A Little Spark of Madness

"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." (Akira Kurosawa)

When you live in New York City, you're inevitably going to run into crazy from time to time.  The homeless man on the subway conversing loudly with his invisible friend, the lady with face paint and surgically-implanted cat whiskers, the Jehovah's Witnesses...  While they scare the crap out of tourists, these things hardly surprise us.  In fact, they are expected.  In-your-face craziness is par for the course, part of the city's charm. This is New York, a veritable onion of insanity.  There are as many layers of crazy as there are layers of people.  Sometimes, the crazy that surprises us most is the kind that comes from unexpected sources that don't carry their crazy on the outside.

I've been slapped with a lot of crazy in the past year.  A guy's ex-girlfriend who surreptitiously found my number and texted me while we were on only our third date -- crazy!  The man who friend-requested me on Facebook every day for six months after I told him to hit the road -- crazy! The guy who sent me irate messages for not answering my phone at 2 a.m. after knowing him for only two days -- crazy!  The funny thing is that each of these people function completely normally in society.  No phantom friends, no voluntary facial deformation, and no cultish tendencies.  With all of these folks falling in various places on an apparently very broad spectrum, I start to wonder if they can really all be "crazy."

Webster's defines insane as (simply put) "unable to think in a clear or sensible way."  The problem with this definition is that crazy people hardly ever think they're crazy.  Our craziest thoughts often seem like the most clear and sensible ones at the time we're thinking them.  Our friends might tell us we're acting crazy, but our actions seem to make sense to us.  So, who is the ultimate judge of insanity?  It seems to me that it is all contingent on perspective.  Our intentions may be totally sane and logical, but they may come off as nutty.  Take the suspicious wife who goes to great lengths to determine whether her husband is cheating:  She's crazy -- until it turns out that he is.  And then, she's just intuitive.  From the ex's perspective, maybe the crazy ex-girlfriend breaking into her former boyfriend's email account and spying on his love life is not so much insane as just stupid or sad.  After all, we all have compulsive thoughts from time to time that may lead to actions that are somewhat involuntary or out of our control.  Is that insane or just human?

To varying degrees, we all live in our own little worlds, where the moments and actions that make up our daily lives may have entirely different significance in our heads compared to others'.  When it comes to dating, flirting and sex and touching and even the way we word our messages are entirely open to interpretation and may mean profoundly different things upon translation into the language of each of our individual psyches.  When someone's interpretation conflicts with ours, they are crazy.  When it agrees, they are sane.  Our perception of insanity may have more to do with how much sense we are able make of the world and less to do with objective mental health.  By this definition, at any given moment, we are all simultaneously both crazy and sane.

In a city like New York, where there is at least one of every kind of person (and usually more than that), we are bound to encounter viewpoints that quarrel with our own.  We will inevitably be subject to expectations and interpretations that are not in line with what we expect or intend.  There will be people that we cannot control or understand, and at times that may even include ourselves.  Sanity is not black and white; we're all imbued with a little spark of madness.  So, don't be so quick to judge another's behavior as crazy; because, ultimately, your sane is someone else's crazy, and your crazy is someone else's sane.  Your creepy is someone else's flattering.  Your obsession is someone else's devotion.  It's all a matter of perspective and scale.  We should keep that in mind.  After all, at the end of the day, even the crazy cat-face lady goes home to someone who thinks she is beautiful.

There are just as many crazy things to do in New York as there are crazy people to do them.  Keeping in mind that it's all a matter of perspective, here are some choices that I think of as particularly sane:

Serendipity
East 60th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues
I always say that I live my entire life below 59th Street. So, a good Samaritan took me here to expand my horizons (and apparently my waistline)! You absolutely can not order anything healthy here -- but why would you want to? This little shop, made famous by its role in Serendipity the movie (with John Cusack and the chick from Pearl Harbor), specializes in dessert -- giant fudge sundaes, banana splits, hot chocolate with mountains of whipped cream, and, the piece de resistance, frozen hot chocolate. We shared some very tasty hot chocolate and a coffee ice cream sundae. The ice cream was just ice cream, but the hot chocolate was fantastic. I can only imagine how good it would be frozen (word has it that it is uncommonly good). Clearly a next trip is in order for that express purpose. Only downside -- we came at 7 on a Sunday night and the wait was over 2 hours -- so, plan on putting your name in and coming back later. Trust me, it's worth it.

Cozy Cafe
East 1st Street btw 1st and 2nd Avenues
Cozy Cafe has 69 flavors of hookah -- attribute to that whatever significance you like.  This place is exactly what you would expect an unassuming hookah bar to be -- draped fabrics, tapestry upholstery, low tables, cozy nooks, and low light.  I don't smoke hookah, so I can't attest to the relative quality of the main attraction, but I can vouch for the Cozy Cafe as a cozy meeting spot for a small group of friends and quality conversation.  Compared to the hookah, drinks did not seem to be a huge concern.  So, don't come here expecting to booze.  The staff wasn't all that attentive, but it was a Saturday afternoon after New Year's Eve, so I am guessing that they were as hungover as we were.


Epstein's Bar
Corner of Allen St and Stanton St.

There's not a lot to this place -- a bar, a few tables and chairs, and wrap around windows.  Definitely a case of function over form.  But, what counts in any bar is the crowd that fills it.  The night we were here, it was full of Irishmen, which is apparently a regular occurrence.  According to them, it's something of a standard jumping-off point.  Good to know if you like a good Irish brogue.  After the crowd thinned out a little bit, Pauly, one of the owners stopped by our corner and started buying R and I drinks.  He was a little odd, but the drinks were free, so we had a bit of a conversation going.  Turns out Epstein's was at the time of it's founding and still is the only bar in Manhattan named after an Irish Jew.  True story.  And like any good Irish Jew, the bar is just what the doctor ordered -- friendly, loud, and relatively cheap.