Table of Contents
Hi friends!
Hi friends! It’s late after work, and I don’t want to write! I’ve been so busy and stressed but also having a lot of fun. I just want to share thoughts.
Bye friends!
I have a lot of comings and goings. One of my besties just moved here after traveling for months and seemingly never going to stop, until he did. One of my besties is moving away this week to spend time with family before going to grad school. One of my besties is coming back tomorrow after being gone for multiple months visiting family and getting certified to be a yoga teacher (in Costa Rica!).
I’m really sad about my friend leaving. Nat and I have been friends since college aside from a year-and-a-half hiatus when I took the wrong side of a fight. When I moved to New York, we reconnected and I apologized for fizzling out what used to be such a strong friendship. I’m lucky she was so understanding because my New York experience would be so different without her.
We are so different from each other but always know how to have fun, whether coworking in PJs or clubbing in dresses. It’s hard to reconnect with friends and create experiences that actually feel new instead of recreations of memory lane. It takes some time, consistent hanging, and new activities. She knows how to get me outside of my comfort zone but also knows when it’s time to keep things easy. She’s maybe the person who’s slept on my couch the most.
Our little group got a special finale dinner together, which involved gift giving, low lighting, and one of us eating (and loving) steak after avoiding beef for two years. We shared all of our food, and Nat schemed a karaoke situation between bites. Thankfully, there was a place down the block. We got our own room, sang, and sweat profusely. I pounded soju and cheered on my friends. It felt like a workout. We ended the night at a bar I hate but they love, Horses and Divorces. Multiple men interrupted our heart-to-hearts to flirt, giving me more reasons to hate this bar.
I’ll see her again before the week ends and she moves. But this is also what I always say when I say goodbye. I’m terrible at them. I remember when I graduated high school and had my final hangouts (some of them still remain the last time I saw some friends) being unable to give a permanent goodbye. We’d have a big dinner or activity, share words of love, and end with Well this isn’t it, right? and Oh, well I still have four more days and Maybe I’ll see you Tuesday?
I always know how to make a finale special, but I never know how to end it as such. There’s always opportunity for more. I don’t want to commit to something being over completely. I always like to leave the door open. I genuinely think I’ll see Nat, especially since we have a group chat of others clamoring to do the same. But it’s just funny. She’s one of my first big goodbyes of me living here. My friend Max moved to Boston for law school, and I forgot to make a goodbye event (I’m seeing him in two weeks). I just don’t know when to fold!
Nat’s always someone I can look to at the function, make eye contact, and exchange endless information through a single glance. Sometimes if it’s too much, one of us bursts out laughing. She has this one laugh that I can totally imagine her throwing out as a 7-year-old while pranking someone on the playground. I’ll miss hearing it from across the table.
In other news, I hosted my Gentrifier Olympics anniversary party this weekend, which I was told I practically put on a billboard based on how much I promoted it (true). I seem to have fallen into a pattern of biyearly hosting, once in the summer and once in the winter. I was nervous about too many people showing up, but it ended up being the perfect amount. One person would text asking Can I bring two friends? and then another would say I actually have COVID and can’t come :( so it all evened out.
Cleaning wasn’t as arduous as I thought it would be, and I was ready for my early birds, who all got along swimmingly. My friends Matias and Nick brought me an insane gift, this adorable green typewriter. I thought they were bringing it as a fun prop but said No, Syd, it’s a gift! I have no idea how they got it, or really, which grandma they tricked. It was so good of a gift that I felt unequipped to believe it even was one. I’ll have to write an entry with it, or something.
The party really started once a group of six of my sorority sisters walked in, and the party moved past everyone just sitting around in one group. It felt like everyone came at once within the 10:15-10:30 window. I love hosting and seeing people mesh together I would (or wouldn’t) have naturally put together. I had multiple bathroom breaks where I’d stare at myself while washing my hands and smile real big.
I gave my early birds instructions to tell me when it started to get too sweaty or antsy and it was time to switch locations. This happened after midnight, so we went to the bar around the corner. I felt like I was a shepherd trying to get my sheep to the right side of a fence. We then went to a dancier place and then an even dancier one. I got a bit exhausted and overwhelmed by the end of the night in a way that showed me not only am I not ready to get married, but I’m certainly not able to have my own wedding.
The busy-ness continues. Meera and I are spending the holiday weekend with friends in New Hampshire, I’m almost immediately going to D.C. for a day for work, and I’ll be “down the shore” the weekend after. I don’t feel particularly ready for this much movement, but I’ll be fine. I’ll sleep when I’m dead!
This week’s photo is from the B57 bus. I went to Red Hook, which is famously hard to get to. What luck I have to live in Bushwick along the B57 that takes me all the way there, spending an hour weaving through some of Brooklyn’s most beautiful neighborhoods. I listened to music and stared out the window with Meera.
Current fixations I want to mention
Food & Drink
I love dessert, but I rarely go to dessert places. I usually just want ice cream, and I don’t want to leave the house. I’ve housed countless pints of Ben and Jerry’s. I use this personality quirk to rationalize why I never went to Anita Gelato even though I lived nearby for a few months. My friend Stella just moved to the UES, so I used a catchup as an opportunity to introduce both of us to some of the most hyped frozen desserts in the city. Not only was it worth the hype, but I think it’s now my favorite dessert spot in New York. I didn’t want to think it was gonna be the best place ever. Long lines, girlbossy design, 2015 radio hits…but no. It’s worth the hype and maybe the best gelato I’ve ever had, which is saying something. I could just submit to everything and be happy through the cheuginess because I’m living in a timeline where this exists. A “regular” cup includes two flavors but is huge and has a fun wafer cookie. There are so many flavors, which are all so inventive and beautiful. I went with Cookieman because of the name (like some sort of fun italian chocolate cookie flavor) and this pistachio creme brulee. Perfect creaminess-to-solid ratio, and both flavors mixed well. I can’t and don’t want to pick a favorite flavor. This place is a must, and a great place to take someone from out of town.
Music
I haven’t listened to the whole Sabrina Carpenter album, but I was pleased to hear that it had a Kacey Musgraves quality about it. It’s self-aware pop with a twang. I like seeing internet theories about Joshua Bassett and Shawn Mendes. My favorite song so far is “Good Graces,” which also sort of sounds like Ariana Grande. Despite all of these similarities, she does sound like her own artist. The lyrics are fun and catchy (‘Cuz no one’s more amazing / At turning loving into hatred is so real). I know I need to listen to the Magdalena Bay album, but I’m lazy.
Internet & Pop Culture
My FYP shows a lot of travel videos, but my favorites are when people are on some sort of unreasonably long odyssey. I would never do something like that because it looks like a logistical nightmare. My favorite person to watch is this guy named Omar through his series “Egypt to Japan Without Flying.” The title is self-explanatory, and he is certainly taking the long way. I’ve been following him for a few months now, and he has such a positive attitude as he meets new people and goes off the beaten path. He’s almost at 200 days and just arrived at Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He’s spent the past few weeks in the Stans, countries I do not know how to differentiate from each other. His series has genuinely taught me so much about these countries, and it’s fun to see what antics he gets up to. Some of these cities realize he’s coming or reach out to him beforehand, and officials show him around or give him amazing accommodations. Other times, he’s on packed, sweaty trains for over 12 hours and playing cards with new friends. He spent the past week or two in Kyrgyzstan hiking with a tour group and staying in yurts. Anyway, I love seeing his backpacking journey. In this most recent video, he randomly runs into people he met on his travels two months ago. The world is so small!
Television & Maybe Movies
I’m a Paramount+ subscriber while the international Drag Race season airs, and this is technically the worst streaming service I’ve ever used. Nevertheless, I might subscribe for longer because I randomly decided to start Survivor. I see the new season starts next month, and I miss the camaraderie of watch parties I feel during the winter when U.S. Drag Race is airing, so I want another show to fill that void. I’m watching the most recent season. At first, I found it frustrating because so much of the show is self-referential, and everyone is a superfan. But the gameplay has been so much fun, and one of the teams in particular has been so beyond bad. I’ll probably have more to say as I continue watching, but I love to commit to a competition reality program. This show feels like it’s made for STEM majors or people who brag about their SAT scores after high school, but it’s still really good.
Journalism & Literature
TW: sexual assault
I’m waiting for the latest NY Mag to get to my mailbox. Until then, maybe read this story on these three brothers that nepo’d their way to real estate royalty and got away with unspeakable acts: “Everyone Knew About the A-Team.” The Alexander brothers grew up in Miami and became NY real estate moguls. But at each point in their career (and before), all three of them — sometimes in the same incident — drugged and sexually assaulted women. The three of them are still trying to save face and are even vacationing this summer all over glamorous European locations. Any sort of exposé is interesting, and it’s wild to see people that have seemingly always be evil finally being sort of held accountable. What weird psychological implications that these brothers were committing these sexual atrocities together.
Something I Saw in the Wild
I saw the play Oh, Mary! this week. Memes relating to it have been all over my feeds for months, and I really wanted to see Cole Escola be strange. I don’t want to say anything about the plot because it’s best to just be surprised. The cast is just five people, including Cole as Mary Todd Lincoln plus two of the love interests from the Fire Island movie (one of them also playing Forty in Netflix’s You). It’s probably one of the funniest plays I’ve ever seen, and I’ve never heard more laughter from a Broadway audience. We got the tickets for $60 each on Today Tix, which I think is a steal even though we were in the back row. It’s humor that you don’t really see showcased in this setting, and a lot of it is really stupid (in a good way). Even if you don’t usually like plays, I implore you to see it because it is worth the hype.