Faded Black is NOT the New Black

Thank you Coco Chanel for institutionalizing the Little Black Dress (and the color black for that matter).



Now it’s not like I’m one of those girls who wears all black all the time. In fact, I would much rather don neon or jewel hues. Purple, orange, hot pink, kelly green. I love me some color!

I think it’s borderline obnoxious that some New Yorkers don’t flirt with color. That they wear onyx “uniforms” every.single.day. Live a little, people!

They can be boring, fine. What irks me most about these uptight, unoriginal, indigenous NYCers is the fact that their blacks are always so black.

The only obvious reason for such brilliant blacks (said in the least oxymoronic way possible, as if a non-color could be brilliant), is that these single-color-minded people are wealthy. They’s got the big bucks so they can afford to buy a gazillion blouses and slacks and knits and skirts and LBD’s.

Yes, that must be it. There are just so many clothes in their unilateral wardrobe rotation that each article gets plucked from obscurity once every two or three months. Hence the non-faded-blacks.

Alas, the greater part of the population, we peasants - whose apartments are 1/8 the size of aforementioneds’ walk-in closets - are forced to wash our blacks every other week. And what happens when blacks are washed too often? Anyone? Anyone?

They fade.

Selfish, malicious, malevolent cotton! Frankly I don’t give a damn if it’s the fabric our lives! It ain’t the fabric of my life!



OK that’s a lie...I love cotton. Especially when it’s soft and loose and flowy and stretchy (Thanksgiving countdown, YIKES!)

But what I don’t love about that popularity-contest-winning fabric is that it can never seem to get its shit together.

Quit losing your dye, cotton. Stop fading when I wash your soiled little ass. I don’t appreciate it.
Nothing says frump-de-la-dump more than bleached, blanched, washed out, lackluster black.
Perhaps I’m overly sensitive to faded-out fabric because I suffered through ten months of incessant black wearing at Bloomingdale’s. A lot of retail stores - or maybe just Federated Department Stores - make their employees don monochromatic ebony ensembles. 

(I find this fact fairly funny - wouldn’t it be far more interesting if we modeled the goods on the sales-floor?)

Nevertheless, I bought up lots-o-black. White House Black Market scooped up a ton of my moolah.

I wore and washed and rewore and rewashed. And all the while, I played by the rules - color safe detergent, cold water - hell, it’s not like there were even other colors to mess with my laundry loads, THEY WERE NADA BUT BLACK.

All to no avail. It didn’t make any difference that I Woolite-d because no matter what, black clothes fade like a mofo. There’s no helping it. There’s nothing you can do.

I had an extremely productive day yesterday (shocking, seeing as how we tailgated Ivy-League-style all day Saturday!) - and ended the nonstop madness with a grocery trip to my new fave Whole Foods haunt (Bowery).

Let it be said that I don’t condone sweatpants in public, but yoga pants are permissible. So I was bumming around in my circa 2002 Hard Tails - which have significantly altered from their original onyx state. They’re soft, yes, but they’ve diminished to a fairly embarrassing dark grey.
I contemplated changing. Wrestled with myself back and forth, to and fro, pros and cons - it was a struggle, but in the end I let my faded flag fly! (My anxiety for an overcrowded Whole Foods the longer I waited and debated outweighed my anxiety for strangers seeing me in faded black pants.)

Sadly, methinks last night was their finale. Time for them to retire, to be relegated to apartment-only status.

Sob, sob, sniffle, sob, sob, but ’tis true. There comes a time in the life of a black cotton staple that you just gotta let go.

Preferably you, the owner, will see the time is near, will realize it, and will wrap that shit up before you’re seen schmoozing in a black-cum-charcoal tee. Because faded black anything - well, in the wise words of Liz Lemon, “That’s a dealbreaker!”

They should sell black laundry dye - like hair dye. Wash all your blacks in this special detergent/dye every other month or so and voilà, no more telltale whitish, ashy, seemingly lint covered clothes!
Come on Garnier Fructis and L'Oréal Paris - think of all the money you and Tide could make if you tag teamed!

The Trouble With Turnstiles

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just have a serious aversion to office building gateways. Exhibit A: disdain for revolving. Exhibit B: lack of enthusiasm for elevators.

And now, drum roll please, Exhibit C: hostility towards…turnstiles.
Turnstiles, as we know them, were introduced at the 1939-1940 World’s Fair. Ingenious mechanisms, insert a coin and gain passage through the three armed monster!
The concept of these loathsome machines hasn’t changed all that much in 70+ years. Their ingeniousness has translated to staying power. But just because they’re good at restricting access to people who have paid (as in subways or stadiums), or people who are authorized (as in Manhattan office buildings), doesn’t mean they deserve an A+.

Turnstiles – apparently also known as “baffle gates” – can be EXTREMELY…well…baffling. Unbelievable, I say! Frustrating. Exasperating. Annoying.

They’re vindictive little shits. Always, always, always on a power trip. “Oops, sorry. You’re gonna miss that subway, buddy, cause you monthly card just expired.”

Or, “Tsk, tsk, that microchip in your ID card ain’t working, to the front desk you go!”

“Five cents short? NO ADMITTANCE FOR YOU!”

Turnstiles are simply inescapable in our world. Amusement parks, concert venues, stadiums, subways, and yes, even office buildings.
Granted, they keep count of peeps to prevent overflowing. And they’re cost-effective regulaatooooors. So yeah, they succeed at their tasks, but come on turnstiles!

There’s nothing worse than seeing the lights of an approaching train, hearing the screech of the brakes, feeling the whooshing wind – and not making it on. We know another train will be along shortly, but that’s beside the point. It’s seriously the most maddening thing in the world when you card just isn’t good enough.

Oh no. You’ll be pumped, not believing your luck, a train’s entering the station the same time as you, OMG! But Big, Bad Mr. Turnstile has got different plans for ya. Swipe, double beep, SLAM. Re.ject.ed. Furiously fumbling that MetroCard, you swipe again, rush forward, and bam...de-nied.

We should get one free pass. If the train is there, the turnstiles should just let us by. It’s blasphemous. As if the fare hike WAS NOT ENOUGH. Oh no, you’re gonna hold it against us for being five cents short? EFFFFFFFFF YOOOOOOOU TURNSTILES.

And eff you people, too. It’s really infuriating – no, stronger than infuriating…violence-inducing – when a train has arrived and people are pouring out through the turnstiles, hogging every.single.one so you can’t get in.

Clink, clank, clonk go the arms, spinning in the exact opposite direction you want them to be. You want to scream at the stupid, selfish people that won’t let you pass. You want to smack that stupid, selfish turnstile for only letting people out, not in. (There should be rules and regulations.) Come on, come on, COME ON, you want to shout (and sometimes do), while the doors are closing and the train is pulling out of the station.

It’s just not fair.

And those are only the first turnstiles of the day.

Turnstiles in offices are a different beast entirely. And I do mean beast. They shun their three armed cousins, look down on them in disgust, cause man oh man, Buddy Boy’s be automated.

Automated? Automated. You scan your ID card or your bar-coded guest pass, two arms open outwardly, and you zoom into the super special, closed-off universe that is a New York City (or any city) office.

That is, of course, if you manage not to get caught. For these more futuristic turnstiles are pretty terrifying. They shriek at you, literally a high-pitched, buzzing-honking shriek, if you even THINK about TRYING to get by their super sensitive sensors.

They snap at you if you’re lollygagging and don’t walk through fast enough (ever wonder why NYCers are speed demons?), or if you are too lazy to bust out your ID card and try to creep in on the heels of someone else.

And beware: these turnstiles and their fangs (aka their two bitchy little arms) WILL bite you if you get too close for comfort. Yes indeed. They will snap shut on you in a second. I’ve witnessed peeps getting caught - YIKES.

I could care less about people who don’t pay the exorbitant subway fare, or who’ve lost their building pass and need to sneak by, or if a stadium needs to count how many customers they’ve had that day. Turnstiles are just line-creating, fright-inducing, hassle-full pieces of machinery that I could, simply, do without.

Port-O-Hell

What a lovely, lovely weekend! One last hurrah before the official end of summer. And boy oh boy was there a lot of hip-hip-hurraying.

The annual German-American Friendship Day (ridiculous, I know), was last Saturday in Central Park. It took some bullying, some sneaking through gates, some getting screamed at by security, but once we were in it was all German all the time.

Steins of beers, lederhosens, bratwursts, and crazy Deutschland bands abounded. Me and my lovely lassie posse enjoyed personal pitchers-o-beer and potato pancakes.
Oh yeah. We “Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, hoi, hoi, hoi-ed!” all afternoon.
Let’s just say that I’m glad Germans and Americans have been reunited. It feels soooo gooood.
However. All that cheers-ing came to a screeching halt when nature came a calling.

Port-O-Potties are undoubtedly the most horrific experience known to peeing-kind. Seriously. They’re deeeesgusting. But these particular POPs were the most revolting, the most sickening, the most odious Ports I’ve ever encountered.

First, there was the ratio of boys POPs to girls POPs. There were four - FOUR - dedicated to men. And only three to women. With one handicapped. “Is this real life?” I asked myself over and over.

People, peeeeople. Don’t you understand that women pee more than men? That we take longer? That it’s a much more complicated task for us than for you?

To lighten the mood, take my mind off my bladder, I engaged in some banter with the other ladies-in-waiting. “Can you BELIEVE there’s more boys rooms than girls? They are such dummies!” But the women simply laughed and flew off on German-speaking tangents.

(It’s funny that we Americans believe the octave of our voice has a direct correlation with language comprehension. I repeated myself a few times before giving up, each repetition louder than the last.)

Then I gave up and stared blankly, shrugging, as they “Ich bin-ed” and “Hamburg! Hamburg-ed!” all over my ears. I smiled politely and eye-averted.

Yup, I was forced to wait it out sans entertainment. And then, joy of all joys, it was my turn. At last.

I seriously don’t know what I was expecting. I know Port-O-Potties are nasty-ass cesspools. But this was atrocity personified. (Of course this pic is not the one I experienced...I don’t want my handful-o-readers gagging, now!)

Never have I ever experienced such a fetid, foul, FULL Porto. It was topped off.
And the smell - ugh. A positively toxic mix of waste and reeking blue solution. Can we say N-A-S-T-A-A-A-Y?

What irked me most, though, was not the smell.

Well - fine. The stink is always the worst part about the Port. But in a veryvery close second was the fact that THERE WAS NO TOILET PAPER.

Whhhhhhy, whhhhhhhhhhhhhy?????

And of course no potable water and soap to wash my hands with.

Omg.

Unfortunately, though, my options going forward are quite limited. Cause when it comes down to it, I'm not gonna give up enjoying me some brewsky’s . I guess I’ll just have to enjoy a few more so that the Port-O-Potty usage isn’t so disturbing.

I’ll also have to re-watch Slumdog Millionaire. Nothing – nothing – could be worse than what the youngest Jamal experienced. Traumatizing. Simply traumatizing.