McSorley's

My friend John was in town, just for Friday afternoon. He had fled New York for greener pastures after being fleeced, tortured, and derided one time too many, while I, a glutton for punishment, had just renewed my lease. We had Thai food for lunch, which he said was the one thing he missed about New York. With markets all but closed and no plans between two and seven o’clock, there was really only one thing to do: drink. If you want to make money, eat out, get drunk, get laid, do drugs, or see a celebrity, Manhattan will invite you to do so on every street corner. If you want to play a sport, spend time outside, cook food, raise kids, or save money, Manhattan will invite you to go fuck yourself. Since we were already in the East Village for the Thai food, we went to McSorley’s Ale House.

McSorley’s says it’s the oldest bar in New York or something, and while I’m sure it isn’t, it is one of the few places in lower Manhattan that has steadfastly refused to change its ways. During the enshittification of the city that caused every establishment around to close at midnight, have a line of Instagram freaks outside, and abut a Chase Bank on all sides, McSorley’s stuck to its guns. You order a beer, and they give you two—very bad business, especially because it’s cheap, and you can charge New York tourists pretty much anything and get away with it. Your only options are light or dark, which is good for keeping out the people who pretend that beer of all things requires a sophisticated palate. And you sit at a huge communal table and have no choice but to talk to the other bar-goers, unless you want to really make a point of defying the norm, which people who are the type to shy away into their phones in public usually do not. It is for tourists, primarily, because it’s too loud and crowded to be anyone’s regular spot, but in a city where you can spend $25 for a single Maker’s Mark ordered via a scanned barcode, McSorley’s is positively atavistic.

Since John had downgraded himself to tourist status after a decade of residence, and since we had no real plans for the afternoon, and since neither of us had set foot in McSorley’s in at least five years, we walked in, ordered two (four) light beers. A surly host (though not Irish, even McSorley’s can’t stick to its roots ethnically these days) wedged us into two chairs between three old guys and a borderline young-Millennial-old-Gen-Z couple.

Of the three old guys, all were kind of fat, mid fifties, and extraordinarily heterosexual. The middle one did all of the talking, and did so with such an exaggerated New York accent that it felt like being in a shitty movie stereotyping New York Italians. “So what you guys do,” he asked, pulling a beanie over his bald head.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is you can’t just tell people you’re a hedge fund manager. First of all, people will think you’re rich, which is not always the first impression you want to make. Secondly, about half of America thinks hedge fund managers are thieving devils, which might ruin the afternoon of drinking. I turned to John to see if he would cop to his sordid occupation while thinking about my own answer.

“I’m a software engineer. I write code,” he said. Fucking lame, I thought, that’s almost as bad as hedge fund manager. There’s no less cool job than a software engineer. They are indeed so uncool that they manage to make getting rich look cringe, which is pretty hard to do. But I knew why John would say that—it was technically true. He did write code, and so while he was really a hedge fund manager, you could truthfully also call him a software developer. And you should always tell the truth. The bald Italian-American grunted and looked at me. “I’m a writer,” I replied. Writer is usually my answer. It’s cool, because it conjures up an image of Bukowski with a cig and coffee cup scratching out art into a notebook. And it’s true, I am a writer—a shitty substack hobbyist, but a writer is just one who writes, and that I am.

The Elder Zoomette with her boyfriend piped up. She worked in marketing and he was a civil engineer. They were tourists from Kansas City. “What kind of stuff do you write? I read a lot.” Now I was in a bind, because I of course am not a professional writer, and saying you’re a writer on substack is like saying you’re an actor on Pornhub, but maybe even worse than that because you’re not making money from it. “Yeah, I write about like, philosophy, society, that kind of thing.” Kansas City said she read mostly Acotar and other such smut, and wouldn’t know anything about philosophy. Her boyfriend wanted restaurant recommendations and seemed unphased that his girlfriend had announced her proclivity for written porn.

The bald mascot of New York, however, had his interest piqued. “My brothuh’s a philosophuh,” he boomed, leaning forward in his chair, “head uh the department, at Boulduh. Smahtest guy I evuh met. Smahteh then me—but I make a lot more money than he does,” and he and his buddies cracked up at the thought of out-earning his smarter sibling. No way this guy’s brother is the head of the philosophy department at UC Boulder, but whatever. I nodded politely. He was a general contractor. Did the sprinkler installation for the Jets coach in New Jersey, where he lived. We talked about him for a little bit. Coached football after playing d2. Got a couple concussions but was sure the problem with the sport today is the “pussification of the NFL.” Now he coaches a high school team, of which he was extremely proud.

But back to philosophy. He said, “you know this guy? Hitluh’s shrink. My brothuh is an expert on Hitluh’s shrink. I ask him, why you do this stuff, if there’s no money in it? He says, I get to smoke weed, give a couple hours of lectures, and that’s it, and they can’t fiyah me. That’s a pretty good life. You know about this guy, Hitluh’s shrink?”

I thought about it. Hitler’s shrink. What? Maybe he means like, Nietzsche, or Carl Schmitt… I asked him and he shook his head frustrated. Heidegger? He slaps the table. “Heidegguh, yeah! That’s him!” I was feeling pretty good about myself for guessing Heidegger at this point, and our new friend would refer to me as Heidegger for the rest of the afternoon. Even John got in on calling me Heidegger.

Needing a jolt of normality, I turned back to the Kansas Citians and gave them some ideas of what to do on their last day in New York. They were too normal to have really followed the Heidegger discussion, though even a Kansas City normie is capable of agreeing that the NFL is indeed pussified. From across the table, “Heidegguh! Take a picture of us, Heidegguh.” One of his silent goons slid an eight year old iPhone across the table and the three older men posed without smiling. I took the picture. It was getting late and almost time to go. “Heidegguh! Give me a salute,” said the walking stereotype, firing off a Roman salute. His friends laughed like they were watching Louis CK at the Comedy Cellar. John laughed at the pure insanity of the situation. The normies were a little scared but laughing too. I shook my head, chuckling.

As we said our good byes, our new friend asked where we’d get dinner. “We’re gettin chink food,” he guffawed. I’ll admit this made me flinch a little. You be as based as you want scrolling /pol/ and Elon Musk’s twitter, but I grew up in California and will not be able to hear “chink food” without flinching for as long as I live. Funny, the Roman salute didn’t get me like that. Not that it matters, it’s all just language. And after all, there is language only because there is discourse, not the other way around.