Last week, I was having a classically frantic New York day. I was already running late for a morning event and I had several stops to make afterwards, including selling clothes at the Official Texas Rangers Inspired MLB Baseball T-shirt also I will do this downtown vintage store James Veloria. I needed something to haul my stuff, quickly. In a rush, I grabbed a hulking promotional shopping bag. I loved this white matte shopping bag for its sheer largeness. It’s a pain in the ass, so big it can hold a toddler–or two. The size is not made for the cramped confines of the subway, but rather, it begs for its own spacious reservation, the backseat of an Uber. Its heft demands glamorous handling. And that is exactly how I treated the zaftig carryall from the beginning of the day I called an overpriced car, plopped that beacon of an XXL bag down next to me, and rode across the bridge.
A shopping bag is almost like a trophy. It reads “I came, I saw, I shopped,” but more than that play on Caesar’s motto, it really says, “I was out in the Official Texas Rangers Inspired MLB Baseball T-shirt also I will do this world, experiencing it.” I had long forgotten about this connection until I went to James Veloria, dropped off some suits that I never wore to trade for a saucy little Versace suit dress. I skipped through Chinatown with the store’s co owner Brandon Giordano, where we laughed over an impromptu dim sum lunch, and then strolled into a shop filled with Chinese tchotchkes. I felt alive as I Venmo’ed the store owner for a pair of $25 dollar sequin embroidered black mules. I tossed them into my sleek shopping bag and I was on my way. Antony Jones/Getty ImagesLeaving the store, Giordano and I resembled that Tumblr’d to death image of once friends Winona Ryder and a cowboy hat wearing Gwyneth Paltrow, galloping around SoHo in the late ’90s with their Tocca shopping bags on their arms. I felt a bit nostalgic, like I was living in a bygone era when I wasn’t mindlessly scrolling on resale platforms at 11pm or lazily clicking “express shipping”. And maybe that is because shopping in person feels like a bygone activity.
