Tin Ceilings and Turning 27

My birthday was last Thursday. As I didn’t reach some milestone age like 21, 40, 65 or 80, I felt the best way to bring in the new year was to toast to it with family over good food, drinks and conversation. My birthday celebration was perfect. Although my family and I raised several glasses to toast the occasion, the festivities, food, drinks and conversation became almost peripheral to something larger I was experiencing.

For the past 2 years, I have constantly struggled with identifying my connection to New York City. Although I have found many connections, like this supper club, more often than not I feel as if the City is so much bigger than me. Anyone who lives in NYC can attest to its madness. The City is perpetually busy, perpetually alive, transient, and eerily isolating. It often feels like I can easily get lost in it if I don’t seek out my connection to it.

To avoid this feeling of isolation or confusion, I try to find those moments or experiences that help me understand why I have decided to live here. After drinks and tapas at one of my most favorite spots (Room 18), we ventured back up to my area to close our evening at another one of my favorite spots – Rolf’s. Any of you who are familiar with either Room 18 or Rolf’s know that both are polar opposites of each other. Room 18 is a small trendy lounge located in the heart of Nolita that serves innovative cocktails and tapas. Rolf’s, a kitschy German bar and restaurant, is located in an old tenement in the Grammercy/Kip’s Bay area of Third Avenue. Rolf’s is cluttered with tchochke decorations and has that atmosphere that at any moment, Julie Andrews could appear singing a medley from Sound of Music.

Despite the obvious and clashing differences between Room 18 and Rolf’s, they share commonalities. Both are located in great old NYC buildings. Both have original tin ceilings, probably dating back to the late 1800s/early 1900s, and both have that wonderful NYC
institutional feel that brings you back to NYC in the 1920s.

As I sat at the bar drinking my hefeweissen celebrating being in my 20s, at a bar in the 20s, I
started thinking about NYC in the 1920s. The bar is original to the restaurant, which has been around for decades. Knowing that 3rd Avenue in the 20s (both the streets and decade) was historically a very industrial and manufacturing area in NYC, I couldn’t help but hear the clanging of the old 3rd Avenue El passing by, the smell of soot and coal that August in the 1920s
could smell like, and I couldn’t help but see the working class men who would stop by Rolf’s for a stein after a laborious day of work in NYC before heading home to their overcrowded tenement apartments that lined 3rd Avenue.

As I sat there staring at the tin ceiling, it was déjà vu. I felt as if I had the experience that perhaps my predecessors did decades ago at the very bar stool where I sat, even though I was experiencing it for myself for the first time. As I continued to drink my hefeweissen and celebrate the remaining hours of my birthday with family, I felt just another connection to NYC. I felt as if I were part of something greater. Like all of those who were here before us, we are
making history daily, and if we don’t stop to feel that connection, we will get lost in NYC’s chaos.

Until next time...