The opening of the pizza place was awaited with a mix of excitement and trepidation: my one roommate worried that it would bring rats and flies (and, already having some serious mice and roach issues, we aren’t exactly bereft of vermin), that our apartment would smell like pizza, and then WE would smell like pizza, and wherever we went people would smell us and suddenly want pizza. But my other roommate and I were excited at the convenience. Who doesn’t like pizza to be so close?

The rats/flies/smell factors haven’t materialized… yet (”Wait until summer,” my roommate warns, “it’s gonna be gross.”). But the pizza place isn’t exactly a godsend, either.

First of all, it’s not very good pizza. It’s passable. If you’re starving, it isn’t repulsive. The cheese is rubbery and the sauce is entirely indistinguised. And there’s really good pizza just a block up. My roommate thinks it’s in poor taste for us to buy pizza a block away and tries to hide it when she comes back, but I, on the other hand, take the long way and march right PAST the guys downstairs, hoping they’ll see me with it and get a clue.

Second, it closes at 11:30 PM, 12 AM every night which, hello? Who eats pizza before 2 AM on a Friday, anyway? Isn’t that the best time to eat it? The OTHER pizza place has welcomed me at 2:30 and 3 in the morning and damn, was I ever grateful.

But last night I came home and was ravenous and couldn’t even think of taking any extra steps, so on my way up I bought a slice. My roommate returned an hour later, also starving, and went downstairs. Midnight found us sprawled out on our respective couches, indigested and grumpy and not entirely sated, either. We paid for our laziness. I think we both realized it’s worth the walk.

Does anyone else live above/near a food place they don’t like? Does anyone else’s corner deli charge way more for milk than the supermarket? Why do we feel these obligations to our local guys when they’re actually hosing us? Or am I the only one?

In other words, not much to report from the Slope. If I actually manage to get out of my pajamas and slippers I’ll update again, but… at this point it seems unlikely.

At my last job we did a toy drive, too. They instituted the “unwrapped gifts only” rule because apparently people would wrap up old, half-empty bottles of lotion and drop them into the box. Having an unwrapped gift means it will be seen as you drop it in, so don’t go through the recycle bin before you leave the house, ok?

People can be such jerks.

It’s a beautiful fall day and down on Wall Street the suits are standing in line at the lunch trucks, most of them with their jackets off and identical from behind (white shirt, black pants, closely-cropped hair). It’s like a Museum of Business down there, I almost laughed. I only have experience at not-for-profits and everything about Wall St. seems antithetical to everything I’ve experienced in a job. This where the Real Work gets done. I thought, tourists should come here instead of Times Square. Then I turned the corner and the NYSE was in front of me, and between me and it there they were, taking pictures, taking turns passing the camera around so they could each get a shot with them in front of the building. Beat me to it.

Unless avian flu kills off the other candidates in the next few days, I most likely won’t be working on Wall Street, but it is a nice place to visit, to remind me of the uselessness of my Liberal Arts degree.

Flip-flop weather is over.

No, it’s true. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but if you haven’t noticed, it’s 50 degrees out there. I have seen scarves, gloves, and knitted hats already make appearances on the street. Hipsters have begun piling their sweatshirts on under their blazers to protect against the cold. It’s time to switch to your fleece-lined Louis Vuitton bag to shove your tiny little dog into so he won’t get hypothermia, and it’s time to put your damn feet away. I don’t care if your pedicure from a week ago still looks fresh, or if it’s so fresh you’re still walking around with toilet paper twined between your toes. There will be no more flip-flops from here on, until at least Memorial Day.

In other words, bring out the Uggs.

That is all.

Sincerely,

Nora

I’d like to append my previous post about there being all different New Yorks, and add to the current New Yorks all the remnants of past New Yorks, which also exist, between the cracks, and poke their heads up from time to time to remind us who lived here before, and what the city might have been like for them.

But all that’s behind us, for the time being. I had family in from out of town this weekend - my sister, a freshman at college; and a wealthy older cousin from the West Coast who came bearing theater tickets and reservations at expensive, top-of-shiny-building-type restaurants. It continually amazes me how many New Yorks there really are. When my cousin said she would love to live in New York for six months, I could see what it would be for her: Broadway shows; shopping on Madison Avenue; and dinners in the kinds of places where you have eight different waiters, a new one each time your water glass needs refilling. She would barely be aware of my New York - going to see friends in plays on the fifth floor of some walk-up on 10th Avenue (or the basement of a school), eating Chinese take-out on the floor. A spacious studio on the Upper West side instead of my two roommates and my bedroom that’s barely bigger than a bed. Taking cabs instead of waiting twenty minutes for the R. Whole Foods instead of the deli.

I like my New York. If I could afford hers, I might like that, too. I like all New Yorks. I like those moments on the street when I see people who clearly inhabit a city very different from my own, and I wonder what they think when they pass me by, or if they notice me at all.

At some point the conversation turned, as so many do these days, towards blogs. My cousin’s boyfriend reads many blogs, often before he reads the actual news.

“I don’t know,” my cousin said, “I don’t know if I would trust what I read [in a blog]. I mean, who knows who’s writing it?”

Touche.

Another good way to look and feel productive is to have about eight different windows open: my resume, a job-search website, the Times, Television Without Pity, a blog or two, and a few things I can’t afford at the moment but really want.

Damn. Look at all that stuff I’m doing. I hardly have *time* for work.

And now I’m back. Unemployed but not entirely unhappy about it, with all the NYC- and Brooklyn-love back in my system. And I’ve made it a goal to post 2x a week, especially while I’m not, ahem, working. So get ready. I am going to seek out every fun thing there is to do on a weekday that doesn’t cost anything, and if that means I do nothing but watch “Judge Judy,” well, I’ll have post about that then.

In the meantime…

What I learned from my siesta:

In Texas, Pabst Blue Ribbon is called “Lone Star.”

They eat tacos for breakfast. They call them “breakfast tacos.”

Texas pride may exceed New York pride. The University of Texas’s colors are white and orange, and on game day it’s astounding how many orange t-shirts you see on the street. And it’s, like, a really ugly orange. But Texans wear that orange the way New Yorkers wear black, and there are longhorns (the animal mascot) on the back of every car.

Rent is crazy low. Groceries are mad cheap. You can live off the salary of a part-time job, if you’re careful. But it gets up to 110, and it stays that way for a looong time. Also the buses cost $.50 to ride, and a buck will get you a one-day unlimited. Madness.

On the other hand the city’s art museum is as big as one of the galleries in Chelsea, and the edgiest film they’ve got playing currently is “Junebug.” Austin is a city for slackers, and I am closer to a Type-A. New York is the city for snobs, and I am a snob to the core. If you need me, I’ll be hanging around Cinema Village with my nose in the air, hoping some post-structuralist will buy me a ticket.