Quote of the Day (as of 4:47pm):
"I'm also in the middle of the sixth century - this is so different for me!" -- Living it up at Avery.
For the past five weeks now, I have been seeing someone else. It is serious. Not better, but different. Engaging. Exploratory. Physical, very, very physical, sweaty and exhausting. I come home rejuvenated, not lethargic, with endorphins that I never even knew I had. It's true - Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I work as the Manual Collector for MenuPages.
In case you have been living under a rock or below Delancey, MenuPages is a website owned by New York Magazine that features the menus of over 8,000 restaurants in the city or some crazy number like that. Every once in a while, they have a manual collector go around and gather menus from restaurants/bars/cafés that they do not already have the menus of, and I take pictures of the places as well. This summer, thanks to a dear friend who already works for the company, that person is me. So for 20 - 25 other hours a week I am thrust out of the Avery vacuum and into The City Of Lights and Sunstroke. I get the job done, but sometimes this job requires me to walk down streets that I am already familiar with due to a quaint and outrageously overpriced boutique I like, or a Starbucks, "The Public Toilet of NY," as my roommate calls it. In this case, it happened to be E. 9th St. So I took ten minutes out of my 30-minute coffee break and did it - I went and got Thick, Square Glasses Frames at Fabulous Fanny's.
That adorable patron HS from the school year was the one who introduced me to the place - she got her round-framed, normal-on-a-grandfather-but-sexy-on-this-facial-bone-structure specs at Fabulous Fanny's on the LES (very much NOT the LES but merely the East Village - a common Columbia mistake, similar to saying "I'm downtown" when you are at 72nd St). "Everyone gets them there," she had told me, and I picked up that "everyone" referred to GSAPP (Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, the only place in the world where you can write a dissertation on Tschumi AND have Jacques Herzog as your studio instructor!). Since the GSAPP table is the one I aspire to eat lunch at one day, or at least the one I want to marry into, I'd scoped out FF's weeks before to decide which Look I wanted. With a legit East Village friend, I prodded her: wiry frames that are barely there, or thick ones? And then opaque or translucent? Should they swallow my face like my sunglasses do, a la Rachel Zoe, or be clear, like someone who is terrified of how his/her faces looks in glasses? Would men's frames be too Randian, or women's frames too Barnard? Do square frames scream ARCHITECTURE! and round ones ART HISTORY!? The round frames made me look identical to an owl with a bit of Cyclops blood in him, but was I permitted the square frames even though I don't spend my days drafting or working in the Apple Store?
After running into three Columbia graduates (one a former Art History major, one Comp Lit, and the last Film Studies) I found a pair of square-ish ones from the back, part of the Spectaculars line, named Rusty, in Tan. I think this they are American Apparel Unisex style; originally I had wanted Dolce & Gabbana frames like Michael Douglas' in Wonderboys, but these will have to do. I only need to use them for staring at the computer and reading so that my eyes don't "strain." What a milquetoast condition.
Now when my regulars enter the library, surely they must think I am a poseur. And I kind of am. I am representing what the library stands for, and that, first and foremost, is pretentious, faux-LES, all-hail-Corbu, appropriated NYU look. My boss likes them, at least, and he should be in Fashion.
http://store.fabulousfannys.com/node/249
Yours,
GA (now with a 0.75 prescription)
Monday, July 19, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Avery Fine Arts and Artchitecture Sanctuary
Fucking J from the architecture school just plastered his squat, sweaty body up against the front door to the library - presumably his charming way of saying Hello - and now every time I look out longingly all I stare at is the greasy smudge his torso left against the glass. This is my current perspective on the outside world.
These past couple of weeks have been quite, quite horrendous, in a very self-indulgent way: failed relationships before they even start; roommate fights; too much heat, not enough sleep, no desire to eat (somewhat untrue); cigarettes, white wine, red wine; family problems, canceled dates, worn friendships; stomachaches, headaches, heartaches; self-deprecation, self-deprivation, guilt, silence, blood, sweat, tears, and ice cream, lots of ice cream. Save for the cigarettes, none of this superfluous bullshit that I call "life" is at Avery. None of that meaningless drama. Yes, naturally, there is sexual tension in every cubicle and smirk and inquisitive stare, but it is safe. Not innocent, but not destructive; everything is acted out in gesture and double entendre and library etiquette, whispered from ear to ear. No one going to fuck you over in a red zone.
A couple of posts ago, I wrote about how terrifying it was that many of the patrons who are here day after day during the summer are the same people who are here day after day during the academic year. They never leave, they don't have lives, they have bad social skills, they are alone, etc etc. Then I thought, why do I come here? Yes, I am aware that the main reason is because I get paid to. But I can get paid to show up at other places - Anthropologie, Books of Wonder (best children's bookstore in the city, with an impressive original Tin Tin collection and a yet more impressive band of DILFs), maybe even the ICP someday (LOLZZZ). Fundamentally I come here for the same reason that you all come here: to escape. Outside of Avery is 100 degree heat and people. Inside of Avery is sweet, sweet A/C and books. Instead of the perpetual cyclical "why did I do that?" "why don't you love me?" (Beyoncé shout out, natch) "how will I fix this?" "will things ever be the same?" train of thought, you think about things beyond yourself here! You research artists and theories and eras that you never knew or don't understand or never lived through so that you can get completely outside of your droll, depressing life. You come here to learn about things that are more important than Life's little "learning lessons," aka regrettable, irreversible mistakes. You make your research a part of your world and your life, one much more enriching and engaging than boyz and other Columbia things. And eventually none of the shit you pulled will be memorable, and you will move on. Avery makes this happen. This is what Avery is for - to escape your problems by learning about ones that actually have impact. It's an interesting place. There are interesting things here that you won't find in many places Outside.
Some, though. As I was shifting books in the NH section (finally you can walk through the aisle without a helmet! And you can actually get to the Jeff Wall books! Quick, someone do a thesis!), noticing museum catalogue after museum catalogue, I forgot how much I liked going to museums. When I was a freshman, hating NYU, I used to take long, brooding walks from my dorm at 10th Street and 5th Avenue up 72 blocks to the Met every Sunday. It's so huge, of course, that I could go to a new section every time I was there. Then I'd go to the café, get lunch, read. Before I left I'd usually check out the Hudson River School paintings because I really liked them at the time, and still do, not even so much for their intricacy but for their sheer vastness. The last time I went to the Met was to breeze through the Costume Institute's American Woman or whatever exhibit, which wasn't that good and which was followed by my breezing through one room of the Picasso exhibit before the museum closed. I hate breezing past art. They made it for you to look at, damn it. Where did that passion go? Into the Hudson River, where my thesis will eventually lie? Into my hatred of Clement Greenberg? Even though I work where I do, surrounded by books featuring the works of practically every artist and architect who has ever practiced, I forget how much art matters. Much, much more than such-and-such kissed such-and-such and what-will-I-wear-to-the-prom (I still sometimes wonder). So instead of complaining to everyone I know about my fake problems and making them wary of my company, I'll just stake out a place here and educate myself.
Germany vs Spain,
GA.
These past couple of weeks have been quite, quite horrendous, in a very self-indulgent way: failed relationships before they even start; roommate fights; too much heat, not enough sleep, no desire to eat (somewhat untrue); cigarettes, white wine, red wine; family problems, canceled dates, worn friendships; stomachaches, headaches, heartaches; self-deprecation, self-deprivation, guilt, silence, blood, sweat, tears, and ice cream, lots of ice cream. Save for the cigarettes, none of this superfluous bullshit that I call "life" is at Avery. None of that meaningless drama. Yes, naturally, there is sexual tension in every cubicle and smirk and inquisitive stare, but it is safe. Not innocent, but not destructive; everything is acted out in gesture and double entendre and library etiquette, whispered from ear to ear. No one going to fuck you over in a red zone.
A couple of posts ago, I wrote about how terrifying it was that many of the patrons who are here day after day during the summer are the same people who are here day after day during the academic year. They never leave, they don't have lives, they have bad social skills, they are alone, etc etc. Then I thought, why do I come here? Yes, I am aware that the main reason is because I get paid to. But I can get paid to show up at other places - Anthropologie, Books of Wonder (best children's bookstore in the city, with an impressive original Tin Tin collection and a yet more impressive band of DILFs), maybe even the ICP someday (LOLZZZ). Fundamentally I come here for the same reason that you all come here: to escape. Outside of Avery is 100 degree heat and people. Inside of Avery is sweet, sweet A/C and books. Instead of the perpetual cyclical "why did I do that?" "why don't you love me?" (Beyoncé shout out, natch) "how will I fix this?" "will things ever be the same?" train of thought, you think about things beyond yourself here! You research artists and theories and eras that you never knew or don't understand or never lived through so that you can get completely outside of your droll, depressing life. You come here to learn about things that are more important than Life's little "learning lessons," aka regrettable, irreversible mistakes. You make your research a part of your world and your life, one much more enriching and engaging than boyz and other Columbia things. And eventually none of the shit you pulled will be memorable, and you will move on. Avery makes this happen. This is what Avery is for - to escape your problems by learning about ones that actually have impact. It's an interesting place. There are interesting things here that you won't find in many places Outside.
Some, though. As I was shifting books in the NH section (finally you can walk through the aisle without a helmet! And you can actually get to the Jeff Wall books! Quick, someone do a thesis!), noticing museum catalogue after museum catalogue, I forgot how much I liked going to museums. When I was a freshman, hating NYU, I used to take long, brooding walks from my dorm at 10th Street and 5th Avenue up 72 blocks to the Met every Sunday. It's so huge, of course, that I could go to a new section every time I was there. Then I'd go to the café, get lunch, read. Before I left I'd usually check out the Hudson River School paintings because I really liked them at the time, and still do, not even so much for their intricacy but for their sheer vastness. The last time I went to the Met was to breeze through the Costume Institute's American Woman or whatever exhibit, which wasn't that good and which was followed by my breezing through one room of the Picasso exhibit before the museum closed. I hate breezing past art. They made it for you to look at, damn it. Where did that passion go? Into the Hudson River, where my thesis will eventually lie? Into my hatred of Clement Greenberg? Even though I work where I do, surrounded by books featuring the works of practically every artist and architect who has ever practiced, I forget how much art matters. Much, much more than such-and-such kissed such-and-such and what-will-I-wear-to-the-prom (I still sometimes wonder). So instead of complaining to everyone I know about my fake problems and making them wary of my company, I'll just stake out a place here and educate myself.
Germany vs Spain,
GA.
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