Sudetenland Tales by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Sudetenland Tales

Page 154

football jerseys and trousers which commenced somewhere around knee level. The dining room on the second floor was completely empty, and believe it or not, I wasn’t the least bit surprised.

There was an outside view of the obvious ones, young people on a gap year, backpacking across the cheap parts of the Northwestern US, staying in hostels and Instagramming the whole thing. I can distinguish them by their young age, their look, their tattoos, their gear. Maybe they have trust funds; maybe the internet has democratized this to a degree. I don’t know and I don’t care.

I think other people either come to New York City on a quest or in defeat. Like they punched out of corporate life after their third divorce and came here to live on ten grand a year and try to forget that it’s a Third World bodega. Or they’re running some off shoring business to kill off jobs in the US, but wish they were back in what remains of the real US, so they find the one Irish bar and pretend they’re in Old Dublin or Old Dayton or Old Aurora, without deigning to come in.

I went to the top floor of the old Hotel Manhattan, which is the 8th, but the G floor with the lobby is really the ‘second’ floor, and there is no 4th floor. The explanation is boring and typical, and is likely done just to keep the traditionalists off balance. The restaurant was upstairs, so basically ten floors up. It was