Xicala

Carrie Bradshaw once said that New York is the perfect city to be pissed off in. You were RIGHT, Carrie. It is. While it does absolutely nothing to alleviate pain it does offer several helpful options for transferring anger. Instead of being pissed off at your faulty alarm clock you can scream at the C train. Instead of hating on your landlord you can slam your huge wooden door in exasperation and trot down your brownstone steps in disgust. Instead of crying over tax season you can fight with a gypsy cab driver over a 7-12 dollar ride, throw an apple core at a blocked entrance, or talk back to an opinion piece in the Times. New York saves the foot-in-mouth complex, shall we say.

I have also found that in New York bitterness makes the beautiful more stunning and the ugly more grotesque. It has something to do with the way we hold our heads, with the way we pierce our lips upon disappointment. We reign it in better than most. The same cannot be said, however, about anger. It makes all of us unattractive no matter the circumstance. Anger cannot be masked.

Well, dear reader, while I haven't necessarily been pissed off this week I have been... off. Just slightly off. It started with a tough conversation about New York herself and ended in yours truly getting deeply hurt by a stupid (yes, STUPID) reality TV show and then not being able to turn on the morning news in fear of what Oskar Schell would call heavy boots.

It's rough out there, people.

Luckily... there is another saving grace in New York to aid in the off-ness... It's a lovely little mixture of friends, conversation, and downtown wine bars. Last night it was Xicala on the LES mixed with Katie and Allison and light discussions on life that brought me down to a normally functioning level. While Xicala wasn't our first choice (did Peasant close?) it was there for me with open arms, soft lighting, and $5 glasses of house red. We also love the queso. Yes, please.

Like I said... it's rough out there. Gotham City will kick you when you least expect it, and drag you along its tax-payer littered streets without so much as a friendly hello. Luckily we are New Yorkers, and by basic definition are tougher than most. We can take it. And as the Beatles would say (I know, two random pop culture refs in one post... give me a break, I'm OFF, people) we get by with a little help from our friends.

:)