Goodness gracious, it's been a long time. If you still check my blog, then I'm sorry, Amanda :) There are several posts on the way, though...
So! Adventures in the city. It's hard to remember everything when I don't write it down as it happens. I blame Robby for keeping me too distracted. Robby is, for those of you who don't know, my boyfr...I mean, my best friend. About six or seven years ago, a group of us from high school started talking about taking this little road trip, that would start in Oregon and end in New York, hitting up ballparks along the way. The details have changed a little (it's only Robby and me, not the group, and we're not doing all the ballparks), but nonetheless, Mr. Hill flew out to NY, and we've spent the last couple days road tripping. The route will take us from NY to Boston to Chicago, and we are doing the cities right!
Our first stop has to be NYC, of course. Our buddy Jake from high school lives there, and there have been two or three times since I've been out here that he and I have tried to connect in the city, but it never works out. So finally, especially with Robby in town, it became a priority and I got some time off of work.
About four weeks ago, Jake told me he'd moved into a penthouse in Brooklyn. Now, there are penthouses in Brooklyn, then there are penthouses in Brooklyn, so I was pretty intrigued to see which he lived in. I don't even remember what night of the week it was that we headed to town, probably Saturday. Either way, that night, Jake was painting at a loft party a buddy of his was throwing. Jake does a lot of live painting, which if you've never seen done, you need to. The artist has a blank canvas onstage, and throughout the night as bands are performing, he works on the painting. It's one of the few times you get to watch the creation of a piece of art completely from beginning to end. It's freakin' rad! If I can find a good picture of the finished piece, I'll be sure to put that up, especially since Robby and I both posed for it. It's a collage of faces, profiles, and bodies. It looks very cool. Rob and I were going to try to buy it, but some guy had already shelled out $600 cash for it before we even asked. Yeah, it's that kind of party.
The show itself was great. A couple of really good local bands, lots of cool people to chat with, and this guy's loft was sick. However, having worked, not slept, and been out every night since Robby had gotten to town, I was done pretty early, at about 1a, and was desperate to get back to Jake's apartment. I was warned there might be an after party at his place, but I didn't even care, so as soon as Robby and Jake's roommate left Jake's to go back to the show, I crashed right out. Stripped down to the skivvies and passed out on Jake's couch. Until about 3 or 4a, that is, when about a dozen freakin' people showed up! So I wound up getting up, getting dressed, and attempting to be social until 5 or 6 that morning, when things started winding down and the few remaining people started finding their sleeping spots. Based on this experience, I've decided I will most definitely attend any loft party I ever get invited to in Brooklyn.
Needless to say, we started a bit slow the next day. One of the first things I did was to step out onto Jake's patio (did I mention the entire roof is decked, and it wraps around, and that's Jake's patio?) to check out the view. The interior of the apartment is clean, super spacious, hardwood floors, with three or four bedrooms. It's killer. The view from outside? You can see Staten Island, the Statue of Liberty, and the skyline. And on the other side there's a famous cemetery, Greenwood Cemetery, maybe. Jake's place is decidedly the good kind of Brooklyn penthouse.
While we were out and about in the neighborhood, we got a chance to check out some great local spots. We stepped into a café that could have been on any corner of northeast Portland, and met three other people from Oregon in there! After coffee, Jake had to take off to some work done, leaving Robby and me to fend for ourselves on the mean streets of Brooklyn. The mean streets of Brooklyn, by the way, are not all that mean. We found Roots, a café Jake frequents, grabbed some breakfast burritos, and made our way to the subway to head into the city.
It was fun to take Rob on his first spelunking expedition into the subway system. One thing that's funny about NYC subs is that they don't operate on a schedule. Other public transit systems have schedules posted, or signs indicating 'On Time' or 'Five minutes late'. No such thing exists for the subway. We found our station, found where to make a transfer, and then had nothing to do but sit and wait for the next train, and hope that no one too awkward or disagreeable tried to talk to us.
There were only a couple of things I hadn't already scoped out, so we took the train straight to Ground Zero to start out, one of my obligatory destinations. Couple of funny things about Ground Zero on this particular day: on the train, Robby asked if it rains a lot in New York, to which I responded, 'Hardly at all since I've been here.' As we got off the train, it was pouring. I mean, if you didn't have an umbrella, it would be a matter of minutes before your clothes were merely sponges. Also, a group of protestors had decided to do what they do - protest - on that morning. So we got off the subway to pouring rain and ignorant... I mean, angry protestors, not to mention the cop presence. Everything at Ground Zero is boarded off for 'construction' anyway (not that any construction has actually happened there in the last nine years). So, I'm glad to have been there, but it wasn't exactly the powerful experience I thought it could have been.
From Ground Zero, we walked our way around soggy Manhattan, so I could show Robby many of the famous spots of the city. A lot of them were the ones I'd already visited: Rockefeller Center, Columbus Circle, Central Park (and I actually made it to The Great Lawn this time!), etc. We spent some time wandering through the Marriot in Times Square, too, but I'm pretty sure the bathroom Steve wanted us to visit doesn't exist anymore. The other place we hit up was the Village; I guess my brother-in-law Steve lived there in college, and after visiting the Village, I finally understand why he loves the city so much. If I ever move to NY again, I will live in the Village.
We had a long, wandering day around Manhattan before we finally made it back to the LIRR, and got back to Long Island around nine that evening. I'm sure there are things I've left out of the day, but I'm finishing this story two months after all this happened, so I think I'm okay with that. I need to collect photos from Robby's camera next time I see him, and then photos of the adventure will be up on Facebook.
