Attention hipsters

The great thing about having a blog is that I can rant as much as I want when I want and where I want (assuming it's close to a computer). I invoke this privilege today to recount my commuting experience this morning and to issue advice to all those tragically hip New Yorkers who cross my path.

I normally don't leave the confines of the N train during the morning rush until my appointed stop, but this morning, in an effort to shop at Trader Joe's before the hoards descended upon it, I hopped off the train at Union Square just after 9:00 AM.

Union Square, where the yellow trains, green trains and grey L train converge, is a mad house at any time of day and is especially intimidating at 9:00 AM when all the people with "serious jobs" have been at work for an hour or more and those left commuting are the aimless, oblivious commuters who don't have to be at work till 9:30 or 10:00. (Apologies to those diligent commuters with flexible schedules for lumping you into the latter category.)

It was in this setting that I encountered my first tragic hipster of the day. I more wove around him than encountered him, really, seeing as how he was WANDERING AIMLESSLY ON THE SUBWAY PLATFORM! Come on! You're in the subway station, that implies intent to RIDE A SUBWAY TRAIN. You've got the express to your right, the local to the left, JUST PICK ONE AND GET OUT OF MY F***ING WAY!

Of course I said none of this, being the gentile southern lady I am (heh). I just grumbled about f***ing hipsters and went on my way. But thinking back on this guy I'm really bugged by the pervasive trait that all the tragic hipsters seem to share: those enormous f***ing aviator sunglasses. Have you noticed that irrespective of weather, temperature, and most annoyingly, location, the aviators are always donned, the hair is always shaggy and those retarded looking military hats are always on their heads (except when replaced by the equally annoying newsboy hats).

Maybe that's why this poor kid was wandering aimlessly on the Union Square platform, he couldn't see through his hip yet impractical sunglasses to determine which train he should get on. Was that it? Or was it that he had the sunglasses on to hide his bloodshot eyes from the harsh neon lights of the subway platform?

Either way, hipsters of New York, let's be practical. You don't live in Miami, LA, San Tropez or any of the other well-lit destinations that might necessitate consistent wearing of aviator sunglasses. You live in New York City where 7 million people miraculously manage to live together without doing each other serious bodily harm (at least not on a regular basis). And you, hip though you are, must do your part to maintain this ecosystem.

So while I realize that you take a great deal of pride in your appearance and have invested heavily in your plaid and corduroy wardrobe, please think for a moment about how your utter oblivion to the world around you may piss off those of us who are not quite as hip as you.

And take off your sunglasses inside for f**k's sake.

Thanks to The Fed, Columbia's subversive newspaper, for the hipster guide. It's worth looking at the full size picture here.

City Slalom

Monday's I Can't Believe It's Science discussed a few recent "science-ish" articles including one by Richard Wiseman, a University of Hertfordshire psychologist, that found world-wide walking speeds have increased since the last such study in 1997.

I have no trouble believing that in our increasingly 24/7 society, where we're multitasking and trying to be in 3 places at once ,we've picked up the pace and are getting there faster than we did just 10 years ago. After all, 10 years ago, cell phones were big clunky things, blackberries were fruit that you ate and email was only good for sending around unix-based lewd jokes, or that 's what it was used for at my college at least... I feel so old.

The part of the article that surprised me was that New York City was only the 6th fastest city in the world. Working in midtown I think that we're fairly fast walkers, especially in the Rockefeller Concourse... if you're not careful you'll get flattened by some snooty-looking ad executive wearing 4 inch heels and through some miracle of biomechanics power walking to get to where ever ad executives have to go.

So although I was first surprised that Singapore (really? Singapore? Maybe they really are an Asian Tiger force to be reckoned with like The Economist says... those fast walking Singhs) had garnered first place, I soon recalled that not all those who walk in New York are (a) New Yorkers and (b) fast walkers.

To address these annoyingly slow walkers, Time Out New York, the obsessive guide to compulsive entertainment, took matters into their own hands. Dressing up like oversexed meter maids, they handed out tickets to individuals guilty of the following infractions:

• Walking too slowly in a crowded area
• Stopping in an inconvenient place
• Blocking pedestrian traffic by walking side by side in a group of three or more
• Irritating use of cell phone
• Stopping at the top of the stairs in a subway station (Great quote from the article: "Where is Wooster? Hint: not at the top of the stairs")
• Other (I think this category could be extended to the tourists who sling their H&M bags willy-nilly and who are generally recipients of the evil sidewalk eye*)

It seems clear to me that in order to be contenders for 2017's award for fastest walking city, New Yorkers are going to have to get serious about enforcement of the afore mentioned moving (or failure to move) violations. You can download your own spiffy citations like the one pictured at the link above. So get out there and show those annoying foot draggers that we won't stand for their leisurely strolls down 5th Avenue, or any other avenue!

*see evil subway eye

Always Pee Where You Pay

Today's Science Times (A Simple Need, All Too Often Unmet) once again delivers helpful advice to us big apple dwellers. For the author, Jane Brody, and many other New Yorkers have often found themselves in need of a restroom at an inconvenient time or in an inconvenient place, this article is truly a public service.

The article also reminded me of wise words my aunt, a long time resident of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, gave me during my early visits to New York: "Always pee where you pay." Brody lists a smattering of likely venues for public toilets in New York, but neglects to encourage paying customers to linger for an extra 2 minutes that can mean the difference between comfort and urgency. My aunt, on the other hand, would encourage us to "just try" to pee before leaving whatever eating establishment, museum or shop where money had exchanged hands. It's a handy phrase that I consider to be some of the best life advice I've ever received.

The most cruel and discouraging time to really have to pee, though, might be on a weekend afternoon whilst touring the city's finer drinking establishments. Then one must not only consider the lack of public restrooms, but also the famous "breaking of the seal" physiological response to having consumed lots of beer.

Actually, I have no idea whether this response is psychological or whether it actually has some physiological basis, but I do know that no matter how long I've been doing 18 oz curls, after I take an initial potty break, I have to pee like every half an hour thereafter. This becomes very cumbersome if I'm sitting on the inside of a booth, or worse if I happen to be unaccompanied at the time by nought but lots of shopping bags.

So hats off to Brody for pointing out a pervasive public health concern for New Yorkers, but remember kids, for a truly great New York City pub crawl, Always Pee Where you Pay and Don't Break the Seal!

Wedding Planning: A Bridal Registry for Murder Weapons

My boyfriend and I got engaged between Christmas and New Year’s and being the practical, career-driven type, we sensibly decided to punt the whole wedding planning effort until we had lined up our next jobs (we’re both in transition this year). Meanwhile, all of our friends and loved ones who have been waiting expectantly for years for us to decide to get hitched couldn’t wait to send cards with well wishes and in some cases, engagement gifts.

This is where announcing an engagement without a solid idea of when you’re getting married becomes a problem. People start to ask when you’re getting married, (we’ll be the first to know that, thank you) where you want to honeymoon, (seriously? Can’t we find new jobs first?) and, worst of all, when you’re having kids (come on! We have a cat and 8 plants, isn’t that enough?).

So when my mother asked us, on behalf of a friend, whether we had decided what kind of crystal we’d like, my fiancé and I decided to look online at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s to see what fabulous options we had to choose from. First we had to get past the fact that the Macy’s website totally sucks and for some reason groups crystal by what’s on sale rather than by designer or by type of design. We attempted to browse their selection online but quickly realized that it was one of those “if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you aren’t going to find it” web experiences which is always frustrating.

The Bloomingdale’s website was much better organized, though we realized that we had no idea what the pieces actually looked like, as lighting and the inability to zoom in on many of them left us wondering whether the crystal was really “smoky” or whether the picture was taken in low light.

After about an hour of poking around on the web, we decided that we really needed to visit the crystal department of these stores to see and hold the actual pieces. We knew that we both liked the wine glasses with big bowls (suitable for snobbishly swirling red wine and checking out its “legs”) and thought that a decorative stem would be preferable to the classic cut crystal goblets our mothers had.

So after work we set off for the crystal department of Macy’s. We reasoned that since Macy’s had recently purchased every single other department store in the United States except Bloomingdale’s our wedding guests might have better access to it than to Bloomie’s. Plus, I’m from the South and thought that there was something pretentious about registering at Bloomingdale’s. Most of the weddings down South that I’ve been to register at sensible places like Belk or Target – Crate and Barrel is also acceptable though they have low market penetration outside of big cities like Raleigh and Charlotte. Plus, Bloomingdale’s calls up visions of fur-clad women with names like Mitzy and Buffy who have lunch at the Waldorf before stopping by Bloomie’s to pick out 1000 count Egyptian Cotton sheets for the maid’s quarters.

I’ll probably have to revise this particular view of Bloomingdale’s in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but I’ll get to that later. First, the crystal department at Macy’s.

After the holiday crush I experienced last month, our Monday night expedition to Macy’s was refreshingly calm. A few folks wandered through, glancing at the post-Christmas, Post-Martin Luther King Day, Pre-President’s Day sale items. It was freezing outside, so most of them were probably just been getting out of the cold, I don’t think the sales were that great.

We rode the escalators up past the perfume and handbags, past the non-designer women’s apparel, through the designer women’s apparel, past the shoes, the bedding (oops, almost thought crystal was in with bedding but it’s SO NOT), though the children’s clothes and at last to the tippy-top of Macy’s where we found the crystal and china section.

The wedding and gift registry kiosk was helpfully located in the center of the crystal/china department and all the other couples were armed with a barcode readers and were scanning in items for their registries. My fiancé and I, only planning for a reconnaissance mission, decided to skip the scanner and look at what Macy’s had to offer before committing to a registry there.

One thing I’ll say for Macy’s brick and mortar is that it’s much better organized than the web site. We browsed various designers: Waterford, Swarovski, Vera Wang for Waterford, Kate Spade for Waterford… I found myself reminiscing about when Kate Spade and Vera Wang had only designed apparel, ah, the good old days. We found some hideous things and some beautiful things, some reasonable things and some crazy-expensive things ($200 for a wine glass? Are you sure it’s not made of diamonds?) when suddenly we found… murder weapons.

We spotted them at the same time, snuck in among the crystal stemware. We picked them up and looked at each other laughing, “Oh my god! You could kill someone with this!” The gravity of the situation was immediate (plus they were really heavy) as we realized that not only could we register for pretty things but we could also register for… dangerous things.

We retraced our steps around the crystal section picking up heavy objects and remarking to each other, “Hey this could be a murder weapon too!” By the end of our shopping trip we had found a few crystal goblets that we would consider registering for and many more potential murder weapons. It was fun.

We left Macy’s without holding one of the snazzy barcode readers, and tonight we’re going to check out Bloomie’s (fur-clad Buffies notwithstanding). I can’t help but anticipate finding murder weapons more than finding that perfect crystal goblet. I hope planning the rest of the wedding is this entertaining!

Would you like coffee with your Evil Subway Eye?

On a recent morning as my train crossed the Manhattan Bridge and I gleefully anticipated filling the seat my mark was about to vacate, a small subway drama unfolded across the car.

To set the scene, I was at the end of the car, facing a very "local" man sitting down in the right seat of a two-seater next to the train door. A young hipster was standing next to him drinking a cup of coffee.

I was reading my New Yorker across the car when I suddenly heard the local man exclaim, "Whaddaya think this is a f***ing cafeteria?" The hipster looked like he very much thought that this was definitely not a cafeteria, and that he was about to get his ass kicked. He apologized softly as the local guy mopped the 5 drops of coffee off his shirt. The local guy continued to grumble about how the hipster ruined his shirt (which if you ask me, the coffee stain was an improvement) and flashed the uncomfortable looking hipster the evil subway eye.

You may think at this point that I'm extremely uncaring about the plight of the working man and am an advocate for hipster rights, but you're wrong. I think that hipsters are a next step in the evolution of the annoying girls with big bangs with whom I went to middle school who became the annoying partiers I went to college with who drunkenly pulled the fire alarm at 3 AM on a Sunday morning. I'm a big fan of local Brooklynites, especially the ones who have been there since before Brooklyn became "hip." I love listening in on their conversations at the local laundromat. Their lives are so different from mine, somehow more "real" and less plastic than my own burgeoning yuppie existence.

But in this case, I had to pity the hipster and turn my evil subway eye to the local guy. I mean, really, it's 8:00 in the morning, and we're all a bit annoyed to be schlepping into work. Could you cut the guy some slack? And the subway looks in no way like a cafeteria! I mean is that really the best disparaging remark he could come up with? And seriously, his shirt looked like it was purchased circa 1985 and, as I mentioned above, the coffee was really an improvement.

In my view, you've gotta feel bad to the hipster trying desperately to get his morning caffeine boost so that he can face another day of his youth, knowing all the while that 25 looms like a large gray cloud over his head. That one day, dressing in corduroy pants, plaid shirts, jaunty hats, slouching and badly needing a haircut will no longer be a viable option. That he'll have to grow up, get a haircut and perhaps do something more productive with his Saturday afternoons than hanging out in Williamsburg discussing the greatness of Iron and Wine and experiencing the existential angst that only comes from wearing a jaunty hat and sipping over-priced microbrews.

Though perhaps equally angsty and yet ultimately thrilling was the hipster's nearly-averted early morning ass kicking drama that I observed. Ah, commuting! still better than the Metro red line in DC.

Commuter Profiling

As a rider of the D train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, I am faced with a daily dilemma: will I find a seat or will my feet fall off by the time I get to work? It's not that I wear uncomfortable shoes, I'm basically a Dansko/Aerosoles (especially now that they have cute styles) wearing freak, yet even for the most comfortable shoes standing for the entirety of my 45 minute commute is something of a challenge.

Being the creative problem solver that I am, I've found that the best way to find a seat is to engage in the much-maligned practice of racial profiling. I don't feel good about it, yet, my feet thank me daily for doing it.

This profiling begins when I transfer to the D at Atlantic/Pacific Street in Brooklyn. As I board the train, I glance purposefully at those seated... and if I'm lucky, I find a unassuming Asian man or women, usually frumpy - not hip, to stand in front of. One subway stop later, if I've guessed correctly, these targeted riders abandon their seats disembarking at Grand Street in Chinatown.

Over the past four months since I began this commute, I've become better at recognizing who gets off at Grand Street than those who disembark! One morning I tagged a small Asian man as a likely Grand Street disembarker and was surprised when he failed to get off there. However, one stop later at Broadway/Lafayette he looked up, confused, and got off the train. Perhaps I should just start nudging the riders I think should get off... they'll probably thank me, or just give me the evil subway eye*.

*The "evil subway eye" refers to that look given by one subway rider to another that says, "die mother***er." The ESE is commonly given for stealing a seat in which another rider intended to sit, for talking loudly, for playing an iPod loudly, or for just being a tourist.