The Sound of No Stars Shining

Schadenfreude is an ugly word. It's guttural, it's hard to spell, but mostly it's ugly because it means delighting in someone else's misfortune. And yet.


And yet sometimes, it would seem, it's pretty freakin' funny. Take the experience I had this weekend at a recently reviewed Manhattan eatery. To give you the back-story, Renee and I discovered this restaurant when it first opened over two years ago. Granted "discovered" is a strong word since as soon as it sprung from the hipster miasma of the Lower East Side it was attracting an A-List crowd... and the Bush Twins. But the truth is we have spent many a fun, boozy evening eating and carousing in the place, so it's always held a special place in the clogged arteries of my heart.

Needless to say, when I read via Gawker via Eater (good lawd, PhDs don't do all this sourcing!) that the restaurant owner had written a piece about an upcoming Frank Bruni review for the Times, I was charmed. Though the restaurant is a minted hotspot, his concern for the uber-reviewer's rating was earnest and touching. The facade of the too-cool-for-school kid that pervades the establishment slipped, and he managed to convey a genuine, "gee whiz, I want you to like me, to really really like me!" attitude that you kind of forget exists.

So when the review recently hit, and the restaurant received NO STARS, which means it's POOR to SATISFACTORY, we (yes, it's royal these days) were shocked, offended, and maybe also wondered how much other bad food we'd eaten while blotto over the years. Nonetheless, it seemed important to go back and show support. And that's exactly what I did on Saturday night.

With a very attractive man at my side, I rolled into Freeman's for drinks just before midnight. The seventeen women at the bar (plus the one long haired bearded dude who's head *must have been* cold for he was wearing a jaunty ski hat on this warm night), all turned around to rate us. And after we elbowed Brian Grazer out of the way, we ordered our drinks from the barman who was as precise with his mixology as he was slow in serving the nectar. But no biggie, this merely confirmed my impression that the place was quirky but charming, and happily, a few minutes later we were even able to score seats at the bar since the silky bloused girls needed to get back uptown.

Yet like all hipster enclaves, a little while thereafter a new wave of cool kids entered, and the barman was back to the business of slowly doling out 'tails (each of which he'd taste before serving by dunking a straw in his concoction to check the mix). Attractive-man-at-my-side and I watched all this with satisfaction, especially because this looked like the crowd that was supposed to gather here, and we basked in the "This is New York-ness" of the scene.

Deciding we liked the atmosphere and wanted to stay on for another drink, it took some time to get the attention of the tender bar man. But since he was not in a rush, clearly enjoying the process of getting his peeps knackered, far be it from us to complain. When we finally did command his glance, we asked for a second round.

"Oh," he says, "yeah, sorry, can't."
"Yeah, sorry, can't?" I reply, confused.
"Yeah, I mean when you guys came in here around 12, it was like last call," he says, wiping out the shot glass he'd just mixed with. "And now it's like..." he walks to the back of the bar and opens his cell phone, "12:25. So I really can't." He then puts the cell phone down, and turns his attention back to the folks on our right.
"Dude," one of them says, "this is great."
Slow bartender nods and smiles, "Here, try this," he says and begins mixing another round for the crowd.

I wasn't sure which amused me more: the Carrot Top finesse with which he used the cell phone prop, or the absolute brazenness of the "fuck you, loser, your money's no good here" attitude. It was theater.

So, as I say, though schadenfreude might be an ugly thing, sometimes it is cold comfort on a hot night out on the town.