The "New Victorians": Um, How Despicable!
According to the New York Observer's Lizzy Ratner, the "New Victorians" are a cozy bunch of luxury-addicted, monogamous, career-focussed twentysomething urbanites whose appetites run more to "home and hearth and eating" than the crazy coke-fueled orgies that 'used to be' the earmarks of NYC early adulthood. "Eminent New Victorian couples can be found all over New York these days, puttering about their brownstones (original detail carefully restored), or pushing babies with names like Beatrice, Charlotte, Theodore and Henry in gigantic prams to the local playground," Lizzy explains. Well. This seemed like one of those classic, ridiculous Observer articles that strains to prematurely name and define a trend based on a few specious examples. And on the other hand....
For starters: I read this article on the subway this morning on my way to yoga class. I negotiated daytime yoga privileges with work for as long as this summer stays slow; it's good for my crazy and for this website, it turns out, because sometimes when I leave in the middle of the day it causes Anna Nicole Smith to die or Jane to fold. True! Today in yoga class when the teacher was like "focus your intention" I thought, "Please let Lindsay relapse for everyone back in the office!" No dice, yet. I'll try again tomorrow though.
Anyway, I was on the R train and these two moms with four towheaded boys in various stages of toddlerhood got on at 8th street. One of the little boys—he looked about three—was staring right at me, giving me this big sunny genuine smile. I smiled back at him and then I played peekaboo with him over the edge of my pink tabloid newspaper. When he and his family disembarked at Union Square, he waved to me and said "bye-bye" and I felt a pang. IN MY OVARY. Okay, not really. But it was super freaking cute.
Then I tried to turn my attention back to the article for the remainder of the trip up to Yoga Union at 28th St. I skimmed until I hit this sentence: "The current obsession with food preparation—I absolutely must have that Le Creuset casserole!—is totally New Victorian." That's when I remembered: crap! I totally forgot to pick up the used Creuset dutch oven I put on hold last weekend at The Brooklyn Kitchen (it was only $100!). I can't wait to install it in the kitchen of the apartment I'm looking to rent in the fall somewhere in brownstone Brooklyn. Email me if you hear of anything!
In fact, I'm looking at a long-term sublet in Boerum Hill on Friday.
You guys, I don't know how much longer I can keep working here.