This guy reminded me of a certain kind of woman you used to see in NYC who’d cling to some upscale bag with casual desperation, as if she’d only just now been shopping at Tiffany’s or Henri Bendel. The bags had a sacred quality, and it was easy to imagine them carefully folding the bag up each night in some shabby apartment, like a scene from a Nathanael West novel. You don’t see them much these days. When I saw this guy, the first thing I noticed was how much stuff was bulging out of his WEF bag, and I thought, man, you’re gonna ruin it — and then I wondered how many bags he’d managed to bring home.
