7 Oct 06

Time:

?

Money:

$7, coffee, Think.
$5, a single truffle and the chocolatiest hot chocolate I think I've ever had, Jacques Torres in Brooklyn.
$5, Half-and-Half at the Guinness and Oyster Festival in Brooklyn (well, it was Guinness and Harp, anyway... I can never remember if it's Bass or Harp that makes it a Black-and-Tan instead.)
$12, the excellent ziti from whatever that place is called on First Avenue.
$30, beverages, Molly Pitcher's.

More interesting things:

Decided, as I hung out in front of the Arch, that the somewhat-higher-up I mentioned the other day - the one who asked if I were a faculty member - almost certainly didn't actually believe that was the case, but I think it was even better: to put it shortly, Jane is the opposite of Darren. Where one didn't know what I was actually doing but assumed, based on my age or something, that it couldn't be more than he has done, the other didn't know and so acted as though the most impressive possibility was the truth. VERY classy. (And also very unsurprising, really.)

Accidentally came across a very well-attended dachshund show in the park. There aren't many places where that kind of thing can just happen to you; in most towns you have to make purposeful plans if you wish to find yourself among badger-chasers galore. Really, the benefits....

Looked across the park to an apartment building or something - it was pretty far off to the south side, but it was tall - with a huge white banner that looked like the classic "I [heart] NY" thing, except I think it said Rex instead of NY. Whatever it was, it reminded me very much of the constant supply of similar-looking banners outside the frat houses in G'ville, which of course made me smile for about an hour. (Especially having seen it on the day of the first Homecoming in eight years I haven't been to; I'm sorry I wasn't there, but I'll be back, and anyway, we beat LSU AND moved up to No. 2... I can't feel too badly about any of that.)

Watched first a dad and then the mom chasing a little girl - maybe three? she was still young enough to hide her face and figure that meant no one could see her - around the Arch. You could tell they lived here, and once again I had cause to think that if there's enough money to do it reasonably, this would be an unmatchable place to raise a kid: what would it be to look back on memories of playing Peek-a-Boo around George Washington's boot?

Saw a guy walking past the Arch, and for at least two seconds I thought it was Tackleberry from the Police Academy movies.

Saw also a TON of Florida shirts. Dooooo-doo-doo-doo-doo - go, Gators!

Came off the A train at High Street to go to the festival, and found that onto the seat of a bike someone (illegally) locked to the black fence around the staircase, an MTA person had attached a sign giving the owner one last chance to move his wheels before they would be taken away. Machines are cheap and efficient, but only a human being could decide to cut someone some slack here, and we need that. Oh, and this is of course yet another installment of the New Yorkers ARE Polite Campaign. (As if you didn't know that.)

Hit the aforementioned beer and shellfish street party with Anne and Co. There wasn't much to it, but a) they certainly weren't skimping on the two main focal points, and b) Anne's cousin scored a free Guinness t-shirt for someone back home, even though, to judge by the difficulty in acquiring them, these shirts must have come straight from Fort Knox. So that was impressive.

Got back on the A, with the intent of going in the direction of some Italian food, but this got complicated pretty quickly. First, though, I should mention that the newest subway cars - I just read about them a couple of days ago - are lovely (and reserved, of course, for the lettered lines, none of which I ride on any regular basis. But anyway.) Instead of a static map with electronic lights, the whole THING is LEDs or whatever, and it even counts the stops for you. Plus they seemed wider somehow, and they're definitely bright enough that you could perform minor surgery in there if necessary. In any case, I intended to switch from A to the 6 in order to get back where I needed to be.

Discovered that this was not quite going to work out, because the 4 and 5 (what happened to the 6 at Broadway-Nassau, I'm not sure - I really thought that's what I'd catch, but it didn't matter) were not coming through that station. It looked like they were doing construction, but I didn't find that out until I got to the top of a long, long ramp (which led ONLY to the 4 and 5, mind you) where I was told by an MTA guy that I needed to get the J to Chambers. Why he needed to stand at the top of the ramp before fending off the hordes who really wanted the 4 or the 5, I'll never know, but it was actually kind of funny, because we all turned around and flounced off toward the who-rides-this-line? J-M-Z platform.

Waited there near a large and still largely good-natured group of people, including a pack of four teenagers who were ruining the oddly positive feeling among us J-waiters but did, I have to admit, make me laugh. They were from out of town, I think, and they were unhappy about having to stand around. "Every other civilized city in the WORLD has better trains than this place." "Well, in D.C. my phone works on the Metro." "Seriously, Paris? Paris has, like, clocks, and they all tell the same time, and you know EXACTLY when the next train is coming." So go back to Paris, Chicky. Although I appreciate getting the opportunity to laugh out loud... you did help the woefully under-measured time go by more quickly.

Converged, with many of my platform-mates, on the conductor once a train had appeared and we found that it was marked "S." The S train, as I had understood it from my long-time study of the system, really had nothing whatsoever to do with this station, but before most of us had even formed the J-related questions we were planning, the conductor started calling, "Everybody on! It's okay, everybody get on this train! We're going to Chambers Street." As if he, personally, had come expressly to pick that particular group of people up for the singular purpose of making it to Chambers. It only occurs to me now that that may have been part of the reason I enjoyed the whole thing so much; it was really another example of that humanity - remember the bike warning? - that you see here all the time, if you want to, or can ignore, if you'd rather find a reason to dislike this city.

Hightailed it, for the most part with the same group I'd been traveling with, through the Chambers St. station towards the 6 - but slowed down long enough to appreciate that it still said "IRT" in the appropriate black mosaic on the pillars.

Found a spot to sit down on the 6 - at last, the old familiar 6! - across from a girl who had pulled the trick I always thought I should use but now have little call for: covering up one's guide book, in this instance with an American Eagle ad.

Decided, as I relaxed after the fun (really!) of wending my way through unfamiliar below-ground terrain, that although it doesn't happen every day - and that's probably a good thing - this town is a great place for injecting a little shot of weird into your regularly-scheduled life. Sometimes it's just something you see - the Camouflage Samurai, the wine-purchasing Labrador; sometimes it's something you become proactive about - this subway journey, finding Ben's friend's office when we first moved here, the Trader Joe's salt conversation. But it's definitely not boring. This is what it means to say that you don't pay all that rent for the sake of what's inside your apartment.

Admired, on my way to an excellent-as-always dinner with Ben, a coat at Banana Republic. It's only single-breasted, but past that it pretty much captures everything I require: wool, three-quarter length, notch collar (I think that's what the Class A-style lapel is called), and overall impossibly... urbane. That's really the word, and I know it sounds overstated, but it's true; I've got a thing for this type of coat, and as a tuxedo will do for a man - ALL guys look great in tuxes - so this coat does for women. I think. But in any case, I liked how it looked on me, so I'm feeling like I'm just going to have to go ahead and bite this particular two-hundred-dollar bullet.

Walked home from dinner, up our hill, and past the church. Well, past the dance party. Okay, somehow - I really do not quite get it - it was both. Thumping music, very little light (and what there was, was neon), and... monks. Spiling out of Our Lady of the Glowstick, or whatever it's called. I wanted to stop and talk to the (very young) men of the cloth, but they were occupied with, like, a skateboarder or something, and anyway, anything they told me would have taken away from the utter oddity of this sight, so it was just as well to leave it.

Met two Dumplings and two cousins at Molly Pitcher's, which was somewhere beyond ridiculous when we got there, thanks to the Mets. The bartender was great, though, and it got a lot quieter once people left after the game. And if nothing else, this place has Guinness ad paintings in the loo (I thought I'd keep it appropriately British... next time I'll say W.C.), so that alone pretty much won me over.