Spotting (and loving) the semi-famous

One of the best things about living in New York City -- other than amazing restaurants and forty percent of the city being awake at 4 a.m. and plentiful wash and fold laundries -- is bumping into the famous (or semi-famous or infamous) when you're at the drug store buying Robitussin or riding to work on the F train.

Saturday night as I stood in line for the Italians Do It Better concert -- a showcase of the some of the Italo Disco label's best offerings including Glass Candy -- at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC's West Village I noticed a super cute, adorably dressed twenty-something woman in front of me. Egged on by the two prickly pear margaritas working their way -- and their magic -- through my bloodstream I blurted out "cute skirt!" (I know, I know -- typical homo exclamation) and she turned and smiled and said "Thanks! I'm worried that I look like Aladdin wearing a gold diaper." (She didn't.) As we continued to chat I had that feeling you get when you see a guy you might have hooked up with three years before but can't exactly remember if it really happened or if you just wish it had happened, which was strange seeing as she was... well ... a woman.

It wasn't until a friend showed up and whispered "wasn't she on America's Next Top Model?" that I recognized her as Amy "Amis" Jenkins from Cycle 10 of Tyra Banks' wildly entertaining train wreck of a reality TV show. Amy was sent home after just three episodes for appearing as if she didn't care about the competition (she woke up 15 minutes before her final judging and threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt -- pretty much fashion suicide in Tyra's "pretty" eyes) but Saturday night she looked nothing but smokin'. She told us she had moved to NYC last month from Chicago, had just gotten a job, and was really open to everything the city had to offer -- including attending an Italo Disco concert by herself.

As the doors to the venue opened we all poured inside and she wandered off with a cute-ish, slightly awkward boy who had also been chatting her up in line. He bought her a beer and paid for her coat check and we saw them later in the night dancing next to each other. I wondered if he knew he was courting a sorta-kinda model-slash-celebrity, but seeing the sweaty, happy look on his face beside her, I knew -- in the end -- it didn't really matter.

-- NOAH MICHELSON

Previously > Fast and Furious with Ongina from RuPaul's Drag Race