You’ve Got Estrogen

You know a place is frou-frou when the Sunday Times refers to it like this:

Indeed, the feminized décor [of Cafe Lalo, the dessert place on West 83rd Street featured on You’ve Got Mail] may serve a purpose beyond aesthetics. After a man spends an hour surrounded by fluffy desserts and the lulling sound of Norah Jones on the stereo, his more carnal tendencies will probably be all but cowed on the walk home. If he musters the testosterone required for hand holding, he should consider it a victory.

Gentlemen, they’re calling you out! What are you gonna do about it?

Tijuana of the Northeast

The rising value of the pound against the plummeting value of the dollar means that New York is now the Tijuana of the Northeast, for the British, at least:

Sheila Riley came for Macy’s, evidenced by the pile of telltale red bags piled around her feet. Russell Whitehead and Robert Archibald made the trip for “Wicked.” Jeff Taylor wanted to propose.

Seb Sims’s goals were admittedly more prosaic and yet they pleased him. “I came to New York to go shopping and get drunk,” said Mr. Sims as he headed for a southbound No. 1 to “Greenwich.” (No, not Connecticut, but why embarrass him?)

I guess it’s not all that different from cashing in on cheap Canadian toothpaste in Montreal (at 30 percent off!), but still . . . shopping and getting drunk?

The Times, observer of all that curious in the world, notes several quirky things about our visitors from abroad:

Some random facts about British visitors, gleamed from several days of observing them:

¶They have an almost alarming interest in shoes, particularly sneakers (or, as they call them, trainers). “I got loads of Diesel trainers,” said Mr. Whitehead, an actor from London. “They are a quarter of the price here. I bought three pairs for $25 each.”

¶They drink such concoctions as dry vermouth with Sprite (called a martini and lemonade) and Stella Artois beer with a shot of Rose’s lime juice. “They also get really tickled about fancy cocktails,” said Sara Najjar, a bartender at the Hotel Metro, which is a veritable outpost of tourists from England and Scotland. “I guess because they can only get beers in their pubs over there. It’s just crazy!”

¶They flock to Macy’s as Americans might flock to Buckingham Palace, and at the department store they sate their appetite for hats, watches, handbags and coats. The store had more than 20,000 British shoppers last year, and company officials report they take advantage of the store’s 11 percent discount for international visitors more than those of any other nationality.

And Anglophiles beware — dry vermouth and Sprite aside, they may be cultured in an Old Europe kind of way, but they still understand and appreciate the occasional good old fashioned chain restaurant:

On Tuesday afternoon, Gerald and Moira McGinty, who live outside Glasgow, waited nervously for their son David and his friend, Liam Hanlon, to join them in the lobby for their car trip to the airport, which was arriving in minutes. Seems some last-minute (shoe) shopping was occurring on Eighth Street.

Among their bags was an electric guitar, bought for $1,400 rather than £2,000 in Scotland. They had their Tiffany key rings. They had their “Chicago” programs. And, sorry Jean-Georges, they had their memories of TGI Friday’s.

In the great community of nations, who among us does not love TGI Friday’s?

On behalf of all New York-area Bridge and Tunnel Club members, I proudly welcome the British to our fair city. Enjoy!

Law & Order Redux

Not to minimize tragedy (believe me, this story is sad enough as it is), but am I the only one who senses a Law & Order episode coming on?

The Sweet Sound of Mr. Softee

Mr. Softee on the hotseat:

He was the star witness, and had come before the City Council to speak on one of the Bloomberg administration’s more controversial proposals. With the news media closely watching, James Conway Jr., the scion of the family that founded Mister Softee, had an admission to make: the Mister Softee ditty, a staple of urban summer, could be so annoying that even he would not want it playing outside his house all day.

“Does it get stuck in your head occasionally?” he said. “We hope so. But the Mister Softee song as a threat to the health and welfare of New Yorkers? I don’t think so.”

The jingle, with its lyrics, “Listen for my store on wheels, ding-a-ling down the street,” has become a flashpoint in the debate over revising the city’s noise code. From dogs that bark too long to nightclubs that draw neighbors’ complaints, the administration wants new restrictions, but it found wide-ranging opposition at yesterday’s City Council hearing.

Joining Mr. Softee in its opposition to the City’s proposed new restrictions was the New York Nightlife Association (NYNA), which worried that the changes would be too broad. That group’s name paled in comparison to the group in support of the proposals:

While the four-hour hearing was packed with critics of the city’s plan, there were also many supporters, including frustrated residents and members of a group known as Noise, which is short for Neighbors Against Noxious Odors, Incessant Sounds and Emissions.

Noise. Got that? Continuing:

But it was Mister Softee that drew the most interest. Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn told Mr. Tweedy: “You and the mayor are very bold taking on Mister Softee. You’re going to traumatize a lot of children in this city.”

Mr. Conway said that the current plan would not only silence the 347 Mister Softee trucks that operate in the city but also disappoint more than 120,000 customers. Instead, Mr. Conway proposed a compromise: stop the music only when trucks are parked for a certain length of time.

Anything more, he said, would cause sales to plummet.

“To get a sense of what this would do to us, remember when you were a kid,” he said. “You heard the jingle, you grabbed your money and you ran to the truck. The way you knew Mister Softee was in the neighborhood was the song.”

Bonus Points: Mr. Softee Theme Sheet Music.

The City That Never Sleeps Always Drinks

The City’s Health Department released a study showing that New Yorkers drink a lot:

It may not come as news to bartenders, waiters and sommeliers, but New Yorkers drink a lot, a new City Health Department study shows. But what may not be so obvious to those who pour for a living is that New Yorkers in some neighborhoods drink much more than those in others.

Care to guess which are the heaviest drinking neighborhoods? The results may or may not be surprising:

The study – based on information collected in 2003 as part of the city’s community health survey – suggests that the heaviest drinking neighborhoods are Greenwich Village and Chelsea, where 32 percent of adults report drinking amounts that the report defines as excessive, followed by the Upper East Side and Upper West Side and Gramercy Park in Manhattan, and Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope in Brooklyn.

Which goes to show that if you guessed that poorer neighborhoods drank more, you’d be wrong:

Residents of the South Bronx, the Northeast Bronx, Kingsbridge, Flatbush, Eastern Queens and Borough Park reported the least drinking.

Of course there were those who quibbled with the definition of “excessive” drinking. For the study’s purposes, “drinking excessively” constituted more than two drinks a day for a man and more than one drink a day for a woman:

In Park Slope yesterday, Jesse Howard, a bartender at the Gate, said that the definitions used by the Health Department classify just about everybody he knows as a problem drinker. “That sounds like a lot of Bloomberg” nonsense, Mr. Howard said, only he did not use the word nonsense. “New York’s that kind of town; it always has been. People go out.”

Mr. Howard, who wore a Slayer T-shirt and a red goatee, looked off into the distance. It was mid-afternoon, and the bluegrass harmonies of the Old Crow Medicine Show coming through the speakers sounded loud in the uncrowded room. Mr. Howard spoke up again, this time to clarify that his opinion was not colored by his professional experience.

“I’ve got friends who hate bars, and they still go home and have a cocktail,” Mr. Howard said. “People who have any social life in New York City go out and booze.”

Then there are those who argue that drinking to “excess” is part of the draw of New York:

At the White Horse Tavern in the West Village, most famous for serving the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas his last drink before he stumbled off and died on his way home, the study’s findings did not surprise Fran DeMastri, a bartender.

“I’d be shocked if it wasn’t true,” she said. “This area is a big tourist attraction. You have so many people coming from out of town. And there are so many bars in this neighborhood.”

Ms. DeMastri, who has been tending bar there for two and half years, said that people come into the bar to honor the fallen poet, not to practice temperance. “It’s a tavern atmosphere. There’s no reason that they would come here for one or two beers.”

Finally, from the department of “It took a study to tell you that?” there’s this shocking finding:

The study also found that men were more than twice as likely as women to drink to excess. And men who have never been married drink more than those with a spouse.

Uh, ya think?

See also: Scenes form City Bars.