The Return of Miss Manhattan Hangs Out, with Vivian Manning-Schaffel
Why would people ever wait in line to get into a Spirit Halloween?
Almost 10 years ago, I started a project where I spent time with interesting people, chronicling our hang in exactly 500 words and 15-20 pictures. Called Miss Manhattan Hangs Out, I ran it for two years on TinyLetter (!). In that time, I was able to share a peek into the lives of those I just met or had known for years. I’d spend time with people at studio visits or farmer’s markets, at coffee or at comedy shows, all in hopes of sharing a glimpse of what life is like behind the scenes. I loved doing it, in part because one of my goals as a writer is always to see the world, even if it was only in my own backyard. I kept wanting to bring the project back and now it’s time.
I’ll now be publishing Miss Manhattan Hangs Out here on Substack twice a month (the first and third weeks of each month) in addition to my regular reflections about New York. I hope you’ll come along for the ride as I spend time with people, getting to know them, and learning just a little bit more about what it means to be human. As this new edition of the journey motors on, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber in the process. And, of course, if you’re interested in being a subject, by all means feel free to reach out at elyssa@miss-manhattan.com. Our first new subject is Vivian Manning-Schaffel.
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Vivian Manning-Schaffel and I meet at Everyman Espresso in the East Village and it’s an hour before I even begin taking pictures. Viv, as she’s known, is a freelance writer like myself. Or as she says, a “journalist, essayist, editor, rumpshaker.” Viv has written for the likes of Vanity Fair, The Cut, and the Los Angeles Times, and on a Substack of her own, MUTHR, FCKD, which by her own description is “a rant about all about those zeitgeist-y moments or shifts in the human condition we text or call each other to rant about.”
Today we also rant to each other, sipping coffee (me) and iced turmeric latte (she) as we commiserate (and gossip) about the state of the media industry, for ourselves and others, how there isn’t and shouldn’t be a timeline on ambition. She gets lipstick on her latte and reapplies. It’s the end of October and old-timey Halloween decorations line the shelves–smiling moons, black cats, witches.
Viv is a force. She has this wonderful purr to her voice, a confidence in her walk that suggests no nonsense is tolerated. Silver rings on her fingers. She calls me mama. When she listens to me I feel like she’s protecting me, but maybe she’s just a good journalist. Maybe both. She pulls on her bomber jacket and we head outside.
Viv smiles for the camera, flips her hair. Because she’s here in the city today, as she often is, there are Converse on her feet. She tells me the story of her tattoos when I ask, about her journeys in and out of New York–she wanted to come to make art, from her native Newton, MA (“the wrong side of the Pike,” she says). New York pumps through Viv’s veins but she moved to Connecticut during the pandemic–don’t worry, she’s moving back soon.
As we make our way to the West Village, she regales me with stories from her city life, the places she lived as a college student, the clubs she went to, the lines she doesn’t wait on anymore (or do, she quips). We walk down 14th Street, where she doesn’t understand why people would ever wait in line to get into a Spirit Halloween. Viv narrates other lives, too. One spent with punk shows at Boston’s famed Middle East, where she once worked. At a radio station, as a musician, as a mom.
Walking down Sixth Avenue, it’s just before daylight savings and still light outside, the clouds gray around us. We stop into a bodega to get a scratch-off–a very New York thing, Viv laughs. She’s about to meet up with her family for dinner in the West Village before heading home. Selecting one of the brightly colored tickets from the bodega’s vast array, Viv scratches it right there on the counter, and to our delight wins, enough to reinvest in another ticket she says she’ll scratch at home. What would it be like to win the lottery, right here, today, on Sixth Avenue?
