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March 13, 2009
1860: Celebrity sighting: Two members of Interpol
I'm not deep. Sometimes I find myself in an emotionally exhausted state, from which the only means of escape is the purchase of some piece of crap. Today, that piece of crap was supposed to be a small cardigan sweater with which I could pair a little belt, comme ça:
I stepped out of my office to grab some lunch and, perhaps, yet another wee, black cardigan sweater. As I darted across 5th Avenue at 34th Street, I saw a man fling himself out of the Duane Reade there with complete and utter despair. For those who are not familiar with Duane Reade, it's a kind of drug store you can find on every city block in Manhattan, featuring appalling customer service and poor line clarity. Given the amount of frustration that comes with any Duane Reade shopping experience, I could not fault this man for exiting the store with such a profound air of disgust.
He stopped, glanced in my direction, and it dawned on me: This displeased Duane Reade patron is Carlos D.
I looked away and when I looked back, he had darted off in search of someone to light his cigarette. I continued on my way and reached into my bag for my phone, to tw*t about it -- because isn't this the kind of thing that Twitter is for? By the time I put my phone back in my bag, I saw that he had gotten ahead of me and appeared to dart into a Banana Republic with the same frantic energy with which he had propelled himself from the door of that Duane Reade.
My heart sank because that was the Banana Republic to which I was headed, and having noted him noting me (and vice versa) I didn't want it to appear I had intentionally followed him in there. I slowed down, and glanced in the window to see if I'd been mistaken or if I could just slip past him in the store to get to the women's clothing upstairs. Unable to determine whether or not he had beaten me into the store, I began to evaluate whether I even needed another black cardigan sweater. (I do not.) I continued walking and almost found myself walking smack into another Interpolian.
Thanks to Wikipedia I now know that he is named Daniel, and thanks to my looking to the left, I also know that he and his bandmate had actually not gone into the Banana Republic as I feared. They'd both gone into a fairly nondiscript doorway beside it, presumably to visit one of the offices in the attached building on 34th.
It dawns on me now that this is the second such encounter I have had with Carlos D in close proximity to a Banana Republic, but I haven't quite figured out what that means. It's not that I am often looking for a Banana Republic, because I'm not; it must be that there's just a lot of Banana Republics in Manhattan (though they do not outnumber the Duane Reades, which actually outnumber New Yorkers 3-to-1). Either that, or Interpol schedule their lives and activities around some need to have easy access to merino wool sweaters.
In any event, realizing the coast was clear and there'd be no awkward "I am not stalking you" moment (as there once was in an airport in Montreal with Rebecca Romijn), I doubled back and went into the store. Naturally, I didn't leave with yet another black sweater -- not because I don't need one, but because they didn't have any. They did, however, have something I overheard a saleswoman describing as being "very nautical... something you might wear sailing." This led me to wonder: Is the need for sailing attire such that even Banana Republic finds it necessary to stock such items? Being from Connecticut, where people do things like sail, I sort of think not. Also, when was the last time anyone ever tried to sell me something based on its appropriateness for sailing? Answer: Never.
So, there you go. Whenever I have something like this happen, I find people email to comment on it; often they want to know how I manage to come across people of varying degrees of fame. It's largely a function of living in New York, I'm sure. Also, I apparently spent a lot of time walking around outside Banana Republics which are little known celeb hotspots.
There's bottle service beside the cologne display.
Posted by ashley at March 13, 2009 08:53 PM
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