One Person Trend Stories

Don't Call it a Comeback! Patchouli, Long Forgotten, Was Never Really Gone

“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 Ritual Roasters in the Mission District and explains how she came to be a patchouli wearer just a few weeks ago. “I was buying some Humboldt Fog and grazing the olive bar at Whole Foods when I remembered I was out of lotion,” she says. “I was way too stressed out about finishing up my History of Consciousness application to go to Kiehl’s for some Creme de Corps so I decided to check out the lotions there. I saw this Kiss My Face patchouli lotion that had a peace sign on the front. It was funny, because all the others had a mint leaf or a lemon on them. I tried some and you know what? I loved it. And better still, I knew no one I knew would be wearing it, too.”

The pungent, musky scent has found Ms. Louche no shortage of admirers. Her boyfriend, Tobias Johnson, a printer at a local letter press and multi-instrumentalist in West Oakland noise band The Saragossa Manuscript, has been referring to her endearingly as his “Little Hippie Girl.” More recently, a salesperson at Barney’s showed her approval. “I was trying on this Philip Lim dress on the Co-op floor and I asked if the 6 was too big and the salesgirl was like, ‘Sweetie? What scent are you wearing? Is that the new Etat Libre D’Orange? Did Marni come out with a perfume?’ and I was like, ‘No! It’s patchouli!’ And then I told her I totally had the Built By Wendy high waisted skirt she was wearing at home and she gave me an invite to this clothing swap she promised will be really good.”

To be sure, residents of the Haight-Ashbury district, Reggae on the River attendees, and caucasian men who wear their hair in the dreadlocks style have often favored the unmistakable aroma of patchouli. In fact, Ms. Louche isn’t even the first in her family to dab on the exotic oil. Her mother, Kali Spiritfeather (nee Allison Abernathy), was fond of it in her youth. “I can’t believe Ceci is wearing patchouli,” laughs Ms. Spiritfeather, who was reached on her mobile phone as she was parallel parking her Porsche Cayenne in front of her Bernal Heights victorian. “I’m pretty sure the last time I wore it was when I went to Altamont. And that’s about all that I want to remember from that day.”

Brooklyn, Ahoy! Young Lass Decides to Call a New Borough Home

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 one Splenda. Then, as if awakened out of a dream, she smiled and looked a reporter straight in the eye and said: “I don’t care what my parents say. I’m moving to Brooklyn.”

Ms. Goldberg, who is 23, graduated last year from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in art history and psychology. Since last June, she has been living in a convertible two-bedroom in a doorman building overlooking the East River in Murray Hill. “They’re really nervous,” she said, sighing. “They say that I’m going to get mugged or, God forbid, raped, that Brooklyn doesn’t have any doorman buildings, that there won’t be anywhere for me to park my car [for her 23rd birthday, Ms. Goldberg’s parents got her a Land Rover], and what am I going to do when I want steamed tofu and veggies at 2 a.m.? There won’t be anywhere to deliver to me.”

She dismissed these concerns with a wave of her manicured (Essie Ballet Slippers, with a coat of Mademoiselle) hand. “Look. I’ve done my research. I read New York magazine! It’s not like I’m moving to Queens. Everyone lives in Brooklyn, including Michelle Williams and Keri Russell. And now they even have 24-hour delis here, and also synagogues. I’m not worried.”

To be sure, young people have been moving to the County of Kings in droves for the last 10 years. Still, Ms. Goldberg isn’t actually friends with anyone who’s made the move yet (she did hear that the weird girl in her Modern Art recitation senior year who wore leotards to class had moved to Bushwick, however). That doesn’t bother her, though, and indeed, Ms. Goldberg just might herald a new wave of pioneers. “I was social chair of my sorority at Michigan,” said Ms. Goldberg, who grew up in Syosset. She leaned in and stage-whispered to a reporter, “It’s only a matter of time.”

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 — I-Phone, magazines (UsWeekly, the Times Sunday magazine), Fiji water, lip balm — Ms. Carmichael looked like any number of tired, sunburned travelers returning to the city after a weekend of sun and surf.  Indeed, she was wearing what could be said to be the weekend uniform of a 26 year old young professional: a navy polo shirt, faded cut-off jean shorts and flip-flops.

But Ms. Carmichael, known to her friends as “Maddy,” had a secret; while her fellow-travelers had tucked their swimsuits away in their weekend bags, or left them hanging to dry in the sea air on the laundry line, she was still wearing hers. Beneath her polo shirt and cut offs Ms. Carmichael, with quiet determination, was sporting a Jantzen halter maillot, still damp from an after-lunch dip.

Needless to say, women have been wearing bathing suits beneath their clothing for years. Go to any beach late in the day, as the sun’s rays lose their warmth, and you will see women, young and old, covering up with colorful sun-dresses, pareas and loose-fitting slacks.  But Ms. Carmichael’s decision to, as she called it,  “short suit” herself — basically, to pull on a pair of snug-fitting shorts over one’s bathing suit — represents a generational shift.

“I was at the beach,” said Ms. Carnichael, “and  I’d had a kinda big lunch and two mudslides” — [editor’s note: a cocktail made of light rum, lime juice, triple sec and Cointreau] — “so I figured a swim would be a good way to clear my head before coming back to the craziness of the city. I went in, and then when I got out I couldn’t believe it was almost 6 — I had to catch this train. So I grabbed my cut-offs, like I always do, and put them on, then my shirt, then I got a ride to the station.”

Asked if wearing cozy-fitting cut-offs over a swimsuit confers any advantages, Ms. Carmichael said, “Definitely. You feel like you’re taking a bit of the beach with you — that nice summery feeling stays with you longer.” Plus, she added, “My boyfriend likes it because, when we get together a few days later and I take off my clothes, a clump of sand sometimes falls out of my [buttocks]. My boyfriend reminds people of Bruce Willis on Moonlighting — I mean, because my nickname is Maddy, which was what Cybil Sheperd was called, though she spelled it M-a-d-d-i-e, so anyway people think of me —Maddy—and they think of Cybil Sheperd, and then it just sort of fits that he’s David, which isn’t his name, I mean, it’s the name Bruce Willis had on the show.  His real name is Chris.”

As the train pulled into Penn Station two hours and 31 minutes later, the Short-Suited Girl of Summer 2008 rode the escalator to the Eighth Avenue entrance and hailed a taxi. Uptown.

Ooooooh, FACE! A Facebook Status Update Gets the Whatevs

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 look at what it said.

“I just know he’s updating his status for my benefit and I refuse to get sucked in,” said Ms. Zerwicki, a 29-year-old handbag designer in Cobble Hill, as she glanced surreptitiously at the screen. “It’s like, I know he has 347 friends, and we haven’t spoken since we graduated from college 8 years ago, but still: I know that he’s just trying to rub it in that I’m single and childless and $80,000 in debt from the PhD program I dropped out of. He’s always updating his status. Or adding new pictures of himself and his wife—the director of a nonprofit for kids with cancer and a yoga teacher on the side—snowboarding in Vail. Or of him with his two blonde, curly-haired kids eating mussels on the beach and smiling. It’s like, I am 100% positive he’s just adding all this stuff to mess with my mind. It’s so typical.”

To be sure, Ms. Zerwicki is not the first person to ignore annoying, inane status updates like one she saw this morning from her friend Dany Rotundo that said “Dany Rotundo is.”  But as someone who is still hung up on her ex—who isn’t really even her ex but a guy she sometimes slept with in college who told her repeatedly he didn’t want to date her—she is taking an extra step: Studiously avoiding her ex’s status updates and profile page, except when it is late at night and her boyfriend is asleep and she is drunk. Which is pretty often. 

Sans Vowels, "Yrs" Is Not Abbreviated in its Appeal

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 remembers. Save for one thing: he signed it, “Yrs, David.” 

Suddenly, LaRace was intrigued. “I hadn’t seen anyone use ‘yrs’ since I was at Oberlin! And in a work context? That was pretty cool,” she says, adding, “I felt like he was saying a lot with just one word. Maybe that he had seen Archers of Loaf open for Weezer or he had watched every episode of My So-Called Life. Maybe he owned back issues of Ben Is Dead or used to carry a lunchbox ironically in high school.” 

To be sure, “yrs” is not the only salutation that can convey an instant camaraderie between sender and recipient. Recently, “XO” or its Gossip Girl-approved sibling, “XOXO,” have seen newfound popularity. “Oh my God, sure. If he had singed it ‘XOXO,’ I would have been all ‘I’m Chuck Bass,’” laughs LaRace. “But now David’s a total enigma to me. I Facebook friended him immediately so I could check out his friends.”

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. But a closer look would have revealed that Mr. Anson was shirtless: wearing just a pair of pressed khaki pants, white New Balance walking shoes and tortoise shell sunglasses. His shirt, however, wasn’t far: it was slung over the back of the bench, a pale pink Brooks Brothers button-down draped in a manner which, to at least one passer-by, evoked  Christo’s ethereal 2005 exhibit The Gates.

Mr. Anson is not, of course, the first man to relieve himself of his shirt on a hot New York morning. Stroll through Washington Heights, Brownsville and other boisterous neighborhoods any time day or night in July or August and you will see that the men of New York are not immune to the pleasure of allowing a summer’s breeze to play across one’s bare chest.

But Mr. Anson is part of a new trend, of retired investment bankers going shirtless in summer. This  despite having the means to spend the hotter months encased in a moving chamber of private air-conditioning, from centrally-cooled CentraklPark West co-op to chilled taxi to the always-deliciously-frigid Jitney.

“I was walking, as I do most mornings,” Mr. Anson said as he sipped a bottle of Poland Spring procured from a vendor. “And, as you can see, it’s brutally hot. I decided to sit down for a minute or two, and my shirt was really feeling sticky, you know that feeling? And well, first, it’s early, so I won’t see many people. And two, I figured, OK, it’s not the most dignified thing in the world, but I’m in decent shape and I don’t think I’m breaking any laws.” He took a long pull on his Poland Spring as his gray chest hairs glistened. “And it’s nice, sitting here, in the shade of a tree, on a bench,  resting a bit, with a nice breeze while my shirt dries out.”

Asked if his wife knew, Mr. Anson gave a queer smile, scratched his right ear, and replied, “Well I’ll be damned.”

Discerning Diners Are Telling Cows Milk To MOOve Over

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. Wheeler’s not alone. “I started having these dreams about cows,” said Cara Bowen, 33. “My visions were filled with engorged udders trapped in those cruel mechanical milking contraptions.” Ms. Bowen was already a lacto vegetarian so she decided to go whole hog and become vegan. “I don’t even miss it. Soy milk is just as satisfying, and it’s not nearly as fattening.”

To be sure, most people will continue to drink what Ms. Wheeler calls “the devil’s beverage,” but what the anti-cows milk enthusiasts lack in numbers, they make up for in vehemence. There are entire websites devoted to warning people about the dangers of milk — websites that receive as many as five visitors a day.

“Whenever I think about going back to regular old American cheese,” Ms. Bowen says, “I just remember that plaintive mooing from my dreams. It will keep me away from cow products forever.”

Can It! The Ladies of Manhattan Make a Mad Dash to the John... in the Subway

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 three-minute walk to work, and another couple minutes waiting for the elevator… She started to panic, envisioning a wet, warm stream of urine dripping down her leg and onto her Miu Miu pumps.

“That was when I noticed a door to a women’s restroom—inside the subway station!” she said. The door was miraculously unlocked, and Ms. Thompson ducked inside. She was pleasantly surprised to find a clean stall, stocked with toilet paper, and a working sink, with soap. True, there was a homeless woman sleeping in the corner, but Ms. Thompson took care not to wake her.

Since then, Ms. Thompson has used the restrooms in several other subway stations around Manhattan, including Union Square and the 72nd Street stop on the Upper West Side. “They’re really convenient—you go, and then you can just hop on the subway and continue your journey,” she explained. “Some of them close after midnight, though, so you should plan ahead if you’re going to rely on a subway bathroom.”

To be sure, using a subway bathroom isn’t for everyone. Sarah Mintz, 24, an assistant at a fashion magazine, said she would never use a subway bathroom. She has, however, gone several times inside the Old Navy in Soho.

Bong-olicious! Pot is Back (Warning: 2 person trend)

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 no interest in dope,” said Ms. Newton, a lithe blonde with a lilting voice. “But when I got engaged, all my friends started giving me packets of ganja! I’ve only done it once in the last 6 months but let me tell you: I like it.”

All over New York City, 28-32 years olds who thought they’d given up non-prescription drugs long ago, are rediscovering the joys of marijuana, also known as pot, the doob, dope, mary jane, and by other synonyms not printable in a family newspaper.

To be sure, Ms. Kandinski and Ms. Newton are not the first people to inhale the reefer. Since the ‘60s, with the hippie revolution, marijuana has been a favorite among all kinds. What’s different now is that these Gen Y/X’ers, who acted really cool about it when they smoked pot regularly back in college, or 5 years ago, or maybe 5 months ago, are now acting giddy and weird and like they are doing something really naughty by taking a toke on the occasional Saturday night even though they don’t have kids or work the next day. 

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 Babeland.

At each store, Golding, a longtime Bergen Street resident, noted one unifying force: lesbians working who were wearing the accoutrements one usually associates with hipsterdom. “They we wearing things like Nike Air Force Ones, No Age t-shirts, and oversized plastic eyeglasses,” says Golding, 30. “All of them looked a bit like J.D. Samson from Le Tigre. One had a tattoo on her neck.”

To be sure, lesbians who have tattoos and, perhaps, piercings, have long worked on a variety of streets in Brooklyn.

“That sounds just like my block,” notes Jeremy Kiehl, a 28-year-old graphic designer. “But I live on Union, near Tea Lounge and Park Slope Yoga Center and the Coop.”