Back in the Big City Blues

Phooosh. That's me blowing off the cobwebs.

Um...Is anyone still there?

All of January and most of February went by with me up to my eyeballs in day job work. Shooting and editing and making industrial videos, picking up a few new clients, all the while being sustained by the fact that we (me and a tiny crew) were heading to Trinidad in February to shoot carnival for the crazy Bollywood movie.

I'm back now and having spent the last decade of my life passionately defending living in New York to skeptical Third Worlders, I'm strangely bummed to be here. It could be just the winter blahs. It could be the crummy drive from JFK airport to my Brooklyn pad, a drive lined with sidewalks of dirty snow. Man, from the time the taxi dropped us off, I was ready to chase him, flag him down and head back to the Caribbean.

Or maybe this isn't about winter. Maybe it's about the desire to get immersed in making something more creative than HR videos. At any rate, tonight when I heard Alicia Keys crooning Empire State of Mind, Part Two on the radio, spinning all that honey toned love, I did not "put one hand in the air for the big city", I yelled at her to shut the hell up and changed the damn station.


Photo by Adrian Miles

A Virginless New York City

Virgin Megastore Union Square is going bye bye, following Virgin Times Square and all the other Virgins in the US.

Hubby and I were browsing the liquidation sale last weekend, feeling a little wistful. Before we were thirty-somethings, had kid and reprioritized, the Union Square Virgin was an iconic place in our relationship.

We'd always meet there. It was close enough to his work and my school. A Friday wind down used to be going from listening station to listening station, checking out new releases, arguing about albums, rummaging through a bargain bin. And I'd always have to go down and visit the books and magazines and pretty soon it was two hours later. (On reflection, I am the reason Virgin struggled so much. Two hours and the most I might have bought was an Orangina from the store's coffee shop...)

I guess when the Circuit City next door closed down we should have seen the writing on the wall but Virgin is/was so New York, so filled with its sense of hipness...and as I realized on Saturday finding nothing to buy, so archaic.

The idea of buying CDs from a store seems so retro. The prices are so high. The listening stations so quaint. Why buy an album when you can just buy the track, anyway? We can hear a track playing in Starbucks, identify it through whatever that I-Phone app is and download it in on the spot with the free Wi-Fi.

So goodbye trip to the city and painful quasi-alphabetical search for artist's CD that may or may not be in stock. Brick and mortar is so 1998. This is progress. This is a leveling of the playing field...so why when the sales associate cheerfully rang me up with my purchase ("Black Orpheus" and "When Harry Met Sally" DVDs) did I feel like so sad?