Last night, I went to see a friend play with the Woman which was unsurprisingly good.  I say “unsurprisingly” because Amy, the director (directrix?), is terrific and her productions are always good.  The other one-act in competition with Amy’s one-act was meandering and too loose for my liking.

While there, I had joked with Isabelle, one of the Woman’s friends, that yes, I unashamedly carry a murse and no, I can’t find a thing in it.  Isabelle came up with the single best explanation for how the murse came to be.  She posits that because many New Yorkers who carry an unlimited Metrocard lack a car, they need a place for all their crap.  This may include keys, a book, a copy of US Weekly, the Daily News, an iPod, a cellphone and/or BlackBerry, a pack of gum, 16 oz. bottle of Poland Spring, a 2 oz. bottle of Purell, a Moleskine, and a hipster PDA.  Look in your bag.  How many of the above list are in there?

Women aren’t the only ones who carry all this crap with them.  Men have the same crap as women with the possible exception of makeup.  As such, men, like women, need a way to slog this crap around.  Hence, the murse.  Urban Dictionary defines a murse as “a man-purse. very fashion-forward right now, seen on many hipster guys. the line between a messenger bag and murse is very fluid – typically, a murse is a bit smaller than a traditional messenger bag and may have a slightly more stylized look to it.  A murse can also be used to carry a laptop computer – one of the reasons it is so popular right now.”

I go for the Brooklyn liberal murse – the WNYC messenger bag.  I can schlep my crap around and it’s even big enough for my MacBook.  Sorry for shilling for public radio, but WNYC has the perfect murse.