It was an early morning. Relatively gloomy outside. Definitely packed the umbrella. I picked up a coffee and headed to the garment district where I would meet Mike, my tour guide. I feel so lucky to have taken a tour with this man on his 74th birthday. Having grown up in the city, him and his family worked in the garment industry at it’s peak. He tells his stories with such passion; he’s seen the district grow and subsequently decline over the years. He attributes a large part of the industry’s decline to the fire in 1910. To this day, no one knows how the fire started. What we do know is that if the fire codes and regulations had’ve been enforced at the time, we might not have lost so many lives that day. The adherence to newly imposed regulations and fair wages increased manufacturing costs and thus the price of merchandise. In order to keep costs low, manufacturers moved out of the city where labour was cheaper and, according to Mike, that was the beginning of the end. We visited a number of spots, my favourite of which was obviously Mood Fabrics but I also really enjoyed visiting Grinnell Designs and getting to see some BTS* jewelry making.
Kid in a candy store is a wildly inaccurate way to describe my experience at Mood Fabrics. I was more like a 6 year old girl who’s watched every single Disney princess movie about 100 times and who’s mother has already conditioned her to believe she’ll one day find her prince charming and live happily ever, getting to host a tea party with all of the princesses and other magical woodland creatures at disney land while wearing a sparkly gown, high heels, and a real diamond tiara, and maybe a magic wand, just for kicks. THAT’s what it was like. If I had access to more credit, I’d have likely gone into enough debt to require me to claim bankruptcy by the age of 25. I’m 24.
BUT thankfully, the bank has access to my credit score and so I just bought the one thing I came looking for…. and by that I mean, I went to the grocery store hungry. FML.
Moving on… Mike suggested a great Kosher Deli (Ben’s) around the corner so I hid from the rain there for a while and enjoyed some super tasty pickles, pastrami, coleslaw and a heap of wine. The rain wouldn’t stop! I had to stay dry… also I got into a heated discussion at the bar about politics. Typical Keegs. I won’t go into details although I will say this: partway through the discussion (I was listening intently most of the time) I brought the conversation to a screeching halt.
“OK before we go on any further,” remember I’d had a few glasses of wine, I was feeling pretty confident, “I gotta say two things. Number one: I’m super stoked about the fact that I’m sitting at a kosher bar in New York City talking about politics and that you’re entertaining all of my questions, so thank you. Number two: if you can believe that Hilary Clinton would be responsible for the bombing of the American Embassy in Libya, you have to at least consider the possibility that Bush may have been behind the whole twin towers debacle. I mean, these are people who are supposed to be taking care of their country. What I’m trying to get at here is, what would Hillary’s motive be for keeping her emails separate? And if the email server had such shitty security it’s not that she was trying to hide having fucked up from her boss, cause you’re telling me anyone could have read her emails!”
Yea, pretty heavy shit, am I right?
I love talking about things I know very little about. It’s educational, I get to challenge peoples opinions with my curiosity, and I think, usually, we both walk away having learned something. That’s what conversation should be about folks. A mutually respective exchange of information and opinions. I’m all about it.
*Behind The Scenes - just incase I’m the only person who hashtags that shit