The Modern World

In honor of the various articles about annoying iphone users

My girlfriend and I were supposed to meet some friends at Luca Lounge on Friday night, putatively at 13th Street and B Avenue here in Manhattan. Stupidly, I didn't call to make sure they were open. It wouldn't have mattered, because they were. Just, no longer at 13th Street and B Avenue, but elsewhere entirely.

By the time we found out, I was already at Union Square, a shortish walk to Luca Lounge, and our guests were on their way. So as I walked along 14th Street towards Avenue B in the desperate knowledge that we might end up at the local taco place, I pulled out my iphone and logged onto chowhound. A search for "Avenue B" turned up Back Forty, one of the leading "back to the farm" restaurants in New York. Google maps told me it was less than half a mile away from where Luca Lounge used to be, so I called my girlfriend, who was still on the train in Astoria, to redirect her, had her check in with her friends, called the restaurant from the imbedded link in the post discussing Back Forty at chowhound to discover that they don't accept reservations, and then opened the menu to figure out what to get. I did all of this before I got to Avenue A. I got to the restaurant, realized I had to wait because everyone else was late, watched a couple of politics related youtubes, and then had dinner. I took a picture of the place with the phone's camera, and then spent the trip home drafting a blog post about the dinner I just had.

Is all this a good thing? I have no idea. But there's no doubt that even five years ago, we would have been left with our guests standing like idiots in front of the closed restaurant, with no idea where to eat, our night would have been ruined, and everyone would have felt awful. Instead, we had fun. At least this time, technology was a net positive.