Kiss 2009 Away
2009 was the year I got drunk and ran through the city with a camera asking people stupid questions. Somehow nobody hit me.
Nicholas Gazin went to this ninja restaurant and ate a steak the size of a laptop and passed out happy. He spent the rest of the year figuring out that Jameson and Ginger Ale was the perfect drink because you can keep going until you’re hammered enough to fall down the stairs with your pants off. Guinness started feeling like work by comparison.
My friend Hannah spent the year trying to break some Desperados beer record while also drinking Sambucca, didn’t pull it off, but got home from a drive doing a bit where she kept saying she was about to puke—which she wasn’t—and they had to pull over on the highway like five times. The whole thing was funny because her friend’s car was brand new and he was terrified she was going to trash it, but then two weeks later he threw up in it himself. This is what friendship looks like.
Juliet Elliott biked through New York for five days, and it was just riding every day, going out every night, meeting people who mattered. She quit her job at Warner Records around the same time because she couldn’t take the office life anymore. Suddenly it was lighter. Better. She got obsessed with Sleep after seeing them play an entire album at this festival, sat in a rented caravan for two nights with her crew just listening.
Avatar was somehow the best film I watched all year even though it’s this bloated monument to special effects and self-righteous environmental messaging. Maybe I was just staring at Michelle Rodriguez. She reminds me of someone from another life.
Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns
was the album that stuck around. One song, Daniel,
might actually be the song of the decade. Carolin swore by The Gaslight Anthem after her relationship ended, said her friends showed her what real loyalty looked like. Palina had these random little moments—Shakira asking where her H&M earrings came from. That’s the texture of the year—small moments, stupid drinks, friends who actually get it.
The year felt like Hannah described it once: We’re just normal people trying to take over the world like Pinky and the Brain, or Hitler.
Which explained absolutely nothing and everything at the same time.
The best thing about 2009 is that it’s over. Not because it was bad, but because I can look back at getting drunk with a camera asking strangers stupid questions without having to figure out what it meant. It just was what it was.