I was in New York every other weekend for a couple of years in the aughts, visiting a boyfriend who lived there and worked in the music industry, which and Angel’s Share was the first bar I went to in that era whose goal was not to be standing room only. I remember walking in the first time, expecting a clamor and finding instead the perfect murmur, the glow of the lighting, the warmth. A place to sit and talk and come away closer than you’d been. It was perfect.
What a loss. But how glad I am that you wrote about it.
I lived in New York for nine years, from 2006-15, and often find myself quietly romanticizing those times despite many of the youthful difficulties you so beautifully capture here; I was always longing to be in a room I wasn’t, I was always just on the edge of overdrawing my account.
I would not trade those times for anything, but when I get especially wistful for them as a now-middle-aged parent in middle-American suburbia, I feel something that I haven’t been able to express but that you summed up perfectly: “the bar may still be there, but I’m not”
I love this so much. It's weird to have settled on "the aughts" as a name, which makes it sound as desolate & longing as I remember being in my 20s listening to a certain kind of music while sitting on a fire escape in a cheap apartment, while I very clearly remember, at the time, people making dumb jokes about how it was impossible to name the decade effectively, everyone trying on "the Naughts" or rolling their eyes at "Naughties", & now I say "the early aughts" & hear "ought, ought, ought" like an echo from a hollow place
oh man, so much here. it's very weird how the pandemic took an inevitable experience ("going out" being a less central part of my life) and changed it from a slow transition to a sharp drop-off. "a relief and a loss," for sure.
I read somewhere that becoming a friend takes 100 hours in adults and becoming a “best friend” takes 200 hours. I’m not sure it’s that’s true or not but there are more than a few nights I’ve had where nothing happened. We sat at a bar, doing nothing but talking shit or examining our pasts and we’ve must have hit a threshold or checked a box. “Okay, now you’re REALLY friends.” It becomes a night we talk about forever, more than the night where I had to get the Uber to pull over on the LIE to throw up or when Mikey left the group chat. It’s the night where nothing happened; maybe there we revealed some truth? Did we just get to 200 hours? How come I remember it so clearly?
I was in New York every other weekend for a couple of years in the aughts, visiting a boyfriend who lived there and worked in the music industry, which and Angel’s Share was the first bar I went to in that era whose goal was not to be standing room only. I remember walking in the first time, expecting a clamor and finding instead the perfect murmur, the glow of the lighting, the warmth. A place to sit and talk and come away closer than you’d been. It was perfect.
What a loss. But how glad I am that you wrote about it.
I lived in New York for nine years, from 2006-15, and often find myself quietly romanticizing those times despite many of the youthful difficulties you so beautifully capture here; I was always longing to be in a room I wasn’t, I was always just on the edge of overdrawing my account.
I would not trade those times for anything, but when I get especially wistful for them as a now-middle-aged parent in middle-American suburbia, I feel something that I haven’t been able to express but that you summed up perfectly: “the bar may still be there, but I’m not”
I love this so much. It's weird to have settled on "the aughts" as a name, which makes it sound as desolate & longing as I remember being in my 20s listening to a certain kind of music while sitting on a fire escape in a cheap apartment, while I very clearly remember, at the time, people making dumb jokes about how it was impossible to name the decade effectively, everyone trying on "the Naughts" or rolling their eyes at "Naughties", & now I say "the early aughts" & hear "ought, ought, ought" like an echo from a hollow place
oh man, so much here. it's very weird how the pandemic took an inevitable experience ("going out" being a less central part of my life) and changed it from a slow transition to a sharp drop-off. "a relief and a loss," for sure.
I love this shit, glad you're back.
"I didn’t belong there; I didn’t belong anywhere."
Oh, honey, tell me about it. 😏
elm
just another woundsday
I read somewhere that becoming a friend takes 100 hours in adults and becoming a “best friend” takes 200 hours. I’m not sure it’s that’s true or not but there are more than a few nights I’ve had where nothing happened. We sat at a bar, doing nothing but talking shit or examining our pasts and we’ve must have hit a threshold or checked a box. “Okay, now you’re REALLY friends.” It becomes a night we talk about forever, more than the night where I had to get the Uber to pull over on the LIE to throw up or when Mikey left the group chat. It’s the night where nothing happened; maybe there we revealed some truth? Did we just get to 200 hours? How come I remember it so clearly?