26th Jul 2002
New York City Fucking Rocks!
To quote Nick at Miki’s wild-ass 4th of July party, “I love New York!” Ever since Adi and I moved to Manhattan three years ago, we have had a great time socially. I’ve twice before lived in cities where I’ve been fortunate to belong to a giant gang of friends: at college in Missoula, MT (shout out to Team Rasta!) and in Budapest in the early ’90s. In between Bp and NY, however, was a four-year dead zone known as San Francisco in the dot-com heyday. Feh! I’m having soooo much more fun here, even before Sept. 11, but since then we’ve only been partying harder, like we’re dancing to the Devil’s fiddle.
I couldn’t agree more with Nick (who I must point out has followed me from Budapest first to SF and now NYC) when he slags SF as a soulless backwater. No offense to my friends who do still live there, but I never went for that town. And neither Adi nor I ever really had what you could call a “gang” of friends there — a bunch of individuals and couples who gradually got to know each other through us, but no sense of a posse.
The NYC posse Adi and I are a now a part of is something to behold. Parties nearly every night of the week. For example, I’ll never live it down that I missed Gogol Bordello last Saturday (read Nick, Peter or Elizabeth raves). On Wednesday, Ildi got folks together for the Philharmonic in the park. Then last night… I’d like to think this photo about says it all:
What started out at Nick’s fabu new Soho loft as a big NYC blogger welcome to the Notorious M.E.G. (Jason, come visit, you’ll love it!), ended past 2am some funky dive on E. Houston (Rosi?) after passing in between thru the painfully chic GenArt party (a few thousand would-be glitterati), the venue for the photo above (no idea who the flanking freaks are, just the three in the middle). We were all on the guest list thanks to Pearl, who’s brilliant short film “Great Balls of Fire” was screened at the event.
At the end of the night, looking around the half-drunk group (to be generous) sprawled on the broken-down couches of the dark bar, it dawned on that this was an exceptional group of people. Earlier in the night I had told Meg that almost every one of dozen friends I had visited a few months ago in SF were unemployed and desperate for work. It struck me then, looking at one of these NYers — Cameron (the hottest Cam on the Net by popular vote), Anil (who remained deliberately vague in his irony about the blog-groupie comment), Elizabeth, Pearl, Joan, Ildi, Sapna, Caroline, the other Nick (and anyone else I’m blanking on) — none of them had “normal” jobs (duh, we’re in a bar at 2am on a school night), with the possible exception of Anil (who doesn’t have to show up for work before noon). But none of them were complaining, either. There were all getting by somehow, a bunch of slack-happy freelancer beautiful bohemian freaks, to a person. They were also a microcosm for our extended group of 50+ folks who all regularly hang around together, made up of a motley collection of Gen Expats, Magyars, film makers, journalists, netrepreneurs, artists and, most recently, bloggers (since the welcome social impact of Mr. Denton’s arrival to town, a mere 2 months ago (seems so much longer!)). Whatever it is that unites this group, I’m glad for it and will raise a beer to it at my next opportunity.
Nick, I hear, is doing something again tonight, but I’m going to have to pass, needing one night to recuperate and plan our birthday dance party for Adi and Miki tomorrow night…
Cameron, stay!
No tags for this post
Leave a Reply