5-28-08 And they Struck the Motherlode

Rehearsed at a loft in Williamsburg, and it was full of funky, interesting people doing their various artistic things. Knick-knacks and bricolage art all over the walls, multi-colored paintings of bulls and people, black and white photographs of cats and slightly out-of-focus women looking longingly into the distance, a chess set with shot glasses for pieces, crates and crates and crates full of old records, men and women walking the corridors in various states of dishevelment, old, enormous rusted tools laid out attractively on ramshackle wooden shelves, unmatched but beautiful old furniture placed all over: all indicators of the certain type of young, artistic, person who would naturally gravitate to Williamsburg in the early years of the 21st century.

We were given the tour of the (surprisingly large) space that had been subdivided into individual rooms, and came upon the (again, surprisingly large) kitchen area, the cavernous nature and wooden floors of which caused one of our number to remark, "It reminds me of a mining colony."

"Yeah," I replied, "a colony where they mine for cool."

1-31-08 Wealth. I don't has it.

The outer doors to Cipriani, a high-end restaurant across from Grand Central Terminal, are black, opaque glass, two stories high. Behind them are revolving doors, like at a bank, leading into an enormous hall with ceilings fifty feet high and a dining space as large as half a football field. I walk past on my way to work and look in, staring deep into the warmly lit opulence of table after white-linen-covered table, while small people, working industriously setting up for some event or other, place gleaming silver and starched napkins down on tables beneath warm gold and wood accents on the walls.

A little ache starts up in my chest, and I remember what it was like to (pretend to) have enough money to eat someplace like that.