The New Vintage

Once we had arrived in the city I had to go out on my first job interviews. Molly had to go with me on the subway because I had no idea where I was going, and I really did get lost. The first place was in SoHo at a wine shop called Vintage.

The shop specializes in wines from New York state. The owners are very ambitious and energetic about their business and when I first met them it was tough to not get wrapped up in their enthusiasm. They own two wine stores in New York, one restaurant, one bar, and a winery up in the Hudson valley. I was interviewed for the SoHo manger job, and by the end of the two hour meeting I felt like this was a good place to get a foot in the door of the NYC job market. I was to have control over everything in the shop, with possibilities of moving up.

It seemed like a good place, and for the most part it was. There are all sorts of good people who work there, including a whole group of people who I now consider my good friends. Without many of them, my time here in New York would be so much more difficult. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of any of them right now, but I will work on that.

Life at Vintage started ok, I worked hard to learn everything I could as fast as I could. It was a little strange because the people who where training me were the people who I would soon be in charge of, but like I said, they are great people and they were very helpful. Within a month I was in control of what was going on, and I got better at my job as every week went on.

There were a lot of things that were making my life very hard. The commute was killing me, 45 mins on the subway everyday, each way was smothering me. I felt like I was being crushed into a sausage casing everyday. There was also a lot of pressure that I can't quite describe where it was coming from, but I just felt the whole time I was there. In the end, it just felt like it was time to move on. Thank you to all who listen to my bitching during this time.

These pictures are of the shop and surrounding area.

This is Vintage in the rain, as I said it is in SoHo which is downtown and this view is looking uptown. It was a fun old building to work in, it had lots of little quarks to deal with, such as, when it rains, the water would seep through the sidewalk into the basement, flooding all the boxes. If you look in this picture, you can see the metal plates on the sidewalk, when people walk on those with their heals it would pound on the roof of the cellars. It was fun.

Also cause this is SoHo they are always filming down here. Those are big paramount power trucks to light the street. They were shooting some Will Smith movie. Oh and that's Ralph the UPS mans truck right there. Good guy.

Vintage had a cool interior that allowed us to do some huge displays, and the owners loved to get out there and design them. The bigger the better. This was Halloween. Undead Red was a hot product.

Looking uptown again.