The Nightmare of the Wedding Industrial Complex

The nightmare scenario for the Wedding Industrial Complex is a culture that avoids getting married during an entire year because of its bad luck:

With just hours to go before the Lunar New Year, dozens of Asian New Yorkers raced to the altar yesterday to head off a marriage potentially jinxed by bad fortune.

“Next year is bad luck,” explained Wilson Chau of Flushing, whose son Jason wed Camille Lee at the Municipal Building yesterday afternoon. “The Chinese don’t like next year,” he said, referring to the new year that began today.

This year in the Chinese 12-year calendar cycle is considered a less than auspicious one for nuptials because there’s no first day of spring, said William Dao, museum associate at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, which is in Chinatown.

Known as Lap Chun, the first day of Chinese spring fell on Feb. 4, which means last year, the Year of the Monkey, saw two first days of spring. This year – the Year of the Rooster – has none.

This so-called lunar leap year happens about once every three years and is considered a bad time for weddings, Dao said.

Brides are more likely to be widowed, for instance, and couples may not be as successful as those who time their weddings more carefully.

“It stems from tradition,” Dao said.

The last few weeks have brought a flood of Asian New Yorkers getting quickie marriages to please their traditional – and more superstitious – parents back in their homelands.

According to City Clerk Victor Robles, 1,947 Asian couples applied for marriage licenses between Jan. 1 and Monday. That’s a 552 increase over the same period last year.

Among the couples who descended on the Manhattan city clerk’s office to beat the bad-luck clock were Noviyana Bong and Yauman Kirana, both 22, who are ethnic Chinese from Indonesia and live in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

On Sunday, both of their parents called them to demand they get married before today – or face waiting another year to exchange vows.

“I just follow my parents,” Bong said.

The Most Backwards State in the Union

Before you go off on how New York is so socially progressive that it needs to secede, and in the midst of the all the movement on gay marriage going on, remember that its laws still don’t provide for no-fault divorce, one those truly crazy Trouble-in-River-City Destroying-the-Fabric-of-Society things that, oh, like every other state in the country provides for!

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!

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.

Tucking one’s trousers, freezing one’s eggs – The life of the affluent NYC female exposed

Just when I was beginning to think that the Observer was only useful for its deliciously snarky engagement announcements, I find two treasures in the same issue. First, a study of women who tuck their trousers into their boots. Who knew this was such a compelling story? It’s told in quotes from such authorities as a 25 year old “performer,” a 29 year old “stylist,” a 27 year old “d.j.,” and a 25 year old “freelance art collector.” Would you believe that the stylist dates a 30 year old “Carroll Gardens poet”? Before you try to join the ranks of these trendy gals, take a bit of advice from, you guessed it, another stylist:

“The problem I see with it most of the time is that people tuck the wrong pant into the wrong boot,” counseled Kate Young, 29, another stylist, who lives in the West Village. “I hate a skinny-heeled boot like a Jimmy Choo or a Manolo-type heel with pants tucked in. It’s unacceptable—completely gross. Or they wear the wrong pant, tuck it in like some kind of weird, baggy pant that then does this strange M.C. Hammer harem look. And I think people who are fat should never do it. I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but it’s not flattering. You just shouldn’t do it if you don’t want people to look at your butt.”

Next up, we ponder the eternal question on the minds of single women in their thirties: “Would you rather have a baby or an eye job?” There’s a strong argument for the baby, believe it or not:

“I think the thing with me is that I have not had a huge maternal instinct, ever. And I’ve been waiting for it to kick in since I was 30. And it just hasn’t kicked in,” said Mary Purdy, who turns 35 in two weeks and lives on the Upper West Side. “And so I keep on thinking: Is it really realistic, that I would never have a child? It sounds kind of crazy to think that I would never have one, but it’s crazy to think that I would have one. I kept on telling myself, ‘I don’t have to make the decision now, I have time.’ But now that I’m going to be 35, maybe I don’t have that much time. I still don’t want a child right now, but I might want one in the future, and I’m worried about the fact that by the time I want one, it will be too late for my body to conceive something.”

It’s rather simple: for the same price as many common cosmetic surgeries, a woman can now freeze her eggs for a chance at future baby making. It’s only a 30% chance that it’ll work, but never mind that pesky detail since your equally neurotic mom will foot the bill anyway. Now we can safely spend our twenties and thirties tucking/styling/freelance art collecting all over town without fear of missing out on the opportunity to add a mini-me to our lives at some distant point in the future. God bless America.