Thursday, September 23, 2004

I am living a capitalist dream

Not only did I strike gold with the Polack's Profiles idea yesterday --it'll make me rich! (see post below), but I found in my mailbox an envelope from L'Etoile asking if I would accept a 100% salary increase and a bonus. Would I accept it? Would I accept it? I gave myself a few hours to consider and then I said yes -- unfortunately I said this during the same phone conversation where I told them I would be a no-show this week-end. I explained that the Chef de Cuisine and I had cut a deal: he'll cover for me at the Market as forager (that is my job) and I will cover for him in the kitchen as Chef de Cuisine any tme he wants me to! However, I do fear that the management at l'Etoile was a little taken aback when I said "Thanks! I'll take the raise and now I am going to save you some money because I wont be there this Saturday."

Of course, I cannot work at l'Etoile this week because I am at this moment flying to my second home for the year -- in New York City.

On the flight over, I was getting into the groove by reading New York Magazine and by dollar-bill-golly, I had another Capitalist Cacophony go off in my head. Amy Sohn's column described the miserable "friendship scene" in the city. It appears to be difficult, nay, impossible for new transplants to NYC to find friends. If you think you'll make friends just because you are social and nice -- forget it! And if you are the shy type -- pack your bags and go back to your friends back home, because you wont find any here. The only way, THE ONLY WAY anyone will consider you for a friend is if you pack a good "friendship resume" with something that marks you as a standout.

Where there is a need, there is a service that will cater to it and so if you are a New Yorker, you can indeed sign up for friendship-searching services. But those can be expensive. Socialcircles.com charges $1,275 just for the initiation fee. After that, it's $600 per match. If the friendship falters -- you do NOT get your money back. A user complains in the article that she is out the initiation fee and two $600 shots an has yet to find someone who'll munch popcorn and watch a DVD with her on a farily regular basis.

Worse off are people past their twenties: their friendship pool is quite limited as people in the more "advanced years" are either married and not particularly interested in meeting strangers, or searching to be coupled. No one in that demographic wants to waste time on being your friend.

A 35-year old newcomer to NY states:
I thought it would be easier to make friends here than in Chicago...I was completely wrong. Now I go back home and when people ask how it is, I say 'Love New York. Have no friends.' And I'm not even shy.

So here's my pitch: I move to New York and offer my services. I will be a friend to all the 'losers' who have failed to secure one. I'll be good for a bunch of emails per week to check up on things, a call here and there, and then a meet-up every so often, to do dim sum and maybe go to a movie. I'll listen to whiners, I'll tell stories from my varied past, I'll even do karaoke if the need arises. At, say, a $500 per friend per month fee and a six month commitment on my part, I'll be better than the going rate by a mile.

Now, if only I could think of a good name. Polack's Pals maybe?

Forty-first street pre-election diary*

A student at the U of Warsaw wrote this about politics and the Polish immigrant in the early decades of the XX century:

The early Polish immigrant … had little opportunity to participate actively in local politics. They were handicapped by their lack of knowledge of the English language and especially by their lack of American education. ...most of all, they were strangers to the American system of government and did knot know or understand American politics.

I feel for them. Now, 100 years later, I sometimes do not comprehend how or why politics proceed in the way that they do here as well.

Back then, Poles established a bridge of sorts – The Polish Democratic Club. The purpose? To help with the election of Democratic candidates. They were successful, too, from what I can tell. If you walk along the far west blocks of 41st street in New York, you’ll pass the building that was once the home of the West Side Polish Democratic Club.

Leafing through the stories in the news...

I read today’s papers and the attention is still on an analysis of whether Kerry has turned the corner. In 41 days we will know. In the meantime, is anyone else paying attention to the fact that we have a hefty 150,000 troops in Iraq while the next biggest force – from Britain – is even now being cut by a third from its paltry by comparison 7,000 (acc. to the London Observer, cited in the NYT)?

In what has to be a moment of perverse gladness, I was pleased to see that the second most e-mailed article from the NYTimes in the past 24 hour hours was the one about how the current administration is seeking cuts in housing aid to the urban poor (okay, the third most emailed article was about the new mozzarella bar in Rome; I almost emailed that one to a friend as well! Yes, we are clinging to our colorful diversions and distractions!). We need to be reading this! Housing projects… Walking toward the east side of 41st street, you hit Tudor City – a residential community that was built before the days of the United Nations [United Nations – that’s the number one emailed article from the Times – the one about how Bush yesterday issued a scolding to the UN, a scolding, at a time when the US desperately needs to be reaching out to the international community]. When Tudor City went up, there wasn’t a UN there, on the other side of the street, just slaughterhouses and glue factories. It was an area of such ugliness that most of the buildings in Tudor City don’t have windows facing east, to avoid the then horrid view. In the Times, Dowd again refers today to the Bush administration “castrating the flaccid UN.” I want to ask, is the next step a return to the slaughter-houses? It would be an interesting statement to make, from peace to slaughter. Or, have we made that statement already?

I’m off to New York this afternoon. Obviously the city is much on my mind – I see the grid of the blocks and I count down the days. Forty-one to go.


*see “forty-second street pre-election diary” post, September 22, for explanation of title