I got to thinking...

I can pinpoint the moment that falling out of love turned to total hated.

It was a few months ago while walking The Highline. Flowers stretching their newborn heads into the glare of the sun, springtime smiles from New Yorkers, views across the Hudson to New Jersey on my left, Manhattan's straight lines to my right. A buddhist monk strolls past in bright orange robes, while in a photo studio overlooking the park, a man is modeling swimwear at a fashion shoot.

Straight ahead of me on the wall of a building is a 50 foot high poster. A huge silver sparkly number '2' and in smaller writing underneath Sex and the City 2- sponsored by Moet and Chandon. I stop. I shudder. I can't decide which offends me most- the drag queen diamante or the movie being bankrolled by the world's most ghetto chavulous champagne. SATC lost it's cool when the first film came out, now it's conceding to becoming a full on franchise? Aimed at who? Teenage girls and rappers?

SATC- the HBO series was great at getting the zeitgeist before it even happened. SATC- the movies have become a designer Disneyland for not very grown-ups, a reliable studio moneyspinner that trades in fake fantasies and forced fabulosity.

The world has changed a lot since 2004 when the series ended. Hell, I even smoked back then. Inside too! In restaurants and everything! Imagine? I liked to curl up on my sofa in Cardiff and work my way through a packet of Malboro Lights while watching Carrie smoke hers.
 
There was always excess back then, but while the movies want to choke on it, the series kept it more palatable and made sure the characters kept one Choo in reality. I loved the TV version, I  really did. Go ahead and be snarky. I was a loud and proud a fan. It was witty, relevant, pitch perfect and of it's time. Everything the movies are not. 
 
If watching SATC the movie 1 was like pouring sugar in your mouth until you vomited, then I fancy  SATC 2 will be akin to catching a once hip older sister buying incontinence pads at Duane Reade. I won't be finding out. I am not paying $15 to give this gravy train any more credence.

If the HBO series Carrie actually existed she would not watch movie Carrie. She probably wouldn't be living in New York anymore. She would spend her nights posting comments on Gawker about how Manhattan is over and too sanitised and it was better when you could walk down the streets and be mugged for your Manolos, except Carrie wouldn't even be wearing Manolos anymore, she'd be wearing Toms.

And she would type: "I got to thinking...could it be the show that was so much about fashion, simply fell out of it?"


*



footnote

Regular readers of this blog will know that this is the first time I have even written the words 'Sex and the City' on Welsh Alien. If it ever needed referring to it was named as The show that we never dare speak it's name since it sold out and made that appallingly saccharin big screen version. Just so that it's clear I'm not jumping on the SATC bashing bandwagon and that I can always be relied on to stay ahead of the hater trends.

How to get a free drink in New York

Last night I watched four strangers get naked...at Bingo.

You don't get that at Gala back home in Wales. I'm sure the most torrid thing that happens there is some Tena lady leakage. Although Mum says there are occasional fights over blobber pens.

The Teenager and I and some Brit friends sit agog at the back of a Lower East Side bar as these audience members proceed to do a fan dance with some paper plates. It is 8.30 p.m. on a Monday night.

The quartet in question had earlier introduced themselves as an opera singer, a political consultant, an erotic party organiser and a go-go dancer. So you might not be hugely surprised at the last two, who no doubt spend their nights watching arse humping away. However I can't imagine there's that much cock on show at Madam Butterfly and I would guess the Republicans like to keep the tits to a minimum. *Insert your own George Bush joke here*

What is most surprising about this impromptu flesh show though is that all of them are doing it for just two drinks each. I have previously blogged about the fact that two drinks is enough to get you hammered in New York, especially vodka Martinis, which seem to be pure Absolut, with an olive for the hell of it. But isn't the point that you would have to be smashed before you got naked? I wouldn't take my clothes off for all the booze behind the bar. In fact, I would probably only just about consider it for the deeds to the bar.

You might ask what do you expect at Drag queen bingo? Well I expected some good clean family fun like I had at Lips in my West Village hood. There I enjoyed fisting jokes and a fake orgasm competition in the company of my mother and daughter. But real life nakedness? I remind myself I'm on the East side now. There are no trees, Armani gays or overpriced cupcake bakeries but there are young 20something hipsters, lots of entertaining crackheads and really good drug dealers (allegedly).

It's edgy. Yeah. I can do edgy. I watch the odd indie film and have fake ray bans.

Later that night I am in queue for the toilet wading through a piss leak on the floor and reading the obscene graffiti on the walls. Next to me is a loud girl in American Apparel lurex telling her friend about a film that's "...really, really really old". Turns out it's from 1989.

Taxi back to the West Village.

Wellington Roots

• 

While on my way to buy rainboots this week I pondered a memory: Many years ago when my fabulous new life in New York was just a twinkle in a social networking site's eye I imagined how life here would be. And naturally, the reality is quite different. But the biggest shock is that I would have been pretty certain that I would do it all in heels. And here I am off to buy wellies. And not in an Alexa Chung 'partying it up at the VIP tent of a festival' way. Just in an everyday wearing way. Scary.

It doesn't take a genius to work out what was responsible for the fantasy of skipping around New York in 6 inch stilletos. A certain TV show that we never dare speak it's name after they sold out and made that appallingly saccharin big screen version.

When I first started coming to New York in 2006 I figured that I couldn't do the smoking (gave up in 2005) or the dating (had met The American by then) or the Jimmy Choos (skint single mother) but I could do stuff in heels. Ya for heels! I love them, spent my whole life staggering around in them. 'Car to Bar' heels as my mother calls them. Only good for going from the car to the bar. I also found them good for the car to the supermarket, the car to the office and the car to a friend's house for dinner.

Problem is now I don't have a car to go to the bar, unless I get a taxi-which is reasonable for a night out but not so much for a food shop. Come to think of it, I don't have a supermarket either, just 'gourmet markets' and I no longer have an office. I have only just started to get some friends so you can see how the 'car to bar' shoes start to become redundant.

But I stubbornly stuck with those heels in 2006, wearing them to sightsee and shop and I simply ended up with feet that looked like they belonged to 90 year old Grandma.

New Yorkers wear flats and rainboots are an acceptable part of an outfit in the snow or wet. I resisted of course, but it was futile. Since I arrived in September my heels have not moved from their place in the shoe rack and my flat boots all need reheeling. And now I find myself buying rainboots. And callling them rainboots. Wellies Emma, they are fucking wellies.

''What is this 'Wellie' you're taking about?" asks The American.
''Wellies?"
''Yeah, what is a 'Wellie?' We don't know that name in America." When the American says Wellie it sounds like Willy so I giggle.
''Galoshes do you call them?"
"Rainboots?"
"Yeah I want Hunters."
''What is this Hunter? We don't know that name in America."
"Yes you do. They sell them in bloody Bloomingdales."

Which is where I am heading now. And while I am there I will stroke pairs of heels with a great nostalgia and I will say:

''I will never forget you. I will always love you."

Because flats might be what I need right now, but heels will always be my solemates.