It’ll cost you $400 to eat at the Times Square Olive Garden on New Year’s Eve night. To those of us foolish enough to think income of $250,000 a year is nothing to sneeze at, forking over four Benjamins (before tax) for a meal is a hefty price, regardless of ambiance. A writer at Fusion went close to home to reassure sophisticated urbanites that for a bumpkin enraptured by the big city, it’s worth the price.
Try putting yourself in the shoes of a potential Olive Garden New Year’s Eve guest. Let’s say you’re a chiropractor from Des Moines who made a little extra money this year, and you want to spend New Year’s Eve doing something really special. [Hello instant Register story idea! —Ed.] You’ve been watching Dick Clark on TV since you were a kid, and going to New York City to see the ball drop in Times Square has always seemed, to you, like the apex of luxury.
Sure, $400 per person is a lot of money. But it’s not ridiculous for an experience you’re going to remember for the rest of your life. … And while spending New Years Eve in Times Square might not be the experiential equal of those things for you, Urbane Tastemaker, it is for many people.
Picking on the largest city in Iowa in this manner is nothing new. In fact, it’s practically a cliche, if only because coastal writers rely on it as a crutch for “place in the Great Flyover that people have heard of”. The insulting bit is when it comes with the condescending implication that Des Moines isn’t a “real” city at all, or at the least, one that should be seen as a place to escape from.
(The Consumerist, meanwhile, went for slamming Topeka in its piece that, like in Fusion, included the obligatory drive-by slap of eating at a chain restaurant in Times Square.)
My brother did a New Year’s Eve in Times Square, by which I mean, he spent the entire New Year’s Eve Day standing and waiting and standing and waiting. The ball drop is pretty to watch with a camera focused on it, but frankly, you would have to pay me to be there in person, and more than $400, too. Not even Carrie Underwood can make New Year’s goggles look good.