Tribal Rites, Part I

Urbanites all belong to multiple tribes. We define ourselves by a variety of them, but perhaps the most interesting ones are professional and there is nothing more urban than the advertising business. It’s not quite like Mad Men anymore. We don’t generally keep bottles of booze and the matching stemware in our offices or desks, but we do party hearty. TV networks, radio stations, and magazines are usually the hosts and some of them do it big enough to justify the extra expense of doing it on Friday nights. Not only that, but with three venues.

The opening venue on this occasion might normally be used for very different tribal rites, although is mystifying sometimes, even to the Urban Anthropologist, how such things can proceed. In this location on the upper west side the small lower-level rooms had a cavernous feel to them with their exposed stone walls and low ceilings, and things eventually got claustrophobic. First word to the wise: Get there early unless you like Standing Room Only.

A DJ in dreadlocks played a custom mix ranging from Latin rock to world, particularly Middle Eastern alternating with Shakira. A petite belly dancer moved among the guests, collecting tips from the more sophisticated ones. Some of the mostly Mad Women were inspired to get up and shimmy along with her, under the influence or no. Female waitstaff in black moved among the guests with hors d’oeuvres, some of which were difficult to positively identify. The Urban Anthropologist, however, is a fan of Staples and by happenstance was equipped with a pen that lights up on the second click. Which made it much easier to identify the shrimp in the sushi and take notes in the dark. Trigorin would have appreciated it.

White cocktail napkins of the kind too small to record much more than a phone number on serve a useful purpose in such places: to mark the location of one’s drink, especially if it’s something like red wine or cognac. Initiates to the NY club scene might want to order something pale, like a piña colada or a frozen margarita, just to be able to see it in the dark. Not to mention learning how to use chopsticks when there is any risk of sushi being served. Failure to do so does make one appear gauche.

Not having been to this particular location before, it was difficult to determine whether it was a pickup or hideaway spot (its website provided no clue). If the latter, the atmosphere was understandable. If the former one wonders how the urban mating ritual plays out in a venue with minimal lighting and dark furniture where most of the patrons and even the staff are wearing black. This must be what keeps the fragrance industry in business.

Sexual shenanigans are not completely dead in the ad business, but this was more of an occasion to meet, greet, and converse – within the limits of the decibel level. Most of the attendees knew each other from having worked together before; some introduced their significant others. The host company’s attendees were in from their regional offices, and within an hour it was so crowded that I missed my favorite vendor from that company, a smart, young caballero handsome enough to star in one of his network’s programs, until we encountered each other outside to catch the bus to the concert.

In between cell phone conversations and greeting latecomer clients there was time for the Urban Anthropologist to observe the parade of prancing dogs walking north on Columbus. Even after the beautifully groomed Samoyed, the stars of that parade were a pug and an English bulldog, both of whom belonged to a woman whose face was curiously like theirs. Both dogs looked out at the humans as if from a stage. How Shakespeare would love the stage that is New York City!

Venue two was the theatre, merely blocks away. Music is basic to the human condition, so it would be impossible for the Urban Anthropologist to live anywhere that doesn’t have a lively and diverse concert scene. Religions that attempt to ban music are denying the ultimate humanity of their followers, but that’s another subject for another essay. When one attends a salsa concert, the connection is more obvious than ever. There was no one in the audience, regardless of ethnicity, who didn’t want to obey Gloria Estefan’s exhortation:

Come on, shake your body baby,
do the conga
I know you can't control yourself any longer
Feel the rhythm of the music getting stronger
Don't you fight it till you've tried it
Do the conga beat….

Had the concert been in Madison Square Garden’s main arena instead, people might have been doing just that. There couples dance on the promenades in front of the tiered seating to the live sounds of Oscar de Leon and Victor Manuelle. For the moment, though, the attendees merely got up on their feet to shake in place and wave the flashing lights provided by the sponsor. One of my clients, seated on my left, played imaginary conga drums on his lap. It is always marvelous to see that busy urbanites still have the energy to do these things at the end of a long workday. Some male fans approached the stage and kissed Gloria’s hand, answering a question that’s been in the Urban Anthropologist’s mind ever since the love of Latin music appeared some years ago (All previous experience involves male singers, this will be further referenced at another time).

The afterparty could hardly be called such, as it was too much like the subway at rush hour. A colleague needed 30 minutes to fight his way to the bar and back for a second drink. Our host company is notorious for choosing venues too small for the guest list, but due to the endless free drinks, will never face a protest boycott. It isn’t a place for the touchphobic or the conversation fan, especially when not conversing in one’s first language. There wasn’t even a dance floor but had there been, it would have been too full of people for movement to have been possible. Not an optimal setting for the tribal rites of Madison Avenue.

My colleague, his wife, and I departed at 1AM and were accosted just outside the venue by a young man who asked for our wristbands, which had been required for entrance. In an accent that sounded French to our weary ears he claimed to be in banking and told us that his girlfriend had lost her wristband at the theatre, so I slipped mine off neatly (when putting these on it is wise to not make them too tight) and gave it to him. However, when he asked for the others’, we didn’t buy it.

En route to the subway we speculated on the guy’s motive and concluded that he had been collecting them to sell at $10 or $20 apiece, as they each represented free drinks for the rest of the night. In New York that could amount to $50 or more per head. While that wasn’t particularly honest, it was a unique form of urban creativity, analgous to youths who purchase full day unlimited Metrocards and sell individual swipes on them all day long. The Urban Anthropologist wonders if this young “banker” will ever realize he is being compared to members of an urban underclass.

Urban Wildlife

Canine

As my multi-ethnic, once working-class neighborhood becomes more and more gentrified, the dog population increases. This is particularly true of those toy- and purse-sized breeds so popular in the residential areas of Manhattan. Whether I am in my home or office neighborhood, these small canines never fail to draw the attention of even the worst urban cynic.

It’s easy to forget that all dogs are descended from the grey wolf when watching these tiny creatures, half of them smaller than cats. There may be a demographic code by breed, but I haven’t identified it yet. There are, however, a few things that all those small genetic wonders have in common:

• They are very people-smart. Perhaps because so many humans pause to stare at them or approach them with an “Awww,” they make eye contact with every human in their path.
  
• Whether or not they are show dogs, they all smile and prance. The Pomeranian gives his cute little foxy grin while the Maltese kicks her long hair out, like Scarlett O’Hara walking pigeon-toed to make her skirt move as she enters a room. A little jet-black pocket poodle walked very daintily on his leash before taking his owner’s lap and scoping out the nearest humans. Of course he had a typical French name: Marcel.
  
• They all have Napoleon complexes. One evening in the East Village I spotted a tiny pocket poodle on a leash trying to incite something with a German Shepherd mix who could easily have passed for a wolf. The poodle’s owner said she weighed less than two pounds. The large dog stared down the poodle from the security of his own leash and went on his way.
  

It’s no secret that owners are huge influences over their furbabies, but whenever I see a woman carrying her tiny dog in a purse as though serving as his taxi service, I have to wonder if the dog remembers that he’s a dog. In the East Village Starbucks I encountered a Yorkie in a purse and went “Aw, hi, cutie!” to have the owner respond “She hears that so often she thinks it’s her name.” I petted the dog and asked her name; curiously, I don’t remember it.

After the few days of the fall that’s coming up in New York, these small canines will be decked out in the best fashions ever seen in Dogue or Canine Quarterly. One wonders what the dogs think of this.

Avian

Although some consider them to be a major urban nuisance, I actually like pigeons. They have attitude. My late mother used to feed the birds in her garden and where sparrows and blue jays go, pigeons usually follow. One day they were sitting in formation on the roof, all staring at the feeders, their heads bobbing to get a better view. As soon as my mother was six feet away from the feeders came the whop-whop sound of the beating of their wings as they swooped down to gavonne the birdseed, like The Goodfeathers’ Godpigeon.

While waiting to cross a street under an elevated train one morning the man standing in front of me was observing the pigeons perching overhead. One was just above him, turning so that his tail feathers were over the edge. “That bird looks like he’s going to take a shit”. I couldn’t resist saying “It looks like he’s taking aim.” Realizing his vulnerability, the man backed up to a position to my right. The light changed and as we began to cross the bird flew back… and got him. As he cursed and I withheld my laughter I lamented that Seinfeld was no longer in production.

When you see courting pigeons you have to laugh. The male struts about in front of the female, puffing out his chest and fluffing out his feathers as if to see “Look at me, baby; I’m the big tough City Bird.” The female always plays hard to get, walking away while appearing to ignore him. I’ve never had the time to observe them long enough to see one succeed with a female and fly off together to a tree or a ledge, so I wonder what their success rate is. Considering the pigeon population, I suspect it’s rather high.


Rodentia

One of the founders of The National Lampoon once said that the toughest animal in the world is a New York subway rat. After what I saw one evening in the 59th street station, I believe this completely.

Two rats were running near the rail, toward me, when the light from the oncoming train appeared around the corner. The lead rat paused at the rail, the other mounted from behind. 1.5 seconds and a loud squeak later, they disengaged and ran off as the train pulled into the station. Did they do this for the bragging rights? I exchanged a look and a shrug with a woman standing about eight feet away from me, and about a half dozen others burst into laughter as the train pulled into the station. Only in New York.


Feline

On Columbus Avenue at an outdoor café the other night was the ultimate urban wildlife sighting: A blue-point Himalayan being carried by his proud human mother sans leash or carrier. Such a beautiful feline draws fans and questions easily and the couple happily described how they could carry this lovely creature around everywhere, including into the plane cabin to take him on their visits to his human grandmère in Japan. This necessitates purchasing a seat for him at human prices. The Urban Anthropologist was too polite to ask whether that required a child or adult ticket, concluding that a non-show cat who could sit on his humans’ laps in a public place with noisy people and a parade of dogs on leashes deserves the privilege.

Reggaeton and other Contradictions

One of the most amazing things about my city is the astounding contrasts to be found within it. One of my favorite stores is Caswell Massey on the corner of 48th and Lexington. There since 1752, it exudes quiet elegance and tradition. The music played inside varies by employee shift, but is either ornate baroque or nostalgic 1920s. Either is completely appropriate as you browse the traditionally-packaged fragrances with names like Greenbriar, Tricorn, and Jockey Club. They call up images of elegant gentlemen in French cuffed-shirts and the bejeweled ladies they would wear these for while sipping champagne or martinis or dancing the rhumba.

Across Lexington and a few feet south is a bastion of post-modernism, the club LQ. Like many others it promotes its Friday happy hour with 2 for 1 drinks, free food, and free admissions for ladies. My office held a sendoff for a departing employee there, and it is such a far cry from what is to be found across the street and with the Latin clubs of my previous experience.

Has Latin music – and the dancing that is done to it -- lost all its sense of foreplay and seduction? Is reggaeton the zipless fuck of Latin music? Or is it the refuge of people who aren’t up to the tango? While the dancing followed its own rules it so lacks the playfulness, the subtler seduction, the romance of the dances done to other Latin music forms. There was no leading or following, and a few cases of no touching or real communication between the parties, like in so many other situations in our lives.

And have dance floors become larger since the 70s to make it all the more anonymous? Couples moved to the thumping beat as though they were joining the Mile High Club in an airplane’s facility. There were a few threesomes on the floor as well, and a variety of singletons, something I had hoped died out with the 60s. Like that strange era, this youth-oriented music seemed to have a universal appeal to this after-work crowd of every race and ethnicity, with the difference that youth is now extended to about the age of 35. Was this a music video set in Plato’s Retreat? Finally, is all this yet another symbol of our rushed lives in this postmodern age?

Freud would have needed a stiff drink or three at the sight of these couples humping on the dance floor, most of them not making eye contact. It all so misses the tease that Gypsy Rose Lee would have been shocked. I realized then that since the music started I hadn’t noticed how many of those couples or threesomes had arrived together. If our great x 3 grandparents had railed against the waltz, what would they have made of this?

The Urban Anthropologist isn’t particularly shocked; it doesn’t go with the territory. However, opinions and tastes are permissible; after all, James Bond’s boss misses the Cold War. If anyone develops a time machine, just give me a lifetime supply of condoms, ten pairs of Capezios, and drop me off at the Copacabana in the world of Oscar Hijuelos’ The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. That would contain gentlemen who would deliver smooth lines before asking a lady to dance. They probably drink Scotch or margaritas, but they would definitely patronize Caswell-Massey.

Intro

Assuming that the earth survives the present global warming and escapes nuclear attacks, will there be a need for archaeologists a few hundred years down the line? How well are our post-modern lives documented? I wish I could discuss this with Carrie Bradshaw over Cosmopolitans or mocha cappuccinos, but since that isn't possible and my day job doesn't include a newspaper column, I will introduce myself now.

The Urban Anthropologist has a Madison Avenue day job, often with long hours. When going through another episode of Clients Behaving Badly, there isn't a lot of reward. Consumer behavior is reported to us and studied by us in ways never dreamed of by the Mad Men of AMC's brilliant series, but we haven't stopped taking notes on cocktail napkins. The only difference now is that the napkins are usually those light brown ones from Starbucks which allow us more space and we're drinking iced Americanos instead of martinis. Well, most of the time anyway. Sorry to disappoint anyone wanting to enter the business, but the 3-martini lunch is dead in the age of accellerating technology and client expectations.

These observations and ruminations are posted from New York City, a microcosm of the human universe, the tossed salad, the advertising capital of the world. All cultures meet, greet, date, mate, relate, contemplate, and otherwise interact here, sometimes with amusing results. City life is deliciously complex, filled with choices upon choices upon alternatives that draw people into its noisy embrace. But for all that we complain about the noise, we get very nervious when it's too quiet.