Just as we were beginning to cope with the senseless horror of a landslide burying the Henry Hudson—"Oh my God, what is happening?!"—another bolt comes from on high. A bridge fire in bucolic Kearny, NJ—"clouds of black smoke billowing!"—has severed all rail links between Newark and Manhattan. "We're unsure of the cause at this time," says the fire chief there. But The Gutter can read these signs of tribulation: the Almighty—as pissed off as any mid-masthead shelter mag editor fielding her tenth release in an hour for a captive-audience press breakfast with Marcel Wanders—is trying to shut down the 17th Annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair.

We could roll over, all of us, slink back under our Marimekko sheets, pray to our Akari lamps that the tempest will pass. Surely we must deserve this? For all our naughtiness in Milan, for all those stolen moments with Wallpaper, for all the times we've gasped, "Oh! The new Navale bath by Xavier Lust!" Yes, we could retreat. Or we could dig deep, feel the carbon fiber in our spines, rise up as one and shout, "This will not stand!" You know the Fair must go on. And on it will go if we have anything to do with it. The Gutter is not inclined to serve the public—God knows; God was counting on it—but in this surpassing crisis there can be no bitterness, no bile. Irony is dead. We will go to parties, and God smite us if we don't drag you along too. So stay tuned: TK later today, the First Annual Gutter Guide to Gaiety at the ICFF. Use it well. We shall overcome.

Posted in Gotham