lunch in the south loop.

Lunch break near Michigan avenue redefines efficiency.  Every suit knows the rules as orders become a number with a signed receipt added to the needle stabbed pile.  Sandwiches are eaten while looking out the window from a barstool and every top button is undone.  Seated women take off one heel and scratch the other ankle, a small glimpse of the relief to come once the workday concludes.  Meals are too big to finish comfortably and just too small to put the last bit in the office refrigerator.  

Unless, of course, it is the semi-seasonal company picnic.  Then an extra half-hour for lunch is taken.  When this happens, I do not get to take a nap.

The South Loop is an ecosystem of migrant tourists, established predators and bright eyed, innocent, recent college graduates.

lunch in chelsea

I work at a contemporary art magazine in the biggest building on the biggest block in Chelsea. Stuck in a Richard Meier-designed loft between 11th Ave. and the West Side Highway, there really isn't anywhere to go for lunch.

Every day, about one o'clock, I pull a brown bag out of the drawer. My boyfriend works at a new hipster cafe in Williamsburg, and he brings home leftover croissants and danish. Lunch today is a pan au chocolat. I eat at my desk as the editorial staff flutter in and out of their desks, popping in and out between the office and the edgy galleries around the block. Munch munch, day-old chocolate. "The installation at Tony Shifrazi is simultaneously of the moment as well as an ancient artifact of the New York scene of the 80s" someone says. I wipe some chocolate off my lip. Someone chimes in "the group show at Gavin Brown is maddening. These summer shows are consistently sub-par." I pull out my juice box. I bend the straw while pushing it through the aluminum hole on top. A girl across the way pins her hair up. "And those Chapman brothers are tried and tired. Their Freudian visual metaphors are in the sphere of graphic inadequacy." I don't think I've ever seen these people eat.

Assignment VI

Simple. Write about what lunch hour looks like in the neighborhood where you work.