On The Myth of Being a Regular Customer

Meet the regular: he always sits at the table by the window. He has a jaunty moustache. Wait: is it really him? Doesn’t he usually carry a canvas tote? The regular is fiction. Although the character woos us in literature and entertains us on television, the contemporary cityscape reduces them to myth through diverse options, hectic schedules and social obligations antagonistic to the development of routine.

TV dramas and sitcoms love regulars. Week after week Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer dined at Monks; Sabrina the Teenage Witch went to The Slicery. But such hangouts weren’t portrayed as active, pleasant choices. Elaine loved the big salad, but the show’s memorable food moments happened in operating theatres and soup kiosks. Sabrina lamented The Slicery’s perpetually sticky arcade games. These places collected friends, but they didn’t collect good times. 

Creating a habitual spot and attendant group of regulars is a social and spatial concern for producers. Script writers are restricted in their ability to introduce new characters. Thus the regulars must be friends. A complicated background story accompanies one-off appearances. For shows shot in a studio, having a single hub for characters to meet provides an economic solution for set builders. When shows break out of the studio, the regular spot transforms into an endless rotation of social spaces. TV constructed the regular and reflects their demise.

If the regular has left the screen, where have they gone? Blogs and magazines locate them at the bar. They depict an economic relationship; regulars go where they get discounted alcohol. Establishing a friendship with the barman lets the habitual customer stay solvent. After a few weeks of tipping heavily for a Manhattan, the barman will knock off a few cents off the bill and reach for top-shelf Rye. This drink-dispensing therapist is a universal trope: Italy boasts the barista, America the bartender, and Britain the chatty tearoom owner.

Unlike TV, which ignores the benefits regulars enjoy, these articles extol them. The habitual customer enters into a social capital network that ensures a convivial meal is only as far as their spot. This meal will be quality; their friends’ presence implicitly vouches good service, a lively atmosphere and a vibrant history. Through locating the regular in reality, magazines and blogs reinforce the myths surrounding them.

Being a regular is a romantic proposition. It signals an unchanging landscape in cities where nice cafes struggle to survive greedy landlords. The regular believes they’ll always enjoy the best table and feels assured having a reliable spot to suggest for meetings. As social media extends the realm of local to Google map’s scrolling borders, being a regular focuses the world around a specific spot. Goodbye debilitating choice. Goodbye postmodern city life. The regular enjoys this drink in this place at this time. Being a regular is a coping device for modern life. We’re not coping well. 

Analog and Digital Culture? It's a question of community, not luxury

I want to read a book. Not consume a story on a screen. Adieu Netflix! Ciao ciao Instagram! Tomorrow I’ll leave my kindle lying on my desk, close down my laptop and forget my iPhone. I want the physical world.

But I can’t figure out if I’m alone in my desires. On one hand, there’s Zoe Williams’ article for The Guardian, “Even my Furby knows it: our love affair with shopping is over,” which argues that we’ve entered a post-consumerist age in which the only things of values are personalized digital non-objects. According to Williams, I will be shopping alone at the bookstore this year.

On the other hand, it might not be so bleak. In "Digital Culture, Meet Analog Fever" for The New York Times, Rob Walker advocates for the continued allure of physical media as individuals use it to declare their devotion to preferred cultural forms. Rather than personalize our digital consumption, Walker sees society specializing its material consumption. Modern consumer society is undergoing a paradigm shift that fragments subject identities between physical and mental spaces. 

Digital media orients the subject in a mental realm through intentionally alienating interfaces. We’re supposed to lose ourselves in a warren of links when reading digital newspapers. Amazon boasts that the kindle dissolves the boundary between individual and book. Youtube leases our music listening to autoplay. Digital media isolates the subject as it individualizes our consumption of culture.

So-called analog media roots the subject in the physical world. Materiality limits us. We can only carry so many books. Our evenings can only accommodate so many performances. A band decides the songs they play at a gig, not us. Walker’s analog media reminds us that our freedom is not total.

But Walker omitted an important aspect. As I see it, it’s the defining aspect of physical culture: community.

If the proliferation of technology has generated a discourse of luxury surrounding material culture, this suggests that the marginalization of analog has reinforced consuming communities. Spending on a product for which technology provides a more convenient alternative asserts an identity. Walker understands this. This physical consumption also forces diverse subjects to enter a single shared space: to go to the bookstore or to the museum or to the theatre. These moments provide opportunities for interaction that unite our shared physical world with our individual mental realities. 

Digital encroachments on the analog don’t jeopardize this community. Although buying a book on Amazon is a solitary experience, the item may be shared and unite us with others. Watching a film at the cinema might be estranged from theatre’s immediacy, but the audience unites as they gasp and laugh. Analog culture forces us to interact with a community regardless of whether or not we identify with the product-as-luxury.

Analog media shouldn’t be reduced to a symbolic assertion of identity. It shouldn’t be exclusive. It should be a right and a ritual. It should be a given that reminds us of our humanity as physical beings with diverse perceptions. Let’s act like it

What an Ice Cream Truck Taught Me About Street Buzz

July’s dense humidity saturated the streets outside while inside the ramen restaurant we slurped until the steam scorched our faces. Perilously overheated we fled out onto First Avenue in search of respite.  That’s when we saw the ice cream truck. Street buzz promised an evening of potential.

Street buzz is a favorite term of urbanists looking to build attractive spaces. Unfortunately, descriptions of the phenomenon are frequently reduced to cliché. Street buzz saves the day; street buzz cures all. The concept easy to understand but hard to identify.

Street buzz describes the atmosphere of a place through the people, businesses and activities that fill it. Diverse shops, people walking their dogs and weather may contribute to the mood. But the atmosphere remains in the absence of specific activities, so long as they remain possible. Street buzz indicates the potential for an event to occur in a given place.

We didn’t immediately realize the night’s potential. But ice cream vans are always possible during a New York summer. We ordered without glancing at the sun-bleached menu: a vanilla-chocolate twist for me, a chocolate cone for him. Unfortunately, day campers had gobbled up the chocolate. So the driver dipped our vanilla cones in a chocolate shell and we feigned contentment. Street buzz revealed one potential but removed another.

Ice cream poured down our hands as we ate and we made a game of protecting our clothes. Pedestrians ignored us; we were buzz. Once our cones melted fully, we skipped to a Yelp-approved bar. Ice cream and bourbon: it was a Monday night street buzz cocktail.

These moments are the product of a good atmosphere, but mood can also be neutral or negative. A sleepy suburb has a street buzz, so does a slum, so does a queue at Disneyland. How the elements of these spaces unify create their unique atmosphere.

We all want to live in areas with good street buzz, but our notions of ‘good’ vary. For me ‘good’ is hopping from ramen to soft serve to bourbon. Someone else might prefer walking from the garden to the café to the bookstore or enjoying live musicians and farmers markets and graffiti. Street buzz impels us to live in different cities and neighborhoods. It is dynamic. We shape and reshape it through our continued interaction with a city. Street buzz is the potential of the now.

Alienation and Integration: A Comparative Photo Study of City and Country Life

A photo posted by Daniel Ernst | @germanroamers (@daniel_ernst) on Oct 21, 2015 at 9:26am PDT

Orange, grey, green: the colours strike you. Moving from vivid ones on the mountain’s sun-facing slope to majestic varieties at the water’s edge, the trees unify the image. They reflect the sun’s energy, nearly overpowering the lone human figure in the synthetic yellow windbreaker.

But this figure is far from lonely. They’re off-centre, but they fit in. Their kayak isn’t garish; its grey-white hue resembles the sky, marking the human as a natural addition. Raising the right paddle, the figure progresses toward an unseen point in the distance. Although the viewer doesn’t know the figure’s destination, the ripples in the water illustrate progression. Far from being alienated by majestic nature, the character finds their home in the landscape.

The reflections in the crystal clear water reinforce the human’s integration. The sky, the edge of the mountain — they absorb and surround the kayaker on several planes. Thus, the awe the viewer initially feels looking at the image is replaced by a calming unity with the world. Humanity isn’t isolated from nature’s glory, movement and participation makes them actors.

A photo posted by New York Times Travel (@nytimestravel) on Oct 28, 2015 at 10:34am PDT

Is the grid or the human the protagonist? Although centred, the figure’s shadow stretches to the left, suggesting that earthly constructions — the sun, the structure — push them toward the past. Their head down, their situation dominates them. Their black and white suit matches the monochrome grid. They are integrated into the world around them.

Yet this grid isn’t monochrome; it’s dynamic with colour. On the lower right hand corner the black lines are illuminated to a purple-y pink by the shadows and sun. An indeterminate geometric shadow falls on top. The shadow could be a building, the window manifesting the vivid colours. Someone is watching the scene.

Man’s progresses through the city alone, but in the shadow of others. He is connected through his phone, through the natural and artificial world that acts upon him. He is connected through concrete structures, like the grid, and intangible information, like the shadows. The contemporary city joins man in his solo progression.