Weekend Review: The Anti-Carrie

Television and movies glamorize the New York City lifestyle to the point where it looks foreign and exciting to me, and I'm a resident. According to pop culture, every woman under 40 spends her salary on handbags and  cocktails, and stumbles down cobblestone streets in $500 heels everyday. Friday and Saturday nights offer hot dates over tiny dinners while Sundays are reserved for brunching and Barney's. New York is a town for pretty people who never stay in to catch up on their TiVo or leave the house wearing drawstring cotton pants and flip-flops. 

And then I had a thought, "Does everyone outside of the tri-state area think all women in New York live like Carrie Bradshaw?"

Watch how I dispel the myths in 4, 3, 2, 1...

Friday night: 

I jumpstarted my weekend with a trip to the laundromat. That's right. And it wasn't even in a trendy neighborhood like the Meatpacking District or Williamsburg. I spent my night in Queens matching socks and poorly folding fitted sheets next to little old Greek ladies hunched over their stacked metal pushcarts. 

What six weeks' worth of laundry looks like. There was so much my boyfriend had to haul it in a hockey bag.

Saturday: 

Vin and I needed some new fall duds, so we headed over to 5th Avenue the Queens Center Mall with the rest of the madding crowd. The stores were filled with Ed Hardy t-shirts and linen napkins pretending to be skirts and I began feeling old and crotchety. 

We had sushi for dinner. This would actually be considered pretty trendy of me, if it were still 1999.

After dinner, we met up with some friends at the Bohemian Beer Garden in Astoria. The closest thing I got to a Cosmopolitan was a $2 shot called a Purple Hooter.

We had midnight desserts and coffee at our favorite corner Greek cafe. 

They bumped house music while we ate pastries served by tanned Greek boys wearing tight designer shirts and threaded eyebrows. For a while, a Family Guy episode played softly on the TV by our table. Then, at the stroke of midnight, the "Haute European Nights" channel began showing a behind-the-scenes look at a photo shoot where topless models posed on top of cows while giggling playfully and sticking inanimate objects in their mouth.  

I guess I'm more Sex and the City than I thought.