Category: New York

mad men


I’ve followed Mad Men religiously this season. Partially because I think it’s good TV in all of its pretentious multilayered symbolism, and partially because it’s fun to follow a TV series closely enough that the next day blow-by-blow commentary makes sense to you. (Two examples: New York Times’ “Talking Mad Men”, and Wall Street Journal’s “Speakeasy”. Also, Salon.com’s recaps.)

And, it’s fun to see the 1960s brought back to life by ambitious well-researched costume and set design people. I remember the 1960s, even tho I didn’t live through them in New York. I recognize the clothes, the music, the political events. I realize I’m heavily influenced by what happened then. Because I was a kid in the 1960s, what I learned about the world I understood to be normal. Riots, assassinations, deeply rooted, sometimes violent, conflicts between people of different races, different generations, or different ideologies. I’m thinking more and more about what all those things really have come to mean to me.

oh, what a time it was

People think this is Grand Central Station. My friend Buford tells me that it is not. This is Grand Central Terminal. Buford worked in advertising in New York in the 1960s, and would run to Grand Central Terminal to catch the last train in the evenings. I watch Mad Men so I have an image in my head of what that would look like. I’m probably wrong about that too, though. Buford is from Texas and a great connoisseur of the cowboy boot. Don Draper, in a suit, and cowboy boots.