Let's open this pit up
You can take the girl out of the mosh pit... but she'll just end up in a conversation pit
A screenshot of Barbara Eden in the 1965 fantasy sitcom ‘I Dream of Jeannie’
Please forgive me, it’s been far too long since my last dispatch. So much has happened since then—I turned 28, started a full-time job at Architectural Digest, and finally scored a set of vintage Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for Knoll MR10 chairs. (BREAKING: She’s leveling up!!!) Taurus season was full of abundance and I soaked up every delicious drop of it before switching over to the chaotic energy of Gemini season. Your best option for survival is to surrender to the chaos, lose all inhibition, and save all your tears for Cancer season. The road to recovery is amongst us, we just have to keep going… Alright, moving on to what you really came here for!
As many of you know, I love a conversation pit. I think about the thrill of sinking into them like that GIF of Homer Simpson in the bushes all the time. Even though people stopped putting the pits in their living rooms after the 1970s for a number of valid reasons, I yearn to replicate the sunken feature in a house of my own someday. As much as I want a big comfy (pink) couch, it wouldn’t take much convincing on my end if a sunken sofa situation was the other option.
The one thing that The Wing ever did right was hiring Chiara de Rege to design the Dumbo location in Brooklyn, NY because it featured a gorgeous green conversation pit that took my breath away when I saw it in person. In 2018, she told The Strategist that she was inspired by Eero Saarinen’s iconic designs for the TWA terminal at JFK Airport and the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana.
A photo of the conversation pit at The Wing
When I really think about where and when this obsession developed, I suspect that it must have something to do with I Dream of Jeannie, a sitcom that I used to watch reruns of when I was a kid. Jeannie’s bottle was clearly oppressive, but the less aware version of me couldn’t get enough of the glam decor on the inside—she was living in a miniature palace and I envied her for it! An alternative possibility is a connection to the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese, but those distant memories are becoming more faded as I continue to age and I’d prefer to leave them in the past where they belong. Last month, it dawned on me that the appeal of the togo sofa is its similarity to bean bag chairs, a form of materialism that I was robbed of while growing up in the suburbs.
While I was undergrad at American University, I briefly wrote this column in The Eagle wherein I made deep metaphors out of my riveting real-life experiences at concerts. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long because I wasn’t consistent in keeping up with it, but it was a fun idea in theory. I really thought that I was so hardcore when in actuality I was a softcore crybaby with a lot of pent-up angst! (For the record, pop-punk was not a phase and I am still very much about that life and ready to go back to Warped Tour.) Here’s an excerpt from an article titled “My mosh pit philosophies”:
“The nature of surviving a mosh pit is simple: when push comes to shove, reciprocate it all. If someone gets knocked down, they have a choice—stay down or get back up. This same idea can be applied to everyday life. When we are faced with a challenge, we have the decision to give up and accept defeat or go in knowing it will be difficult, tackle it hands-on and conquer the beast.”
As I settle into my late twenties, I’ve been feeling like I’ve graduated from the mosh pit to the conversation pit though. Coming out of this pandemic (please tell me you read that in the voice of Brandon Flowers a la “Mr. Brightside”), I think we could all benefit from a conversation pit. Every single time that I go to a function I spend the first 20 minutes struggling to socialize with the people around me. We always laugh at the awkwardness of it all, but surely there’s a better way to ease this painful transition… We’re all rusty after spending this past year in isolation so what could be better than gathering in a comfortable space that embodies that very function? Do me a favor and let that sink in.
this inspired me to look at conversation pit layouts/designs for 35 minutes, thank u