Me?

Me, I have long held that the best way to code yourself as physically available [which is to say sexually available, yeah, but also something much larger, 'in public' in a way that's morally correct]- the best way is to look a little bit preppy, a little bit young+masculine, and a little bit pink. If I want to look like a whore [a: servant of the city], I imagine a boy in a pink Lacoste shirt with chemically burnt hair, and I try to evoke him through similar gestures. Not the same gestures, precisely. I don't look very good in a Lacoste shirt myself.

Soooo, I wanted to like the new hot pink automat in the East Village a lot more than I do;

St Marks Pl -->

St Marks Pl is singular; brief and eternal. I remember, for instance, the Sock Man, who sold colorful wool crap off a table through the start of 2003. People from the 1960s remember the DOM, where the Velvet Underground played and Warhol's films were shown. I dunno when Kim's Video opened but that will surely be remembered for a couple generations. It is indeed probably New York's best video store although it's surely uncool to sell an all-region dvd player for $80 that can be bought from even Amazon or Target for $35.

So right next to the JAS Mart, which is itself only 2-3 years old, on the north side of the street, an automat has opened. It's between 2nd and 3rd Ave, on the same block as Kim's; it's called Bamn [site] and it's reportedly the first automat open in New York since the last Horn+Hardat [on 42 St and 3rd Ave] closed in 1991. The idea of an automat seems so compatible with New York City, but the machines are a rare sight anyplace in America. Reading about automats, I saw a guy in the Bowery mentioned in a newspaper article, who had 'enough parts to assemble 100 automat machines', but he hadn't assembled them. I wanted to know his story.

Anyway, Bamn was opened a couple months ago by some NYU business school graduates. It uses the same machines that the Dutch chain Febo uses. It's pretty tiny, with only one short counter [just out of frame in the mirror shot above; the blue bag is sitting on it]- the architecture basically encourages you to eat on the street.

Their slogan is 'Satisfaction is automatic'; my first thought was Athens, GA's Weaver D's ['automatic for the people']; my second thought was 'pleasure is easy'. Totally, I was ready to love it. The first time I walked past the building [with Steven], I was impressed by how immediately and flagrantly it did its job. 'Hey, it's an automat,' Steven said. Before I knew it we were inside the pink-lit stand. Everyone around us was saying the word 'automat'. Automat, automat, it's an automat. On cell phones: 'I'm at the automat.' People are ready to build it into the vocabulary of the neighborhood as a landmark already.

I'm not that into the name 'Bamn', especially because it conjures an annoying cooking show, but regardless, the first few times I walked past the automat, the seduction was just total. The pink, the rectangles that give a hint of preppy masculinity. I like fried food as much as anybody, and who doesn't want something placed on display in this manner, a la Amsterdam's red light districts?

The most amazing thing about Bamn, though, =the conversations that people have there. I expected the spot to be cruisy, but instead, you hear just the most insane shit about _snacking_. Everyone seems slightly nervous. Guilty? I'm not sure. Couples share an item like chicken nuggets or mozzarella sticks and laugh awkwardly, tapping their thumbs on the wall, the air thick while they wait to admit that they want a second item too. People say things like, 'It's okay, we can get something here, and then when we get to the restaurant, we can order just enough for one person, so we eat enough for one person here and enough for one person at the restaurant, we're two people and that makes two people's worth of food so THAT'S NORMAL.' Something large and common is forced into the open. '_Oh my god_,' a 20something girl was saying when I went by tonight to take pictures. '_Oh my god_ I am going to get the pizza dumplings, I _so am_, oh my god.' The sheer loudness of speech there, it's so public it's as shocking as the pink. At any other restaurant or food stand you would simply order. Right?

It's open 24 hours, and the spot is so intense and bizarre, at first I thought I wanted to work there. Over the course of the past month or so, though, I've discovered that the vegetarian options are all fairly yucky. The french fries [made fresh, not served in the machines yet] are good but start at $4 and there are Belgian frites just around the corner. I haven't tried the 'donuts' [pictured above] or macaroni+cheese kroket [ugh], but all the other vegetarian fare has been disappointing. I was super into the idea of a deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich; that actually sounds delicious; but when I had it, it tasted like chicken and fish- like the fry oil, I guess. That's definitely a sure way to fuck up peanut butter and jelly, make it taste like chicken. The mozzarella sticks are substandard and the grilled cheese I had was really soggy- gross gross.

For $2.50 [the same price as the grilled cheese] you can get a gigantic shaved ice, which comes in a container that would be comic to try and carry on the street, so it's best to stay in or near the automat while eating it. That was my best automat experience, the time I got a shaved ice. It took me a good 20 minutes to eat it, during which time I overheard lots of uneasy giggling. Being there is kind of like being around a bunch of fifth graders and someone has just said a word like 'lube' or 'sextant'.

I like what the automat does to and for the street. I like what it wants to say about taking whatever you want. I don't like the food though. Incidentally, if someone opened a good vegan automat in a sexy color, I would hang out there day and night.

I went looking on the web for pictures of Febo. Holland, wow; always simultaneously cute and horrific. That's not me in the first photo, just someone who looks like me.