Shu Blues
“It’s tough out there. High water everywhere.
Buyin and stashin apples
Lookin for a cart to sell em on.
More news from the trenches…At an uptown lunch on Friday, a friend ’embedded’ in the fashion industry for over thirty years, told me that Saks is about to declare bankruptcy. I winced. The merchant princes, Mr. Gimbel and Mr. Strauss, must be rotating in their graves,I thought. (I always touch the brass plaque dedicated to their memory near the elevators.) It’s not that shocking, of course. Not with fall inventory slashed down 30% to 70%, three weeks before Christmas. I went after lunch. More as an homage than to shop. (OK. that’s a tiny lie. I hoped I might find stuff for Christmas.) There was something eerie, unsettling, about seeing rolling racks packed with sale merchandise in the hallways outside fastidiously neat and deserted designer boutiques. The staff seemed as listless and lost as the shoppers. I mean, I used to love a sale. Everyone loves a sale.
It reminded me of a recent walk past the old Lehman Brothers building on Broadway. I’d pictured apocolyptic emptiness. Coffee cups and cardboard boxes and other windswept debris blowing through the lobby. It wasn’t that bad. Barclays has taken over the property. But there were no Town Cars lined up bumper to bumper. No pinstripes rushing in and out of the lobby. I ate a salad at Bobby Van’s across the street. The bartender spends most of his time polishing glasses now.
“It’s dead,” he said. “We’re still hoping and hanging in but it doesn’t look good.”
I’ve always admired the way bartenders work. The economy of movement. The efficiency. Like commanders of a small army with their array of glittering bottles standing in as soldiers. And everything but their customers in such perfect order. As he sliced limes for an empty house, he also said that the guys and the coffee carts across the street were gone. “They just disappeared. After seven years, gone.”
Isn’t that what they called the victims of the Argentinian junta? The disappeared? It seems like thousands of people are just disappearing. Gone missing. It’s not like the day the towers fell. This crash is invisible. Silent. You can’t see it or smell or feel it. There aren’t any screaming sirens racing to a futile rescue. And, again, unlike the Towers, it’s not something that happened and was over. It just keeps happening.
Dinner on Friday was strange, too. Lots of writers and publishing people. News that Houghton Mifflin is closing its doors. Sales of the back list down 30%. But then you hear that Tina Fey just sold a book for 6 million. Don’t get me wrong. I’m crazy about Tina Fey. She’s funny. But for six million bucks, her book better be very fucking funny.
“I just want to keep what I have. No more. No less,” says Robin, a 38-year-old stylist at Supercuts. Yeah, Robin. Don’t we all?
On a cheerier, final note. Drove out to Brooklyn Saturday night. (Gas is cheap.) Drinks and dinner with a young friend. Whip smart and gorgeous. Ditto her boyfriend. The boyfriend works in a sleep clinic. As a woman who never sleeps, I was fascinated. He had just delivered a lecture up at Harvard on his thesis: Dreaming and Modern Philosophy. Dinner (inc. booze) was $100.00 for four. Now that’s dreaming, I thought, as we stepped out of the restaurant into the city’s first winter snowfall.
Tomorrow? Laughter. I promise.
