My life is crazy busy so I rarely get the chance to leave Manhattan. But, when I do it’s a huge treat. Over the weekend, when I went to visit my Dad in Massachusetts I realized how much I’d missed the long forgotten simple pleasure of a walk in the New England woods. The untouched beauty of nature inspired me to do a photo shoot based on natural beauty. So this is me without makeup. By the way, the dog’s name is Lili. Isn’t she cute?
With all of New York’s splendor and glamour, we often forget that this is a dangerous city. A place with so many people is bound to have just as much good as it does evil. If you watch Law & Order: SVU as much as I do, then you totally know what I mean. Saturday night, my neighbor and I went to see the dark Lars von Trier film, Melancholia, starring Kirsten Dunst in SoHo. What started out as a classy artsy evening in one of Manhattan’s trendiest neighborhoods could have potentially been ruined had I not recovered my wallet after a criminal attempted to steal it right out of my Elliott Lucca purse. I was climbing up the stairs to get off the crowded subway and there was a man in back of me carrying tons of shopping bags filled with boxes that looked like Christmas gifts. As I walked further up the stairs, I noticed that his bags kept hitting me. Nearly all the way up the stairs, I felt something strange and looked down at my bag to find it wide open and my WALLET GONE!
I stopped in my tracks and turned around at the people behind me screaming that someone had taken my wallet. That made everyone stop and give me their full attention. That must has scared him and made him drop my wallet because a girl found it on the stairs and handed it back to me pointing at that guy with all the bags. We all yelled at him and called him a pick pocketer to his face. At first he denied it and tried to blame it on someone else. But, other people getting off the subway had seen him try to take stuff from them. We yelled at him some more until he finally left the scene of the crime (luckily without my wallet.) I guess only a true New Yorker can get pick pocketed on the subway and get their stuff back two seconds later.
Even though I had gotten my wallet back, I was so shaken up about the whole thing. After the movie which was an interesting depiction of the end of the world, I locked myself in my apartment with a bottle of wine and tried to calm down. Perhaps, my impeccable fashion sense ultimately caused me to be the victim of theft. I must have done an excellent job dressing up last season’s boots because in reality, I’m not the ideal candidate to steal from. Remember to always stay fabulous and be on guard, especially in crowded places. The more people there are around you, the more crazy people there are around you. Keep your purse close at all times with the zipper in front of you because having to cancel all your credit cards and report fraudulent charges is super annoying.
It’s cloudy and rainy in NYC and this ugly weather will be making many appearances this week. But, no worries. It’s time to trade in your rooftop lounge chair for a plush couch. For me, bad weather calls for a movie marathon complete with delivery food. One of the coolest things about living in New York is that so many movies are shot here. Sometimes I will be watching TV and see a scene taking place somewhere I’d passed that day. No wonder everyone here seems to think they have movie star status. The small island of Manhattan is full of some of the biggest personalities, myself included.
When putting together a New York City themed movie marathon, I like to choose films with fun main characters who mirror aspects of my own New York experiences. Here are the top five New York chick flicks to save for your next rainy day:
5. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: This movie is hilarious! Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey have excellent chemistry on-screen as they cruise around New York on a motorcycle. It’s great how they wrote diamonds into the storyline. Rainy day or not, they are a girl’s best friend.
4. The Devil Wears Prada: Only in New York can a scantily paid journalist get free designer clothes long before they hit stores. This movie has fashionistas everywhere wondering if Miranda Priestly is actually based on Vogue’s Anna Wintour. Though many suspect, it’s never been proven.
3. Confessions of a Shopaholic: I have a bit of a shopping problem so I can totally relate to Rebecca Bloomwood’s passion for magical credit cards. Her writing also gains her critical acclaim from the New York elite just as mine has.
2. The Nanny Diaries: The epic story of a Jersey Girl who takes a job as a nanny in New York directly after graduating from college while telling her parents that she landed a job at Goldman Sachs. This movie shows that no matter how confused you are when you first get here, New York is a great place to find yourself. You can also learn a lot about anthropology from this movie so it’s an educational experience.
1. Breakfast at Tiffany’s: Obviously! Every socialite wants to be like Audrey Hepburn. Plus, I always cry at the end when they find the cat.
I don’t ask for much, only for a life filled with socialite fortune and fame. But, I think I also need a bigger closet. Manhattan apartments may be known for being small, but when the majority of your time is spent roaming the city in search of the next big sale or party, the size of your home doesn’t seem to matter. As a lover of fashion and all things shopping, I am currently going through a complete closet crisis. As you can see, my tiny closet that is actually big by New York standards is overflowing with just a small portion of my constantly expanding wardrobe.
Considering that many apartments in Manhattan are built without closets, I am lucky to have one at all. But, in a city that glorifies fashion, I find this architectural decision to be extremely hypocritical. I agree that you don’t need that much room to sleep, but where are all of your clothes supposed to go? I store the rest of my wardrobe in bins under my kitchen table and in any available floorspace in my bedroom along with under my bed. The main issue with this storage system is that I can never find anything. Having all of my clothes stacked on top of each other, causes me to wear the same looks over and over again because I can never make it to the bottom of the pile. This forces me to go out and buy even more clothes. I guess the solution to this problem would be to buy a free standing closet from Ikea, but that would involve hours of self-installation that I simply don’t have. Therefore, my kitchen will continue to serve as a walk-in closet.
As one of the most congested cities ever, the citizens of New York often shy away from its hot summers in favor of the breezy beaches of the eastern seaboard. As long as I have access to air conditioning, I embrace a good summer day in the city that never sleeps. For me, summers in New York bring out some of my fondest Manhattan memories of the time when I first decided to move here. So when the city begins to get warmer, my mind reverts back to the summer of 2009 when I had just graduated from Syracuse University. It was the height of the recession and everyone was broke and obsessed with vampires. Due to the recent death of Michael Jackson, his music was blasting at every bar. I spent the summer going back and forth from Delaware to New York sleeping on friends’ couches and sometimes floors.
As I went through this incredibly turbulent time in my life, I fell in love with New York and all of the glamour it held for me. During that fateful summer, I would find myself walking the streets alone on many steamy afternoons attempting to take in some of the city’s splendor. One day after a job interview, I passed a Bank of America that had a screen in front of it that showed all of the stocks of the day. The whole thing was red and my future was looking incredibly sad. It was then that I decided once and for all that in spite of all odds, I was going to take the future into my own hands and become a socialite. So here I am, living in Manhattan still striving for socialite fame and fortune and loving every moment of it.
