Dude

At NYC taco mini-chain Dos Toros, there's always this sign up about how you may only sit once you've gotten your food, i.e. no grabbing a seat upon entering. While I generally think lists of rules are HMYF (hipsters make your food) preciousness, in this case, it's a fine point. It's better for the establishment if people who have actually purchased something are the only ones sitting, and better for the people who've just bought a meal to be able to sit down to eat. So. After some of the usual haunts (Uniqlo, Housing Works bookstore), we stopped by a certain large-but-crowded Village coffee shop. No signs, alas, and all kinds of people sitting down while a friend went up to get the drinks. This is acceptable in a place with available seats, which wasn't the case.

But what's never acceptable is plopping down with your various Apple products (not plugged in, no wifi, so this wasn't post-Sandy recharging) and a glass of the gratis water from the establishment and no purchased anything, and no friend in line to get drinks. Dude had just parked himself, relying on the privilege inherent in looking like Ultimate Upscale Coffee-Shop Dude (whiteness, yes, but so much more) not to be asked to move aside.

So my husband and I had a little chat about Elaine and the eggroll dare in the Chinese restaurant "Seinfeld" and, in my attempt at becoming a more assertive person, I, beverage in tow, marched right up to dude and explained the situation. But his friend, he assured, was just two blocks away. Of course, as we all know, a friend who's said he's nearby is about to enter the subway in another borough, and we can safely assume that dude, in this situation, was exaggerating the proximity above and beyond whatever his friend had claimed, if there even was a friend. There was a bit more back-and-forth, and yeah, I soon gave up, as did a couple other women who appeared to be trying the same. On our way out, we saw that the friend had indeed arrived, and now it was the friend holding the table. Every man for himself.

Coffee shop breaches in etiquette, that I notice. And cute, fluffy dogs. Shortly after the aforementioned showdown, I was squealing at a couple when I noticed that these were not just any dogs but dogs being walked by Alec Baldwin and his new wife. Alec Baldwin in a really sharp suit. And yes, I watch "30 Rock." This is the second time in recent memory I've noticed a canine before the famous-person walking it. Not sure what to conclude from this.

The Kimmelman Center

It's not every day NYU grad students get sneered at in the paper of record, but Michael Kimmelman has a go at it, complaining about, of all things, "iPod-engrossed graduate students" taking up precious space in Greenwich Village. Poor Michael Kimmelman! I never realized that listening to music or a podcast while shuffling between the library, department, and classroom buildings  (and don't forget the taco place!) while in the process of getting a PhD was so aesthetically off-putting to those with delicate sensibilities. I ought to be more careful. What would be much better than a doctoral candidate is a park, in which Michael Kimmelman and his folksy Village roots can celebrate their true ownership of the 'hood. I mean, why stop there? Why not a right of return for anyone whose ancestors hung around with Edith Wharton back in the day?

Kimmelman, who evidently went to graduate school in euphemistic Boston, and in the pre-iPod age, is simply better than us peons. When he was a grad student, his mere presence inspired epic poetry.

But this type of argument isn't new, just the anti-grad-student insult. The Village person's anti-NYU argument (to be distinguished from the various grad-student-quasi-union and other internal clashes with the administration) seems to be essentially that Village residents - a few lucky beneficiaries of rent control, plus those in finance who are the few who can afford the area at market rates - are these quaint, quirky individuals, whose charming, "Friends"-esque existence suffers when kids whose crimes are being young and more creative-seeming than Ivy-serious, at least to outside observers, do such things as walk down the street in their presence.

And it's all a bit nuts. If the popular image of NYU is a wealthy, spoiled undergrad, the reality is plenty of undergrads on scholarship or from wealthy families but not the least bit entitled, along with a whole bunch of grad students, staff, and professors, who are simply... working, middle-class-give-or-take adults, doing our small part to keep something of a middle class in New York. Whatever you think of NYU-the-institution, it seems a mistake to pick on those affiliated with it. NYU is too many things to really sum it up. Almost everyone I know in New York, friends from childhood up through college, ended up with some or another connection to the university. It's a million things to seemingly a million different people. The only reason to dislike the NYU 'community'-such-as-it-is is that we're not buying $30 million townhouses, or, for the most part, of the class that spends its time protesting travesties involving pretty neighborhoods getting muddied up by the presence of non-financiers.