the one with all the poetry

it was so bizarre walking through a replica of a space I was so used to seeing only on a television screen — for years and years this space was like a new york city fantasy world, a sitcom reality — and to walk through it at full scale, it was fun and weird and trippy — to sit on identical couches and stroll through realistic set pieces designed to look exactly like the real thing all culminating in a Central Perk that was actually a functioning coffee shop… it was odd to say the least — and to take photographs of all the props and stir up memories from favorite scenes — costumes, scripts, the whole experience really scratched that Friends nostalgia itch — bits of trivia and random facts, recalling favorite episodes and classic quotes… it was totally my favorite show as a kid, and it held up pretty well over the years — not at all realistic, of course, when it comes to representing real adults living and surviving in Manhattan, but certainly a fun ideal for children to aspire to — to think a life could really revolve around such supportive friends — to think apartments and jobs and relationships were so easy to come by — to think this wacky, scripted situational world could be anything more than escapist comedy on a Thursday night — now, of course, on any night at any time — your friends always there, your portal to the lively and prolific 1990s, a period depicted in a way that seems more unreal now than it ever did back then, and yet this fictional simulacrum, this scale model I walk through today, manages to hit me in all the right ways, puts a smile on an otherwise dour face, and turns a hot, windy weekend day into absolute magic

Franco Amati 2023

Went to the Friends Experience in NYC this past weekend and, well, these were my lingering thoughts about it—all my impressions, mixed up, turned into verse, and served to you hot in this freshly brewed poem.