New York, One Gay Date At A Time

Inevitable Changes

As I devote more and more time to ancillary projects, this blog has fallen a bit to the wayside, but will stay up for as long as I can maintain the hosting.

Now that I have a platform at Huffington Post, I’m tempted to devote my fun posts to Arianna’s fab group blog. I'm glad to contribute a gay voice to the bunch.

I'm going to be blogging at alexgeana.com, my pro site, because I can have a varied platform, as I have more projects to content to. I'm going to focus strongly on things that are interesting to me, not necessarily in the mass-over-use-of-pointless-topics kind of way, yet write about stuff that influences my work as a writer, I have a full range of interests beyond dating.

Charting the course and progress of this blog has been amazing and has truly helped me craft and hone my writerly voice, to cut my teeth and force me to produce usable work. I think every writer needs to blog, it helps the words come smoothly and makes it easier to find inspiration for larger and more powerful topics.

That said, thank you for being on this wonderful journey with me. I know over the months as I've been to overwhelmed to write new things, I've lost many long time readers, so really this post is for the blogging universe, a virtual thank you for helping me understand a new dimension to creating work and being able to find my own baring.

I just finished a novel and will work on getting that published, I'll begin work on a new play shortly.

Thanks for reading.
AG

On Hiatus

I haven’t updated this blog in a while. I’ve had way too many projects and way to much stuff to accomplish. On the other hand – life has been more stable. Something I’ve really enjoyed, I’ve been able to work on my craft and my art and get a little rest but not to much I'm afraid.

I’m still single, even though I’ve dated. I guess I haven’t found the right guy for me just yet. That mixture of mutual attraction, understanding and compassion hasn’t been met. Who knows, maybe it’ll happen when I’m looking for a chair.

To sit on, that’s how one of my friends met his partner, he wanted to sit and his life partner sat right next to him. I guess it always seems simpler. When someone else is telling the story.

Then again, I might just be single for the rest of my life and start a house of cats.

I’m enjoying my job and I hope it’ll last, yet the sense of impending doom is still there from so many shoddy employers.

I hope you enjoy the archives; I’m still maintaining this blog because people have still found my posts and still enjoy my work. I’ll get back to it when I can but can’t make any promises.

You can also subscribe to my Google Group to be informed when the blog is back.

       

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Thank you for all your comments and emails. Also, check out www.alexgeana.com for all my other work and updates.

AG

The Play’s the Thing, again

Okay, all this hard work has paid off. The cast is great, I'm really excited about the performers and what they've come up with. We've come a long way since the staged reading.

That said. Buy tickets people. Come see a show in Midtown. Go to Three Tables and buy tickets.

The Opening Night Party

Effen Vodka is sponsoring our vodka open bar, Martinis for all. Because of the early sell out. Everyone can come and you can even invite friends that aren't going to the show. Drink people drink. We want a great crowd, and great energy in a very cool bar. Join us.

November 3rd
Upstairs at the Ritz
369 46th Street
btw 8th and 9th.

The Opening Night Party is made possible by the generocity of Tommy Greco the owner of The Ritz.

More Gay Dates will be coming to you at the end of November.

Interview with Jacob & Joshua

Now that I’ve been on hiatus forever because of my play - I’ve been meaning to write I swear.

My blogger buddy Eric Arvin has done an interview that’s quite good. Check out the new show on Logo. I think my Tivo is going to have a little fun tonight.

Check out his piece on Jacob & Joshua: Nemesis Rising. He’s damn lucky to have been talking to those two hunts. Que the twin fantasy now.

More gay dates will be coming to you at the end of Nov. In the mean time check out the play website, I’ll do an update in a bit. 

The Ritz

I popped into the day-before-opening-prep (i.e. pre opening party) at The Ritz. New gay bars happen in Hells Kitchen. More often now then ever before.  It's interesting, seeing the change in the hood. I feel good that this bar has opened away from the "Triangle of Three" at the 51st  Street intersection, recently, the gayest corner in all of New York.

I was initially apprehensious about the address, then realized I welcomed the change. Tommy’s just taking the - I’m here, come and drink approach to launching his new place.

I promised pictures and my camera decided not to give them to you. Mostly because it was lounging on my desk and afraid to snap without my direction. Also this bar is getting a very low key opening. Last week, I walked by and they were still polishing the floor. It's gorgeously done by the way. The bar itself is well put together and looks much better on it's opening then Vlada did on it's first day. Some of the bartenders are from XL and other once gay hot spots. I'm trying to place the faces of some of the staff but I've seen them all before.

The Ritz, is plush and comfortable. The down stairs has an inviting bar with woven chairs and the intimate lounge has plush canvas chases, a couple was kissing fondly on the king size bed in the back. It's very Hampton chic. Upstairs, there are big plush chairs you can sink into. Pottery Barn accents dot the place. My only worry is that it must move beyond a townhouse feel, into something fresh and new.

Tommy succeeded in making his last bar, a comfortable place were many types of men felt good hanging out and meeting each other. I see The Ritz being no different. For the after work crowd and the subsequent shifts after that. Turning into a bouncing club way into the night.

In any case, I'm looking forward to many cocktails, sitting at the bar, maybe even writing, it’s a place I want to take my laptop to and write. There's also an outdoor patio in back and the place flows nicely from one room to the next.

Once again a place opens and the gayboorhood changes. I just sit and wonder, if the bars feel is the outcome of an owner’s determination to open or the changing and unifying taste of his patrons? That question, I won’t be able to answer for a very long time.

The Ritz Opens

Save the date peeps. I'm happy to announce the opening of Tommy's bar The Ritz. It'll open Friday the 22nd.

The Ritz
46th Street
btw 8th and 9th.

I'll have a moment to take pictures this weekend, I'm quite excited. Let's see what it looks like. Keep up with One Gay Date at a Time to find out about the opening.

Send the info to your friends.

The Reversible Life

I don't know if I'm just melancholy and my depression has once again reared it oblong face, or it's the weather. I think it's mostly the weather that's made me poopy and somewhat drowsy constantly.

I've been feeling like a wet puppy recently, the spurts of rain, me forgetting my umbrella ... all these things. Then again, being overworked hasn't helped, I have stress, lots of it. I have so much stress, I havn't wanted to move or work, just sleep. Watch TV and randomly surf the web. It's like my thoughts have feed into themselves and won't let me go. Churning at night, not allowing me to sleep. Simple things, like finding a director for my play and how to write about arts and crafts have been consuming my unslept moments.

I actually had a massive pissing contest with someone. I finally stood up for myself. Someone who shall remain forever nameless in the blogoshpere was trying to couch me on how I should write, without ever having read my work. I found that to be the poorest of form.

Then I'm left to read fiction in the New Yorker, it seems like they have been publishing work about family, rape, incest, or cell phone family plans. I'm thinking of writing something that drones on and on and gets nowhere quickly, just like this blog post, then submitting it to the New Yorker, yes that is my new master plan to achieve accepted writer status. After reading their fiction I went on to read the five hundredth mention of a young writer who was published in aforementioned magazine to be offered a $500,000 dollar book deal, they went on to write about incest and drug addiction. So the cycle continues.

I need to get out more. I really do, I'm blaming this all on the weather.

Swamped

Hey, sorry I haven't been updating, I'm totally swamped right now. I have lots and lots going on and I need a personal assistant. Sigh.

The Cool Customer

I’ve been called a cool customer recently, by a lot of people. I always manage to internalize stress; I can always have a smile and act calm when the world is storming around me. I often don’t show the emotion I’m feeling.

Wondering how this translates to my dating pattern, my interaction with the not so cool customers out there. I’m happy that I can control my outlook on life, at times anyway, that’s why my experience, the withdrawing from Celexa was traumatic. I spent a lot of time at home.

At drinks with a friend, who’s known me for three years now. As life has changed for me, she says that she’s found me more resolved and more dynamic; she even used the words “close to normal”. She knows me to well.

The toll that sacrificing my soul to a corporation so early in life, the tax it’s had on me. It’s been many years and I still don’t know. As I look back on my cool customer days the days when I was barely even able to shine a smile or a frown and always needed to be pleasant.

I also found that trait in the manager that gave me such a difficult time on my exit from The Modern. I find that characteristic in lots of business people that have to dole bad news on a regular basis. I feel now, after all these years, I can be a little less chill and allow just a little more of myself to shine through. If only in baby steps of healing.

Weirder Still

I didn't know newspapers had Dom stocked, I mean here at New York Mag, all we have is Fonseca and Sparkling Wine (the cheap stuff left over from last Christmas). I have to talk to someone about this, we need to keep up with the Observer.

As a sign of solidarity with Hova, new Observer owner Jared Kushner has released the following statement:

"It has come to my attention that the managing director of Cristal, Frederic Rouzaud views the 'hip-hop' culture as 'unwelcome attention,'" said the 25-year-old. "I view his comments as racist and will no longer support any of his products through any of my various brands including the Observer nor in my personal life."

Kushner plans to replace Cristal -- which an Observer spokesman said the paper could never stock enough of -- with Krug and Dom Perignon.

[link Gawker]