I’ve got to be honest; I’m not in love with New York right now. Well, that’s not entirely true. I guess what I mean to say is that lately it’s been hard for me to have any kind of love affair with anything, especially this city. No matter how many times I say “fuck New York,” the city just won’t fuck me back. It doesn’t care. I know that’s why I love it, but it’s also why I hate it. I broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my brand new glasses. I dropped my incoming mail in the outgoing mailbox. New York doesn’t care. I can’t get these things back and my heart is dying, meanwhile the horns keep honking and the price of my morning bagel just went up. Where’s the hug I need? Or the fuck I need, at that. When I started working at The Good, The Bad & The Ugly over Christmas, I didn’t realise at the time it was sort of like being handed the hug I so longed for. It was just a retail job. I learned how to use the register and I thought that would be that. Instead, what I’ve got is the best co-worker ever, Sarah Apodaca. Sarah manages to run an entire shop as smooth as peanut butter, while at the same time she dances to musical numbers spontaneously and seems to have a story for every appropriate occasion. She has no shame in the things she loves most, whether it’s Sex and the City, Taco Bell, Mariah Carey or weird prison art. At age 25 she’s married, has a plethora of gays to party with, hosts theme parties whenever she can (her most recent idea is an “I love Ponies” party where she wants all her friends to dress up like pre-pubescent girls who love ponies, followed by pony rides. Literally). We can wax poetic for hours on topics such as fi nding your soul mate, people who suck, and American Idol. No matter how I’m feeling she has me giggling for days, and anyone who goes to work everyday knows how far a few giggles can take you. Another great thing I have besides Sarah at The Good, The Bad & The Ugly is jeans. Jeans, jeans, jeans, for days. We have high-waisted pink ones that fall below the ankle. We have high-waisted bell-bottoms that make you feel like you have fl owers in your hair, even when you don’t. We have Three’s Company jeans, Valley Girl jeans; jeans that lattice up at the side which make you want to snap your gum and look cheap. But you don’t look cheap at all; you look very, very expensive.

Why I love New York isn’t because the weather is so great or the people are so nice, but because in its big mash up of flavours and eccentricities, there is a constant. All day long beautiful girls come into the shop and look in the mirror and decide. I watch them think, and doubt, and then buy – or not buy. All the while Sarah and I are egging them on, not because we want to make money, but because we want them to feel good. We want them to be laughing with us in our jade green skin-tight cigarette jeans. We want to give back what has so generously been given to us. I like it that no matter where you go, we’re all the same. We all shop by ourselves and doubt our style. We all feel guilty over a big purchase but excited at the same time. I know working here is not forever, and since
I’ve been too sad and fragmented to leave my apartment and be swallowed up by New York, I have to say I’m pretty psyched that every day when I go into work, New York comes right to me. And she looks amazing.