Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed: Denim, Gold and White Eyelet

Here are my feet, freshly-polished, encased in strippy gold sandals with a four-inch, faux snakeskin wedge heel, courtesy of Aerosole.

I have no idea what they originally cost, but when I purchased them from the Aerosole store near Columbia one hour before the Ramath Orah annual fundraising dinner two Wednesdays ago  -- selected to accompany the white Tahari dress I had purchased from the Century 21 on Broadway and 66th Street just an hour earlier -- they were marked down to $39.99.

And here is the rest of me, wearing an Old Navy jean jacket I bought perhaps 15 years ago, a white eyelet dress from Kensie, purchased last year at Loehmann's and a gold tone chain I bought from a street vendor last spring.

Though I wore this outfit to work today, it was planned with my evening destination in mind: a book party in the East Village. While I felt a bit like a rocker chick at work, in the noisy darkness of Manitoba on Avenue B -- where friends had gathered to toast Rich Cohen on the publication of his new book, The Fish that Ate the Whale, my outfit found a sense of homecoming. Thus attired, I was neither noticeably Upper West Side nor reaching too hard for hipsterdom.

By the time HOBB and I arrived, there was a small but animated group of friends crammed into the tiny dive. We had a chance to talk to Rich and meet some of his friends. After the horror of seeing a prematurely-aged, wasted and once-famous NYC author whom I had first met a couple of decades ago when she was a sullen teen at the Ramaz School and I a newlywed, we decided to hightail it to Second Avenue for an excellent, no-frills dinner of fishcakes and omelets at the legendary B&H, one of the few remaining luncheonettes in the city.

Of all the places me and my outfit were most at home, it was at B&H. Perched upon a stool at the counter next to HOBB -- faux snakeskin wedge heels planted comfortably on the counter footrest, tipsy from an overly generous glass of Manitoba's house white, wearing my white eyelet summer frock, now newly innocent without its edgy denim jacket -- I watched the counterman saute the mushrooms and onions for my omelet, then mix the eggs in a bowl, then blend all the ingredients together on the skillet, following his every move with open-mouthed rapture, just like a little kid.