The Visa Diaries

This article caught my eye in the NYTimes the other day. It is about how New York City’s Village is becoming a theme park to its former self. In the Old Days (whenever that was – any time from the 1800s to about 1980 it seems, depending on the revivalist), the Village was a really a bohemian village. Inhabited by all sorts of artistic and/ or gay people who did not fit into mainstream society, they found a community together in downtown New York, and later went on to become famous. Accounts claim it really was a village – things were smaller, cheaper, and less hectic, people knew their neighbors. Actors and writers without trust finds could afford to live there.

The world has obviously changed significantly since then, and one of the ways is that businesses and individuals have become more and more savvy about creating images that can be marketed. Simultaneously, consumers have become more skeptical of those images, and ravenous for something “authentic”. Like other neighborhoods that were the sites of iconic cultural happenings (Haight Ashbury, for example, or a much closer neighbor, Soho) the Village finds itself sought out by people looking for the magic for which it became famous – outsiders finding a home together and having a grand old time, unconscious of how cool they would later be seen to be.

The inevitable truth of course is that the genie is long gone from the bottle – magic exists only as long as it doesn’t quite realize it is magic. As soon as it has self-consciousness of its it-ness, well then, hello tourists and fashion boutiques, hello high rent. Good-bye to that faint, ineffable, je ne sais quoi. Good-bye to the innocence that, by definition, cannot be tried for.

Perhaps the magic of the Village really existed as storied, or perhaps it is only a post-fabricated nostalgic revision – most of us will never know. At the very least, it has been amplified post-facto, like all myths, and the restaurants described in the article are are reinforcing that myth so as to cash in on it. They are more sophisticated and upscale than the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney Land, or even a place like New Orleans Latin Quarter, but the function is the same: create an exotic experience that people will pay to feel a part of.

The Wonder Wheel at Coney Island

All of this came back to me when I went to Coney Island last weekend for the first time. My brother and his family, including Mr. Ben (age 7) and Miss Rowan (age 5) were visiting, and I thought Coney Island would be fun. It did end up being fun, but only after I got over how run-down it is, how trashy are the clientele and the food, how I was afraid to walk barefoot on the beach for fear of what might be in the sand. After I got over all of that, we had a good old time, and I was struck that Coney Island, which is actually supposed to be a theme park, is not. It is authentically, non-self-consciously what it is, and what it always has been.

This may not always be the case – there are various development plans underway for Coney Island. I say run over there as fast as you can, and live the magic… before it is revived as Magic!(TM).

Commuting from home in West London all the way down to work in South London at prime rush hour is not exactly my first choice of how to spend an hour and a half of each one of my days. The London Underground is unpredictable, dirty, and crowded at the best of times, and catching three different lines en route means I pick up just about every delay on the system. However, there is one bright spot: I am practically forced to read the “news”papers that are distributed for free on the Tube. A guilt free hit of crack-media – bring it on! In the mornings I actually have enough energy to concentrate on the quality reading that I bring with me, so I usually skip the Metro. But by the evening, fake news and gossip seem just the thing, so I’ll pick up a copy of the London Lite, or TheLondonPaper, or sometimes both to compare their varied “reporting” of the important celebrity issues of the day. The Beckhams in Los Angeles, Lindsay out of rehab, the ups and downs of Kate and Pete… these paper-thin personas feel like old friends.

Whenever there is a bit on the young royals (are Kate and Wills on again?? I would be on the edge of my seat if I had one during rush hour), it always seems to take place at “Picadilly hot-spot Mahiki.” So when my friend B suggested that we get off our lazy butts and actually venture out of our neighborhood for a fancy drink, and go to Mahiki, how could I resist? Would we get in? Would it be too terribly chic if we did? Full of rich and handsome aristocrats??

Let me just cut to the punchline. B said it best when, after sailing in and finding ourselves in a completely unremarkable Polynesian-themed tiki-bar, she concluded, “Same idiots as everywhere.” There was a faint smell of off milk and/or fruit when we first walked in. That faded soon enough, but the bartenders in hawaiian shirts and the drinks in coconuts and ceramic cups with Polynesian mask-faces on them all created an enthusiastically kitsch, far from cool, environment. I couldn’t help comparing it unfavorably to the Tonga Room at the Fairmont in San Francisco, which has been around for years, but at least has a pool in the middle that starts to rain and thunder every half hour and a boat with music comes out and performs a bit. Here the only thing to watch were young Sloanies with too much of daddy’s money. Which I guess, on second thought, is a show of sorts.

The night was not a total bore. We met some nice enough French Moroccans. Bankers of course. One of them who lived in Dubai did a lively job of trying to convince me that the vapid life is where its at. He failed, but was quite entertaining along the way, and I now have an invitation to Dubai.

Here it is: rich people can never be cool. They are inherently conservative because they want to preserve their status, and since they can buy whatever they want, they never develop any creativity. Also, the higher up on the economic ladder you go, the better looking the women get (high maintenance budgets) and the worse looking the guys get (too much time spent in the office, eating expensively, and patting themselves on the back). Next time, B and I are going to pull some builders.

I got accused by one of my classmates for “not living the student life” when I told him about my time in New York last weekend. Amongst the general New York-ish activities like going to a show (the now-closed Absinthe “sexy circus” down at Pier 17), stopping by the MOMA (the current exhibition “Out of Time: A Contemporary View” is pretty flippin-fantastic), brunch at Balthazar, etc, we also spent a fair amount of time at Soho House New York. Arvind is a member in London, and gets entry to the entire family of clubs.

I used to be anti- the members club. Why bother when there are bars and restaurants aplenty? Why go back to the same venue over and over when there are so many new places to try? Why hang out with a bunch of twats who need their co-bar-inhabitants to be vetted? Members clubs are an urban uncle to the beer-guzzling fraternity member rampaging over college campuses across america, and I never liked fraternities for the same reasons.

However, it was our lovely friend Indira’s birthday (she is filming a pilot of an exciting new tv show in town), and what with none of us being exactly local, Soho House seemed like a good bet. And it was just that – a good, safe, bet, where we didn’t have to wait in line or waste time equivocating, where there were contemporary cocktail mixes with cucumbers and such, and where there were enough people but not too many. It was comfortable and well-executed media-yuppy lounge. Apart from the fake tin panels tacked on the ceiling (”Soho” House feeling it had to live up to its name, despite being in the meat-packing district?) it was all a comfortable, benign blend of contemporary/ old-boys-club – somewhat the same tone of decor as a Banana Republic.

Well, we had such a nice time, or have become so lazy, the we returned Sunday afternoon. The roof deck with the pool, overlooking the Hudson River at sunset, was what got me accused of not living the student life. Fair enough. And now I see the benefits of the members club. Compared to the airless confines of the average New York apartment, where you are lucky if you have a view across a shaft, this roof deck complete with wifi and bar service was absolute nirvana. Even sans roof deck, the members club is a comfortable public space to hang out, chat, work, occasionally eat or drink, whatever. A place where the chairs are cushy and reconfigurable, to take you from coffee to cocktails, and where you do not feel like there is a stopwatch ticking for your table. Kind of like an upmarket version of Starbucks, actually. Yeah… Starbucks House. Sohobucks…