I love getting my nails done. I have loved it since I was a little girl (yeah, my mother was one of...those mothers). I find it to be the most relaxing thing in the world.
The place I get my nails done is in Union Square, and I've gone there as long as I have lived in Manhattan. It's across the street from Grace Church on Broadway, and as I get my nails done, I look out the plate glass at the spires and I feel like I'm in a Candace Bushnell-meets-Edith Wharton story.
There are a few things my closest friends know about me: I watch television with the sound off. And I love Vivaldi. This nail salon plays movies--classics, Disney-Pixar movies, Christmas movies at the holidays--with the sound off. And the soundtrack they play instead is Vivaldi; opera; Haydn; Holst. It's like the owner lives in my head, and plays to my personal preferences.
I didn't start going there because they did what I like, rather, over time, I noticed how everything was just...right.
Yes, it's a little expensive. ($13 for a manicure, when the place across the street charges $8). But no one talks to me just for the sake of filling space and time. No one pressures me--if they ask if I want a spa pedicure and I say "no," then they don't ask again. But if they recommend a treatment, I've been going there so long, the relationship is such that I know enough to know I could probably use it.
It's clean, and nice, and they always remember me, and say hello to me, and they know my routine and I know theirs.
When I was out of work, and going through the worst of things, I made going to Iris Nail a part of my "routine." It helped center a world that was literally--truly--falling apart. It was--and is--a safe space in the middle of chaos; an hour of Shrek with
adagio molto from Autumn substituted for words.
There is nothing particularly special about this nail place. I am sure there are others like it; others that do fancier things, or provide special services, or are even cleaner or nicer, or what have you.
But this place has been a safe space for me; has been a place I have retreated to.
You should go there.
In a world of chaos, it's a safe space. And if you still haven't experienced the pleasure of watching television and movies with the sound off and any one of the four seasons blasting, then you have no idea what you are missing.
Comments (1)
any place that "welcomes you home" (the best way I know how to put it) is a place you want to be. And if you can have beautiful nails at the same time, cool. I think it's the little things in life that give perspective. Then you can deal with the big things. It gives the big things edges and gives you power to deal. Or, at least, that's my two cents.