quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

And even the best-laid plans falter. Jenna Catsos, 22, does not have a cellphone because she thinks the idea of always being reachable is “scary” and prefers to keep in touch with handwritten letters. While at college in rural Vermont, Ms. Catsos decided to drive to Massachusetts to surprise her father for his birthday. Halfway there, her car’s transmission broke down. She walked half a mile to the nearest gas station and called her parents from the payphone, but because they were not expecting her, they were not home. After leaving a message with the payphone number, she stood in the gas station parking lot for an hour waiting for them to call back.

“It’s situations like that when I would really love to have a phone,” she said.

Am I missing something? She DID have a phone - a payphone! If she travels across the country without an address book containing, for instance, the mobile phone numbers of her parents, she is simply a fucking idiot. Luddism has nothing to do with it.

A friend who lives on the top floor of a house in Brooklyn has a perpetually broken apartment buzzer. So Ms. Mboya makes noise to disturb the dogs who live on the first floor, who then bark and announce her arrival to her friend.

“This system works pretty well,” Ms. Mboya said, though the dogs’ owners might disagree.

Strangle. Her. Strangllllllleeeeeeee

I have a good friend who purposefully doesn't have a cell phone. She keeps the plans she makes, she is on time for things, and she calls in advance from HOME if she has a question. She keeps a planner in her bag with names & phone numbers. SHE BEHAVES LIKE A NORMAL PERSON WHO RESPECTS THE TIME AND EFFORT OF OTHERS. Jesus fuck.

whadda u guys think of the times new restaurant critic?

http://events.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/dining/reviews/14rest.html

http://events.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/dining/reviews/21rest.html

I'm reserving judgement but he certainly has a writerly voice, esp. for the staid old NYT, though so far he's treading a thin line between affected & effective. and that jazz about new york in the 80s was a little nostalgic-hazy IMO.

I'm reserving judgement but he certainly has a writerly voice, esp. for the staid old NYT, though so far he's treading a thin line between affected & effective

dude did u miss the long and affected reign of mr frank bruni

actually i thought bruni got better as he went along. sifton seems to be TRYING REALLY HARD but hey it's a pressure-cooker job (pun intended)

maintaining a breezy tone while conforming to the times style must be a tightrope

whadda u guys think of the times new restaurant critic?

I was amused/interested to learn that he is the grandson of Reinhold Niebuhr.

ill give him a little while. i was always kind of on the fence about bruni tbh, but i felt sort of sad when he was leaving

"Jenna Catsos, 22, does not have a cellphone because she thinks the idea of always being reachable is “scary”"

I cosign that far, obv, but I do have an address/phone book, and don't bother dogs.

I just don't get why you can't answer the phone.

She keeps the plans she makes, she is on time for things
Imagine that! I hate how cell phones have made flakiness and irresponsibility ok...if you call!

Well, the call is more like, this is just tell you that you can go get a coffee for 20 minutes because my landlady decided to show the apartment as I was leaving today...so the person who's ON TIME doesn't stand in the rain or something.

It doesn't really make it "okay" to be more than about 15 minutes late, or however much your social/cultural grace period is.

The other really nice thing about this friend is that if you're going to the same show or event, you can just say, I'm going to get there betw 9 and 9.30, and she doesn't text you back 27 times to say, "Are you still going? What are you wearing, I think I'm going to wear a dress. Are you there yet? I might be early. I'm standing by the bar now." But then lots of people who DO have cell phones and are not RETARDED don't do this either.

I"VE KINDA HAD IT UP TO HERE W/SAM SIFTON

I just don't get why you can't answer the phone.

What are you, Superman?

srsly let it ring turn it off or go under the earth

now u are "unreachable"

M. Night Shyamalan's "Unreachable"

Punish those flaky people by turning your phone off for an hour before 'the plans' and turning it on when you arrive at the meeting point. I am getting less 'that's OK' if people scramble my day because they're trying to impress themselves with how busy they are.

Restaurants are culture as sure as music or paintings. They say something about who we are. So never mind the bold-faced names, those old familiar faces. Civilized people on the subway home from the Met talk about opera, not who has seats in the parterre box. Marea says, settle down. When the market was low, we spent like crazies and now look wise. You like to eat? Watch what is going to happen to you.

didn't like (or even understand, really) this bit of the Marea review but when he got down to the food it was pretty good

it read like a two-star, though. three stars and the thing they don't do well is "entrees"?

White people!:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2009/10/23/20091023-away-slideshow/30531013.JPG

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/nyregion/25coop.html

I BOUNDED off the Q train in Brooklyn one night last winter and headed to Union Street, past the yogurt shop and the firehouse, to do some grocery shopping. But my plans soon went awry.

“You’re suspended,” the entrance worker at the Park Slope Food Coop announced as I swiped my membership card. Some entrance workers speak softly, but not this one. Worse, there were a dozen other shoppers within earshot.

http://i34.tinypic.com/2vc6mq9.jpg

"For such a scrutinized institution, little public attention is paid to people like me"

god, what is the point of that co-op article at all?

The point appears to be 'when visit farmers market get pie'

"co-op membership is a hipster accessory you have to work to deserve"

how did we miss this

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/dining/28Date.html?ref=dining

WHEN Jenny Kirsten, a producer for the Food Network, went on her first date with Jason Beberman, a chef at Dressler in Brooklyn, they didn’t splurge on a multicourse dinner with wine pairings. Instead, they went to the Rusty Knot, a West Village bar that teeters between dive and chic, for picklebacks: a shot of whiskey with a pickle juice chaser. They split a gourmet chicken liver sandwich — with bacon and red onion marmalade — followed by a couple of Tecates with salt on the rim, and then played the free jukebox.

Whatever, it worked: a year later, they are still together. Now their idea of a romantic meal might be a burger at Back Forty, a neighborhood place in the East Village with epicurean credibility; the burger is made of grass-fed beef and comes with homemade ketchup. They prefer to sit at the bar.

“We can cut the burger and share the fries, and make a date-night toast,” Ms. Kirsten said. She sighed contentedly. “I’m too in love for my own good.”

holy shit

i get SO CLOWNED for chasing shots with pickle juice - shit just ELIMINATES THE COMPETITION tbh

highly recommended

Friend & I once were alternating shots of ALbertson's store-brand Heritage Vodka ($13 a handle) and pickle brine...it was like drinking gasoline.

Instead he and his wife, Sonja Johansson, a Feldenkrais practitioner, find romance in the fried chicken spots hidden on second floors in Koreatown.

the nytimes has this impressive ability to make everything fun seem lame

this second floor fried chicken spot is totally hidden except for the huge flashing sign outside

haha, yeah, apparently Ezra Klein follows this sort of stuff too. He linked to that story this morning with this:

Congrats to the New York Times trendspotting team, which has recently learned that young people occasionally go on dates to hip, trendy gastropubs as opposed to pricey, fussy French restaurants. Reporting!

a story about dates involving Gray's Papaya = something I would read

hot dog; hallway.

there should really be a hallway hot dog place

No results found for "halloway's hot dogs".

Ugh, I would never survive in a relationship founded on the principle of buying one meal and cutely splitting it in half.

this one puzzled me...she was too poor to visit her parents for the holidays, was eating Saltines and Kraft cheese, yet she also has an art collection she's slowly selling off, is taking her time to consider writing a book, and moved to Greenwich?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/opinion/25kolhatkar.html?_r=1&scp=31&sq=october+25+2009&st=nyt

It's not really suspicious that a former art gallery owner has an art collection, and it suggests she moved in with her boyfriend in Greenwich. Also there's a good chance she has debt from her failed business. Not that you should feel sorry for her, I just don't think there's anything puzzling there.

Becky, 43, is not one of the blonde wisps usually seen working at chic Manhattan art spaces — she has a big head of curly black hair and chunky eyeglasses.

she OWNED the gallery

lol everyone knows how rare it is to see people with chunky glasses at art galleries

thinking thats prob new york times style manual for "fattay"

big head

I dunno...she claims to have nothing, yet she also has an art collection (which she has the opportunity to sell off slowly), has the luxury of time to contemplate a new career and the possibility of writing a book...she's in a bad place to be sure, but I'm thinking a lot of people blindsided by this economy would be really envious of her predicament...

LOL you try getting an ex-gallerist to do a fire sale on the secondary market. It's the last thing they'd do because the artists in question have to hold value and they also get very, very pissed off when their work is sold like this.

huh? she's not the worst-suffering person in America therefore she deserves no pity? she was a self-made woman who lost her business/savings/apartment/purpose.

there's nothing in that article that suggests she's a bad person other than that she's dating an ex-finance guy, so I'm not sure why you're so keen on attacking her. so yeah, not all recession stories are poor people becoming poorer, sometimes it's upper-middle class people becoming lower-middle class...

Ilxors rag nyt about it because basically all of the lifestyles pieces there regarding the recession are about upper-middle class or rich people "suffering" somehow. It's not newsy and it's not even interesting reading, unless you want to say, "OMG, this is stupid. Tom, look at this." Brick and mortar trolls.

This week's episode of Frontline reminded me of this thread when I was watching it:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/closetohome/view/