just couldn’t handle the shame of living in 10013 or 10012. And apparently there were nearly riots on the Upper East Side last year when they split 10021, possibly the most prestigious zip code in the country, into three different codes. Residents feared that the value of their land would drop and that they would be cut from certain elite social circles. You can imagine the pearls and chardonnay flying in that fight.

So, what’s a boy to do? I obviously can’t afford 10014 or 10021, so I did what any self-respecting Prada-wearing gay man would: I lied on my driver’s license application. It’s not like they check those things, right?

Close Quarters

The couple next door seems adorable. He’s an out of work actor, she’s a working soprano. They’re thinking about having a baby and moving to Yonkers. Of course, I’ve never met them. If I bumped into them on the street I would have no idea who they are. But, I can tell you when they normally go to bed, what their favorite album is (Avenue Q!), and that she has a fantastic voice.

Manhattan apartments are notorious for their thin walls, and my fabulous little apartment is no exception. While it doesn’t really bother me (who doesn’t want to hear “do-re-mi” at 10:30 every night?!) it has been a bit of an adjustment. I find myself trying to be quiet so as not to disturb my neighbors, which means I’ve had to re-think my in-home daycare business. Maybe I can teach silent yoga instead? We’ll see.

What I’m finding is that privacy is a luxury in Manhattan, similar to shopping at grocery stores or driving a car. It’s just something most “normal people” can’t afford. On an island that has over 65,000 people per square mile it’s difficult to find a space where you are truly alone. Even the subway tunnels, which were my last hope for complete solace, don’t provide a ton of privacy (though those graffiti artists are actually quite nice).

In the end, though, didn’t I move here to be a part of a thriving city? I could have privacy in Seattle or Midland or Bakersfield. Who cares if people know my business? Everyone in Manhattan is an exhibitionist and I’m going to have to learn to become one too. The truth of the matter is, no one cares who you are or what you’re doing in this city – they’re just focused on making it through their own day. So, my neighbors might find out that I love Reba McEntire and that I watch too many episodes of Friends and that my date last night was awful. Who cares, right?

Note: I do not like Reba McEntire, nor do I waste my time watching Friends, nor have I ever had a bad date.

One step at a time, I guess…