Count your blessings, not your problems

Now I've pretty much seen and heard it all. I've been called a lot of things by very many different people, but I've never been called a Count before (well, the closest one prior to this incident was when I was told that I had a slight resemblance to the Count of Monte Cristo; I don't necessarily entirely agree with this...).

Anyway, we were checking out the new entrants to the Helsinki nightlife with Istvan on Saturday and thanks to his magnificent charm and exotic appearance, my friend was gathering the attention of the fairer gender for the most part of the evening. We eventually found our way to the recently opened Tiger where we ran across some of the people from the previous destinations. I kept myself out of the discussions and let my friend enjoy the ride while I kept myself preoccupied by working on my recent Twitter addiction and trying to figure out what I would like to drink next with an additional constraint that the generic, but still very friendly, bar staff would actually know how to make (it turns out that Manhattans are way to exotic). The bomb of the night arived when I briefly rejoined the conversation my friend was having: our new pals were very much intrigued whether or not I was a member of nobility, a Count perhaps. Unfortunately I had to admit that to the best of my knowledge I am nothing of the like. Nor are my ways in general very noble, so there we are...

I didn't get around to asking what this was about, but I have formed two mutually non-exclusive theories regarding my supposed promotion. The first is that Finland is still not entirely ready for any sort of dandyism, and I would very much argue that what I was wearing wasn't very dandyistic in the first place--a black blazer with grey buttons, a white-and-blue striped shirt, relaxed jeans, brown oxfords and a black Ascot tie with slightly slicked back but still wavy hair. My second theory is that I might've come off as slightly arrogant by excluding myself from the conversation and also exhibiting a decent posture and restraint of unnecessary facial expressions.

Now, asides from these two theories I'm still very much baffled. But this begs the question as to whether or not Finland is destined to be doomed; are Finnish men really so lost that Finnish women will mistake a semi-decently dressed person as a person with class and are youngsters so ill after being exposed to hip-hop-pop that they cannot hold a decent posture? Now that one actually begins to think about it, maybe it seriously is so...

Moving on, surprisingly enough The Tiger seemed like a semi-decent place. It's still essentially Lux but with a slightly different colorscheme and women who are more aggressively trying to steal drinks that your group has positioned onto a table. Then again, it was opened on Friday, so I guess we'll need to give it a month or two and see what it turns into. Privé opened up again a while back after being closed for a few years. The opening event saw the place packed up pretty tightly, but last Saturday it was more or less empty. Is it so that trying to position yourself in the upmarket amidst a recession is a foolish thing, or is it just that the places that are truly founded in the upmarket are ones that stay around year after year and are not even competing in the same category as the fad-ish clubs that come and go in three year cycles... Anyone see the parallels to the fashion and art worlds?