Times Square New Years Eve

So apparently New Years in New York is kind of a big deal.

I knew there would be some excitement over the dropping of a disco globe 12 a.m.ish, but was nowhere near prepared for what really happens New Years Eve in NYC. Last Thursday I exited my apartment and was transported into what looked like some sort of police state. There were guns, dogs, and concrete barricades. And that was on my 8 a.m. walk to work.

My original evening plans were low-key. My best friend was visiting from Houston and we decided to opt out of the high-cover-charging night club parties and have our own private soiree complete with classy lady champagne, hors d'oeuvres, an ample supply of vino and, if at all possible, pink feather boa crowns with the glittered numbers “2010”. Basically, all the essential ingredients for the best New Years Eve ever.

After I got off work, we braved the predictable crowds at the Amish Market, a specialty grocery store I sometimes go to when I have enough money to splurge on rich people food. An hour later we were back on the street wielding bags full of goodies: three kinds of smelly cheeses, a large baguette, salmon pinwheel sandwiches, an assortment of different types of olives, fig-orange preserves, rainbow sushi rolls, and blood-orange sorbet for vodka-freeze desserts. So, all was going according to plan and "New Years Eve of Awesome Delicious Things" party was soon to be well underway.

By this time it was 4 p.m. and we sauntered towards my apartment without a care in the world, both making the gross miscalculation that the crowds at this point, 8 hours until midnight, still wouldn’t be very bad.

We were all kinds of wrong.

All of a sudden the streets were teeming with people moving in the same direction, flowing in a steady but SLOW stream of tired, confused tourists. Beyond those people and between us, my apartment and our awesome New Years Eve, was a guarded barricade.

At first I wasn’t too concerned. My landlady had emailed the day before warning me that getting to my apartment near Times Square could be an issue New Years Eve, and advised me to carry a copy of my lease with me in case I had any trouble. That was last thing I’d grabbed before we left my place earlier, as an afterthought. Now I fished it from my purse and clutched it like a golden ticket.

Somehow we muscled our way to the front of the mob. I tried to get the attention of any of the three policemen talking to one another beyond the fence. I could literally see my apartment awning across the street, but it might as well have been in Russia.

“Sir! Excuse me! Officer! Can you help me, sir?”One turned. He was a youngish man. Probably 28. He had good skin.

“Excuse me sir, I live across the street. I have a copy of my lease. That’s my apartment right there and we’re just trying to get home. Can you let us cross?”
“You’re gonna have to walk up to 56th.”
“I’m sorry?”
“This is closed. Walk up to 56th.”
“I have my lease with me. I live right there—“
“I’m not calling you a liar. But you still can’t cross.”

He was grinning like an idiot.

“You’re laughing but this isn’t funny to me. I really want to get home.”
“Up to 56th,” he said and turned his back on me.

I decided his skin was the ugliest I’d ever seen. And that he probably had herpes. And that most likely, his mother had never loved him.

E. and I started to head up to 56th, a handful of blocks and an avenue out of our way, but it became clear pretty quickly that a detour that would normally have taken ten minutes was going to take over two hours. The crowd literally inched forward. Our grocery sacks packed full of goodies became heavy and we were miserable. That’s when inspiration hit.

I’d been apartment sitting all week at a place very close to mine on 49th Street. The place belonged to a close friend and under the circumstances, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a big deal if we crashed there for the night. The crowd covered the entire street from sidewalk to sidewalk. We took a look around and decided it was official, we’d seek refuge at T.’s and "New Years Eve of Awesome Delicious Things" night would be back on track!

But when we finally got to 49th street, I noticed a partial blue barricade. Not good. We quickened our pace.

E. and I had very nearly reached our goal—again, we could see the apartment awning— when another man in blue with terrible skin and a loveless childhood yelled, “49th Street’s closed! 49th Street’s closed!”

Only it wasn’t. Not yet, anyway. Not really. The barricade still wasn’t complete, but men in blue wore busily lifting the other side into place.

E. looked at me and yelled, “run!”

And we did. Actually, we flew. Or at least that’s what I’ve decided must have happened. We flew over oncoming traffic and the immovable mob because there’s no other way we made it through alive without somehow temporarily acquiring the power of flight.

I glanced back only when we reached the front door of the apartment, half convinced an army of men in blue would be following close behind, handcuffs out but, thankfully, the street was empty.

The picture above shows the view from the window of T.’s apartment where could see the masses inching forward in the sleety snow for the chance to watch the disco ball drop ten minutes til midnight.

We watched it in HD and toasted from the couch.

Back Home

I spent Thanksgiving week between Dallas, Texas and Shreveport, Louisiana, my two hometowns. My mom and her parents live in Shreveport, which is where I spent most of my childhood. My dad is in Dallas, where my younger brother and I visited every other weekend, Thanksgiving, Christmas and half of summer vacation growing up and where I eventually went to college at SMU. So I have pretty strong ties to both cities and, even though both of my parents were awesome enough to come visit me up here, by the time Thanksgiving rolled around I hadn’t been to either home in six months. It was beginning to get rough.

I’d started craning my neck to follow lone sets of cowboy boots spotted in the Times Square tourist crowd, hanging around bad New York barbeque restaurants just to taste the smell, and gulping down New York’s rare and awful version of “Sweet Tea” which, for the sweet tea connoisseurs in the room, is made all wrong. I’m pretty sure they don’t even boil the sugar in with the tea bag. I know. I was in a bad place. Call it Southern withdrawal, or whatever you want. It wasn’t pretty.

I had a much-needed great time in Texas with my Dad and my college friends. I loved having the chance to see their new off-campus apartments and new off-campus lives as well. It’s nuts how fast the time has flown, as cliché as that is to say. Sometimes the truth’s a little cliché.

I also finally had the chance to get my haircut in Dallas, which I hadn’t done the whole six months I’d been in New York. I know what you’re thinking—don’t they have hairdressers in New York? Well, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t looked for any, because they for sure don't have Sharin. People in Dallas following my blog should seriously give her a call (972-898-3656). In addition to being an amazingly talented hairdresser who sometimes styles for photo shoots (nbd…), she’s super fun and very cool. She’s been cutting my hair for four years now and I won’t go anywhere else, which may seem silly now that I live on the East coast but, I’ll make it work. Even if I get a once a year haircut at Thanksgiving. Worth it.

But, I digress.

To get to my mom's for Thanksgiving, I drove the 3 hour trip from Dallas to Shreveport with my 20 (nearly 21!) year old brother that we’ve driven more times than I can remember.We got to do the whole big Thanksgiving family thing with my mom, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. It was great to see everyone, and just to be in the city I grew up in and drive on the streets I learned to drive on, past my old elementary, middle, and high schools and to pick up a Humphrey Yogurt from Counter Culture, something I can’t get anywhere else in the country… mmm.

Major nostalgia ensued and I was worried that it would stay with me on my trip back to New York and beyond into my life up here, but thankfully, it hasn’t. Nostalgia is best in small doses. Too much is a dangerous cocktail that can only end in ill-advised phone calls or a treacherous trip down “What if” Lane.

As great as it was to have time at home, I’m glad to be back in the city. Just signed another six-month lease with my landlady so, officially here to stay.

And today I took a walk to Strawberry Fields in Central Park in hopes of hanging with the hippies, but I think it was too cold for them because all I saw were a bunch of open mouthed tourists and an unofficial-looking group collecting money with a sign that said “end poverty.” I suspect that the only poverty they were ending was their own.

Still, it was a gorgeous day and the lack of hippies and presence of vague and questionable charities couldn’t stop me from enjoying the new book I’m reading, Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames. Hilarious. Pick up a copy if you get the chance.

Hope everyone else’s Thanksgiving was fantastic!

H&M Partners with Jimmy Choo... really?

The consequences of refusing to pay a monthly cable bill and only getting media through the internet have finally caught up with me. Today, on a whim, I moseyed down to my local H&M on 5th Ave. and 51st St. in search of some cheap knits and possibly a cute new pair of flats— completely emotionally unprepared for what I was about to walk into.

Today is the launch of the apparently long awaited Jimmy Choo for H&M clothing line. And everyone in New York City but me knew about it and was out for blood.

My first thought when I walked in, “Is that a spotlight?” It was. A theater style spotlight circled the room erratically, and I’m sure it was meant to make the launch that much more glam, but when it fell on me I couldn’t help but feel like a prisoner caught trying to escape.

The first floor looked as if someone had vomited black and purple all over it, a person who had also eaten a ton of sequins (probably the cause of all the vomiting). The world was all leather, suede, zippers, sequins, and studs. And people. People everywhere grabbing sequined tops and dresses like they might never see clothes again.

It only took me a moment to realize that I was in some bizarre, alternate universe where my tried and true provider of cheap clothing merchandise, H&M, had partnered with the impossibly expensive, completely inaccessible, hopelessly coveted designer brand Jimmy Choo. In short, this was hell.

I could have walked right out the door, and almost did. But my curiosity got the better of me. I also couldn’t shake a nagging sense of indignation. I had come to this store in the expectation of inexpensive winter wear and I was going to leave with said inexpensive winter wear! This influx of designer junkies looking for a cheap (by their standards) fix would not stop me from shopping in my store previously marketed to people like me who couldn’t afford to blow $100 on a coin purse.

So I browsed. The Jimmy Choo merchandise was everywhere. I quickly assessed that none of it was under $80 and most of it was over $150. I did not even look at the shoes. Ok, I tried, but it was impossible. The entire area was roped off like a mine field and women were lined up to the front of the store to wait for an opportunity to enter the restricted area for a maximum of 20 minutes to shop. Every few minutes or so I could hear someone yell over the music blasting on the speakers, “8 more minutes ladies!”

Accepting the reality that I could not afford a single item displayed on the first floor for the line launch, I went up the escalator to the next floor where they’d shoved their regular merchandise. As usual, H&M’s ability to provide cute clothing for ridiculously low prices did not disappoint.

At the checkout my total came to less than $45 for two sweaters and a bra. A feat in purchasing women’s wear by anybody’s standards. But the victory was not as sweet as I’d remembered in the past.

I’d come to H&M with a goal, and left more than accomplishing it, so why did I feel so unsatisfied clutching my plastic H&M bag next to those suckers with their bright purple Jimmy Choo by H&M eco-friendly paper bags?

In truth, I didn’t even like any of the Jimmy Choo merch they were selling. I thought it was a little ugly, never having been a fan of see-through silk, leather with studs, and too-large zippers that serve no real purpose.

Ok, I’m not being fair. From what I could see over the eager line of women, the shoes, true to their reputation, were lovely.

They were also clearly spring and summer shoes. No winter boots or booties. No close toed pumps. Nothing I could wear for at least six months.

So in short, there was nothing there for me to even covet. I wouldn’t have wanted to buy anything even if I had the money. I knew this, and yet the nagging, undefined disappointment persisted.

I pinpointed what was bothering me on my walk home in the rain (it’s really been raining all day, I’m not just adding this for dramatic effect… although it kind of works, right?)

H&M is a place I come to shop when I want basic staples. Sweaters. Shirts. Sweatpants. It’s not where I go when I want designer jeans, or a good purse. Then I go to a consignment shop or Fileman’s Basement or Marshall’s or Century 21 or any number of discount stores.

But anywhere I go, I avoid the source of these designer duds like the plague. There’s nothing more uncomfortable than walking around in a nearly empty store looking at clothes I can’t afford while the sales person glares at me like I’m about to take a $300 dress and stuff it in my pocket. For me, entering a designer store is a little like subjecting myself to emotional assault.

And today, H&M lured me in like the wolf in grandma’s clothing and ate me whole!

Ok, overly dramatic strange fairy tale metaphors aside, I went to H&M and was confronted with exactly the lifestyle I shop there to avoid. And this Jimmy Choo madness seems there to stay.

Now where will I go to shop comfortably in my poverty?

Tsk tsk, H&M. Tsk tsk.