an ipod in booze

let me tell you something. there's money to be made in booze. and last night's after-work romp to the hudson hotel with a coworker for her birthday proved it. as if it needed proving.

my coworker decided that she wanted to go somewhere fancy for drinks. now, i go plenty of fancy places for drinks: the cock, for instance, or even therapy if i'm feeling extremely wealthy and preppy. this doesn't happen often, as you can imagine, so i do most of my drinking at the cock. why? because even though these places are more expensive than baltimore (more expensive, really, than anywhere else in the world except tokyo, london, paris, and boston), they're cheaper than any other bar in the city. well, any bar in manhattan. i wouldn't go to like some bar in staten island. hell, i wouldn't go to staten island.

so since i do my drinking in divey gay establishments, i don't often see how the other half live. you know, the other half who can do things like go to the hudson hotel bar (which, by the way, is fashioned after that scene toward the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the floor is all lit up and there's all that clear furniture. i don't really know anything about this scene because i haven't seen that movie since 6th grade, when our crazy possibly-lesbian definitely-mean science teacher whose name i can't remember showed it to us.) and drink $15 martinis.

fifteen dollar.

martinis.

that's not even to mention the $400 bottles of champagne they list on the menu. yeah. so when the bill came--and it was my credit card on the chopping block--and the grand total (including gratuity, which i thought was very gauche for a bar that tries to pass itself off as fancy. like, if you think you're serving rich people don't you expect them to tip you more than 15%? yet i digress) was $319, i tried not to fall out of my chair. luckily i was with a bunch of adults, all of whom started throwing wads of money at the bill. and i'm going to go deposit all of that cash and immediately pay the tab off. but still.

$319. that's like...an ipod. in booze.