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"Dinner at the Foodies"


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Almost by definition, being here means we're among the skewered snob set.

Gotta have this as a sig.......may I? :laugh:

Sandy~

Please make sure you let us know about WWTBAM ?!

please do.

good luck....two friends of mine both won the million (well, one won more than that cause they were doing that increase the max amount every day thing then)

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Yes, I know your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek.  Just be careful to move it out of the way before your next mouthful of food, lest you bite it.  :wink:

I'm always careful to chew on only one side, Sandy, switching tongue back and forth between alternating cheeks during those times when I am not completely sticking it out. :wink:

DC is the only city I've been in where you really can eat prestige.  Okay, maybe that's not really prestige that's being served on Capitol Hill, 'cause that wouldn't complement either the power or the black bean soup in the Senate cafeteria.  But it's something like it.

You can eat prestige on Wall Street, in the larger investment banks. It is an excellent seasoning, most sought-after. Quite tasty too, I hear. :raz:

My one-upmanship is of the Sam-Walton, more-frugal-and-practical-than-thou, you-can-get-better-for-less variety, which usually doesn't play well among the wannabe elite, for whom conspicuous consumption is the name of the game.

But just you wait until I win the million dollars.*  Then, once I get that house in town with a yard (or deck), you're gonna see barbecue the likes of which is unknown to Northeasterners, even those who participate in Kansas City Barbecue Society-sanctioned contests.  :wink:

Can't wait. And I hope you'll open an outlet here in the outback, where barbecue is a forgotten word, overcome by pizza on the one side and overpriced "tapas" (quote intentional)(snark snark) on the other.

Haven't read full article, but the excerpts above don't make plain just what in all this is "new?"

Paul Fussell commented acidly about similar behavior a quarter century ago in his popular best-seller, citing Diane Johnson's then-recent review of 24 food books and cookbooks in the New York Review of Books.  " 'Here eating is not the thing,' " Johnson is quoted.  Instead the books stress "anxiety," fear that the host's position "may not really be securely anchored" (Fussell, who goes on with many little examples).

Juvenal might have mentioned this too. :biggrin: But that was not in New York, I don't think. :wink:

Edited by Carrot Top (log)
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"Especially in New York, where there are fewer status indicators (like cars and landscaped lawns)..." Are you sh*tting me?!

Only halfway.

The writer is making a few IMO accurate assumptions about the rest of the country, but then promptly forgetting that Manhattanites (for it's really these "New Yorkers" we're talking about; the other four boroughs are different, though parts of Brooklyn increasingly less so) simply adapt to their unique locational circumstances in this as in so many other arenas.

It's true that fewer rich Manhattanites tool around in large expensive cars of their own or live in large houses than rich folks elsewhere in the US do. (And no rich Manhattanites have houses on large plots of land, unless you count their summer places in the Hamptons.) In the rest of the country, those two objects are the most common and most easily identifiable status markers.

But it's not true that there are "fewer status indicators" in absolute terms. It's just that the status indicators are different, and often impossible for the out-of-towner to discern without education in what to look for. Things like where one is seated when one goes out to eat, for instance, and for that matter at what restaurants, take on increased importance in Manhattan because one cannot whip out a Beemer to settle the status issue. The presence of doormen in apartment buildings is another status marker that takes on added significance. I could go on some more, but you get the idea.

Edited to add: For the sentence quoted to be accurate, the only change that needed to be made was for the parentheses to be deleted.

Edited by MarketStEl (log)

Sandy Smith, Exile on Oxford Circle, Philadelphia

"95% of success in life is showing up." --Woody Allen

My foodblogs: 1 | 2 | 3

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I lived in New York for 5 years (3 consecutive, 2 at different times), the last time being in 2004 after several years in Paris. I was shocked, on returning to New York that year, at how pushy and showy people were with their status symbols. Of course in Manhattan, that's not going to take the form of cars (or less often) and lawns (right), but it did include address, doorman building, gym, summer home, cell phone or other tech gear, clothing, which restaurants, bars or clubs you frequented or could get into in a snap.

It was really suffocating, at times (at most other times, I just lived my life). So the quote from the article made me choke. Though maybe I should have left off the parentheses, which are true, but beside the point.

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