“The thé,” I wrote, after the ending of Wallace Stevens’s “The Man on the Dump”: While it was being distilled, I was able to design my own custom label.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I bought a Le Labo scent, Thé Noir, that was compounded for me right in the store. It sold perfume-Frédéric Malle’s Portrait of a Lady, Serge Lutens, Dior. Department stores feel like a revolving door spinning constantly between who I am and who I imagine myself to be.įloor LL-the Foundation-housed the Madison Avenue store’s cosmetics department: foundation, gold-leaf face cream in unbreakable jars, masks, brushes. The department store represents a glittery, glamorous, starry life that seems impossibly out of reach, yet it is also embedded in my DNA my grandparents owned one in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The floors of Barneys form a fantasia in my mind, at once kaleidoscope and memory palace, a zoetrope that blurs my personal memories with something more collective. Tourmaline, 20K gold, platinum-tinted locks. There were also secret floors: the mezzanine, a leatherbound couture clubhouse the passage to the interior ballroom the elevated jewelry section deep in the back of the first floor-beyond the Fendi baguettes and fur-covered pouchettes-where the real money began. The Madison Avenue flagship boasted ten circles of hell, from floor LL to floor 9, which was home to the restaurant Freds. At the opening night party, Barneys spent a quarter of a million dollars on canapés. In 1993, Barneys moved to a 230,000-square-foot French limestone palace on Madison Avenue and Sixty-First Street, becoming the largest new store built in New York City since the Great Depression. In 1981 Barney’s became Barneys, discarding the apostrophe, becoming plural instead of possessive-the royal we. Barney’s scaled up-it was the first place in America where you could buy Armani suits-yet maintained a patina of accessibility through its legendary warehouse sales, where you could find Norma Kamali sleeping-bag coats in wacky colors at whacked-down prices. Under Fred’s leadership, Barney’s adopted a cool, upscale, whimsical vibe. Barney’s son, Fred, added women’s wear, expanding the store into a row of town houses across the street. He hung a sign over the doorway: NO BUNK, NO JUNK, NO IMITATIONS. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.īy the time Barney retired, in 1975, the store was doing $35 million per year in business. In 1923, Barney Pressman pawned his wife’s engagement ring for five hundred dollars and opened a five-hundred-square-foot clothing store on West Seventeenth Street and Seventh Avenue, in downtown Manhattan, where he sold well-tailored menswear at steep discounts. He really did not know her, but she knew him, so he pretended to know her in order to avoid an awkward social situation, because he's very smart.Īnd then the rest of the events of Half Life 2, which I do not want to write.SPP Installation at Barneys, 2017. LICENSED UNDER CC0 1.0. Alyx (Vance) had been so kind as to not let Dr. Freeman out of the room and send him off on his own. The reunion didn't last very long, as another nonfriendly combine soldier began knocking upon the door, and Barney had to shove Dr. He looked just as old as he did last time he was seen. There wasn't much time to ponder over this thought as another human person came up on the screen, Dr. Freeman could swear he used to be shorter. A little gray, but still super cool and handsome and attractive and slothy. His eyes were still about half a foot apart, just as he remembered. He certainly aged, because time had passed. Freeman took the time to look at his face. While Barney (the sloth) was typing away at the computer, Dr. about that beer I owed ya!” Barney started, filling Dr. He blanks out on the next few seconds out of anxiety (I also don’t want to write them), next thing he knows he’s alone in the room with this combine soldier, and the cameras are being turned off.īut God must have a soft spot for him, as the combine soldier then removes his helmet, revealing himself as an old friend.
There’s a deep pit of anxiety in his gut, following this combine soldier in this unfamiliar area, which seems to only be used to beat the hell out of random citizens for no good reason. Which led him to where he is now, in some seemingly alternate world which is actually his own 20 something years after he was forced to leave it.ĭr. He also apparently earned his job under the Gman. He has to be, he earned the title Doctor and his job at Black Mesa.
Freeman, of course, knows nothing of the fandom, for as far as he’s concerned the events of Half Life are simply the events in his life. He’s also, according to essentially the entire fandom, a little gay.