🫖 Hello, sweet people. Last week, I wrote about leaving New York—temporarily for me, permanently for others. On Thursday, paid subscribers got access to my reading recs. This week, I elaborate on a conversation about “Fake Places” that Evana and I had on her podcast, which is now unlocked to the public. Drink up! 🫖
Poised at the microphone, Evana asked me, tentatively, what I thought about Ray’s. My voice raised an octave or two. “I’m, like, a little against it generally.” Our politeness dissolved in a puddle of laughter, as she interjected: “Me too! Please go in.”
I supplied a mocking pantomime: “iSn’T iT CoOl WhAt A nOrMaL bAr ThIs Is? We only do NORMAL cocktails, like gin and tonic.” It’s true. They cultivate a no-frills atmosphere, with no menus, meticulously “down-to-earth” art and a dirty little bathroom. A sign behind the bar reads: Classic Cocktails. Nothing Fancy. The place conks you over the head with the earnest insistence that it is a dive bar. The reason this assertion falls flat is because it’s celebrity-owned, and devised by the Golden Age Hospitality dudes, who are behind some of the hypiest mainstream night spots. The owner of International Bar captured the essence of the situation aptly when she said: “Anyone who runs a ‘dive’ doesn’t set out to achieve such a low standard.” A low bar, indeed.
I’ve been to Ray’s three times now. First in summer 2021, when friends were whispering in my ear that it was Cousin Greg’s bar. This was probably at a time when everyone still thought Do You Have The Antibodies was funny and every NYU senior was trying (and presumably succeeding) to get into Nicholas Braun’s tall pants. The second time was in November 2021 (pictured above), when a friend was visiting and I had been deuxmoi-pilled and was craning my neck around to see if Zoë Kravitz or Cara Delevigne would show up. The third time was the oft-referenced basement reading that roundaboutly led to me meeting Evana.
That night, I tapped my card willing to pay any price to occupy my hands with a plastic-cupped G&T sans lime. My credit card statement was stamped with an ignominious $20.62.
Returning to the pod, Evana agreed that the vibes at Ray’s are off, and mentioned how a lot of places in New York feel like adult Disney World. This led me to think about a phenomenon that comes up a lot for me and my friends: that of the Fake Place. As sick as I am of “vibes” discourse, the simplest way to put it is as follows: in Fake Places, the vibes are off.
Fake Places benefit from a few theoretical frameworks: heterotopia and simulacra. Foucault introduced the concept of heterotopia in his 1960s lectures “Of Other Spaces,” in conversation with the better-known utopia. Using the prefix meaning “other,” heterotopias function to “create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory. Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged, as ours is messy ill constructed and jumbled.”
As I take it, heterotopias are more about how they feel, rather than what they are: they are spaces imbued with the uncanny. Despite being “real” in the physical sense, they stand apart as an in-between or upside-down. To use my terms, they feel fake.
Foucault cited cemeteries, prisons, and fairgrounds as heterotopic spaces, but my mind goes to distinctly American places that are even faker. Idealistic, design-heavy sites for people to live like Reston in Virginia, Playa Vista in Los Angeles, and Walt Disney’s failed dream of EPCOT. Overtly-themed restaurants like Johnny Rocket’s, the Rainforest Cafe and Mars 2112. Las Vegas, naturally, is the fakest place of all: an air-conditioned desert transcending space and time, with casino after casino constructed to transport you to miniature versions of the wonders of the world.
The concept of the simulacrum (Latin: “likeness, semblance”) has been tossed around since Plato’s time, but the definition that interests me most was elaborated by Jean Baudrillard in 1981. In the postmodern era, simulacra are copies with no original. In his words: “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real.” Paola Giaconia explored the concept in her article about Universal CityWalk—the theme-parkified “city blocks” between Universal Studios and its parking lot. If you haven’t had the pleasure, CityWalk is a cultural blank slate full of tacky eateries, expensive experiences1 and major retail chains. It’s the backdrop for Justin Bieber’s Baby, which you should probably rewatch for research purposes.
Los Angeles is a place where any (extraordinarily wealthy) homeowner can have their Xanadu. Pick any city street, and you will find a jumble of clashing architectural styles, garishly overdesigned to please the individual. CityWalk condenses LA’s mismatched sprawl into a tiny microcosm— in the words of Giaconia, “a collage of the images and traits of the city, [that] doesn’t actually replicate any of its buildings.” A copy of everything, but nothing in particular, that leaves the individual with an odd feeling that they are in an idea of a place, rather than a real place.
The name itself inadvertently exposes the con. Though it’s plainly named for Universal Studios, it’s ironic that a universal city block, by being designed for everyone, is actually for no one.
To return to Ray’s, obviously Evana and I are late to the conversation, as post-pandemic residents of New York. I moved to the city in May 2021, and she’s an even newer transplant. When Ray’s opened in 2019, a number of aggrieved writers lambasted the establishment for trying too hard. In a press release that’s impossible to track down, Justin Theroux (owner of Ray’s, former husband of Jen An, and actor in nothing you or I have ever seen) said such unlikeable things as: “The Lower East Side’s diviest new dive bar,” and “A place you can carve your initials into the table.”
I’m not even the first person to use the term simulacrum as applied to NYC’s pseudo-dives. Writing about Dolly’s, Ray’s and Holiday Lounge in early 2020, Joshua David Stein explored the reason that these places felt off to him. He made a great point: dive bars still exist. So why do we need new, expensive fake versions to LARP as dives?
Downtown Manhattan is a battleground of old and new gentrification. There’s a whiff of colonialism in remarks like Theroux’s. A “new dive” is a clear paradox. Ray’s is one of a series of initials carved into the East Village, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, saying “this is ours now.”
Golden Age Hospitality frontman, Jon Neidich, seems perpetually romanced by the heterotopic dive. Their most recent land grab, Le Dive, opened in dimes square in June to the pleasure of some and dismay of many. It’s a natural wine bar (because, of course it is), that Neidich dubiously asserts is intended to be “a welcoming, warm, hospitable place” where “you just have to make sure that nobody is cooler-than-thou.” Bet.
I haven’t been to Le Dive. Admittedly, it’s probably lovely. Despite the off-putting name, it’s gotten a much warmer critical reception than Ray’s, probably because it feels less appropriative. Or, perhaps the general public just feels more comfortable buying in to the experience of a French tabac than a down-and-dirty watering hole. A $15 glass of orange wine, sipped at an alfresco maroon table does feel like more bang for your buck than a $20 well drink haphazardly poured after waiting in line for an hour.
I suppose what grates me most about GAH’s growing empire of fake places in New York is the pretense that they are open to all. In Foucault’s words:
“Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place … To get in one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures.”
I’m sick of all the downtown permissions and posturing. The gatekeeping of gatekeeping by claiming there aren’t even gates to be kept. I’m one of thousands of new New Yorkers who never knew what came before, yet can still feel that the vibes are off in places that are generic copies of disappearing originals.
5 songs for the vibes being off
These songs all capture a sense of prevailing emptiness, IMHO. Enjoy, lol!
Alongside my Spotify archive, I’ve created Youtube mini playlists so that you can easily listen to the songs of the week, without scrolling through the full playlist! Check out the channel to listen to all the mini playlists, and let me know how this works for you.
“Khmlwugh,” HOMESHAKE
HOMESHAKE two weeks in a row? I know, I know… But, the opening lines of this song have lived in my friend group’s linguistic repertoire for years.
🎶 Something doesn’t feel quite right. 🎶
“Captain Stupido,” Thundercat
🎶 I feel weird, comb your beard, brush your teeth. 🎶
“All We Are,” Dirty Projectors, Björk
Uncanny queen, Björk! The lead singer of Dirty Projectors has a kind of greasy Jack-Johnsony voice that bothers me, but I also kind of like.
🎶 I reached out for you, but reaching never meant less. I could feel that you were gone and I, despondent, turned and left. 🎶
“Sleep Will Come,” The Durutti Column
🎶 peace will come, and with it sleep. 🎶
“Night Ride,” The Growlers
🎶 Night clubs and back rooms, baggies in the bathrooms, nothing’s changed but you. 🎶
🫖 Later, skaters! Show your support for Insecure Tea by liking, sharing, or upgrading to a paid subscription. Paid subscribers get access to everything, including my reading recommendation column, tsundoku, as well as my poems and illustrations! 🫖
Picture this: it’s 2009. It’s the day after my parents sat my brother and I down to tell us they were getting separated. It’s Father’s Day. As a tear-stained broken family, we go to Universal CityWalk to consume Wetzel’s Pretzels and lemonade and try out the indoor skydiving experience, iFly. I considered returning to CityWalk to write this piece, but I hope this history and a 50-minute drive is compelling enough evidence for my decision to abstain.