[Somewhat] Mapping Bright Lights, Big City
a look at some of the Manhattan locations, along with corresponding passages, in Jay McInerney's novel.
It's 6A.M. Do You Know Where You Are
[via Time and Space on the Lower East Side]
When you meet the girl who wouldn't et cetera you will tell her that you are slumming, visiting your own six A.M. Lower East Side of the soul on a lark, stepping nimbly between the piles of garbage to the gay marimba rhythms in your head.
The Department of Factual Verification
It's ten-fifty when you get to Times Square. You come up on Seventh Avenue blinking. The sunlight is excessive. You grope for young shades. Down Forty-second Street, through the meat district. Every day the same spiel from the same old man: 'Girls, girls, girls, -- check 'em out, check 'em out, check 'em out. Take a free look, gentlemen. Check it out, Check it out.' The words and rhythm never vary. Kinky Karla, Naughty Lola, Sexsational Live Revue---girls, girls, girls.
A man's home after all is his castle. Approaching your building on West Twelfth Street, you observe the architect's dim concept of European fortresses: a crenelated tower atop the building conceals the water tank and the entrance is fitted with a mock portcullis.
[Lion's Head now Kettle of Fish]
You check the fridge; no beer. A finger of vodka in the bottle on the sink. Maybe you will step out and get a six-pack. Or wander over to the Lion's Head, as long as you're going out to see if there's anybody you know.
You walk down into the Lion's Head, past all the framed dust jackets of all the writers who have ever gotten drunk there, heading for the back room where the lights are low.
The glittering, curvilinear surfaces inside Odeon are reassuring. The place makes you feel reasonable at any hour, often against bad odds, with its good light and clean luncheonette-via-Cartier deco decor.
You get out at Bleecker Street. Megan takes your hand and leads you into a delicatessen. ... From the deli you walk toward Sixth. ... Each step takes you closer to the old apartment on Cornelia Street, where you lived with Amanda in New York. This was your neighborhood. These shops were your shops. ...
You pass Ottomanelli's Meats, where the corpses of small animals hang in the window: unskinned rabbits, hairless fetal pigs, plucked fowl with yellow feet. No ferrets. Amanda was always gross out by this.
now [still] an empty storefront
At the Corner of Jones and Bleecker a Chinese restaurant has replaced the bar whose lesbian patrons kept you awake so many summer nights when, too hot to sleep, you lay together with the windows open.
You walk up Fifth Avenue along the park. On the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, a mime with a black-and-white face performs in front of a small crowd.
You go to the Egyptian wing and wander among the obelisks, sarcophagi, and mummies. In your several visits to the Met this is the only exhibit you have seen.
[Dorrian's* (via Eater)
*neither Friday's nor on 1st ave., but Dorrian's on 2nd avenue, which might as well be TGIF...]
In a few minutes you are in singles' heaven on First Avenue. You start at Friday's, where you get a seat at the bar and finally succeed in ordering a drink. Prime time approaches, and the place is packed with eager secretaries and slumming lawyers. Everyone has the Jordache look--the look you don't want to know better. Hundreds of dollars' worth of cosmetics in gold around the necks of the open-shirted men. Gold crucifixes, Stars of David and coke spoons hang from the chains. Some trust in God to get them laid; others in drugs. Someone should do a very survey of success ratios, publish it in New York Magazine.
The first light of the morning outlines the towers of the World Trade Center at the tip of the island. You turn in the other direction and start uptown.
There are cobbles on the street where the asphalt has worn through. You think of the wooden shoes of the Dutch settlers on these same stones. Before that, Algonquin braves stalking game along silent trails.
"Taste," says Tad, "is a matter of taste."
[Top 1st pic via StoryboardC]
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