In my nineteen years in New York it’s been pretty rare for me not to have something to do in the evenings. It’s usually a show or a class or something, I’m not that cool. Those activities usually start around 7:00. And for the most part, despite the last few somewhat lean years, I’ve always had a day job that ends around 6:00. For all of you mathematicians out there, that means that I often have about an hour to kill.
I still have not mastered this skill.
I used to go to the Starbucks in the Barnes and Noble on 6th Ave. and 22nd Street because it was in a balcony that overlooked the store and it was a cool place to read and or write. But that place is long gone. It’s now a Trader Joe’s and a Michaels (that’s right, one Barnes and Noble turned into two stores).
I also used to go to the Virgin Megastore in Times Square to wander around and buy DVDs that I didn’t need. Sometimes I would go to Bryant Park and read if it was warm enough. This was when I was killing time before barking at Gladys’s Comedy Club (in the back room of Hamburger Harry’s) in Times Square. I also have a distinct memory of just going on long walks and listening to my iPod while smoking cigarettes. Eventually I would get to Hamburger Harry’s, head to the back, grab my flyers, and then head out to trick people into thinking they were seeing good comedians.
It was a nice night tonight, so, I left work right at 5:30 to wander around before my improv rehearsal. I went to H&M to look at clothes. Then I went to the Doc Martens Store before settling in a Pret to stare at my computer and not write anything. The WIFI cut out after a few minutes and when I hit refresh, I got the Chrome dinosaur. Have you seen the Chrome dinosaur game? When you have writing to do, hitting a space bar so a dinosaur can jump over cacti and pterodactyls becomes incredibly fun.
What strikes me about all of this is how representative this is of my New York. Not only does a great deal of my New York involve going to chain retail stores, I can even reminisce about the chain retail stores that have closed. I can’t really compete with the old New Yorkers who think this city’s lost its soul. “Oh man, I caught Talking Heads at the Mudd Club a week before it closed.” “I know how that is, I bought a four dollar copy of Old School at the Virigin Megastore before telling tourists that I had done stand up on Letterman.”
As Whitman said, “Manhattan of ample retail was mine…” or something like that.
