A reason to celebrate!

Last night, Tuesday May 17th, an Australian friend of mine working these days in Mexico City came to NY for business. We met in Soho for dinner and soon found a terrific seafood restaurant which I could endorse from previous visits. It was just the two of us and the restaurant was busy, packed with larger tables, people having a good time. Only some feet from us there was one such table. A bunch of good-looking men and women ranging in age, we guessed, from early to mid twenties. My friend and I started to contemplate if they were celebrating a birthday or some kind of graduation. Certainly, the ladies were dressed to the nines. Long, designer, back-less gowns, they looked terrific. And the gents scrubbed up as well. I felt they could perhaps be an adult class, graduating from University in a course that may have taken them several years...this made sense to me considering their diverse age range. By the end of the meal we found we were still hungry to learn what the root of the celebration was and so I asked our waiter if he knew. He told us that they had all just purchased a number of horrendously expensive photographs from a gallery nearby and so were celebrating their acquisitions. Our waiter rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath, 'trustafarians...trust fund kids.'

NY Removalists! Get the job done!

sometimes i dream on the subway

A guest by any other name...

It seems that sales clerks in stores are now referring to customers as 'guests'. It happened twice on the same day recently and left me far from amused. The first time I thought it may have been a simple and honest oversight by the staff member. However, only an hour after the first occurrence I was in another store when, after standing in line waiting to pay for a pair of jeans, I heard the line attendant state, 'Would our next guest step down.' 'Our guest!' Really? Now I know it's not the fault of the poor floor workers, instead it's the ill-designed phrase conjured by some half-wit in the marketing dept. paid too much and sitting too far from reality...Yet naturally, I brought the matter up when I approached the counter, saying that, I would in fact like to revoke my guest status and re-install instead, myself as a customer. A customer who expects nothing more then decent service as opposed to a guest who feels truly humbled and in fact honoured that 'said store' might consider him worthy of being a guest in this holy-of-holiest shrine to the denim jean. The bemused clerk corrected me, saying that in fact I was a guest. Withholding any payment I informed the clerk that I had not received an invitation to appear at said store, there was no rsvp to attend to and in fact referring to your customers as 'your guest' changes the dynamic in the customer/clerk relationship. Indeed, should this outlandish behaviour continue I will take my 'guest' money to an alternate store where I am known simply as a customer. By this time the shift manager had approached the scene and interjected, saying, 'Don't you want to be our guest?' 'Well, if you refer to me as a guest, then I suppose I could consider these jeans a gift?' The shift manager looked around for someone higher up in the food chain. 'And,' I continued, 'if that's the case don't you think it's a bit much to ask your guests to pay for their gifts?' Muttering almost inaudibly they agreed to refer to me as a customer...yet no doubt referred to me by a few different names after I'd left their temple of cloth.

guns

finished work last night at 2am. sat down to have a staff drink at the bar. some fella from Georgia started talking to me. told me they have guns down there. this fella talked about the right to bear arms. how it was a good thing. I disagreed. mentioned tassie massacre. he then told me that a buddy of his had recently committed suicide. how? I asked. 'Shot himself in the head,' came the reply.

shaky