🍰✨

What did you do on the night that Melanie died?

I was in the East Village, being spontaneous and agreeing to a change in plans. Waiting for Marie to travel from work, I ate dinner at Veselka (mushroom + sauerkraut pierogis w/ matzo ball soup ofc), and then took myself for a drink at The Immigrant.

No photos of this place, but I highly recommend. Great “waiting for a friend” or just “sitting alone with my thoughts” spot. It opened in 2009, so it’s been here almost as long as I have. No loud music. Bustling, but not busy. Good twinkly-light atmosphere. Would return.

Marie arrived, and we decamped to the Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

I was totally crashing this event, which was a meetup that her colleague was throwing for photographers and visual creatives. But it was SO FUN. Any networking event that includes the hostess sabering a bottle of Moet, then pouring it into a champagne tower is one that I’d gleefully attend.

More of this in 2024.

I left much later than I’d planned to, and I was tired for the next two days because being awake way past 10pm threw my sleep off, but I felt so happy. I will always love how nights out in the East Village place me back into timeless, ageless joy.

There was a feeling I had often in my early/mid-twenties that I called “the cusp of life,” and I felt it that night. This is why I live in New York.