The Persistance of Revelry
Apparently, time is not of the essence when Dali, a DJ, and plenty of alcohol await.

What: The Guggenheim's First Friday
Location: The new El Greco to Picasso exhibit
Date: First Friday of the month, starting again in February of 2007
Cost: $20
Bohemian Factor: not a one to be had on 86th street
Geek Factor: occasionally found reading the biographical blurbs on the walls and taking notes

The adage that "Time is money" is particularly salient in New York, where everyone is always short on the former and wants more of the latter, and where everyone's choice of neighborhood, real estate and transportation depends on their own private interpretation of what that stale platitude really means, anyway.

For me, I discovered, it means I am willing to pay $20 and 2 hours and 45 minutes of my time to see the new Guggenheim exhibit "El Greco to Picasso," accompanied by an upbeat soundtrack and lots of good-looking sybarites checking each other out. I had this moment of revelation at 11:45 pm during last December's trendier-than-thou "First Friday" event, as an otherwise balmy day gave rise to frigidly cold winds and an excruciatingly long wait loosened the resolve of my accomplices to celebrate a friend's birthday under the cross-eyed gaze of Picasso's "Woman Ironing."

Having decided that $20 bucks was just not worth it for the sole hour of remaining exhibit viewing/partying time, my friends decided it was time to abscond for a Second Avenue bar nearby. But my feet refused to budge from the line (though long periods of time in uncomfortable shoes tend to do this to me). After slowly making progress towards the fifth avenue entrance, waiting in a long line that snaked deceitfully around Madison, the collective will had weakened. While initially intrigued by the onslaught of glammed up young things arriving by the taxi-load (and ugly-SUV-limo load) it was clear we were just plebes in the eyes of the watchful museum security, who seemed to open those coveted doors only to Guggenheim members, waiting in their own, much faster moving queue on the South side. Beware of that "members only" line- it routinely raises false hopes among first-time arrivals, who make the frequent mistake of waiting in the wrong place.

Actually there was no need to venture all the way to Second Avenue for alcohol: the high-heeled, tiny-pursed revelers and their scruffy-shaven companions had already discovered that the endless wait could be made more entertaining by sending a representative down to any Lexington avenue liquor store, and bring something back for all to covertly share. Strangely, drinking from brown paper bags in the cold didn't seem a particularly attractive birthday celebration, and I soon found myself the only one unwilling to cut my losses after already giving up 2 hours and 15 minutes. I felt that the hours I had logged, feeling crabby and windblown, were an investment I could only recoup with my promised hour of art viewing, dancing, and social anthropology.

Fortunately, S was willing to wait out that last half hour with me, literally only about ten feet from the entrance, waiting for two more people to leave. Numb, though thawed by the bright lights and a sea of wiggling bodies, we grabbed free drinks and made our way up the Guggenheim spiral. The space really is uncannily suitable for such network-y events; if one is not that interested in reading about the evolution of cubism and too shy to jump into the oxygen-less dance floor, the activity of choice seems to be leaning over the balcony, and gazing passively at the attractive faces visible from above and below. From the very highest level, the bodies of the dance floor became hypnotically abstract, dangerously reeling in the types of people who get sidetracked by their screensavers.

S and I managed to partake in all three activities, in addition to enjoying some Spanish painters I had never heard of, despite the occasional displays of PDA that occasionally obstructed the view (despite the growing numbers of those rotunda voyeurs, it were the couples and groups that that had arrived joined at the hip who firmly were in control of the evening). And apparently lingering too long, although minding our own business, near the dance floor invited some unsolicited attention. A middle-aged man shared his own thoughts as to "which guys are the cutest," and generously advised us as to whom we should be hitting on. Finding his comments mildly sketchy, we decided to chalk our remaining gallery time strictly to art appreciation; given there were only ten minutes left, we still needed to recoup our investment.