November to Remember: The NYC Meetup, 11/18

Posted on by

The election is over, and it leaves our community divided. We have happy macacas, upset macacas, indifferent macacas, and those who object to the term macaca. But surely the one political development of the last couple of days that has won broad-based approval is the apparent defeat of Sen. George Allen, for the reasons we all know. And in response, there have been calls for a party.

We’d love to fly all of you out to the bunker, where we could throw an outrageously debauched event away from prying eyes. Maybe someday. But for now, we offer the next best thing. On behalf of the whole crew, Vinod and myself invite you to The Sepia Mutiny “November to Remember” New York City Meetup, Saturday, November 18, 5:00 – 7:00 PM, at Epistrophy Cafe, 200 Mott Street (between Spring and Kenmare).

We’ve chosen this timing so that folks can join us and still go on to their fabulous New York evening activities, so no excuses! Epistrophy is a low-key, high-quality wine-oriented cafe with small food, both veg and non-veg, and reasonable prices. It’s owned by a couple from Sardinia and named for a Thelonious Monk classic. After 7, those who are so inclined can move on to dinner somewhere, but in the spirit of Monk, we’ll improvise.

FAQ: Regulars are welcome. Lurkers are welcome and encouraged. Aunties and Uncles are welcome. Aishwarya Rai, Kal Penn, M. Night Shyamalan, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Bipasha Basu, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Dr. Vijay, Salman Rushdie, Laloo Prasad Yadav, are all welcome. Macacas and non-macacas are welcome. Exotifiers and orientalists are welcome. Those who aren’t welcome are velcome.

Please to kindly RSVP in the comment thread, so we get a sense of numbers and whether we need to move the party to Bungalow 8 or Madison Square Garden. Zindabad!

162 thoughts on “November to Remember: The NYC Meetup, 11/18”

  2. … SM is closing down its LA Bureau just before Christmas and relocating to the South …

    Are there really that many Macacas in Tijuana? Too transparent an excuse, yaar.

  3. do it during xmas/new years end of december time abhi and i might even be able to make it out to the city of angels..;).. nothing before the 18th however…

  4. I would gladly have suggested a DC hangout, but THIS WAS A VIRGINIA COUP!!! Ergo… We can all put aside our B&T aversions for an evening, dammit!

    Fair point. I woke up at 4AM on Tuesday and hauled my butt out to NoVa to stand outside a polling precinct all day on behalf of the Webb campaign, so I’m feeling the love for VA. My request had less to do with B&T aversions than with logistics — have plans in DC that evening and it would be easier to do both things if they were close by. If others respond and there’s a Whitlow’s consensus — although there’s no reason for them to be reading this thread, is there? — I’ll try to drag myself out to NoVa again.

  7. @jeet and his entourage – it’s a desi’s car. It will fit more people than it’s rated for. I’ll be there. inquilab zindabad. eddi, nee vaadi. ninne kandittu ethra naal ayi. is Sendhil Ramamurthy invited?

  8. puliogre is a KANNADA DISH!!!!!!!!!!!

    sad i don’t live on the east coast to meet all of you! hope you have a fabulous time.

    when is the next SFBAY meet up??

  9. I hope Sidarth did use/is using his brief fame to ‘get some’; but with his being a shy, 20 yr old desi kid, somehow I doubt it.

  10. I hope Sidarth did use/is using his brief fame to ‘get some’; but with his being a shy, 20 yr old desi kid, somehow I doubt it.

    “let brown turn your world upside down.”

  12. If someone is still counting through all that…count me in. Usually simply lurk…

    41 tambram male married with kids NYmetro since fob 93 CA banking I Consume: NyTimes, New Yorker, Economist, Time, Colbert, occasionally Jon Stewart, Saat Phere 😉 Thamizh movies, epaper.thehindu chennai edition, & of course, SM!

    If you are going, ‘how predictable!!’….that’s exactly the expression I’m shooting for.

  14. It’s been interesting following the US election news from Europe (Prague, Frankfurt, and now Paris). I just struggled through today’s Le Monde (my French is intolerably bad for having studied it to fluency, albeit 15 years ago) and one of the headlines roughly translated to Bush Beat Down. As a recent Californian, I love that Pelosi is speaker, but no one knows her outside the US. I wonder/hope if that will change.

    I thought you might find the following story interesting. I flew into Charles de Gaulle airport this evening, and my cousin and her husband who live here picked me up. We were just about to pull out of the parking spot, when a huge black van pulled up blocking our path, and half a dozen black vested Frenchie police jumped out and surrounded the car. They immediately separated us and started asking questions. My US passport was soon extracted and examined (it has not served me well in the past – in Tunis’s Med port, they found the combination of my Nigerian birth, Arabic name, American passport, and Bangladeshi good looks to be wholly unbelievable and insisted I produce my “real” passport). This time, it appeared my blue jeans and blue hair was the right combination to dissuade further questioning. However, my poor cousin, dressed in a lovely shalwar kamis unfortunately obscured by a puffy down coat, was so nerve wracked by the experience that she couldn’t speak properly. I was then pulled into her line of questioning to ostensibly translate their awkward English questions (about her visa, legitimacy, and papers) into my (shitty) Bangla.

    We found out late into ze affaire that there is some illegal private taxicabbing going on, and we had parked inconveniently close to the taxi area. Once they determined that we were related and legal and so on, they let us go with a unsatisfying “desole.”

    What’s interesting is that the whole time I had disturbing thoughts of being hauled off and decitizenised and so on. And my cousin and her husband, while upset and frazzled, were not afraid, at least not in that vein. Why did I expect the worst so quickly? Is it so bad in America? Well, really, it can’t be, not with sharp silly sexy blogs like yours. I’m sorry I won’t be there for your NYC party. I’ll be (sort of) keeping an eye on y’all from Dhaka (my next stop). Keep up the good work. Abeer

  15. Will be there. Dare someone stop me !!

    Can i bring Dada Kondke too ?

    Which of the SM blogmeisters are going to be there for sure…just so I know how many bullets to carry !!

  16. I’ll shag SR-71 Siddarth. Be there at the meetup you silly scruffy boysie woysie.

  18. Simple things first: Did you notice they always use “Pakistanis and Indians” Did they ever use the term “South Asian”?

    Simple things have simple answers. The Comedy Central blog omitted the SA quote from the original News article.

    The Republicans lost the crucial count of the Senate by one seat, that of sitting Senator George Allen, who was beaten by a margin of 7,000 votes, just because he had annoyed the South Asian immigrant voters by calling an Indian photographer as Macaca, the African monkey, during his election campaign in August.

  22. Yes, Allen has been “macaca-nated”!

    In the words of the great rap artist Chris Bridges (aka “Ludacris”), “MOVE b#*ch! Get out the way!…”

  24. oh My! Looks like this meetup is going to be huggggggeeeeee!

    Take lots of pictures for Sepia Mutiny and everyone smile 🙂

  25. It will have to be since SM is closing down its LA Bureau just before Christmas and relocating to the South because the City of Los Angeles would not give us a tax break for building a new office building.

    Vait, vait, vait. What’s all this about? ARE YOU LEAVING US??? And does that mean there will be no more LA meetups after December?

    sigh I don’t know how many times I’ve said “I wish I lived in NY” on SM, but it has to be said again: I wish I lived in NY 🙁
    Ech, I don’t even live in LA right now… Take lots of pictures, you East Coast mutineers!

  27. 7 · Desi In Seattle on October 30, 2006 06:39 PM · Direct link

    Hmm… no one from Seattle here? There are days I hate living here for more than the weather !

    So the above comment was actually from a 10/30/06 post that I just read in response to the Chicago Meet-Up, but I just had to post it here in hopes that the author (and other Seattle desis) might actually see it. I was so excited to come across it!!! I second the sentiment that there is a serious lack of macaca community in this town. I know there are microsofties peppered around (mostly on the eastside), but what about everyone else? (I’m a med resident, btw, but don’t hold it against me for not having deviated from the proverbial beaten track…topic for another day)

    So I propose a meet-up of our own. Is anybody else down? I’m happy to organize…target date 11/18. (sorry to interject in this thread…but this is a serious issue in the emerald city, with no real other way to access people…)

  28. I really wish I could be there, especially to celebrate the macacas throwing George Allen out of politics, but I’m out of town that weekend 🙁

  29. I will try to make it but, at the moment, it looks unlikely. However, my schedule might feel compelled to rearrange itself if we play games. Lets draw figurative self-portraits. We’ll get to know eachother throughout the evening and at the end we’ll play ‘match the metaphor’! you know you wanna…

  30. Can we get an LA meetup up in here? ok. In December.

    Seriously?

    …

    Is it going to be at the Griffith Observatory?

  31. Ennis,

    Can we have a Chicago meetup? I know we just had a meetup … but everyone seems to be planning a meetup and Chicago shouldn’t be left out.

    Please please…

    December 1st weekend anyone?

  32. By the way, ANYONE can organize an SM meet-up in their city. Just place meet-up event (for a given date) on our Event Tab and include your email address using the form so other mutineers in your area can respond to you and you can coordinate. Nobody ever said you need a blogger for a meet-up. Go forth and mutiny. 🙂

  34. Ennis, Can we have a Chicago meetup? I know we just had a meetup … but everyone seems to be planning a meetup and Chicago shouldn’t be left out. Please please… December 1st weekend anyone?

    Count me in (am sure I wont be sick this time!), and I promise to bring my camera 🙂 It’d be fun to eat masala dosa’s in chilly winter !

  35. Can we have a Chicago meetup? I know we just had a meetup … but everyone seems to be planning a meetup and Chicago shouldn’t be left out. Please please… December 1st weekend anyone?

    I canvassed those in attendance last time, and they indicated that they wanted to wait until Spring, and were less inclined to wander outside in the winter.

  37. oh. i spoke too soon. mounam samadham. i won’t be able to make it during the evening, revolutionaries, but if the celebration proceeds close to the witching hour, i hope to be in the vicinity by then.

  38. I canvassed those in attendance last time, and they indicated that they wanted to wait until Spring, and were less inclined to wander outside in the winter.

    wusses.

  39. just to keep this thread on track – though the tangents are entirely enjoyable – if you think you might attend the meet-up and haven’t said so here yet, please do! and there will be a reminder thread a few days before the event.

  40. [brown is a battlefield]… Thank you Pat Macacatar.
    Finally someone got it! 1980s pop kulcha points for you, tamasha.

    Macaca please. If there’s anything I know, it’s ridiculous 80s music!

  41. I canvassed those in attendance last time, and they indicated that they wanted to wait until Spring, and were less inclined to wander outside in the winter.

    Its is not THAT cold and if you call, they will come.

    Ravneet is in. Lets meet to celebrate macaca good over evil even if it is a handful of us. I am CRAVING some south indian food.

  42. By the way, ANYONE can organize an SM meet-up in their city. Just place meet-up event (for a given date) on our Event Tab and include your email address using the form so other mutineers in your area can respond to you and you can coordinate. Nobody ever said you need a blogger for a meet-up. Go forth and mutiny. 🙂

    Abhi, thanks for the gentle suggestion to utilize the Events tab for this purpose…I’d forgotten it exists. Although seriously, I don’t know who checks that tab with any regularity except maybe for folks from a few cities (ie NYC, Boston, SF, LA)…. Sigh

    Any Seattleites out there, feel free to check out the Events tab and give me a shout if interested in coordinating an Emerald City meet-up…

  43. This is a Virginia victory, so shouldnÂ’t the VA/DC/MD area be celebrating….? hint hint. Wish I could be at the meetup, but its my birthday and I already have plans that day, other than that I would have had my Amtrak ticket in my hand! LOTS of pictures people! You guys should have a gigantic meetup with all the bloggers in attendance, I vote for it to be in DC, it is the nationÂ’s capital, and this is an American blog! 🙂

  45. East coast browns and their meetups are over-represented. We need to redistribute browns, bloggers and the meetups for the sake of fairness and in proportion to total brown population. California wins.

  46. and they indicated that they wanted to wait until Spring, and were less inclined to wander outside in the winter

    Well, it won’t be that cold, going by what we can brave all winter long. 🙂 Let us try to ping people.

    Lets meet to celebrate macaca good over evil even if it is a handful of us. I am *CRAVING* some south indian food.

    Well we did have some hot south indian y;day at Udipi @ Schaumburg, but yeah the hot sambhar and spicy chutney can draw me out once again.

  48. Salil, ANNA, SM Intern, if you do do a DC/VA/MD meetup this weekend, can you do it for sunday afternoon….pwweeeeese 😛

  49. East coast browns and their meetups are over-represented. We need to redistribute browns, bloggers and the meetups for the sake of fairness and in proportion to total brown population. California wins.

    I agree!

  50. East coast browns and their meetups are over-represented. We need to redistribute browns, bloggers and the meetups for the sake of fairness and in proportion to total brown population. California wins.

    Here is what the stats say about SM visitors since Sept. These are the top 5 states:

    State Visits California 74,000 New York 51,000
    Texas 26,000 New jersey 24,000 Illinois 20,000

    The point is that we HEAR you. These poll numbers say that we need to open an office in Texas right away. We already have offices in or near the other states. SM listens to its readers (but only when it suits us).