When I was in my twenties, back in the day when Matthew Broderick was also in his twenties, one would go down to Soho to see art, hook up with an NBC executive, do some blow, have crazy loft sex, go to the SNL after party at Rockefeller Center and then wonder what the hell you were doing with your life. Of course, what you were doing with your life made total sense and if you could do it all over again, well, you would.
These days, you go to Ben Sherman and you buy a load of cotton from the sale rack. Look, I’m a bit beefy, which is a nice way of saying I could lose fifteen pounds and the world would be better off. But still, those Ben Sherman cuts, all 1960’s and British, give me a happy feeling.
Soho is a mall. A frigging Paramus-Beverly Center Redo below Houston.
Corporations made me quake today. First the artists, then the galleries, then the cafés and shops, then the corporate stores. This is the natural progression. Like bog to woods. Read about the bog to field to woods progression. It’s so fun.
And I go, with everyone else, downtown to buy my mall clothes and pretend I’m having a cutting edge experience. I mean, shit, I ate frozen yogurt.
I hate clothes shopping. Something about all that fire retardant stench in the stores. Some people associate it with optimism, fresh new times. I associate it with strange cancer odor.
But I like new clothes. And thank goodness Adam, my recognized by the State of California Domestic Partner, completely takes over when we shop. He’s a total clothing top.
Cut off the tags, wash them well.
2 comments:
Manhattan is too posh for it's own good.... Don't even get me started on Hell's Kitchen, and the once delightfully grungy Meat-Packing District!!
When I was in NYC circa 1976 I went to an art opening that was someone who knew someone who knew someone's friend or lover. It was an exhibit of small boxes. In each box was a bit of meat. Chicken, I think, Some skin and muscle tissue - maybe a fragment of bone. Stretched tight on a small board and held down by something sharp. A pin or shard of metal. I hated it so much I never went back to Soho. The pretension. But the SNL after party was at One Fifth. We went a lot. I remember Sissy Spacek and Guilda and Lorraine. They were all impossibly skinny. To get an authentic Soho experience you have to come to Baltimore. I rent studio space in an old mill where they used to make cotton duck cloth for the sails on clipper ships. $170 plus utils.
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