NOTES FROM A RECESSION

FROM April 5, 2008

Ran into my friend who works for a major newsmagazine (hint it ain't Newsweek). They're laying people off left and right, with little to no notice, so the press doesn't get wind of it. They're trying to save the magazine. I told her it needed to convert to the internet and start skewing left. The Huffington Post doesn't even link to it. She said its 80-year-old fanbase probably isn't trying to read it on the internet.

Outside the neighborhood vintage/antique/eccentricities shop: A Bear Stearns tote bag, priced up for those who can still afford irony: $25.

$105 million dollars is actually less than I figured the Clintons were raking in. That's about 3/4 of what Wyoming spends on prisons.

At the wine shop, the owner said the importers are paying dearly thanks to the Euro vs. dollar issue. All wine bottles have gone up at least two dollars. California wines are following suit, because they can. The man in line behind me was British, and suggested Americans start buying Argentinian wines. I bought a Cote du Rhone for $11.99.

All day I thought about how the Europeans are taking over New York. I dont think it's the terriblest thing, because more cultural diversity is good for every city, and this is a place built on foreigners, anyway. I just hate the American developers who are catering to their riches and forcing out the indigenous (see: New York magazine piece on the new Trump Soho condotel). But I don't know enough about it yet to offer a less pat opinion.

The crime rate in the city's gone up three percent. Down at the bodega buying cat food tonight, when a young shorty (I thought he was 11 or 12 but he tried to holler at me) addressed a boy from up the block, the rock house, about 17: yo i heard you're the new head goon around here, how you like it? slingin to the crazies. The boy, less cautious than embarrassed, gave the bodega lady a dollar and a quarter for his orange soda. He left without answering.