Rule #4: You Cannot Wear a Frat Party T-shirt After Graduation

For the past 16 years or so I've lived in Kips Bay, generally considered the most boring neighborhood in all of Manhattan, if not the entire city of New York.

How boring is it?  When the Borders closed in the Spring the neighborhood lost it's only bookstore, CD store, video store, AND the only coffee shop that is NOT a Starbucks (future rule will involve where Starbucks can stick its dark roast).  The New York Press' "Best of Manhattan" issue two years back highlighted a local bar (since closed) for having "The Best Drink Special in a Neighborhood You'd Never Visit."  When they had the Manhattan maps in cabs, Kips Bay was an unlabelled gray area between Murray Hill and Gramercy Park (which is fairly accurate now that I think about it).

The 'hood used to be Armenian, but the only remaining evidence is two churches who I hear hate each other more than they hate people who deny they had their own holocaust. For the past 7 or so years, however, the neighborhood has been zoned for one type of person only.

Douchebags.

 (Note - do NOT Google Image "frat boys" with Safe Search off at work.

Unless you work at Splash on 17th Street.)

Gaggles of unthinking white people graze 3rd Avenue every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, trying to figure out which of 10 identical bars has more people who look, think, and sound exactly like they do.  

• Average age 24.3
• Average salary $46,000
• Average dress size 2.3
• Average IQ 74.6

And, they have invaded my apartment building (GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!!).  I think I am one of the few people left who's apartment is not being paid for by "daddy."  It got so bad that my building posted a note saying extra security was being added weekend nights, and that residents should stop leaving BudLite cans in the front hall (someone did scribble on one note "or we'll tell the RA on you!").

Thanks to this demographic I have been privileged to read about Spring Flings, Toga Parties, Beer Pong Tournaments, and other highlights of the SEC social calendar from the mid-2000s on the chests and backs of my neighbors.  I have neither the energy, nor the ability to defend myself against someone half my age, to explain to these folks that wearing a frat party t-shirt is the equivalent of saying "I was present at a date rape."

And to wear it after you've entered the "real world" (or as "real" as Kips Bay gets) says that nothing you have done in your life since graduation has meant a thing.  To anyone.  On planet Earth.

Which, I must admit, makes you fit in well in Kips Bay.

There is, of course, one exception.  If you are wearing this shirt while everything else you own is in a canvas bag and you are heading to the laundry room, fine.  Hell, I wear Nets playoff t-shirts from the days when the Nets not only made the playoffs, but actually won games in them, on laundry day.  And occasionally under my softball uniform shirt.

"But what about the gym?" I hear you ask.  Nah.  That's saying "hey, I am so far beyond my college days that I can sweat in this shirt and not care...but I still want you to know that I was a party ANIMAL not too long ago.  Wanna' go see Coldplay?"