Five Bloggers and Several Cocktails

A round of drinks for five style bloggers at the Gramercy Park Hotel.
I had the great pleasure on Thursday night of meeting up for cocktails with four other blogger friends who I had never met in the flesh before. Lisa Borgnes Giramonti of A Bloomsbury Life was visiting New York City from her home in LA. Lisa and I have been online friends for several years, following each other's blogs, leaving comments, and connecting on Facebook. Likewise the pen-named Reggie Darling and his partner Boy Fenwick who joined the party, as well as Nick Olsen, who is a new friend.
Lisa was staying at the apartment of a friend who lives on Gramercy Park so we all met there and then hightailed it across the street to rustle up some drinks at the swanky Gramercy Park Hotel, owned by Ian Schrager and designed in collaboration with Julian Schnabel. After an ill-fated attempt to take the elevator to the roof garden bar which turned out to be closed, we landed on a chic perch in the ground floor Jade Bar on low little stools surrounding a table with one glowing candle.
The Jade Bar, photo from the Gramercy Park Hotel.
There we had a great time getting to know each other in person. It was funny because we already knew a lot about each other – our families, our homes, what we have been up to for the past couple of years. We talked about the what we like about blogging (the global reach, the opportunity to teach) and what we didn't like (the hours required, the lack of monetary reward). Lisa observed that for the most part we like romantic things that go back in time but that we are using the very modern internet to communicate our point of view. We agreed that blogging helped us to know ourselves better; certainly my blog about style has helped me define my own style. The Infinicam iphone photo app was recommended, we discussed the current second season of Downton Abbey, and talked about the books we are reading (Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, The Guest List by Ethan Mordden, The Love of Erika Ewald by Stefan Zweig). It was fun to be with others who share a similar viewpoint about aesthetics and manners and art, and the internet had already connected us.
Soon our time together was over. We dispersed our separate ways but we can always meet again online. I rode my red Raleigh bicycle home around dark, historic, nineteenth-century Gramercy Park.