Space Odyssey: The Meatpacking District

I feel so far removed from the world of the wealthy elite that glancing into the red, pulsing depths of a nightclub is about as strange as peering down the endless corridors of the New York subway system. Dramatic lighting and gleaming chrome, paired with broken teeth cobblestones and aged wood, makes the Meatpacking District a foreign and attractive place -- a beautiful person dressed in homespun fabrics and shabby clogs (and a wallet packed with benjamins).

I don't go out here much, other than to play around in the High Line Park. The drinks are expensive, and I always somehow end up feeling like a little kid sitting at the grown-ups' table, surrounded by good-looking people who stink of casual money. Oh well!, I thought last night, and brought Kiersten down to Gansevoort for a drunkenly good time.

We started at Pastis, a French bistro with predictably high prices and strong cocktails. The waiter looked like a pathetic James Dean. We moved on to the Brass Monkey, where I gave up on cocktails and just drank a cup of Jim Beam. If it were not pouring rain, we would have probably also gone to the Standard Biergarten, which looked grubby and fun.

The Meatpacking District was apparently quite a dangerous area back in the day, home to AIDS-bearing transsexual prostitutes and Mafia-run nightclubs. The area was "cleansed" by the gradual opening of trendy boutiques and bistros, to the dismay of some nostalgic New Yorkers (do you see a pattern here?). The Meatpacking District now tends to appeal to the "bridge and tunnel" crowd, a.k.a. the Unmentionables from New Jersey, a change that has only added to frustration for the needle-brandishing, corrupt Italian locals.