A NIGHT IN & ON THE TOWN

Nostalgia has been on my mind of late … it “comes with the dinner” upon reaching one’s eighties. First there was my extended weekend going down memory lane with my Emmy award winning television series Cagney & Lacey, then there was another Amazon Prime presentation of an old documentary favorite, Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?).

Those “everybodys” include, but in no way are limited to, Robin Williams, John Lennon, Jimmy Webb, Randy Newman, Yoko Ono, and Ringo Starr. And those are just a few of the folks who go on about the gent who may well be the most talented singer/songwriter of his (my) generation. The 20-year-old Harry Nilsson documentary contains a whole bunch of Harry’s singing, some of his shenanigans, and … even though it went on for the better part of two hours … I was sorry to see it (and hear) it end. Consider my thoughts on the piece an unqualified rave.

Not so the other evening … the subject of which also belongs under the general heading of what “comes with the dinner” for octogenarians … especially those of us who attempt a night out with a small gathering of much younger adults … on a Saturday night … at one of the town’s hipper eateries … in the Midtown District of Miami. There is little in life that will bring one to reflect on age or bring on the feeling (realization?) that a crossover has been made to that of the ancients.

It is not the food; it is the sounds that dominate the night. The pounding/repetitive beat, the redundancy of the din with nary a pause between numbers (note: I cannot go so far as to call them songs … or even tunes. It is most definitely not Harry Nilsson). The inability to have any sort of communication (let alone conversation) with anyone who would normally be considered as being within earshot, creates something distinct from what … in my experience … is known as an evening of dining out.

I wonder at the ability of these youngsters to withstand the onslaught of incessant noise. Could it be their hearing has been damaged by too much time at overamplified “concerts” so that they do not notice the clamor of their surroundings, or have they simply become inured to uproar?

It seemed to me apparent that the Gen-Z crowd, who compose the bulk of the establishment’s clientele, have been raised to believe cellphones at the dinner table are somehow the norm; the result: they do not appear to miss … (or, apparently) even expect … conversation as part of the night’s menu.

This observation of mine was to be “good naturedly” belittled by my tablemates … my views of the dinner attributed to either my unwillingness to go with the evening’s “flow,” the inefficiency of my aging ear drums, or both. The words of the Harry Nilsson version of “Everybody’s Talkin’” goes on … “I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’” … on this evening I could certainly relate to that.

The idea that … just maybe … what I was observing was society’s evolution into something more dependent on a collection of cell phone apps than any human need for convivium, was not up for discussion. But then, an absence of discussion … certainly at  this restaurant … seems to be de rigueur.

My apparently antiquated view of aspiring to be an interesting dinner conversationalist fell on … for all intents and purposes ... deaf ears. As to what meets the eye, the clientele of the restaurant is pure Miami. Women dressed in the latest fashions… often beautifully, if somewhat scantily, clad … while the fewer men in attendance were, as is often the norm in the Magic City, wearing jeans and tee-shirts. So much for that.

Was the food good? Yeah… I guess, but it is not the accentuation of the positive one takes away from the evening. Besides the cacophony of sound, the close-to-$200 per person price tag might have seemed objectionable if not for the fact that the arrival of that piece of reckoning signaled a merciful close to the evening.

Outside the restaurant, the neighborhood traffic in the mid-NW 20s of Miami… both on foot and by car … has one wondering, can the era of the rickshaw be far from the new reality? Call me old-fashioned but having to pay $45 to the valet for one’s automobile, then having to wait for nearly a half hour for it to arrive, did little to balance out the evening. Is “Everybody talkin’” about that? If not, they certainly should be.

Perhaps it was this octogenarian’s sense that the gestalt of the restaurant and the neighborhood was that of an adolescent’s playground on acid, coupled with the feeling that if there was anyone there born before the 21^st century, they were doing a good job at keeping that simple fact under wraps. I only know the evening … and I … were getting old … older… very fast.

“One” (is the loneliest number), another Nilsson hit made even more famous by the 70s rock group Three Dog Night comes to mind, not in a morose way, but with the realization there is absolutely no social stigma attached to someone my age simply saying no to evenings such as these … and meaning it.

It is, after all, me and my Arrow.

Barney Rosenzweig