I Need Some W(h)ine

I realize that I haven’t been posting lately.  Part of this is due to the fact that I’ve been keeping myself busy (which I know is all the more reason to post.  Alas, alack.) Another part is sheer laziness. 

But perhaps the greatest part is that (I fear) the “glamour” and novelty of the city is beginning to wear off.  My subway trek is habitual and forgettable. On the streets, I neglect to look up, to see the towering skyscrapers or to be impressed by them. I stop being optimistic about the possibilities of the city and start seeing the aspects that frustrate me most.

Thus, I introduce to you the first installment of a new list.

What’s Pissing Me Off in NYC:

1. People who just decide to STOP in the middle of the sidewalk, making you run into them.
2. Tourists. (#1 and #2 are usually synonymous).
3. Especially tourists who feel the need to take pictures of EVERY building.  Times Square looks exactly the same from every angle, people, I promise: a lot of annoying people, a lot of lights.  Take one shot and MOVE ON.
4. Bikers who feel they are exempt from basic traffic laws and streetlight functions.  Just because you’re going green doesn’t mean you have the right to be an idiot.
5. People who walk two abreast going up the stairs when leaving the subway, painstakingly stomping up the stairs as if each foot weighed 300 lbs.  This is especially frustrating when people do this on both sides of the stairwell, thereby disrupting traffic flow going up and down, ignoring the “slow-ass people keep to the right (please)” rule.
6. People who ignore the “let people off before you get on” the elevator or train rule. Seriously, it’s 5 seconds, and whether you wait or not, you will make it into that claustrophobic can, trust me.
7. People who don’t move to the middle of the subway car, then laugh at everyone in the mob by the door because the newcomers couldn’t move into the middle.  Because you’re standing there laughing.
8. People who play their music too loud (when I'm trying to read).  It’s not my fault you’ve caused yourself to go deaf.  Get some better earphones or go see an ENT doctor.
9. People with strollers. Yeah, I said it.  But especially people with strollers on the subway. At rush hour.  COME ON.  (I’ll extend this to bikes as well.  Ride the damn thing, don’t ride with it.)
10. People I pass on the street who are more attractive, more stylish, or are clearly wealthier than me.  So, basically, everyone.

Yep. New Yorker in the making.

(Can you tell it’s Monday?)

Really kitschy, cheesy photo googled to serve my purposes of providing at least some visual content.  You're welcome.

On a related note, while g-chatting with my coworker today (the modern era’s version of the watercooler conversation), our complaints about our management led to a business proposition.

It began with my suggestion that we start a club called (imaginatively) the Bitter Club.  Then I suggested that we drink alcoholic concoctions involving bitters because 1) it’s thematic and 2) every club should involve alcohols of some kind.

Then we latched onto the bar idea.

W(h)ine

• An after-work (or anytime) bar for everyone who wants to complain about bosses, job frustrations, coworkers, family, significant others, New Yorkers, etc.
• (We realize that an argument could be made that this is, justifiably, any and every bar, but that’s how business works, isn’t it?  Create a “new” product out of existing one by simply repackaging what everyone already has, then convincing them that they need the new.)
• No “happy hour.”  The term would contradict the bar’s name, after all.  We will still have a time when we offer drink deals, but instead, we’ll call it “[The] Bitching Hour.”  As my business partner pointed out, “Hey, let’s go out for bitchin’ hour” sounds pretty legit.
• A menu.  Typical bar fare at the moment, maybe some special fare in the future.  Right now, it features items with punny names such as “French Fry Your Boss.”  Eh.  Probably too cutesy/terrible.  We’ll work on that.
• To prevent violation of the “what happens here, stays here” principle, instead of (or perhaps in addition to) a coat check, we will also have a cell phone check, thereby assuring that you come to our bar to bitch about rather than at through the means of drunk dialing/texting.

Business plan to follow.

(Now, I do realize that the ethical claims against an establishment based solely on gossiping are probably astounding and, well, correct.  Chalk the idea up to a case of the Mondays? or the Mean Reds?)



*I've been harboring some of these thoughts for awhile.  On April 27, I accompanied a friend to a strange underground art gallery event in Bed-Stuy.  Literally underground - it was in the basement of a nondescript brownstone where they served Two-Buck Chuck on top of the washer and dryer. We went because her coworker was performing (vocals and guitar), though we may have missed that part.  The reason for the show - the art side of it - was a number of self-portraits from artists in France.  (Incidentally, only about a quarter of these art projects actually made it to the show through the mail; the walls were a bit bare.)  Along with the self-portrait, the artists were asked to answer a few questions, including things such as "What do you think about when you're on the metro?"  For the thronging crowd (i.e. 10 people) in attendance at this event, the organizers had also laid out a notebook with these same questions, which I assumed was a log to show who had come to the event.  So I jokingly filled it out.

Then I learned that they were shipping this back to France for the artists.  Whoops.

What the French received (please excuse the language...not usually my style. Blame it on the 2-Buck Chuck).