[Originally posted on September 17, 2010.]

There used to be a restaurant in my neighborhood that I would go to a lot. One of my fondest New York memories is of taking a cab from the airport late at night and going straight to the restaurant with my suitcase and eating a late night dinner at the bar with a group of friends. They also had these disgusting brunches that just made you feel so sick, but were reasonably priced and a ton of food, so we ate brunch there most weekends. Tuesday nights we’d all meet up for a drink there and the bartender would make us booze milkshakes if we wanted. Once there was a rumor that the restaurant was being scouted for a scene in the Sex and the City movie. And once I was there on a date and a surprise burlesque show started for some reason. But then the restaurant changed their menu and redecorated to try and improve their business. It didn’t work. And then the restaurant closed altogether for awhile. They opened it a couple of summers ago as a pop-up barbecue place, but who wants to eat barbecue from a pop-up barbecue place inside of a failed restaurant? (Answer: no one. It closed again.) Then it was remodeled once more, and renamed, and had a new chef and a new menu and a new vibe. I ate there once and hated it. Then it closed again for the final time. They’re currently remodeling the building and I heard that it is going to be a paper store, like for fancy stationery or something. The friends I had that memorable dinner with that one night years ago have all moved. And, of course, all the burlesque performers in the city have been rounded up and placed in Federal Burlesque Performer Internment Camps hundreds of miles from the city.

The point that I’m trying to make is that the world changes. Sometimes when you stop and look at it you barely even recognize it, because it’s a new world. The world in which that restaurant existed and was a central location in my life has disappeared. And gone is the world we used to inhabit together, in which a woman in a motorized wheelchair could videotape herself “dancing” to Madonna while encouraging people to awaken their bodies if she wanted to, but she didn’t have a forum for posting that video and making it public.

Eventually this world, too, will be disappear. It’s just what worlds do. (Thanks for the tip, Funtastik.)