A (Very, Very, Very, Very) Short History of Eatin', Drinkin', Partyin', and Crashin' in NYC

Several years ago a friend of mine and I were walking around Soho with a girl he was briefly dating. We walked passed a restaurant (don't remember the name now) and she pointed at it, noting, "My friend used to work there. She had sex with the chef on a table."

My immature reaction was, naturally, "Cool! (And can I get her number?)"

Of course, that kind of "hanky-panky" goes on in restaurants (and lots of other businesses) all the time; as we've learned, frighteningly, it isn't always consensual. It's never appropriate. But, for a long time, it was normal.

And yet ... there's always been a romantic allure to the high-end NYC restaurant world. While it's always been a exhausting, poor-paying, and incredibly insecure profession, it's also full of glamour, celebrity, and, yes, sex appeal. That's why people are trying to break into this business more than ever before.  

Interestingly enough, the high-end hotel industry doesn't have quite the same allure of restaurants (how many celebrity hoteliers can you think of, besides Ian Shrager?) but, it goes without saying, there are many hotels in NYC where "if these walls could talk ..." Take, for instance, the Gramercy Hotel, the crash pad of choice for numerous rock stars like David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, and Lou Reed, just to name a few. Needless to say, back in the day, pure bedlam ensued at the Gramercy when these rock gods and their entourages crashed there. 

That said, you can still seem some bedlam -- more to the point, dancing female bartenders -- at the infamous Coyote Ugly saloon. Yes, it's same place that a movie was made about several years back and it's still going strong. It recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. I have yet to go and should (after all, I've meet to the real Mystic Pizza that's in Connecticut!). In this #MeToo era, a long-lasting business in NYC that was established and run by women should be celebrated.

Eating, drinking, partying, and crashing in NYC -- you can't beat it.