Dear Annie Choi

Dear Annie Choi,

Good riddance. We haven’t been so keen on you hanging around us like an archi-hag anyway. It's too bad though, we will truly miss all of those “deep” interjections you have about turkey eggs and tacos.

We are sorry that you have not been able to use us for something self-gratifying like you do the rest of your so-called friends. Sorry we seem to have nothing to offer you but we do take offense at the suggestion that we are not good to hang out with at a bars. Frankly, we believe we are some of the most jovial drinkers out there. We are also typically quite generous with buying rounds as we hate to drink alone. Perhaps you didn’t catch a round because you were too busy ogling the doctors and lawyers at the tables next to us. Or maybe we were downing our drinks so fast that you missed a round or two.

We also don’t get the whole 11:00 at night dinner thing. We are sure that there are some in our profession that love to work more than anything else in the world and unless we have been out drinking and skipped a regular dinner hour, we typically dine right after work. It is unfortunate that those are the only architects you hang out with. We believe that if you started slumming it and hung out with some of us from the 2nd and 3rd tier architecture firms (not the SOMs, KPFs, or any of those snobby arty firms) you would quickly find that many of us realize there is much more to life than architecture. We typically show this by drinking profusely; religiously attending every nearby happy hour.

Don’t think for a moment though, that while slumming with us lesser architects you will escape discussions of architecture. We still over-indulge in ourselves and in our work and why shouldn’t we? We are the most brilliant and most important people we know. We are responsible for some really cool shit. We just don’t work as hard as our big-wig counterparts. Stressing over stuff like what angle to tilt our curtain walls or what type of zinc-coated panels to use on our buildings is really not high on our list of priorities.

Again, we are not so sad you are giving up on us. It's just too bad you have such a bad impression. If you stuck around long enough you might eventually see us slip into some meaningful conversations about space elevators, Adam & Eve, or Jessic Biel’s acting career.

Yours truly,

Architects Suffering a Life Without Andy