May 2010
1 post
New York Man Dates Less Attractive Woman
Nate Thompson and his girlfriend Victoria Bridges* are, in many ways, a typical New York couple in their late 20s: He’s a banker; she works a nonprofit that helps the homeless; they share a garden apartment in Boerum Hill; they have a puppy named Skip; they met through friends at a holiday party three years ago; they slept together on the fourth date.
But Victoria is noticeably, well,...
August 2008
2 posts
Brooklyn Woman Takes a Stand Against Elaborate...
Last Wednesday, Nick Halloran, a 26-year-old copywriter at the advertising agency JWT, sent out an email about his upcoming farewell party. He didn’t think twice about giving his invitees—a carefully cultivated list of co-workers, college buddies, ex-girlfriends, women he’d slept with two or more times, bassists, and writers with whom he’d corresponded but never actually...
Testing her Patience: Aging Intellectual Defies...
Against all advice to the contrary, Kate Callahan bought the Princeton Review GRE practice book.
“So there,” said the 34-year-old, who currently works for a non-profit, with a nervous laugh.
It was on a recent Wednesday that Ms. Callahan, who hasn’t taken a test in almost 15 years, went to her local Barnes & Noble to pick up a book on how to crack the Graduate Record Examination, better...
Drunk Woman Mistakes Authentic Preppy for Ironic...
Nate Orosco’s “Dirty Thirty” birthday party was, by all accounts, a success. Not least of all for Monica Dehner, who met a cute boy somewhere in the vicinity of her fourth glass of limoncello. “It was a party, so it’s not like we went that deep,” says the 29-year-old graphic designer of Clay Walker, a 27-year-old law school student. “But I think we talked about Casper, my French bulldog, and how...
July 2008
19 posts
It's All In Her Head! Twentysomething Troubled By...
Something strange started happening to Carolyn Murphy soon after she began working at the New York City law firm of Kurklestern and Branz. Every day at 6p.m., the 25-year-old junior associate would begin her walk to the subway, and every day, midway through her journey, she would find herself humming a tune. The song was “It’s a Shame About Ray,” by the now-defunct band The...
Cheers to That! Woman and Colleague Make Drink...
On a recent Monday, in the garden of Flatbush Farm in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Sonya Swartz and Jena Lorenzo did something they never do with colleagues: sit down, order a glass of lambrusco and a mojito, and drink them. Also: They talked.
“Normally, when I make plans to have drinks with someone in my industry, the day we’re supposed to get together arrives and we both just blow it off,” said Ms....
More Workers Opting Out of Holiday Parties Early,...
It may be only July, but Kevin Masterson has decided he’s not going to his company’s holiday party this year. “Every year they have a theme,” Mr. Masterson, who is 32, said via telephone from his cubicle at a marketing consulting firm in Boulder, Colo. “Last year was Tiki. The year before was Paparazzi, and they had a red carpet and people taking photos and...
East Coast Native Does Not Find Big Sur Magical
In his first year of dating a native Californian, Oliver Goodstein found that there were many perks. When he and his girlfriend, Rachel Offerman-Simms, went to visit her family in Aptos last December, Goodstein was pleased to find out that the temperature was in the seventies, tomatoes grew year-round, and backyard pools were not uncommon. “And, it was so cool, Amy and...
Enough is Enough! One Woman Takes a Stand Against...
For Susie Atkinson, July 8th had gotten off to an auspicious start. That morning, her Nike + told her she had run her fastest mile yet around Prospect Park, her Rogan jeans didn’t feel tight, and the Mario Badescu Drying Lotion was really working wonders on her complexion. In other words: all was in place for her big meeting. Atkinson, a 25-year-old Park Slope resident, had a meeting with a...
In the Hamptons, It's a Normal Summer—With a...
After her Saturday morning workout, Melissa Nardone was picking up her usual Buff Monkey smoothie at the Soup Man restaurant in Hampton Bays. As the counter girl, Jessica Russo, 15, handed over the frothy strawberry-and-banana concoction, Ms. Nardone said brightly, “Enchanté!” With that she swiveled on her flamingo-tinted Nike’s and walked out to her silver Hyundai Santa Fe. Ms....
iDoNotWant! Young Man Says "No, Thanks" to Latest...
Mark Dempsey had read all the breathless pre-launch hype and the early reviews (Mossberg, Pogue, Gizmodo, etc.). He’d planned his day on Friday carefully: He’d wake up at 5 a.m., ride his fixed-gear bike to the Apple store in Soho from his apartment in Williamsburg, wait in line, get his iPhone, and be at his job as the marketing manager for a record label by 11, when everyone else...
Don't Call it a Comeback! Patchouli, Long...
“Here, smell this,” says Cecelia Louche, proffering a slim forearm accented with tattoos of nautical stars, swallows, and a portrait of her deceased grandmother. “It’s patchouli oil. Doesn’t is smell amazing?” Patchouli, once the official scent of the Summer of Love, is finding favor with a new generation. Ms. Louche takes a sip of her Norwegian Egg Coffee at...
Brooklyn, Ahoy! Young Lass Decides to Call a New...
Haley Goldberg sat in the window of Tazza, the cafe on Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights, her long, chemically straightened dark brown hair pulled back neatly in a ponytail. She wore a red Diane von Furstenberg sundress and Tory Burch flats, and a Theory cardigan was draped on her chair. She was silent for a few moments after a reporter brought her a skim latte, and almost absentmindedly swirled in...
In the Hamptons, It's a Short-Suited Summer
Madeleine Carmichael boarded the 6:30 PM Long Island Rail Road train at the Hamptons Bays station and sighed as she began the Sunday night ritual of looking for a seat. She walked through two cars before finally finding a spot between two Hasidic men returning from a smörgasbord at Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach. As she pulled the necessities of modern single-woman travel from her tote...
Ooooooh, FACE! A Facebook Status Update Gets the...
This morning, at 8:57 AM, Rachel Zerwicki did what she always does when she wakes up: Lean over her futon, grab her G4 laptop, and log onto Facebook to check out what all her friends have been doing since she went to bed at midnight. On this Tuesday, Ms. Zerwicki saw that Jonas Ramon, her ex-boyfriend, had updated his status.
And so Ms. Zerwicki decided to do something different: she refused to...
Sans Vowels, "Yrs" Is Not Abbreviated in its...
Best. Kind Regards. Warmly. Yours Truly. When was the last time a polite salutation got anyone’s attention? When meeting a new coworker from the Venice office over email, Brooklyn copywriter Kerri LaRace was struck by one. David Campbell, her west coast office’s new project manager, had sent her a brief introductory email. “The email was polite, but unremarkable,” LaRace...
The New White-Collar Cool-Off
Central Park was just coming awake last Wednesday — the calls of the warblers, sparrows, vireos, tanagers and even a rare thrush draping the morning in a dappled canopy of birdsong — as Michael Anson sat down on a bench near the 85th street transverse. On most weekdays there’d be nothing remarkable about a retired man relaxing on a bench halfway through his brisk morning walk....
Discerning Diners Are Telling Cows Milk To MOOve...
Late last year, Orchid Wheeler, 29, was perusing the endless cheese aisle at Fairway, contemplating whether or not she should buy the Brie or sample the sheeps milk cheese from the Pyrenees. “I’d read somewhere that cows milk has been linked to breast cancer,” Ms. Wheeler said, “so I decided to go with the sheeps milk. I haven’t looked back since.”
And Ms....
Can It! The Ladies of Manhattan Make a Mad Dash to...
A couple of weeks ago, 30-year-old editor Claire Thompson was on her way to work, transferring between the 2/3 and the Q train at Times Square, when she suddenly really, really had to go. Ms. Thompson made some quick calculations in her head: if she made it to the platform in less than a minute, and the train was waiting, she would be at 23rd Street in less than 10 minutes, and then it would be a...
Bong-olicious! Pot is Back (Warning: 2 person...
Carly Kandinski was at a fourth of July party when she said yes. To marijuana, that is, that had been passed to her by her boyfriend, Ben Bradley.
“I hadn’t smoked pot in years, even though it’s been offered to me at parties,” said Ms. Kandinski. “But I sucked it down hard, and you know what? It was so fun! I smoked more the next night. And the next!”
Sandy Newton had a similar experience. “I had...
Hipster Lesbians Are Working on Bergen Street
Courtney Golding was on deadline. She decided to go to the new vegan coffee shop on her block to get a tempeh reuben for lunch. While her sandwich was being prepared, she decided to run some errands, picking up a copy of The Secret Diaries of Laura Palmer at used bookstore Unnameable Books and then taking a look around the just opened Brooklyn locale of the girl-friendly sex toy emporium, Toys in...
Perms are Back
Permanent waves, the curly, chemically created hairstyle, haven’t been popular since the 80s, but wandering past a salon one day, Melissa Martin, 30, thought the time was ripe to bring it back.
“I suddenly wanted corkscrew curls,” she said. So she got a spiral perm. Melissa says the look is very now. “It’s retro, like it reminds me of the the girl from Just the Ten...
