NY: all that’s fit to print
where did i leave off……
monday was rough, with the late night/early morning that happened sunday evening, and then the heat, but eventually i crawled out and wandered up to Williamsburg. yeah yeah, hipster mecca/gentrification whatever, but they have great food and shopping. i wished all day that it would rain. around dinnertime i met marc on the street and we walked his dogs and pushed his adorable child around, and i’m sure if some people could’ve seen me, standing with 2 dogs on leashes in hand and a baby in a stroller waiting for marc outside the drycleaner, they would’ve had to blink a few times. we caught up and had light dinner and eventually i had to say goodnight because my brain was no longer working. i slept monday night.
tuesday i met up with W.O for lunch near chinatown at a vegan restaurant, and everything looked so good we ordered way too much food. to my luck he summoned JayB to tag team, and after W left J and i finished the food and then headed out for early afternoon cocktails at some random place nearby. after that i hopped a train uptown to visit my one and only coworker, who i’ve worked with for more than 10 years, as i’d never seen his apt. since he moved from berkeley to NY a few years ago. it was a short trip that included a visit to St. John’s Cathedral and a walk to Columbia where he was giving an evening guest lecture.
back on the train downtown to the village to meet up with Alliedise and CGlush, my old phishy phriends! we had a great dinner at Kin Shop – a thai fusion place that was delish! – and then headed out for cocktails. tried to get in Death and Co. – i really loved the carved gothic doors – but it was so crowded maitre d’ dude wouldn’t even let us inside. so a quick phone call and off to Please Don’t Tell, which i won’t tell you about except that it was hands down my favorite of all the bars i went to (which in 10 days has to be at least 20). other friends joined in and it turned into yet another very late and mostly sleepless night.
very early (6:45) the next (Wed.) morning i travelled back to brooklyn (aside: on the oh-hi-i’ve-been-up-all-night-drinking-on-a-weeknight walk of shame on the train, during AM rush hour, a woman dressed much like any other commuter is standing 12 inches from me. she is loudly evangalizing: “YOU ARE THE PROBLEM WITH THIS WORLD. LOOK AT YOURSELF. YOU KNOW YOU ARE A SINNER. YOU KNOW IT. DEEP DOWN. YOU KNOW YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. SEE THE LIGHT. TAKE JESUS AS YOUR SAVIOR AND BECOME GOOD, NOT EVIL…and on in that vein. at first i was like OMG CLASSIC NEW YORK CRAZY and initially aggravated, but then i determined i was not going to be affected by her words, and i just started watching her closely. she was mostly eloquent. she was sincere. she sounded genuinely concerned. and so i just watched her face. watched her speak, watched her eyes look at no one. then she got off. i wondered if she does that regularly. or with direction.) (also: early morning joggers always make me feel more shame than commuters. getting up and going to work is de rigueur. but getting up to jog represents something i have never had and seeing them while i’m making my way home sometimes makes me question my priorities.) i grabbed a backpack full of beachy things, and hopped the LIRR to go see Reagan at the beach. by this point i needed a vacation from my vacation. i was in Wantagh by 11:00am and half asleep on the beach for the rest of the afternoon after that.
in the evening Orange arrived, and we made Big Gulp sized margaritas and headed a half mile down the beach to:
according to RBM, this kind of thing never happens there. down the way is Jones Beach amphitheater, but this was right there in their little town and FREE on the BEACH and this was a BIG DEAL. and the crowd proved it. thousands! really!
to start it off the mayor and some other people got up and started talking and during this we went over to the beach and had fun jumping off the lifeguard stands into the sand. some tweenie girls with Bieber t-shirts who were also doing this took these photos of us:
and then, back to the show. now, i have never been a huge Billy Joel fan. the Greatest Hits existed in my college house just so we could get drunk and sing Piano Man at 4am. repeatedly. so anyway – i was super pleasantly surprised at how good this cover band was (they were not joking with the “Ultimate” descriptor) and also surprised at myself that i did actually know a lot of the words to the songs i didn’t even realize i knew. they also covered Tiny Dancer which made my day and then Whole Lotta Love, which you wouldn’t think a Billy Joel Cover Band would be able to nail but they did a hell of a job on that.
most of the other attendees had brought lawn chairs and blankets and picnics and coolers and whatnot. all we had was our enormous margaritas, and eventually summoned the Brother to bring the other half of the bottle of tequila which we drank just like, straight. most of the other attendees also stayed seated in said lawnchairs, but we were DANCING and after a while a whole slew of Women With Husbands Who Don’t Dance joined us and we started our own little dance party there on stage right.
it was actually kind of a long show and by the end of it we were exhausted from screaming and dancing, and also totally tanked. i had to wrangle the girls away from trying to talk some security guards into coming home with us, and we (us three + Mom, Brother, and Brother’s GF) walked back home. we all eventually went to bed, but as tweeted, someone woke up on top of the pool table after having gone to sleep in a BED and it wasn’t me. i laughed so hard when this was revealed i almost fell down.
anyway, up early before 6am again on Thurs AM (so many early mornings in new york!) to retrieve Jay from his red-eye flight into JFK despite irreconcilable hangovers from that bottle of tequila. jay retrieved, back to the beach. the morning was fogged in (so nice after NYC heat!!!) but it eventually burned off, and Reagan’s brother took us out on his boat from some pull-behind-the-boat tubing action on the little inlet. this looked super fun but also looked like i might hurt my shoulder if i tried, as people were getting THROWN from that thing, so i did not participate. boat was also acting janky, and so we headed back to the beach. not as nice of a beachy beach day as the day before – windy/sandblown and the water was rougher. so we lounged around, and then in early evening got back on the LIRR and headed back to Brooklyn.
where it was HOTTTT. man. whew. it took us a while to get back to our host apt and then we headed out again for a late dinner with W.O. and Kat, which of course led to after dinner drinks and by around midnight i totally CRASHED.
so where are we now. Friday. i had now been in NY for a full week and i think i got maybe 3 nights of actual sleep? unclear. also, i can’t eat well in the heat and had about 5 iced coffees every day. so i was starting to get that end-of-the-week-at-burning-man feeling. sort of light and not quite focused. we had breakfast at an airconditioned coffee shop (which had a totally oversharing young sexy counter staff) and then headed to midtown to have lunch at a vegan japanese place with Bex before she left the country, and got to see C and her tiny baby girl. by the time we got done with lunch it was literally 104 degrees in manhattan – i saw the temp on a clock tower.
we opted to walk through central park anyway, and eventually came upon some kids playing in a sprinkler. adults were going by sweating buckets in all directions, tourists looking like they were going to drop dead kept walking, but we were like OH YES and took off everything we could in public and joined the kids in the sprinkler. definite HIGHLIGHT.
and then back on the train to Brooklyn for happy hour. a lot of our friends were going that evening to see the Glitch Mob somewhere, so this was a pre-gathering of sorts. we were not going to that show, and so after the many happy hours instead had a late dinner at IndochineNY. great atmosphere, if a little kitchy, super hot wait staff, good cocktails. and then out for more cocktails. and more. until we ended up back in Brooklyn at the Fulton Grand until 3am+, where some wasted asshat made a snide Paris Hilton comment at me. i really wanted to punch him and that’s when i knew it was time to go home.
saturday we got up slowly and eventually braved the heat and made it to the Brooklyn flea market. lots of cool stuff, but we were SWEATING. i never sweat. it was amazing how much i was sweating. hopped the train to PS1 -formerly public school #1, now an extension of MoMA where they have afternoon parties in their courtyard. i don’t want to talk too much shit about the art inside, but none of us liked it. except for the longstanding piece “Meeting” by James Turrell, which is one of the old classrooms with benches along with walls and a big hole to the sky. so simple, yet so much more enjoyable than the videos of people screaming on an endless loop.
anyway, when they redid PS1 into the museum, they bought out the houses/buildings around the sides to demolish and create the outdoor spaces, but one of the landowners wouldn’t sell. and now, some friends of friends live in the only remaining apartment building, which has a deck that literally sits above the courtyard where the party is going on. it’s definitely baller to sit up there on a hot afternoon with a couple of bottles of champagne and watch the crowd.
um…..then. saturday night. back to brooklyn. to dinner party. to bar. and finally, a late night hottub party. that went until the sun was well up. i finally went to sleep at 11:00am on Sunday. and that’s all i’ll say about that.
sunday then, as you can imagine, was more than a little surreal. i slept for 3 hours but then we had to get back to the host apartment, pack our stuff, and get on a plane back to SFO. and thus ended my 10 days in NYC.
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things i did not do:
see the Statue of Liberty, even in the distance. (maybe i did from the brooklyn bridge?)
visit Ground Zero
go to Times Square or anywhere near it
go to the Zoo
see some people i wanted to
shop nearly enough
.::.
i went to yoga today and my instructor said she was a little out of it and low energy because she’s doing the 10 day master cleanse. i was like, yeah, i feel you, because i am still pretty exhausted and so had empathy. even though i’ve been home for 3 days, i still feel in recovery. while i did what was perhaps the opposite of a traditional cleanse, as i’ve mentioned before with burning man, it’s actually sort of the same in terms of deprivation and your body going into survival mode, which at a certain point starts to feel euphoric. after 10 days of extreme heat, tons of water to stay hydrated, too many iced coffees, sleep deprivation, walking miles and miles every day (after a couple of days of walking in the heat my feet were so swollen every pair of shoes i had gave me blisters and eventually i had my feet almost totally taped. not to mention all the other weird bruises and scrapes i somehow acquired. sexy.), dancing, too many bars and drinks to count, and most importantly, the constant enveloping feeling of love from all of my amazing friends, by the time i got off the plane late sunday evening, i was practically delirious. but it felt really good to be alive.
.::.
many thx again to all the lovelies who put me up, picked me up, took me out, danced with me, drank with me, ate with me, walked with me, laughed with me, sang with me, talked with me, lounged with me, soaked with me, napped with me, sweat your ass off with me, beached with me, walked me home, called me a car. especially Bex and Nat for hosting. so amazing.
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