Fashion Week Sucks!

Okay, it's that time of the year again that I've grown to hate living in New York City: Fashion Week. For one thing, I go to school directly across the street from Bryant Park and my school, Katharine Gibbs, happens to be neighbors with the official hotel of Fashion Week: The Bryant Hotel. Needless to say there is so much traffic congestion on 40th Street, it's enough to make me want to scream! Also if you go to any deli in the area this week, it will be hard to find 3 things: yogurt, bottle water and cigarettes - the supermodel diet! Not that I smoke, but if I did, I would have to go outside of the vicinity of Bryant Park to find my smokes. Most of the guys in school (the straight ones anyway) love the fact that there are gorgeous supermodels walking down the street ignoring them as we make our way past the police barricades to get to school.

It started last week almost right a week after the Monday Night Film Festival ended. In the summer, Bryant Park shows old movies that start at sundown on Monday nights. They show really films that run the gamut from classic to camp, musical to drama, action to family and the such. Some of the films that they showed in the past have been "Psycho", "To Sir With Love", "Annie Hall", "Rosemary's Baby", and "Casablanca." Sometimes it's a lot of fun to chill out after work on the lawn with a group of friends, a picnic basket and a bottle of wine and watch a film from yesteryear all as the sun goes down on a hot day. But once Labor day hits, the fashion crowd invades the park and the climate changes in more ways than one.

I'll admit it's interesting to watch the limos and town cars unload on 6th Ave in front of the entrance tent on 41st street. Lots of famous faces, I've seen make the trek up the stairs over there. But living here in the city, you can sometimes get jaded by seeing celebrities walking the street. It's the tourist who live in the Midwest that get the big rush out of seeing Sly Stallone or Anna Wintour pound the pavement. Frankly, I'm long past jaded. I even get upset sometimes when I can't cross the street in my daily routine because: "We're trying to get a shot. Can you walk across the street?" Ask any New Yorker about what it's like to have any of the many "Law & Order" series shoot in your neighborhood, and you probably will get a negative response.

Don't get me wrong, any time there is a film or television production shot here, its good for the economy. The only thing you have to watch out for is crossing the streets or being kept from entering your apartment building because Mariska Hargitay or Sarah Jessica Parker is shooting a scene.