New year New York

We love a line

“Wait, body tea, those jeans look good on you, low key I need to charge my phone—why haven’t we been given water yet?—the desserts here suck and are hella overpriced,” was a single sentence a teen said at a table next to mine at Café Select on a freezing winter weekend afternoon when all my go-to lunch spots in the area (which I refuse to name!) had lines, even at 2:30pm.

Living here, one may go months without overhearing two people this young conversing, so my first thought was, like an ethnographer, “wow, they really speak like this.” And they continued to, for example, “When they’re like, how do you want your steak done, I’m like, regular? My mom says never order anything other than well done, but I’m like, mom, it’s not that deep.”