Is it good to be sophisticated?

Great Debates
61

How would they be helped by your foregoing a nice meal? If everyone avoided eating well, the people who work in the restaurant would be broke and hungry, as would the ranchers, truck drivers, cleaning crews and others who’s work relates to the restaurant.

If you want to give a certain percentage of your money to charity, that’s fine, but I don’t see what’s so ethical about foregoing every pleasure just because there are others who are miserable. Hell, I’ve been so poor I had nothing but rice and salt for days. I never even thought of resenting people who could eat a good meal. (I’ll admit to a bit of envy.) Even now, there’s no way I could afford to drop $300 for a single meal. $50 maybe, and even that would only be for birthdays or very special occaisions.

62

The Asylum, at the top of Adams Morgan, right near 18th and Columbia. You’d better have a taste for hard rock and gothic decor, but I find the bar food surprisingly good. Beer’s cheap too, though sometimes this draws college kids.

63

I lived there for three years, which would technically make me not “B&T”. Except I moved across the river so now I’m in the same boat as you (just on a different river).

So non-NYs may be wondering “what’s the big deal about being ‘Bridge & Tunnel’ (anyone who doesn’t live in Manhattan for those who don’t know)”. For some it’s just a prestige thing. That you’re somehow cooler for having a 212 area code. That’s a little pretentious.

For others it’s a matter practicality. If you are a single New Yorker, you don’t want to date someone who lives in Jersey or an outer borough because it could be an hour subway ride to go see them.

Mostly it’s a cultural thing. Like mswas said, if you are trying to have an evening with your sophisticated friends, you don’t want a bunch of obnoxious cheeseballs coming in and creating a ruckus. It’s not elitist to throw a party and want to keep out the riff-raff. When we threw fraternity parties in college, it was always an issue with townies or rival fraternities or randoms who just want to get fucked up for free, grope the female guests and try to throw their weight around.

davenportavenger - Don’t get me wrong. $300 is a lot of money for me to put down on a meal. And think of it this way. A wealthy person dropping $300 on a meal that normally should cost $25 isn’t eating six times as much food.

64

Hmph. Spoken like a man who’s never hit 120 on his daily commute.

65

I am now strongly pondering the pretentious percentage of the populace which happens to populate Niew Amsterdam.

… maybe I’m getting a tad silly at three days without sleep.

66

I know it. Right down the street from me, actually. Been in there for drinks, never actually occurred to me that that the food would be good, though. Maybe I’ll actually order something next time.

67

msmith537Yeah, it’s as you say I was using B&T as an epithet. It’s more of a term for someone who lacks in culture. I have plenty of friends that live in New Jersey that I wouldn’t consider B&T. In the last nearly a decade that I have lived in the metro area, I have lived in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Jersey City as well as farther out in Jersey when I first moved here. It’s basically like what people would say about not wanting to party with frat boys. Mostly what I am trying to avoid are the people with a chip on their shoulder, something to prove and do it by wearing expensive clothes and driving up the cost of liquor at the bar for me.

As far as spending more money, I think it’s also important to remember the economies of scale. There are a lot of wealthy people that don’t flaunt what they pay for things in front of people, that’s what’s known as ‘class’ but if you have millions, then $ 300 doesn’t seem like much.

Erek

68

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great food, it’s just very good pub grub. It’s not to be compared to a slab of porterhouse, or one you’ll get at a nice restaurant, but it’s a lot better than, say, Chili’s or TGIfridays, IMO.

69

Sure, I understand why a $300 steak is not for everybody or even most people. What I don’t understand is some people’s urges to shit all over the other peoples appreciation for such things. I would consider myself grossly unsophisticated in many things, and that’s ok because I don’t care about those things. But I have friends who are incredibly into some of those things and I think nothing of the fact that they spend what I consider to be absurd amounts of money on them because I understand their perceptions of such things are different from mine.

I guess what would be a better question is: Is it good to be sophisticated beyond the level of your budget?

Take, for example, my $300 steak. While I’ve never actually spent $300 on a steak dinner, it’s mainly due to me preferring to cook such things myself. The most I have ever spent on a steak was a slab of beautiful Wagyu sirloin that cost 25 USD for the meat alone. In a restaurant, that would be a $75 - $100 steak using the proverbial 1/3 to 1/4 food costs. Along with the steak, I also had a beautiful chunk of pecorino that costed $5 by itself and a salad dressed with some absurdly expensive 20 year balsamic, total cost about $2.50. For dessert, I had some wonderfully fresh strawberries that costed $4 for a little basket with some creme fraiche stirred with a hint of honey. In total, the cost of the meal was about $50 which meant that it would cost about $150 - $200 in a restaurant. Add in a little wine and you could easily hit the $300 mark. Should I, looking at my income levels, be able to “afford” such a meal? Hell no, I’m living on a grad student stipend I should be living on rice & beans. But I don’t have many expensive hobbies apart from food and that steak was a truly transcendental experience and I wouldn’t hesistate to spend it again in a heartbeat. Now don’t get me wrong, I can produce fantastic, cheap meals that have also left me feeling wonderful at the end of them. But I still demand a minimum quality level that makes food shopping quite pricy, fresh vegtables and fruit, good quality meats, artisinal bread when I can’t be bothered making my own etc. Theres a certain minimum food cost which is shockingly low considering the quality of food I eat but is still many times higher than subsisting on Kraft mac & cheese all day. All of this is quite a strain on my budget which means that I’ve had to make sacrifices in other areas. But has it, in the end made me happier? I dunno. I’ve managed to make a few transcendental meals which I can still remember the taste of today, but most of my meals are made just like any other persons, to put food in my belly and to get on with other things in my life. Except that I have to devote much more time and expense to mine to achieve that bare minimum condition.

I have a few other friends who are in similar conditions but with other hobbies. One of them became incredibly into clothes and now can’t wear a shirt that costs less than $80 because he can feel the cheapness of it and it irks him immensely. Another is a avid cyclist and he owns a $1200 bike. When it got stolen one day, he was incredibly pissed off but went off and promptly bought another $1200 bike because he just couldn’t stand to ride on anything less. Another is a exceptionla trombonist who practises for at least an hour every day and he owns a $3000 trombone, again because his previous $2000 trombone became too limiting for him. He was offered a chance to play on a $5000 trombone and had to struggle to stop himself from taking it up because he knew that if he did, he could never play on his own one again without noticing how inadequate it is.

Now, none of these friends are rich, in fact, they are all pretty much in the same situation as me and all of them have had to devote a significant chunk of thier income to their hobbies. At the same time, none of them are financially irresponsible, AFAIK, they all have no credit card debt and all are saving at least part of their money for the future. And none of them are “snobs” either, they are all acutely aware of the money they are spending and all supremely knowledgable about why such things are worth what they paid for them. And all of them have a very low tolerance of bullshit and of the products on the market that are massive scams designed to part rubes from their cash. If asked, they could probably break down to the dollar exactly where the improvements in quality are compared to cheaper models and exactly why they are worth it. I know because I love learning about such things; why it’s better to get a non-fused collar or a very good fused collar but also how the extra labour involved raises the cost. Why disc brakes on a bike are great but significantly increase the mechanical complexity and thus, cost more. Why the hours of testing of every trombone is neccesary to produce a brilliant, resonant sound.

But, in the end, is it worth it? Is it worth not being able to go out to a nightclub with friends because there were some fantastic tomatos at the market and I just had to buy some no matter how much they cost? Is it worth not being able to afford a car because I’m scared of what they’ve done to supermarket meat and buy my meat at the butchers for twice the price? Is it worth the up to 3 hours a night that I can spend preparing dinner because I refuse to take shortcuts? I don’t know but I do know that I probably couldn’t live not like this. I tried it once, living on convenience foods and cheap staples as an experiment when I went through a particularly busy period and I was miserable as all hell. If the devil came down and offered me a chance to completely erase my foodie tendancies forever and be completely happy with the lowest quality and most badly prepared foods, well… maybe I would have to think pretty hard about it.

In short, I think sometimes, sophistication can be a curse but it’s impossible for me to know because I can’t experience how happy someone else is and compare it to my own experiences. Is my feeling of transcendance really significantly better than someone elses? I’ve certainly seen other people have exactly the same outside reactions to a plate of crappy buffet food as I would towards a basket of truffles, does that mean they feel the same happiness internally? Does my food really taste better to me than their food to them or is it simply that their food would merely taste foul to me?

70

I would say that there is nothing inherently good or bad about having expensive and/or cultured tastes. I’d say that my life is easier for my willingness to experiment with food and also to be content with what is available. My husband the picky eater has it rougher. My BIL the food snob (I mean snob specifically) has it rougher. The ability to appreciate “the finer things” is a benefit if it doesn’t include an inability to appreciate “the less fine.”

71

Sounds like you might also be using “frat boys” as and epithet. Not all frat guys are a bunch of meatheads who just go out to get drunk and throw their weight around. Semi-formal fraternity run open cocktail parties were pretty standard at my school. Imagine my surprise the first week of school when people are like “hey lets go to ‘cocktails’ tonight!” What the shit are ‘cocktails’? You mean I have to wear a freakin jacket and tie to go out drinking? And this is something that happens every weekend?!!

While a bunch of frat guys hanging around in “cocktail attire” sipping drinks with their friends may seem like the height of pretention, it’s actually quite nice. They’re open to all (capacity permitting). It’s a little quieter and classier than the standard “frat parties”. It’s also more appealing to people who may not enjoy the rowdy beer-fest meat market atmosphere but still want to drink socially.

Of course you still sometimes have guys like my buddy and me who just throw on a blazer and jeans that looked like a wolverine ate them, get drunk off shots of tequila and then drive back and forth in front of our own frat house tossing empty bottles at it until “those pussies come out and fight!”. Hey…it’s still a fraternity. :smiley:

72

Yeah, I am referring to a very loud segment of frat society. I have good friends in college frats that are not as obnoxious as all that.

I am also a freemason, which is an adult fraternity, and we do the cocktail thing, and I enjoy it. I also do crazy wild parties in the woods with lots of psychedelics and trippy electronic music. I personally like to taste a wide swath of the gamut available.

Erek