Lucien
Article
Lucien is a recurring venue in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between November 26, 2024 and March 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Lucien ($85 for cauliflower soup, organic turkey, and pumpkin pie)”; “After I abandon the Richard Kern line, I go to Lucien”; “Lucien for drinks”. It most often appears alongside Jean’s, Matthew Gasda, Chloe Pingeon.
Metadata
- Category: Venues
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: November 26, 2024
- Last seen: March 25, 2025
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Jean’s (3 shared issues)
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- Matthew Gasda (3 shared issues)
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- Chloe Pingeon (2 shared issues)
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- KGB Bar (2 shared issues)
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- Los Angeles (2 shared issues)
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- Madelyn (2 shared issues)
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- Matt Weinberger (2 shared issues)
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- Night Club 101 (2 shared issues)
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- Page Garcia (2 shared issues)
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- Sovereign House (2 shared issues)
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- Valley Latini (2 shared issues)
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- A Very Pussycat Thanksgiving (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
For a feast, the grapevine of my New York City-local friends and acquaintances who can’t cook recommend — Lucien ($85 for cauliflower soup, organic turkey, and pumpkin pie), or The Knickerbocker ($90 for Thanksgiving Pre Fixe at The Coziest Restaurant In The World).
Inline links: Lucien, The Knickerbocker
Monday, December 9 A busy day. One quickly finds this to be the solution to all malignant indulgences. Before a comedy show at Jean’s, Natasha and I go to Altro Paradiso for dinner. It’s an early dinner in the rain. Madelyn works here, and I’ve been meaning to visit for a while. I’ve been meaning to apply for a job here, too, but the list of things I’ve been meaning to do on that front continues to pile up. We order many things on the menu. The house specialties that we did not order somehow seem to keep materializing on our table as well. It’s like magic. It’s a special night. Rumor has it: Marina Abromovic was dining here this afternoon. Rumor has it, she’s dined here twenty times. Altro Paradiso is a well lit restaurant - I read something I liked about well lit restaurants this week and now I can’t recall where. The premise was: enough of this haze. Some people want to see their food. Some people want to see and be seen. Tonight, I drink Ciro Picariello. It’s like white wine but it sparkles. I drink a cocktail with peach purée and peach liquor. I drink a dirty martini. I eat olives, bread and ricotta, finocchio, another salad with fig and orange, mushroom pasta shaped like pillows, lemon pasta shaped like thick noodles, branzino, gelato. It’s a winter feast. I haven’t had a feast like this in my recent recollection. After, the rain has stopped but the evening is still misty. We hail a cab. We’re too late for Jean’s. Natasha is good at spotting famous people. Rebecca Black walks by. EmRata’s ex husband. Some other people, too. We go the The Nines, which is very festive, but where everyone is very rude. We go back to Jean’s. The show is over, they let us in, but there's no point in lingering now. I loved tonight, I say when I get home. A sign of mental stability is drinking alcohol and not hating every second of it. I know for some people, it's the opposite, but this is how it works for me. Tuesday, December 10 The line to get into the Richard Kern book launch is too long and it's raining. I see Annabel and Ellie outside. I see that Berlin blogger who only wears all black or all white and her TikTok DJ boyfriend. "I need to become someone who's 'list me or miss me'", a girl in line sighs. We're still waiting in the rain. She said this in a way like she was kidding, but I repeat the sentiment with no humility to David later. "We should become 'list me or miss me’,” I say. David has a tendency to bludgeon his way through lines. "We should become 'list me or i'm going to fucking kill you’,” David says. After I abandon the Richard Kern line, I go to Lucien. I run into a few people there. The expected and the unexpected. There are things I'm very excited about these days. Excitement is risky - it's unwise to tempt fate and it's destructive to celebrate accomplishments you are yet to achieve, but I am excited. Full of ideas again. Everyone at Lucien is an actor. That must be so cool, I say. I'm so full of sincerity, I think. This time of year can be so full in general that it begins to feel uneasy. This type of luxury isn't mine to claim and it's certainly not sustainable. The hedonism feels truly hedonistic today, though. It's energetic, not coated with something darker. I'm having so much fun. David wants to go to Frog Club for banana chiffon pie. "Why am I so broken up about Frog Club closing?” asks David. "You've never been to Frog Club," I say. "Yeah, that's probably why," says David. Risotto David made for me + prints from Paris Wednesday, December 11 I went to the Russian Baths on Wall Street on my first day in New York. I still go often now. It’s not really of my own volition. It’s a family tradition. It’s still pouring today. It’s been pouring all week. I used to think the Russian Baths were all liminal space and Russian mob, but now it feels less secret. The Doritos are from Israel. Russian Jews and Russian Gentiles, I hear someone explaining in line behind me. The building is huge. The pool area does feel kind of like The Backrooms. I have night terrors every night. In my dreams, I am never stuck in places like this. My aunt likes the cold plunge. She can stay in it for seven minutes, far beyond the recommended time of three. The Wim Hof method recommends rapid bursts of breath coupled with exposure to the extreme cold. I’m in the Infrared Sauna. On Christmas, I will swim outside in Walden Pond. Wim Hof (the man) lost a finger, an ear, something detached in the retina of his eye… I can’t recall the specific injury but something bad happened swimming across an icy lake. He took it too far. When I get back to New York, I will swim off Orchard Beach. There’s a group that goes every morning. My aunt tells me you have to go to Orchard Beach in the winter. It’s like Siberia in the Winter. It’s finally getting cold enough to swim. On my Wednesday at the Russian Baths, I lose my keys. I lose the big rubber slippers that they give you on arrival. I can’t last very long in the extreme heat or the extreme cold. An actor in the infrared sauna is talking about how he can only memorize lines in the cold plunge. I’m thinking about how I’m in an infinite feedback loop where everyone I meet keeps being actors. We go to dinner at the Russian Restaurant at the spa. It’s called Matryoshka like the dolls. I only learn this later David and I split potato pancakes, salad olivier which is the one with mayonnaise and egg and chicken (delicious), beef stroganoff, steamed chicken pelmeni. More stroganoff and borscht and red wine is also passed around the table. I can’t drink red wine, so I drink ginger juice and ginger vodka instead. Afterwards, too full to continue. There are other plans tonight - a film, a party, I promised I would go and I never cancel plans but sometimes I do just neglect to show up. A very bad habit. Inertia ultimately breeds pure evil! Time doesn’t pass at Spa 88. Still pouring but dark now, when we emerge from the underground. Thursday, December 12 My abridged review of Dimes Square (revival) today. I didn’t see it the first time around - I wasn’t here. I was in Boston. I was in a sorority. I arrived in this godforsaken ecosystem after it was already dead. I’m kind of being facetious. I think people try to qualify eras too concretely. Concretely: Dimes Square (the play) is indeed a period piece. In the vein of all Matthew Gasda’s plays, it is emotionally rich, lucid, kind of yearning, which catches me off guard but I think adds depth. The thing I like most about Dimes Square is this: it’s not self serious but also it is not sneering. The best satire is actually quite sincere. This is why most satire is generally and particularly in contemporary culture, bad. Dimes Square (the play) is excellent. I will be publishing a stand alone review of the play here shortly. I already wrote the review but then I realized I was far too stuck on historical accuracy and far too personally tortured. In the meantime (from my notes) -- “The main fault of the characters in the play is that they are cruel, but the main critique of this scene in real life is that it is (was?) (is?) full of people who are pathetic”
Monday, March 16 I entered into all this fugue state psychosis yesterday. The guy my friends ran into at the bar yesterday entered into all this unrequited love psychosis. People can be so evil. That’s the last thing I texted my boyfriend before I basically blacked out on Saturday: people can be so evil. In my glass house, it was pouring pouring pouring rain last night. I felt so nostalgic for that apartment last night, even as it still remains mine, now. I felt like I could suddenly remember what it was for this apartment to be all new. There was no clutter last June. There was a sudden arrival in a place that was suddenly mine. It was freshly cleaned and there was all this space, it was like infinity it was like, all this light, oh my god, all this air and light and space, this will never get old. My mother says that about the fields behind the house sometimes: I moved in and I wondered if it would ever get old and it never did, she says. But she’s been there twenty-five years. humid summer air and thrifted propped up fans still blowing hot air through the white wood corridors on august mornings. I’ve been here nine months and I am already starting to stagnate. Which I guess is to say: I’m spoiled or, maybe I’m boring. Last night, I was nothing but happy. Tuesday, March 17 How to redeem yourself? Wednesday, March 18 Places this week: Cafe Reggio, The Public Library, Elizabeth Street Garden, Lucien for drinks, Fanelli Cafe for dinner. My roof every morning and night because it is spring now. Spring again. Spring at last. Thursday, March 19 And something gives in a permanent way. New practices, new routines, you cannot continue like this, and so you wake up one day and you don't. There has been a lot that has been beautiful and then, there has been me taking myself out of all this beauty. And you don't become so didactic and harsh and full empty promises. You just give yourself some willpower and then you give yourself some peace. I'm feeling really really really really annoyed on the plane to El Salvador. I'm sorry. This part isn't supposed to be in the story. I will tell you the real story, soon. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, March 25 From 6:30pm at McNally Jackson Seaport — Jamie Hood presents her new memoir Trauma Plot, in conversation with Rayne Risher-Quann.
Inline links: presents her new memoir