We swore we'd never lose our critical integrity; never be bought, only to be sold and bought again; never succumb to the seductions of free lunches and the occasional bit of swag.

It was precious.

And true only before the Architect's Newspaper sponsored our Friday night fun on the 48th (or 49th?) floor of 7 World Trade Center, developer-renamed into the completely acontextual 250 Greenwich. Got there around 7:15, walked past the monolithic (yet faceted!) base that hides the ConEd power station, into the lobby that was lit so that every single person looked like they'd come down with a horrific case of looking like shit, signed off on the list (we lied; we didn't crash), got through the metal detectors, and up to the top.

Where we got out of the elevator and thought to ourselves, you know, UnBeige, looking out the windows from back here, it looks like there's a pretty sweet view. So we went close to the windows. And looked down. And were like Oh. Right. That happened.

So we felt a little weird about it. And so did a lot of other people. But then we forgot, once we started seeing every single person who's ever looked at a mayline and lives in New York. In the order in which we can remember:

Anthony "I Run Cooper" Vidler, Andy "Big Andy" Bernheimer, Ray "I'll Take Manhattan" Gastil, Karrie "Quite Contrary" Jacobs, Philip "Sidekick" Nobel, Joanna "This Building Is Awesome" Rose, Michael "We Can Be Friends Now Even Though You Wrote That Thing" Arad, Larry "Drinks On Me!" Silverstein, Jesse "Competition" Reiser, Jason "Competitions With Reiser" Scroggin, Liz "SOM" Kubany, Nicole "CSJ" Oncina, Matt "LTL" Roman, Mary "ARO" Voorhees, Tom "The Man" DeKay, Andrew "Space Place" Blum, Anne "Constant Gardener" Guiney, Debbie "Articulate" Ganz, Kristen "ArchNewsNow" Richards, Tucker "Studio Red" Viemeister, Chee "Everywhere" Pearlman, Allan "So That's Who That Is" Temko, Bill "This Is My Party" Menking, Diana "Bill, This Is My Party Too" Darling, Cathy "This Is So Also My Party" Ho, Ari "Pundit" Kelman, Julie "ID" Lasky, Julie "Elle Decor" Iovine, Sara "Awesome" Hart, Sara "Bitchin'" Moss.

We know we're totally forgetting people, but we're remembering others that we forgot before, so we're assuming karma intact.

Can't wait for Round 3.