Robert Deniro’s famous quip that New York is dead to him north of 14th Street sounds more like something Leo DiCaprio would say, given it appears that no one above 25 years old lives south of 14th Street anymore. Yes, there’s Tribeca with the strollers and Soho with the skinny jean, long gray-haired stragglers who all look like former junkie Pink Floyd roadies or Andy Warhol’s carcass. Oh, and the straight out of central casting octogenarians who charm the youth with sporadic blasts like, “I says to her, I says, the Kawfee ain’t good here no maww.”
Okay, I get it. I should have long been married and living in Brooklyn Heights, or God Forbid, Garden City, Scarsdale, or, oh fuck it, Boca Raton or some other shoot-me-in-the-toe-of-my Gucci Horsebit loafer. But I’m single, over 50, and want to mingle, and I just assumed that a town with such density would have age-appropriate women on bar stools from the Seaport to Avenue C. But they are nowhere to be found, not south of 63rd Street. At least, I haven’t found them.
Last weekend, I was taking in some rare warmth and sun standing on the corner of Bleecker and Perry Street when a very cute 20-something walked by and said, “wow, you really put out some serious Hot Dad vibes.” By the end of our conversation, I think I got a date with her … or her aunt… I’m not sure which.
I’m stuck in a purgatory of sorts with my choices being the occasional random fling with a gal with daddy issues, crossing the proverbial swords with my friends’ sons, or having to hike it to the Upper East Side to do a Pilates class followed by a late afternoon martini in some brasserie, hopeing to find an age-appropriate woman who is not turned off by the fact I’m not wearing a quarter-zip with a country club logo on it and a pair of sensible khakis.
My complaint may sound shocking to my friends in Jacksonville, Charlotte, San Antonio, Eau Claire and Montpelier as they sip their tequila sodas at the country club and enjoy date night at Top Golf or The Capital Grille. After all, most of them have done a stint in New York, whether it be a Shearson-Lehman (sigh) training program or the bartend-before-law school summer of love, so all they remember is Manhattan teeming with women, which it still is, if you’re 25. But I swear, it’s different now. Or like I said, it’s not. I am.
Except for Balthazaar. Nude figureheads stand guard in proscenium effect framing the elegant bar, calming the tempests that lie in old men’s hearts as they watch the handsome bartenders display their youthful plumage in crisp white jackets, shake, shake, shaking out martinis to an admiring, lusting, envying mix of tourists, artists, loyalists-in-from-Jersey, investment bankers, influencers and the influenced, from 21to 81, by God.
Good old Balthazaar, the one place I can go Downtown and feel vital, certainly not the oldest man in the room. Good old Balthazaar, where there is always, always, always, a large, fat lipped Teutonic man in the mix, Augustus Gloop-turned-fragance-distributor-in-36 countries, diamonds on his Rolex burning your retinas as he works his way with zero self-consciousness through a steak au poivre (rare), as two, always two young starlets sip champagne and hang on his words, like the cognac sauce dripping off his lip.
Good Balthazaar. Bad Keith McNally, what a dick (I read your book. I’m not sure if you were trying to garner sympathy but you did a shitty job of it). But thank you Keith for the one place I can go and have a shot at life, or at least a decent conversation. Oh, that and Raoul’s, of course, but that’s just plain derivative.
Any other suggestions on spots I should check out are welcome, dear reader.
