Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The City That Never Sleeps. But I Do. A Little.
New York, as always, was a very good time.
We went up on Friday the 1st, which was Adrian’s 29th birthday. In this it was a lot like his 24th birthday, when I surprised him with a trip to New York. (though that time, I started to get off the train in Wilmington, Delaware. Adrian was not amused.) Dinner was a sandwich from Au Bon Pain at Union Station, followed by cheap wine from the Club Car on the train. One of the smarter things we did was upgrade our train from the standard regional train that got into New York after midnight to the earlier, and faster, express train that put us in around 10pm. That gave us plenty of time to catch a cab and make our way through the approaching storm (thank you, Tropical Storm Ernesto, for following us from DC to New York, so we could enjoy you for yet another day) to our hotel, and have plenty of time to change and go out. As it happened we got up there faster than our friends who took the Chinatown bus, even though they left DC before us – traffic on Labor Day weekend, especially with bad weather, can be a real bitch.
Friday night we went out to The Web, one of the friendlier clubs in New York in my most humble opinion. Friday is a good night for them, and there were plenty of cuties to watch and dance with. And of course, a cute go-go boy asked for my number, which always warms my heart. Angelo and Josh and their friends Ruben, Prakash and Albert met us there once they hit town, but I don’t think they really enjoy dancing very much and after a while they left without telling us. We took off around 3:30 after lots of fun and Shirtless Adrian Dancing. (the gym is paying off for him)
The original plan was to head out to the US Open on Saturday and try for general admission tickets, but TS Ernesto had other plans and the whole day of tennis was rained out. That was probably OK, as we didn’t get up until 11:30 anyway. We decided to do some shopping after brunch, but first we headed down to a salon where one of Adrian’s old co-workers from DC is now working. After a 30-block walk through the rain and a call to Directory Information, we found the salon. More importantly, we found it closed, and later got a text message from Adrian’s friend saying he was at the beach all weekend. But at least I worked off the Eggs Benedict I’d eaten. We went back up to the new Apple Store on 5th Avenue, which I think would be a good place to take a date. Very nice.
The storm was getting on our nerves so we called it a day. We went out for happy hour drinks at a bar called Therapy – me getting absolutely soaked along the way, not in a “wet t-shirt contest” kind of way but in a “wet poodle” kind of way. We met the other guys down in Little Italy for dinner, which was very good, but unfortunately all my drinks (that is to say, both of them) caught up with me, and I wasn’t feeling as chipper as I might have wished. Afterwards we headed back to Therapy with the boys, which had picked up a bit, and a couple hours later we walked the six blocks back to our hotel after putting the boys in a cab.
One of the things about going around with a group of people is that everyone will have different things they want to do based on their interests, their financial status, and their definition of “fun.” Some of the guys had talked about going to Atlantic City that night because there “wasn’t anything to do” in Manhattan. I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around that idea. These are the same guys who were sharing a plate at dinner, something I’ve seen them do before, so you wonder how they can afford Atlantic City. But I digress. Like I tend to do.
Sunday I got up and trotted out to the US Open, figuring that with all the matches they had to make up from Saturday, this would be a pretty good day. Unfortunately, after standing in line for half an hour (and missing the train back to the city by 2 minutes) they told us there weren’t any more tix for the day. So it was back to the hotel, and we thought the guys were joining us for brunch at Food Bar in Chelsea but there were some issues with the whole “waking up” thing, so that didn’t happen. Adrian and I had a great time, with good food and a cute waiter (and a really hot bartender, who was not allowed to serve us mimosas until after noon – I’ve never heard of this in New York. Or anywhere.) We met up with Angelo and Josh and went to the The Bodies Exhibit, which was a very surreal look at what we all look like inside. Using real bodies. Preserved. With skin removed. Josh bought chocolate afterwards. I don’t know how.
That night Adrian and I saw Avenue Q, a musical I’d seen a couple years ago that I always wanted him to see. Any show with racism and puppet sex is bound to be either really good or really bad – fortunately, this one is really good. We had a great time, then walked over to Don’t Tell Mama, our favorite little piano bar, where we met a veeeerrrryyyy gay guy and his girl friend who had moved here together from Kansas a year ago. He appeared to be hitting on Adrian. At least, Adrian was the one to whom he gave his number. We were there pretty late, since we obviously couldn’t leave while people were buying us drinks, and on the way home we stopped for hot Italian sausages from a street vendor because they smelled SO good. And tasted even better.
Monday we finally made it to the US Open, where we had tickets for the main court in Arthur Ashe Stadium. We saw Nadal beat Novak and Roddick beat Becker (who had beaten Agassi the day before, damn him). A very good day of tennis, and also a good day to get some sun, considering it was about 3000 degrees in that stadium. A fantabulous time was had.
Monday night was an adventure, but that will have to wait.
I needed me some New York. In a big bad ugly way.
We went up on Friday the 1st, which was Adrian’s 29th birthday. In this it was a lot like his 24th birthday, when I surprised him with a trip to New York. (though that time, I started to get off the train in Wilmington, Delaware. Adrian was not amused.) Dinner was a sandwich from Au Bon Pain at Union Station, followed by cheap wine from the Club Car on the train. One of the smarter things we did was upgrade our train from the standard regional train that got into New York after midnight to the earlier, and faster, express train that put us in around 10pm. That gave us plenty of time to catch a cab and make our way through the approaching storm (thank you, Tropical Storm Ernesto, for following us from DC to New York, so we could enjoy you for yet another day) to our hotel, and have plenty of time to change and go out. As it happened we got up there faster than our friends who took the Chinatown bus, even though they left DC before us – traffic on Labor Day weekend, especially with bad weather, can be a real bitch.
Friday night we went out to The Web, one of the friendlier clubs in New York in my most humble opinion. Friday is a good night for them, and there were plenty of cuties to watch and dance with. And of course, a cute go-go boy asked for my number, which always warms my heart. Angelo and Josh and their friends Ruben, Prakash and Albert met us there once they hit town, but I don’t think they really enjoy dancing very much and after a while they left without telling us. We took off around 3:30 after lots of fun and Shirtless Adrian Dancing. (the gym is paying off for him)
The original plan was to head out to the US Open on Saturday and try for general admission tickets, but TS Ernesto had other plans and the whole day of tennis was rained out. That was probably OK, as we didn’t get up until 11:30 anyway. We decided to do some shopping after brunch, but first we headed down to a salon where one of Adrian’s old co-workers from DC is now working. After a 30-block walk through the rain and a call to Directory Information, we found the salon. More importantly, we found it closed, and later got a text message from Adrian’s friend saying he was at the beach all weekend. But at least I worked off the Eggs Benedict I’d eaten. We went back up to the new Apple Store on 5th Avenue, which I think would be a good place to take a date. Very nice.
The storm was getting on our nerves so we called it a day. We went out for happy hour drinks at a bar called Therapy – me getting absolutely soaked along the way, not in a “wet t-shirt contest” kind of way but in a “wet poodle” kind of way. We met the other guys down in Little Italy for dinner, which was very good, but unfortunately all my drinks (that is to say, both of them) caught up with me, and I wasn’t feeling as chipper as I might have wished. Afterwards we headed back to Therapy with the boys, which had picked up a bit, and a couple hours later we walked the six blocks back to our hotel after putting the boys in a cab.
One of the things about going around with a group of people is that everyone will have different things they want to do based on their interests, their financial status, and their definition of “fun.” Some of the guys had talked about going to Atlantic City that night because there “wasn’t anything to do” in Manhattan. I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around that idea. These are the same guys who were sharing a plate at dinner, something I’ve seen them do before, so you wonder how they can afford Atlantic City. But I digress. Like I tend to do.
Sunday I got up and trotted out to the US Open, figuring that with all the matches they had to make up from Saturday, this would be a pretty good day. Unfortunately, after standing in line for half an hour (and missing the train back to the city by 2 minutes) they told us there weren’t any more tix for the day. So it was back to the hotel, and we thought the guys were joining us for brunch at Food Bar in Chelsea but there were some issues with the whole “waking up” thing, so that didn’t happen. Adrian and I had a great time, with good food and a cute waiter (and a really hot bartender, who was not allowed to serve us mimosas until after noon – I’ve never heard of this in New York. Or anywhere.) We met up with Angelo and Josh and went to the The Bodies Exhibit, which was a very surreal look at what we all look like inside. Using real bodies. Preserved. With skin removed. Josh bought chocolate afterwards. I don’t know how.
That night Adrian and I saw Avenue Q, a musical I’d seen a couple years ago that I always wanted him to see. Any show with racism and puppet sex is bound to be either really good or really bad – fortunately, this one is really good. We had a great time, then walked over to Don’t Tell Mama, our favorite little piano bar, where we met a veeeerrrryyyy gay guy and his girl friend who had moved here together from Kansas a year ago. He appeared to be hitting on Adrian. At least, Adrian was the one to whom he gave his number. We were there pretty late, since we obviously couldn’t leave while people were buying us drinks, and on the way home we stopped for hot Italian sausages from a street vendor because they smelled SO good. And tasted even better.
Monday we finally made it to the US Open, where we had tickets for the main court in Arthur Ashe Stadium. We saw Nadal beat Novak and Roddick beat Becker (who had beaten Agassi the day before, damn him). A very good day of tennis, and also a good day to get some sun, considering it was about 3000 degrees in that stadium. A fantabulous time was had.
Monday night was an adventure, but that will have to wait.
I needed me some New York. In a big bad ugly way.
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You know that every time you mention tennis, I get flashbacks of my tennis team in high school (I was #3 seed). Now that you mentioned tennis so much, I'm in the mood for some tennis right now. I can't let these 11 years of experience go to waste.
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