Michael and Emily Hold With Variants of Jayden Rising

Although “Michael” and “Emily” are still the top two names for babies in New York, the list is becoming more diverse:

In the last several years, New York City has had more baby girls named Fatoumata than Lisa, more Aaliyahs than Melissas, more Chayas than Christinas. There have been more baby boys named Moshe than Peter, more Miguels than Jeffreys, more Ahmeds than Stanleys.

Yesterday, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released the name breakdown for the 124,099 babies born in New York City in 2004. That, together with data stretching back to 1920, shows that in a city that is fashion-conscious and full of immigrants, some foreign-sounding names have become arguably more New York than American classics like Carol, Susan, Stephen and Harry.

As reported last May, “Brooklyn” has become quite the popular name around the country, a trend apparently not replicated in the five boroughs:

There is one popular name on which New Yorkers differ sharply from the rest of the country: Brooklyn. The name, a combination of two girls’ names, Brooke and Lynn, has soared up the list of the nation’s top 1,000 female baby names since 1990, landing at No. 101 in 2004. But in New York City, Brooklyn has barely registered, appearing nowhere in any of the Health Department rankings.

“New Yorkers hear Brooklyn, and they have an image of a place, despite its many charms, that doesn’t seem very delicate and feminine,” Ms. Wattenberg said.

White People Dine Finely, But What About Black People . . . ?

The New York Times notes that fine dining establishments are almost exclusively patronized by white people:

With summer drawing to a close New York diners will soon begin their fall migration back to the city’s top restaurants. But if they fly to pattern, only a few blacks, at most, will join the flock.

That helps explain why at Chanterelle one night, I almost became my own worst nightmare. The sight of a black couple strolling in struck me as so bizarre that I swiveled in my seat, bug-eyed, to trail them through all that creamy quiet. I say “almost” because my husband put an end to it with a merciful hiss: “Stop staring.”

Whoa! What kind of condescending, clueless Times piece is this? Don’t worry, writer Diane Cardwell is black! And this is a first-person account! Phew:

Well, yes, I was staring, but not just because they were black. Suddenly, for a change, I was not the only black customer in the room.

Still, is this sort of inquiry “asking the tough questions” or is it just . . . weird? Observations like steakhouses are more integrated than Nobu and Babbo, both of which are still more integrated than, say, Chanterelle? I say “weird”:

All those lobsters in pumpkin-seed-fenugreek broth, for example, have not drawn a strong black following. “That kind of chichi food doesn’t have long roots in the African-American community,” [president of the Multicultural Food Service and Hospitality Alliance] Mr. [Gerald] Fernandez said.

But they may soon sprout. One night at a gala at Chelsea Market for the Black Culinarian Alliance, a racially mixed crowd sipped fine wine and nibbled elaborate hors d’oeuvres and specialty cheeses, enjoying an event billed as bridging the cultural divide among different ethnic groups and their cuisines.

Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way . . .

Cocaine Is The New Astoria

Low prices and easy access to midtown mean that cocaine is enjoying a renaissance. The New York Press whispers that it’s worse than you think:

When surveying the cocaine scene, it’s almost tempting to ask, New York-style (“Is Manhattan the New Brooklyn?” “Is Abstinence the New Sex?”), whether coke is the new weed–or at least the new coke. In terms of provenance (Medellin cartel) and potency (got talc?), though, coke is pretty much what it’s always been. What’s changed is who’s doing it, where, and why.

. . .

While the Mayflower set may have discovered some sense of decorum toward the drug, not all among the city elites have. Two acquaintances recently went into a meeting with a powerful business executive and were interrupted twice: first when the businessman pulled out a bag and took a toot, and again when his beautiful young daughter popped in to help herself to a bag for later.

Afterward, the pair was invited out for a drink by the daughter, who it turned out was in the eighth grade at an expensive parochial school. Lugging about a volume of Dante, she told them that most of her friends used coke, and that she had her own dealers but visited her father because he had better stuff.

If this sounds unbelievable, recast it with marijuana in place of cocaine. It’s disgusting, but not implausible—not even shocking, really. Perhaps coke is the new weed after all.

Dog Days

While Boldface Names is expensing shit out in the Hamptons (“‘I tried to make bunny rabbit,’ said ANDREY BARTENEV, an artist, when we asked about his outfit on Saturday night at ROBERT WILSON’s Brazil-themed Watermill Center benefit . . .”) and the New Yorker is writing about god knows what (“Among the passengers the other afternoon on the Ninety-sixth Street crosstown bus was a young black man in bluejeans and a white T-shirt . . . [h]is teeth were slightly bucked”), the Village Voice has nothing better to do than relive the experience of consuming malt liquor in its 40-ounce form, as countless shiftless teenagers are no doubt doing as we speak. No, seriously:

The taste test (complete with a blindfold segment) confirmed some generalizations: 40s are watery and never seem really cold, even just out of the fridge. They have very small bubbles, which makes them easy to chug but also contributes a distinct flatness from the beginning.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

As trustafarians artificially inflate prices across the city, regular working-class joes are forced to pilfer household goods from their parents, as reported by the Times’ Style Section:

A generation ago, adult children visiting their parents’ homes might have left with a Tupperware container of lasagna. Today, many of them stealthily make off with toiletries, groceries, sometimes clothing and even furniture. It is an apparently widespread practice, born of a sense of entitlement among young adults – and usually amusedly tolerated by parents – that gives new meaning to the phrase “home shopping.” Like most adults, the pilferers have set up their own households, but they seem not to have given up the expectation that their parents should provide for them in certain ways. They loot their parents’ houses to cut costs, or because they would rather not pay for incidentals. Or because they want things with sentimental value.

Sometimes the children ask if they can take things. Often they do not.

. . .

Stephen Kunken, 34, an actor in New York who is an admitted “pillager” of his parents’ possessions, said he rationalized that his parents had too much stuff and that he was both “trimming the fat” and “liberating” things. “I thought: ‘These poor things. These are never going to get used. I’m going to liberate them and bring them into the city,’ ” he said.

Through the years Mr. Kunken has taken briefcases, a slide projector, an electric toothbrush, razors, blank tapes, paper towels, soap and bottles of wine.

His parents did not know their wine was missing until he served it to them at a party at his Brooklyn apartment. “We had our own wine that he stole,” his mother, Ginny Kunken, said. “It was very nice that he invited us.”

His parents are accustomed to finding things missing. “What have they taken?” said her husband, Fred Kunken, a dentist from Upper Brookville, N.Y., referring to Stephen and his 37-year-old brother, Jeffrey. “What haven’t they taken? They’ve taken just about every bit of my clothing, from my underwear and socks to –”

“Bathing suits,” his wife interjected, laughing.

“All of a sudden my razors disappear,” Dr. Kunken said. “Shaving cream disappears. It’s gotten to the point that if I see them coming, and if it’s something I just got that I want to wear, I hide it.”

To be sure, it’s quite possible that the subjects’ professions have something to do with it. Age, Sex, Profession and Neighborhood of interviewees in article follows:

• F, 24, Fashion Model, Manhattan
• M, 34, Actor, Brooklyn
• F, 26, Musician, Brooklyn
• F, 31, Actress, [No Neighborhood Mentioned]
• F, 24, “campus recruiter for a financial institution,” [No Neighborhood Mentioned]

You see where we’re going with this . . .

Is there any end in sight? Researchers are optimistic:

The phrase “emerging adulthood” does imply that these sticky fingers will eventually become independent. Is there a specific age by which one should finally accept the responsibility of paying one’s way? Psychologists and economists point to the early or mid-30’s.

“By the early 30’s the assistance that kids are receiving from their parents dissipates strongly,” said Robert F. Schoeni, an associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “The kids are establishing their careers, they’re getting better-paid jobs, getting married.”

Ms. [Nicole] Atkins, who has decorated her Brooklyn apartment with shot glasses, candles, Mexican marionettes and boxing gloves from her parents’ house in Neptune, N.J., says she will cease her home shopping once she gets married and has a family.

“If I had kids and a husband, and I was still taking stuff from my parents,” she said, “that would be really lame.”