Small Bites: Weekly Reading List (Issue No. 2)

From the Empire State Building 1946 (night - horizontal) © Todd Webb Archive

In this issue: Girls. Los Angeles. 1940s NYC. Women wearing men's dress shirts. Bret Easton Ellis. 

1. From 'Girls' to 'I Love Lucy': How realistic are New York apartment on TV shows?

Okay, so in the interest of full disclosure my gem of a best friend who is a real estate broker found me the Manhattan apartment I live in. It is a ridiculously nice and spacious shouldn't-be-anyone's-first-NYC-apartment apartment. It might not be as sprawling as the ones on Friends or How I Met Your Mother (those don't exist for less than a mil) but it is a steal for Manhattan rent prices and occupies the entire top floor of a building. But still, every time I see a "Manhattan apartment" in a movie or tv show I can't help but say "um, no way they're doing that for a living and live in that apartment." This article has made floor plans of some of tv's most popular apartments and it's fun to see how they look and how realistic/unrealistic they are.

2. At L.A. Restaurants, VIP Keys Are the New Power Tables 
As someone who grew up as the daughter of two restauranteurs, my entire life is my own personal Kitchen Confidential, a book that I imagine can only be shocking to someone who has never worked in a restaurant. Restaurants (my parents' included) are always coming up with new ways to latch onto high rollers and this is an interesting way to do it.

3. Do Women Actually Wear Men's Dress Shirts After Sex?
​HA. Well for starters, they button on the wrong side, but I don't think I need an introduction for this one. Definitely read it for a laugh or two. #relatable.

4. The B.E.E. Podcast – Andrew McCarthy
Okay, so I've deviated a bit here from reading into listening with this suggestion, but this is my blog, so whatever. Bret Easton Ellis' podcast is my favorite and by favorite I mean the only podcast I listen to. (As a format, I'm just not that into them.) B.E.E. is my favorite writer and if you're not familiar he talks about a wide range of subjects grounded in film and pop culture by interviewing iconoclasts like Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) and Paul Schraeder (Taxi Driver.) And in the most recent episode, Andrew McCarthy. What's most interesting here is the discussion about Less Than Zero (a complete deviation from Ellis' novel, but without comparison, a great movie) of which Ellis wrote and McCarthy starred in. TBT to when Ellis said McCarthy was miscast as Clay. 

5. Photographer Todd Webb's Stunning Photos of 1940s NYC
It's funny how blocks can change in just a year, so seeing what New York City looked like in the 1940s (or to be more specific a snapshot of what NYC looked like at a very particular point in time in the 1940s) is fascinating.