The problem with staying at nice, semi-expensive hotels is that you’re always surrounded by couples in their late 60s and 70s, and more particularly by old balding guys in shorts and sandals with blotchy skin and knobby knees and bare feet. I’m sorry but something snapped when I was having breakfast this morning. Everywhere I turned I was looking at alabaster old-man toes encased in rubber sandals. I’m sorry but I can’t stand the company of older retired couples, or more precisely the metaphor that they convey. I like walking around Manhattan in the fall and winter with hard-working careerists and creatives and snappy-minded hipsters of whatever age with certain sense of style. And yet there I was this morning on the 14th floor, sipping coffee and quietly seething as I asked myself, “Why am I the only person in this hotel who’s wearing John Varvatos shoes with Urban Outfitter socks? Why does every person in this room appear to have never even considered distinctive apparel of any kind? Why do they all refuse to wear anything other than the standard golf shirt, shorts and sandals outfit?” I’m not trying to be amusing. I’m serious. It’s profoundly depressing to be around these people.