Listen up people, you all need to get up from your comfortable lair, get out and about, move freely about the country, explore, get out of your tiny bubble, and see what is going on out there across our great land. A little bit of travel, a change of scenery, and you entire perspective can change. You can open your eyes to a whole new world and see your own tired and stale existence through a new viewpoint.
Here is what I learned by leaving home and driving the lovely eastern seaboard region, I’m a “poors”.
You see my fellow Americans we live in a new world order, and while I was exposed to this new reality living my daily mundane existence, I failed to realize that we were not in some kind of temporary change, the way “Covid” disrupted life for a few years and then everything went back to a new normal. You know, a few years of abject change, dealing with life differently, coping more than living at times, and then after the problem passes you go back to living life more on your own terms, less affected by national crisis, and your previous day-to-day existence returns.
No my friends, we are in an all new reality. And how you cope with this new world order, how you deal with the new change we are all going to be forced to live with will be instructive as to where you stand in the pecking order here in America.
Living my rather boring and plain brown-paper-bag existence in Florida you’d hear me complain here on Substack about prices, or the new costs on menus at a favorite restaurant, perhaps some shock that a glass of cabernet at a favorite spot had reached twenty-two dollars. Or that grocery shopping bills had doubled seemingly overnight.
I had developed some attitude that life in general was under attack from outside influences that were a nuisance. That drained the bank account much quicker than previously experienced. But that were temporary, a brief and nagging problem, that would, like “Covid” pass behind us and allow us to slowly, slowly, get our feet back under us and return to our normal lives.
How wrong I am at times, how incredibly naive and stupid I can be.
It is a whole new ballgame my friends. Life has changed and we all better not only get used to it, but to change our attitudes, to change our viewpoint entirely, and embrace this new reality.
Oh friends, I’ve now seen. I’ve born witness. And an incredible new realization hit me.
Holy Moly, I’m not one of them! But to survive I need to become one of them, you need to become on of them.
On our travels we stopped along the way and dined in some fine establishments in some of the nicer and more popular current destinations for those “in the know” in America and lo and behold I discovered a whole new outlook.
There are people dining out there in America, at the finer white table cloth establishments, consuming twenty-five dollar glasses of Cab, ordering eighty dollar steaks, twenty-five dollar appetizers, and smiling. Happy. Perfectly content. They all have on stylish new outfits, the women are just bathed in jewelry. Their hair just so, lovely, well coiffed as we used to say. The men tend to wear polo shirts as usual, but not just any polo shirts, crisp, new, look like they just came off the rack polos that have golf course logos from the finest resorts in America. A Kiawah shirt here, a Pine Valley shirt there, with what appears to be the most current logo design.
And shoes. Fashionable shoes, new shoes, not a scuff mark to be found. Were you to come to my table, sit and imbibe with us, and look around the word you would use to describe the audience would be “crisp”. “Crisp and fashionable”.
And as I sat watching and observing the “haves” enjoy themselves immensely I realized, they don’t care about the prices, no one is complaining that pasta has gone to thirty-six a plate, no one cares that eating a nice steak now eats near a hundred dollar bill, or a “hunge” and I like to call them. No, no, no. These people are the real people, they don’t care at all about costs. They leave their second or third home, drive to the best restaurant in town with a regularity, eat and drink the very best food and wine imaginable, and they couldn’t care less what the right side of the menu says.
I watched, I observed, I listened.
I didn’t hear one person say “Oh God I feel like a steak tonight, but if I order the pasta that is forty dollars difference right there, I’ll just pass up the red meat this evening and save the forty bucks.” No, people ordered with gusto, smiling, happy, full-of-life. They sat in their fine and dandy duds, wrists jangling with expensive gold bangles, and gulped down red as if nothing mattered, the restaurant had plenty because the restaurant ordered by the case. When this bottle empties you know what, we will just get more.
No one noticed me making a value judgement about the fifty dollar bone-in pork chop as opposed to the twenty-seven dollar eggplant parmesan. It was an excellent eggplant parm, had a real “meaty” flavor by the way. No one noticed when I cringed as the wife ordered the meat ball appetizer at a cool twenty-five dollars. I mean I’m sorry, but I can still remember when appetizers crested fifteen dollars just, what, wasn’t that last year? Because it seems to me appetizer prices jumped from twelve to fifteen and then somehow ended up in the mid-twenties and no one batted an eye. Except me.
Oh, but no longer. I’ve been exposed to our new reality.
I have decided not to retreat, as others propose, back to a world of buffet style restaurants, food produced for the masses, and national chain dining.
Oh, no. Not me, not us.
We are going to somehow join the “crowd”.
How?
I have no idea yet.
I don’t even have a new polo shirt. I’ve been wearing the same Bay Hill shirt I bought when my son and I took a trip to Arnold Palmer’s Orlando resort, what was it, six years ago now, seven? It fits me better than any other polo in the drawer, even with the added twenty pounds. And sure when the waist line went from thirty, and started threatening thirty-four I purchased just two new pair of pants, to use just until the waist retreated to thirty where I could wear more of the newer and more stylish wardrobe. So right now I’m down to two pair of pants. But hey, that just means I can start new and catch these people, the real people, the ones in the restaurant smiling happily and never realizing there is a right side to the menu.
And jewelry. The David Yerman purchased years ago for the wife is starting to look rather dated.
See?
Joining the “we don’t care about price” crowd is really difficult. You can’t just show up and order the tomahawk chop at a buck-twenty-five and think “I am one of them”.
You have to have the entire outfit, the car, the style, the clothing, the attitude. Oh, and of course the money, but first you’ve got to get into the right look and spirit of it all.
It reminds me of when the four kids were young and we started to get invited on ski trips. Damn ski trips cost me damn near ninety grand.
How, you might ask?
Well first you’ve got to get the big, black, Yukon XL SUV. That was seventy-five. Then you have to get the rooftop carrier, and it has to be a “Thule” brand name, that was five hundred or so. Then you have to buy six sets of skis, another couple of grand. And you have to buy ski bibs and proper outfits for all, including goggles. And very stylish much more expensive than a Sunny Surplus version of a wooly cap for the girls. No eight dollar knit cap for them. Forty dollars for one that has elan is much more fitting.
By the time you give your buddies two grand for the giant ten bedroom home everyone is sharing, and pay for all the lift tickets, going skiing over a nice long holiday weekend has set you back between eighty-five and ninety thousand dollars.
But you fit in, everyone caravans to the slopes in their oversized SUV, everyone looks fashionable on the slopes, and you can smile and hold your pinky out that night as the private chef makes everyone dinner. Of course you hire a private chef dummy, everyone is too tired from skiing the slopes to prepare a meal, and besides, you need the food ready when everyone arrives back home and gets those bibs off, skiing will help you build an appetite. Far better to come off the slopes, grab a fresh made Bloody Mary, and have an appetizer tray handed around the room because after all, those three downhill runs made you famished.
So my eyes have now opened wide. And I want yours to open wide too.
After all, Katie Couric and her ilk aren’t sitting there fine dining in Savannah, or Charleston, and thinking “maybe I should save a twenty on this entree”. No Siree Bob. Not happening. Those types never even see the bill, that goes to “the man”, who disburses all payments, and makes sure the finances are “right”.
Time for Mikey and Company to stop being such lower middle class trash and live!
This little trip has opened my eyes. Of course inflation isn’t “transitory”, this is our new normal. We all have to stop sounding like a grandpa in the sixties complaining that a cup of coffee used to cost a nickel, and that penny candy was a “thing”.
No more but, but, but the six-fifty chicken.
You can’t live in the past. What was, was. What is, is.
If this is the new normal, then we have to join them, jump in with both feet.
First I have to trade that old 2012 Mercedes in and get something newer, and more stylish. Maybe that 911 is for me after all. Hey, I only drive about six thousand miles a year, maybe a Maserati, since they break down every ten thousand miles that would mean I can drive a year-and-a-half before the big repair bill.
Once I’ve got the wheels then I can work on the wardrobe. Skip Macy’s, head right to the boutiques. Directly to the Peter Millar store, maybe hit up Worth Ave for some shoes and pants. Find out what the new David Yerman is where stylish jewelry is concerned, pick up a few baubles to update the wife’s accoutrements.
After all that going out to dine will be a snap, I’ll go from buck-fifty bottle of red, right through a three course meal at two hundred a head without flinching. Won’t that creme brûlée cheesecake taste great for dessert. Sure it will, accompanied by a twenty year old tawny port, and cappuccino. Goodbye cretin, hello new world.
No more valet tens, in this new world order they are a twenty all day. Hey, if they leave the 911 “up front” with the real hardware, the Bentley’s, the Ferraris, maybe two twenties, Hell, maybe a fifty. The Valet has to eat too.
I only face one small problem moving into the real world.
Back in the day when I needed a quick ninety grand to join the ski brigade I was able to “crunch all you want, I’ll just make more”, to commission sale my way to newfound fun. Work harder, get to play harder.
Now I’m an old man, decrepit, fat and tired. Beaten. Scarred by life as a “poors”.
And with inflation, well that ninety grand is up to what? The 911 alone is a cool hundred thirty.
Wow.
I’m going to have to find a way to find about two-fifty very large to climb up and out again this time. And quick. I have to find an extra two-fifty large immediately. If this trip has taught me anything, it has taught me I’m a quick two-fifty shy.
It isn’t easy sitting white table cloth and making it look easy.
I wonder if the wife would mind working a little harder at her job, maybe.
I like this new lifestyle.
I'm guessing there are no SEIU workers behind the scenes at these places. Maybe there's even an "undocumented" or two.
Your descriptions brought this short to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t60MMJH_1ds
The Carving Station and a new White Marlin Tee are calling! It’s just food.