Linda is a shopping planner. Yes, you heard right – a shopping planner. Not only does she organise tours of the great shopping Mecca that is New York City, she organises limos, special spa, nail and wax treatments and books restaurants after a hard day’s spending in the Big Apple.
She has the tell-tale sign of a bad nose job. Her once prominent honk looks as if it has been scooped out, leaving her with a tiny turned-up buttoney thing which is far too small for the rest of her equine face. The hair is layered blonde, expensive highlights and the black cashmere wrap marks her out 100 percent Manhattan – aspiring Upper West Side – but still living downtown.
The four or five weeks before Christmas are her paydays and her best clients are Irish. Not super-rich Irish, but run-of-the-mill folk who boarded Aer Lingus EI 105 bound for New York last Friday morning at 10.30.
The Irish are the seventh largest group of visitors to the Big Apple. Now think about that. We, with our population of four million, are not only the seventh largest group, but we are the fastest growing nation of tourists to New York.
This year, it is expected that over 350,000 Irish people will visit New York – the vast majority to shop. This figure is increasing by over 30pc per year and is up 145pc since 2001.
Given that our workforce is only two million and as much as 14pc of that figure are immigrants (who are unlikely to be splashing out in NYC), it means that over one-in-six of the Irish workforce travel to New York every year to shop.
So, far from being the super-rich-out-of-sighters, the average Josephine Soap is making the pilgrimage.
This development has not gone unnoticed by the New York authorities; and in June, the woman who runs New York retailing, Cristyne L Nicholas, and a man with the rather unusual title of “Chief Adviser for Irish Tourism”, Adrian Flannelly, opened a new tourism office in Dublin. They also run a “Next Stop NYC”, tourism marketing campaign created to capitalise on the booming Irish travel market, currently – according to the New York Times – “the fastest growing among New York City’s top 10 origin markets”.
Judging from the pure Dundalk accents in the upmarket Sephora cosmetic emporium on 5th Avenue, this campaign has been working. Where once the Irish pilgrims went to Lourdes, the new holy of holies is Midtown Manhattan on a chilly Sunday afternoon. Linda swans into the foyer of Fitzpatrick’s Grand Central Hotel on 43rd Street and Lexington to be greeted – like the Messiah – by 15 excited 40-something Irish women in skinny jeans.
She has the assault planned in advance. With military precision, the shopper will take Manhattan. First, there will be a financially, high-risk, quick incision uptown to Bergdorf Goodman and Tiffany, followed by a thrust down Fifth to Maceys. Having successfully achieved this mission, our well-armed elite shopping troop will fan out into Bloomingdales on Lexington, to regroup at Fitzpatrick’s at around lunch time. Linda has arranged a late brunch on Third Avenue, before heading downtown to the dangerous, boutique territory of Soho, Chelsea and the meatpacking district – formerly home to the notorious Irish-American Westies mob in the 1970s, but now host to more Irish credit cards than the Westies could have hoped to counterfeit in their pomp.
For the full-on shopper, boutique-land is a minefield. At Marc Jacobs on Bleeker Street, our Irish group – who had been conquering all before them – meet with stiff local resistance for the first time.
Post-op Jewish women are dipping deep into their alimony flashing their “Drop the Debt” Red American Express card (you can never be too virtuous), while second-generation Asian-Americans are vying for the attention of the gay sales assistant in that pushy but polite Chinese way. Anorexic models in comically high boots – which make them look like stick insects in concrete blocks – use their height to stretch over Dundalk’s finest at the counter.
A Mary J Blige lookalike with short natty dreads pushes past Monica from Castlebellingham and makes an unsolicited grab for a pair of half-price wedges. War is declared. The Irish women, realising that their advantage is in small tight formations, hunker down, almost prop-like and cover for each other as they hoover boots, shoes, bags, sandals – anything.
Linda, sensing a crisis, rallies the troops and they head for the relative safety of Gap and Urban Outfitters. As they leave the crowded hell that is Marc Jacobs, an ageing Yoko Ono double with big hair, big sunglasses and adolescent Puma trainers acknowledges Linda. Shopping planners have an almost Masonic ability to recognise each other at 50 paces.
In the late 1980s, Linda remarks, it used to be Japanese shoppers who invaded New York, today it is the Irish. This frenzy is accelerating and it is financed by excessive borrowing.
With one-in-six of the workforce coming to shop in New York and the same number owning second houses abroad, we have turned into the world’s most hedonistic consumers. All the while our debt-to-income ratio is exploding.
In the excited effervescence that is New York City in early December it seems churlish to bring this up, but if the financial day of reckoning ever comes, today’s budget measures by Brian Cowen will seem little more than deckchair rearranging on the Titanic.
“Linda has arranged a late brunch on Third Avenue, before heading downtown to the dangerous, boutique territory of Soho, Chelsea and the meatpacking district…”
Where on earth are you getting the idea that Soho and Chelsea are “dangerous”? Even the most salubrious areas of Dublin are about 100 times more dangerous than the areas you’ve mentioned.
Vandala, David here. I mean “financially” dangerous to frenzied shoppers with credit cards, rather than actually dangerous.
Regards, David
I think the “dangerous” description applied to Soho and Chelsea was in the militray theme of the shopping trip DMcW was following. Dave, it’s Macy’s not Macey’s and the westies were in the Hells Kitchen area (i.e. the 40s more or less west of 8th ave) not the meatpacking district which is much further south.
Mc
Could DmcW Misspelling of Macys be his way of saying’dont include me’?
Hi Dave,
What did the lovely ladies from Dundalk ever do to you?
On a more serious note, is there a rough estimate of how much is spent on these shopping trips and the effect of the loss on the Irish economy?
Take 350,000 @ €1k = €350m
The figure is probably a lot higher.
God bless the Germans and the good old credit card.
We should use the German credit card to build world class manufacturing centres. I guess the Germans are happy that we buy useless merchendise with their cash.
David & Co.:
Your respondents sure know the lay of the land (Macy’s without the extra “e”, Tribeca and Soho being the new “in” places, the location of Hell’s Kitchen, etc.). May I add one more note to the shopping frenzy idiocy: these certified lunatics take a some 50 mile bus trips to far-off Orange County, New York to the Woodbury Commons to deposit their euros (soon to be transfigured into shekels).
Happy Shop Till You Drop Season!
Dan
Bravo David & Co. Very humorous article & I do believe you have hit the nail on the head. It would appear that the Irish truely believe in the saying “long live lunacy!” Why buy indigenous?… or albeit even over the internet, when you can travel for hours on end over the Atlantic, spend hundreds on airfares, busfares and taxi fares, buy heap loads of junk you don’t need (via the German-induced credit cards we are all so fond of) and throw in a bank-balance-breaking spa break to top it all off. Fashion meccas have never really made logical sense,… Read more »
Paul above made an estimate of the expenditure. For Christmas shoppers, The Irish Times claimed that their survey showed that the average cost of flight + downtown hotel was about 1500 and that the average spend on shopping was to be in the range 2k-3k. That makes a total spend around: 100,000 * 3500 = 350million (the 100000 was for Christmas shoppers alone). If 100,000 Irish people are flying to NY for Christmas for an orgy of consumption, what does this say about our chances of cutting carbon emissions enough to prevent massive climate change? This kind of frenzied, shopping… Read more »
Ethan Greenhart Is it ethical to go Down Under for the Ashes? Ask Ethan: Our columnist offers more advice on how to live the green and ethical life. Dear Ethan, I have been a cricket fan for years. I even named my daughters Willow and Maiden. I would dearly love to follow our boys Down Under as they defend the Ashes (or fail to, if early evidence is anything to go by!). However, Australia is an awfully long way away and I’m concerned that my own Ashes tour might turn parts of the planet to ashes…. Is there an ethical… Read more »
I live in Boston now, but ship stuff back to my siblings in Ireland every Christmas. Clothing, kids toys etc are at least twice the cost in Dublin so you could almost argue that the trip pays for itself.
Does anyone have any analysis to back up the claim “All the while our debt-to-income ratio is exploding”.
Dont get me wrong – I believe it – just wondering has anyone got any quantitative analysis??
Fair enough, David!
I know you’re probably fed up hearing me say this McWilliams – but chill out.
When the oil peaks in a few years time the farthest these spendthrifts will manage to travel is a bicycle ride to the local market !
WILLFUL WASTE MAKES WOEFUL WANT. This is exactly everything that is wrong with modern Ireland. Cocaine epidemnics and retail therapy. Property boom and social problems. Crime and pollution. Ireland is becoming a cultural colony of California. David is right, NY has replaced Lourdes, retail therapy has replaced prayer, and brand names have replaced pioneer pins as the emblems of virtue. We have descended a long way from DeValera’s vision of a frugal, free, virtuous, noble society where wealth was secondary to culture. Now the culture is all about self indulgence and excess. Apart from that, “God Bless the Guenthers” as… Read more »
Hi David,
Could I have your permission to host this article on our site? All references to your name will of course be cited.
Please advise ronan@newyorkapartments.ie
Best regards,
Ronan Fitzsimons
Director
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