A Sad Day In Gotham

I had the weirdest day out on Sunday. It started fabulously with me engaging in one of Manhattan's favorite pastimes - Brunch. The end...not so much.

If you don't live in NYC you may not understand that Brunch is a verb here, not just a noun. Saturday and Sunday Brunch is kind of a big deal. A way of life. A movement. Brunch foods are foods you don't eat at breakfast or at lunch (such as crab cakes topped with a poached egg) and of course it's the only legitimate occasion to get drunk at 11am or 12 noon. Of course said drunkenness may be induced only by Mimosas or Bloody Marys. Any other drink would be tacky. I guess you can also drink a Bellini or good wine. But no Cosmos or Gin and Tonic at Brunch. And definitely not dark liquor, that just makes you an alcoholic in need of an intervention.

So this Sunday I Brunched with friends from a very Upper East Side volunteer organization I recently joined. (Sidebar: This has been such a great way to meet a whole new group of people. Luvs it!) These ladies Brunch. Alternatively you can "do Brunch", depending on which syntax you prefer. We went to Gascogne, a super cute little French bistro with a fantastic garden in Chelsea on the recommendation of one of my foodie friends. They do a $20 prix fixe three course meal including a drink (ie Mimosa or Bloody Mary). Great deal right? NYC is full of these types of deals especially these days. Of course you end up spending a lot more than that because it's a small Mimosa and everyone is going to order at least one more round. As we did of course. I mean, a sober Brunch is just breakfast.

Gascogne

Brunch was fabulous. I wore a to-die pair of pointy toed 4-inch burgundy suede ankle boots with some skinny jeans and this great Ralph Lauren Black Label purple cashmere kimono sweater. I was feeling quite the New Yorker since who else would wear 4-inch heels with jeans to boozy breakfast? No one else does that but people here, because you can, but it's actually a bit stupid and over the top. But fun.

Then I called a friend to go ice skating because I've been dying to go for like, two years. One of my Brunch companions had given me the skinny on two straight bars in Chelsea so I thought me and this other friend would go ice skating at Chelsea Piers then go for a beer at one of these mythical straight bars. But the stars conspired against us a little bit. Plus it was February 15th and really, what kind of desirable person goes out on the day after Valentine's Day? Or does it matter? Hmmm....

First the Chelsea Piers schedule didn't work with ours so we went to Rockefeller Center since it's closer to Chelsea than Central Park and Bryant Park is Fashion Week right now. Rock Center is actually beautiful and fun and we had a great time once we got through the torture chamber where you pay and rent skates and change your shoes. My personal trainer was texting me about my cardio homework (she assigns me homework expressed in terms of calories to burn between torture sessions) and informed me that one hour of ice skating burns 400 calories! Which is worth almost six vodka shots. We bonded and chatted and laughed and didn't wipe out once. Had the afternoon ended with some hot chocolate at Dean & Deluca and a kiss kiss goodbye at the Subway, it would have been a perfect New York winter day. But no, we went chasing the high. Generally a bad idea.

Dr. Debi Thomas

First stop was The Half King which is a pub/restaurant in Chelsea with a somewhat artsy writer-type straight-ish crowd. But no crowd Sunday night except people drifting in and out to pick up food, and couples with babies and just nothing interesting going on. I guess people didn't have the day off Monday as I did. Or had a Love Hangover from Valentine's Day. Or are economizing because of the recession. At any rate we ate at the bar because we were starving, a game time decision that worked out OK but not great, and then decided to go down to the Meatpacking District to start a ruckus. I would not ordinarily choose this path but we were making spontaneous decisions and I didn't have anything else planned so why not?

Second stop - Spice Market. We sat at the bar next to a very handsome if anxious South Asian gentleman who as it turned out was meeting friends in town from Vancouver for dinner, who were late. Lateness and being made to wait alone apparently bother this guy a lot because he was making love to his Blackberry, like calling his florist, making dentist appointments, checking emails for the tenth time and web surfing, as he waited. No Brickbreaker though. Despite great eye contact and world class flirting and witty chat he didn't bite. His nerdy friends arrived apologizing profusely for being like a half hour late, and off he went. *sigh* Really it was no loss - South Asian men quite rarely marry black girls anyway, so no point in taking it beyond a polite chat at the bar. Wait, that sounded like I'm looking to get married which isn't quite true. In fact it sounded just plain weird and a little too deep and quite awkward but I'm leaving it in because IT'S TRUE. What I mean to convey though, is that no significant relationship would ever develop so the flirting at the bar was plenty. Entertainment.

Spice Market, the section where our gentleman friend and the group of sisters were (separately) seated.

We also saw a group of about eight beautiful sisters (=sistas, ie they weren't necessarily related) all dressed up for a date at Spice Market with each other. Something about that made us both sad. Maybe because they weren't smiling and laughing as though they were each others' date by choice. And also because they had clearly tried (successfully) soooo hard to look pretty. For like, each other or an unknown man or two or six who would rescue them from their suburban solitude. You could tell they didn't live in Manhattan by the big night outness of their vibe. In fact there were a lot of suburbanites and other undesirables - victims of violent fashion crimes (I tried to take a pic but my phone wouldn't pick up the detail), high school d-listers, tourists, ugly people and nerds - because it's Restaurant Week and Spice Market participates at DINNERTIME too. Quel horreur. In so many, many ways. I'm not the biggest fan of Spice Market because the lighting is too dim to see your food or get a surreptitious camera phone pic of anything interesting. I bit into one of those crazy Southeast Asian peppers there once and almost had to be resuscitated.

We next strolled over to Pastis, where I have previously only Brunched, to see what was happening there. Just curious. All the New Yorkers are like "OH NOOOOO!" right now. The crowd was a cliché, as you would expect. A lot of hipster trust fund baby model wannabe types dressed to the nines. Since I'm none of those things and was wearing a J Crew sweater and puffy vest (remember I had just gone ice skating, forgive me) and cowboy boots (the one touch of fabulous, because they're bronze), I wasn't dressed for the occasion and certainly didn't feel the energy of these pathetic fashionistas and divos. My girlfriend and fellow victim of this deteriorating day was decked out a très cool shirt/jacket hybrid thingy covered in zippers and showcasing her enviable decolletage. But that wasn't right for these folks either. Plus those beeyatches were way too ana* for us.

Some ana beeyatches we saw at Pastis

By this point we had long since realized we were chasing something that wasn't there but for some reason we kept going. I don't know why because I know better and really I'm not that desperate girl. I rarely torture myself like this. Maybe I needed something to write about because I am 99% of the time the kind of person who's like, "OK the vibe isn't flowing for me tonight, I'm going home and getting some beauty sleep." But onward we went. The next stop was Revel which is generally reliably packed with a good not self consciously hip but not B&T** crowd, but that night was a ghost town and really just sad and pathetic and depressing. We walked in, I used the loo, and we walked out. We should have called it a night but still, we soldiered on.

The FIFTH STOP was Tortilla Flats, where apparently everyone from NYU had agreed to meet. On a weeknight the crowd has a much better age mix, like at least a couple of grad students, but since we were clearly not in age range there we walked in and right back out. It's a fun place, though, I'll go back on like a Wednesday after work.

Tortilla Flats

We finally found refuge across the street from Tortilla Flats at Barbuto which had a more low key and adult crowd. Low key and adult because they were ALL MARRIED. Nothing but couples having dinner with their couple friends there...and all the husbands were sooooo hot. Hmph. A total tease. A friendly barkeep with great tats, and a so-so glass of Syrah kept us posted up at the bar where we engaged in extensive girl talk and then went home. I was sleeping by 11:15pm and dreaming about moving to London to find another Sting (see: The One Who Got Away posted 2/15/09). London is the only other place I could live except maybe Paris, but neither place has ubiquitous late night delivery so maybe not.

What's the moral of the story? Trying too hard is decidedly unfabulous, a little (ok a lot) pathetic, and can make you fall a bit out of love with this place. Also NYC is not a bar hopping place unless you're barely drinking age. You have to know your spot in advance and commit, and if it doesn't deliver on your expectations, leave and try another day. And also don't go out on Dec 26th, Jan 2, or Feb 15th. It would appear that is a loser move.

GLOSSARY:

*Ana = Anorexic

**B&T = Bridge and tunnel, ie from Jersey or an outer borough. Connotes gaudy and uncool. Acrylic nails and big hair and fake tans and what not.