Gotta add my own two cents even though the copper in a penny exceeds the value of one. I think I can relate to the previous comment more than your piece as I’ve never lived in NYC and only visited it once. I sure don’t know even one supermodels’ name but now I guess I do. Still don’t care however. The very idea of ad execs just makes me sick. Corporate America has virtue signaling down to a science all the while fueling the abject poverty they fully endorse around the world. It’s all fun and games until the shareholders profits actually dips even a smidge. Wouldn’t it be lovely if CEO’s took a hit when they nose dive a corp making stupid mistakes instead of just tanking retirees income?
Apr 26, 2023·edited Apr 27, 2023Liked by Cintra Wilson
Sympathy for people who are suffering is being human on easy mode. Sympathy for people who are shitting on the precipitously less privileged is hard mode. Even just dialing down my knee-jerk hatred for advertising executives makes me feel like I need a long lunch break.
Apr 26, 2023·edited Apr 27, 2023Liked by Cintra Wilson
That's a valuable rage well spent in print. --- Good words for a bad faith in action that's growing its poisoned fellowship every moment it seems....
Manhattan has turned, my take, like the country generally, into a price-gated community surrounded by poor servant encampments and disaster zones like Flint and East Palestine. And it's the same elsewhere, though not quite as stark in some ways, but only because all those Wall Street jobs aren't there, only small Wall Street outposts like Dallas or Louisville or Denver or Atlanta--- or wherever the cash flows out of the low LOW hinterlands--- up. ---
I lived at New York, mostly on the lower east side, for 8 years of the 80s and a year of the mid- 70s and spent the 90s and 00s visiting 6, 8 times a year at 57th street... what was once a class-race-ethnic wild, uncultivated, varied urban social-system is now, it seems to me, sadly, a nearly uniform Borg-ville nest of the well off Professional Managerial Class and their masters, the super rich, and wealthy tourists--- where I think you'd be safe reckoning their hive minds are exactly as conforming, and boring and predictable --- and self back patting as their overpriced masks and costumes would indicate...anyhow, buzz buzz buzz....
And anyway, anyhow, there's a quote from Marshall McLuhan, "Clothing: the first social aggression".... or, something like that. Well, last time I was on the upper east side about 2013, I think, I was reminded of that --- a dull, stupid, monotonous, inattentive aggression based first in costuming--- everywhere I looked. And in concurrence with the times, I suppose, it seemed sexless and sterile to me. I mean, if there was any sex, it seemed to be set off--- "in quotes" somehow. --- Where once New York was a great place for mixing and matching and learning and making and desire and lust and fucking. --- Without fucking I'd have had no place to stay half the time for my first year in New York. I was like a Judy Tenuta joke, " Did you ever go out with somebody because you were too lazy to commit suicide?... " Well, I slept with women cause I had no place to stay.-And because it was fun!-- Does anybody fuck in New York anymore? It used to be terrible AND fun living in New York, all at the same time. But I get the impression it's become a slog and a drag and an ordeal of making the rent so it can trickle up to somebody Worse than Donald Trump--- and being bullied and keeping 6 foot distance and talking about your identity instead of having actual hot human intercourse unless it's somehow become digitized and transactional.
Well, there's my "off the top o me hed" reaction to your prompt. As weird as it is. I am obviously an old crazy theatre guy. ---Nobody's more surprised than me I'm this old.--- & It's like I got stung by a bee and had a crazy big swollen faced reaction.... reading your piece.
Apr 26, 2023·edited Apr 26, 2023Liked by Cintra Wilson
"There goes the .0000000009 percent, I say, when I see Shalom and her Man.
All the looks, all the cash and all the fun, apparently. Glad somebody's having everything all at once. I just wish the rest of it all were more evenly distributed, like everything else in America and the world."
the fact cintra that you redistribute your own breath-taking prose and imagination and worldly gifts and for free and let morons like me comment no less MORE than makes up for ALOT of inequity on this eon-rock-cooled orb we call home...albeit sure with all that said we have a fucking long way to
go....havent even got to the Woolworth subject matter but damn the foreplay is astounding and i mean that and must have built "Salon" into some kind of powerhouse it is? or was? but i'd heard of it
carry on as csny might say and keep digging thru the atic of your brilliance it saves time for for lazy and distracted impatient people like me in hunting it down on google etc.
Nice. Really enjoyed the prose though I've never lived in New York, don't recognize the name of any fashion model, and rarely shopped at Woolworth's. I've framed the first paragraph and set it on my mantle.
Gotta add my own two cents even though the copper in a penny exceeds the value of one. I think I can relate to the previous comment more than your piece as I’ve never lived in NYC and only visited it once. I sure don’t know even one supermodels’ name but now I guess I do. Still don’t care however. The very idea of ad execs just makes me sick. Corporate America has virtue signaling down to a science all the while fueling the abject poverty they fully endorse around the world. It’s all fun and games until the shareholders profits actually dips even a smidge. Wouldn’t it be lovely if CEO’s took a hit when they nose dive a corp making stupid mistakes instead of just tanking retirees income?
Sympathy for people who are suffering is being human on easy mode. Sympathy for people who are shitting on the precipitously less privileged is hard mode. Even just dialing down my knee-jerk hatred for advertising executives makes me feel like I need a long lunch break.
That's a valuable rage well spent in print. --- Good words for a bad faith in action that's growing its poisoned fellowship every moment it seems....
Manhattan has turned, my take, like the country generally, into a price-gated community surrounded by poor servant encampments and disaster zones like Flint and East Palestine. And it's the same elsewhere, though not quite as stark in some ways, but only because all those Wall Street jobs aren't there, only small Wall Street outposts like Dallas or Louisville or Denver or Atlanta--- or wherever the cash flows out of the low LOW hinterlands--- up. ---
I lived at New York, mostly on the lower east side, for 8 years of the 80s and a year of the mid- 70s and spent the 90s and 00s visiting 6, 8 times a year at 57th street... what was once a class-race-ethnic wild, uncultivated, varied urban social-system is now, it seems to me, sadly, a nearly uniform Borg-ville nest of the well off Professional Managerial Class and their masters, the super rich, and wealthy tourists--- where I think you'd be safe reckoning their hive minds are exactly as conforming, and boring and predictable --- and self back patting as their overpriced masks and costumes would indicate...anyhow, buzz buzz buzz....
And anyway, anyhow, there's a quote from Marshall McLuhan, "Clothing: the first social aggression".... or, something like that. Well, last time I was on the upper east side about 2013, I think, I was reminded of that --- a dull, stupid, monotonous, inattentive aggression based first in costuming--- everywhere I looked. And in concurrence with the times, I suppose, it seemed sexless and sterile to me. I mean, if there was any sex, it seemed to be set off--- "in quotes" somehow. --- Where once New York was a great place for mixing and matching and learning and making and desire and lust and fucking. --- Without fucking I'd have had no place to stay half the time for my first year in New York. I was like a Judy Tenuta joke, " Did you ever go out with somebody because you were too lazy to commit suicide?... " Well, I slept with women cause I had no place to stay.-And because it was fun!-- Does anybody fuck in New York anymore? It used to be terrible AND fun living in New York, all at the same time. But I get the impression it's become a slog and a drag and an ordeal of making the rent so it can trickle up to somebody Worse than Donald Trump--- and being bullied and keeping 6 foot distance and talking about your identity instead of having actual hot human intercourse unless it's somehow become digitized and transactional.
Well, there's my "off the top o me hed" reaction to your prompt. As weird as it is. I am obviously an old crazy theatre guy. ---Nobody's more surprised than me I'm this old.--- & It's like I got stung by a bee and had a crazy big swollen faced reaction.... reading your piece.
Thanks for the swelling.
"There goes the .0000000009 percent, I say, when I see Shalom and her Man.
All the looks, all the cash and all the fun, apparently. Glad somebody's having everything all at once. I just wish the rest of it all were more evenly distributed, like everything else in America and the world."
the fact cintra that you redistribute your own breath-taking prose and imagination and worldly gifts and for free and let morons like me comment no less MORE than makes up for ALOT of inequity on this eon-rock-cooled orb we call home...albeit sure with all that said we have a fucking long way to
go....havent even got to the Woolworth subject matter but damn the foreplay is astounding and i mean that and must have built "Salon" into some kind of powerhouse it is? or was? but i'd heard of it
carry on as csny might say and keep digging thru the atic of your brilliance it saves time for for lazy and distracted impatient people like me in hunting it down on google etc.
xox
That was the perfect nightcap ☺️
Nice. Really enjoyed the prose though I've never lived in New York, don't recognize the name of any fashion model, and rarely shopped at Woolworth's. I've framed the first paragraph and set it on my mantle.
Damn. You were a fire-drake on this one, Wilson. Perfectly poised. Impeccable writing. And that style.
“Tang dynasty finger bowl.” Priceless, for all of us who know what Tang was.
Wonderful
“entitled-to-your-rapt-attention”: I gotta remember THAT adjective!
Thank you Cintra!