Subway etiquette in New York City is abominable. This week I encountered a girl (with a dreadful spray tan that gave her an orange glow) who had positioned a small box on the subway seat in front of her. I asked her if she could move the box so that I could sit down. She said, “It’s a really heavy box.” I reassured her that it would be fine on the ground, as seats are for people, not boxes. She responded in a bitchy tone, “You can just imagine that I’m sitting there instead of the box!”

Five minutes later an attractive man boarded the subway car and asked if the girl could move her box. She smiled at him and immediately repositioned the box so that he could sit down. I exclaimed to her, “Are you kidding me? Are you some sort of reverse sexist with a super heavy and important box?” The handsome man interjected, “I asked her if I could sit down.” I replied, “So did I. She must have a big crush on you or something, so you should start flirting with her.” The girl was humiliated, and when she finally exited the subway, the man chased after her. I guess he figured that since she was so eager to move her box for him, she would be an easy lay.

- Haley Hogan

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“The world has gotten so boring. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking for a disaster—I’ve had enough of those since 9/11… But Everyone’s just looking at their screens all day and no one has an original fucking thought. It’s all shopping, looking at pictures–it might as well be porn. Why doesn’t everyone just turn off their screens and meditate until they have an original idea?” A woman in my office said these insightful words to me this week. Ever since I have been questioning my computer.

Admittedly, due to boredom at work, I had become obsessed with looking at handbags online (mostly because I can’t believe that they’re all so heinous and overpriced). But it’s definitely an addiction that is making me brain-dead, like The Facebook.

There should be a new movement: Occupy the Screens. They could make it into an international holiday each year when all screens, large and small, are turned off. When was the last time you spent more than two hours without looking at a screen?

- Haley Hogan

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There’s a hotel in Manhattan where all the wankers can take their mistresses, or prostitutes. Surprisingly, it’s called Le Parker Meridien. How luxurious! And you can rent rooms by the hour. How convenient! And it only costs $150 per hour. How affordable!

There’s even an upgrade option for $250. It includes champagne, strawberries, and an adult film, to get you and your lover/sex slave in the mood. Talk about gauche. I guess the economy has forced us all to limit our spending. The Parker Meridien’s hourly room rate should be called “The recession special.”

- Haley Hogan

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I finally got a job as a bartender, and since I’ve been serving fine wines to a lovely crowd of Upper East Siders for two months, I have made some interesting discoveries.

1.  Online dating is major if not essential.

2.  Older men who work on Wall Street are seeking crazy 20-year-old girls who are seeking free trips to Paris.

3.  Most people don’t really know anything about wine.

4.  Like art history terms, all wine terms are absurd.

5.  Some people are foreign and don’t understand American tipping policies.

6.  A lot of New Yorkers don’t like to tip.

- Haley Hogan

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A friend of mine attended the ‘Spring Is For Lovers’ party at her Ivy League graduate school. It was held at a nightclub and intended to bring together the engineering students with the French literature students, etc. etc., because apparently being in grad school requires a middle school dance in order to facilitate dating.

My friend had the unfortunate luck of meeting an aggressive med student who stalked her all night and even bought drinks for all her friends just to impress her.

At the end of the evening she was persuaded to get in a taxi with him because he had commandeered her coat. He said he would take her to a great restaurant Uptown. He told the cabbie his own address instead. How Patrick Bateman of him.

At his apartment, he made her a delicious drink with freshly squeezed lemons. He turned and said with conviction, “I can tell you’ve been eyeing my lemon squeezer. It’s yours for the taking.” She politely refused, “I couldn’t possibly take your lemon squeezer,” but he insisted. And such is the way of modern romance.

- Haley Hogan

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There are few exceptions to the rule that being a post-graduate, unpaid intern or freelancer is just bullshit, not to mention illegal. But fledgling writers (myself included) continue to write for the exposure and the “glory” of getting our work published, though we remain spiteful about not getting paid.

One of my friends has been doing slave labor for an elitist blog for months. Though they’ve promised to pay her for at least some of her work, she hasn’t received a single check. She has, however, been offered other forms of compensation, including beer, marijuana, and several forms of uppers. Coupled with the benefit of building a digital portfolio, these pleasure-inducing handouts have made her adopt an “it’s not so bad” approach to working for free at this particular establishment. It’s somewhat gauche to give illegal stimulants as payment for work, but I suppose it’s a step up from just having your name on a masthead.

- Lizzie Crocker

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Manhattan taxi drivers are the eyes and ears of the city: they shuttle corrupt bankers to and from Wall Street everyday; they rescue hot messes from their walks of shame during the wee hours of the morning; they even harbor young couples too horny to wait until they reach their destination…

Cabbies tend to be fairly tolerant of  their passengers’ erratic behavior and stingy tips, but occasionally they lash out from behind the plastic partition. This weekend my friend was in the back of one such cab. She was innocently making out with her date, and when she had reached her destination she gave the cabbie $6.00 on a $5.30 fare, only to have him aggressively shout at her, “You were practically fucking in the back seat, and this is all I get for a tip??” A rather gauche solicitation, in my opinion. I guess one cabbie’s pervy sightseeing is another cabbie’s sexually frustrated Saturday night.

- Lizzie Crocker

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What to do on a Friday night in Manhattan? If you’re a desperate, unemployed freak like me you weasel your way into a “Harvard alumni media & art networking” holiday party to try to make some professional connections.The name for this network, “Harvardwood,” symbolizes the pathetic attempt of a group of Harvard graduates to make a pun on “Hollywood.” There holiday cocktail party was as underwhelming as their dorky name.

Since I went to Yale, it was slightly gauche of me to intrude on their gathering, I ran away from the embarrassingly dull event and stayed true to my Alma mater. Procuring free champagne cocktails at the St. Regis Hotel’s King Cole Bar proved far more entertaining. What’s the point in mingling with washed up playwrights still obsessed by their college days when you can get free champagne from random Greek men? Manhattan truly is full of possibilities.

- Haley Hogan [Follow me on Twitter & read my other blog]

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Most of Manhattan’s residents live in such close quarters that it’s not unusual to hear clomping feet, clamoring pots and pans, hammering, shouting, and other standard household noises through the walls of your apartment. But occasionally it can be an awful disturbance, if not simply a sound one can’t ignore — particularly when it’s the sound of your neighbor (who has a tendency to lurk in her doorway wrapped in a silk kimono) engaged in wild and rapturous sex.

The other night I was sitting at home having a conversation with a friend when I was suddenly interrupted by moans of pleasure, shrieks, and Grade A dirty talk from across the hall. My sensual neighbor screamed, “Fuck! Oh god! Oh yes! Stick your finger in my ass!” It’s no wonder Manhattan is a creeper’s paradise, and maybe not the ideal place in which to raise children.

- Lizzie Crocker

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I though that I had finally found a full-time paid job working for a cool media company in downtown Manhattan. A reputable staffing agency hooked me up with it, and I was so psyched to get down to business for my first day of work. The hours were a bit unconventional: 7am to 3pm, but after the months of unemployment and lying in bed watching old episodes of Glee, I was ready for the early-morning challenge.

My job description was “quality control,” and the company was in charge of distributing content to cable television. Apparently all I was supposed to do was watch movies and critique them. But trust me, it wasn’t as exciting as it sounds. First of all, the movies were mostly D movies from the 1970s, or Bollywood, or seriously low-budget soft core porn films. I suppose that the job would have been a dream for some perverted brain-dead people, but I couldn’t deal with the prospect of sitting in a dark windowless cell for eight hours every morning watching “Naughty Busty Secretaries Part II.” Maybe I’m overly idealistic…

- Haley Hogan [Follow me on Twitter & read my other blog]

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