On Friday morning I took the Delta shuttle from Washington, DC to New York City. I usually don’t have anything nice to say about Delta, but this shuttle service was one of the most pleasant traveling experiences I have had for quite some time. I left my apartment between 9:10 and 9:15am, waited for the bus, went down to the Metro and waited for it, then took the Metro to Reagan National Airport. When I got to the airport at about 9:30 (did I mention I live close to the airport?) I had the option of taking an earlier shuttle so I jumped in the security line, got pulled out for a bag check because of my traveling shaving brush (it looks like a bit bullet), and then waited for the plane to board. Not knowing what to expect I wasn’t expecting much, so when I walked on board and found a rather spacious three seat by three seat plane with ample head- and legroom I was shocked. It was unassigned seating as well, so the fact that I have no status with Delta mattered not a bit. Flying quite regularly for work I consider myself to be an experienced traveler and suffer from the jaded mentality that is often found in the rumpled shirt and wheelie suitcase crowd so when they brought along bagels and cream cheese and juice my jaw hit the floor. Food on an airplane? On an hour flight? Egads, what was happening! This day was turning into quite the shocker so when I found myself at my friend’s door a little before noon the fact that I had left home less than three hours earlier had no effect on me.
My friend lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and so did her friend that I would be staying with. I had heard that Williamsburg was the hipster place to be. But is seems that South Williamsburg isn’t quite as hip as North Williamsburg, so I didn’t get to see the full frontal hip that I was expecting, or at least none of the hipsters in this ‘hood where up yet. So, after arriving in the quite frankly un-gentrified portion of Williamsburg, Brooklyn I went to lunch with my friend. I had a broccoli quiche with a side salad and we shared a chocolate mousse cake that was super-duper. Taking a walk through this old school New York neighborhood, populated by Hasidic Jews and Dominicans, not hipsters and other poseurs, I remembered why I don’t live in New York. I was reminded of these reasons every day of my trip. It is on the whole an ugly city, in both people and architecture, no matter what the denizens of the finer zip codes of Manhattan may live in or look like. Coming from a Midwestern city the idea of throwing your garbage onto the sidewalk is abhorrent. (The fact that one sees this in DC is not too pleasing to me.) But I do love going to New York and find that it does give one things on every street corner that are difficult to find in other cities.
After lunch we met up with our friend in her neighborhood, which was in a different part of Brooklyn, one populated by old-school Italians. I had no idea that neighborhoods like this still existed. The time I spent living in New York I confined myself to the Upper East Side and other rather more tony areas of the city, so the weekend spent in Brooklyn showed me aspects of the city that I had only experienced from inside a taxicab. Old Italian women sitting on stoops, old Italian men fatly standing on street corners with hats, cigars, and canes being stereotypes. It was fantastic. Completely mob run, cash only eating establishments. I had quite a lot of wine (white, as I find that I am less and less able to drink red without getting terrible headaches) and a light salad with asparagus and special Italian ham. We shared a tiramisu, which was great. After dinner we grabbed a bottle of Lillet and retired to our friend’s apartment for a brief time to chat. We then traveled back to Williamsburg and I retired to my friend’s friend’s apartment for the evening. I didn’t get to sleep very well, as the local Dominican population decided to throw a party on the street with music blaring from parked cars. But they went to bed a three, and thus so did I.
On Saturday we met up with another friend of my friend and went to Katz’s Deli in the LES. None of us had been there before. I had a pastrami, natch, and was once again reminded of the general ugliness of the local population in this popular restaurant. Several nasty women tried to cut in front of my friend as she stood behind me. I had to turn around and butt into their arguments to say, “I believe that she was behind me since we are together”. I then gave them my “I really don’t care about anything because I am a hardened urban rat, but I wouldn’t mind terribly much punching your face” face and they settled down.
After lunch we walked around, had some beer at McSworley’s (sp?) supposedly one of the oldest bars in the city, walked past another bar that I wish we could have gone into that is supposedly run by people dressed as monks and they shush people if they get louder than a whisper, and then went into a haberdashery. I bought two fedoras, one grey and the other tweed, for my fall and winter costume. Because I bought the two hats my friend got a free scarf, which I helped pick out. It was a smashing scarf and I insisted that she tell all her friends that they had to meet up with us because she got a new scarf. She didn’t think this adequate incentive, but it turned out to work as she got several compliments about it, all of which filled me with intense good feeling.
We then went to a Ukrainian restaurant and had carrot cake and I had an egg cream and the met with more of her friends to go see Wedding Crashers, which wasn’t as funny as I was told it was. It was funny enough, but not life-changing or revolutionary like Old School was. I was hard pressed to name my favorite scene. I also was led to believe that there was more T&A than there was.
Saturday night we returned to Williamsburg and went to a local restaurant with more of her friends. This was a good restaurant and they played a lot of good music from the 1980s and early 1990s, which led us to talk about music of our youth for a time. We then retired for the evening. I slept reasonably well since there was no party outside.
On Sunday we went to the area in Manhattan where they filmed Sex in the City to meet up with another of my friend’s friend. We went to lunch and I had a bit to drink at lunch (it was brunch). At lunch, three awful women sat next to us. It looked to be a grandmother and her two granddaughters. They had been shopping at an expensive boutique whose name escapes me after three weeks, and the two granddaughters were so spoiled and poorly dressed in ill-fitting expensive clothes and oversized sunglasses and liberally applied makeup that they looked like they were starring in a VH1 special about spoiled New York debs. One was particularly bad and kept complaining about life while slouched in the booth. It seems she was at some family party and someone wouldn’t let her drink and this led to her not being able to hook up with some guy.
Anyway, the friend of my friend laughed at all my jokes and I began to take a liking to her. After lunch we went to Magnolias, a famous bakery, and had cupcakes and a banana pudding, both of which were great. We ate this while sitting on a stoop down the street from Sarah Jessica Parker’s house (which I am told is just the street down from the house her character “lived” in on the show). I really wants to be a stoopsitter and we laughed about pretending that this was our house we were sitting in front of. Of course when people walked by and went into the garden apartment under “our stoop” we were a bit embarrassed. We then went back to the friend’s apartment where I took and even keener liking to her. My friend and I retired back to Brooklyn to prepare for church. We went to grab coffee and then went to church. It is a proper denomination, Presbyterian, and not of the non-denom dos, but it is held in a Hispanic Lutheran church (I was surprised at how few Catholic churches and how many Spanish language Pentecostal churches there were in the Hispanic part of the neighborhood). There was a rather large picture of Mary in this Lutheran church, which made my eyebrows rise to say the least. IT was a nice enough service and filled with hipsters. I’m not sure one can still be a proper hipster and go to church, but these were hipsters (actors, sculptors, painters, writers, etc).
We then went to dinner where I expressed my fondness for the friend (and have not done anything since, FYI, because I am a wimp) and gathered to go to the Sufjan Stevens concert at the Bowery. This was the purpose of my trip, you see. (A little insider story that only big fans will care about, the church was Sufjan’s church so many of my friend’s friends know him at least a little and I was given communion by Vito of Vito’s Ordination Song, which was cool.). The concert was fantastic. I was a little nervous about how it would come off live, since his sound is so rich and complex, but he came out with the full Illinoisemakers band. There was a lot of dry humor. Each night was a theme night and Sunday night was Pirate night, so Sufjan wore a pirate hat throughout the show. I guess other nights included Fake Wound/Facial Hair Night, Backwards Day, and Prom Night, just like a Spirit Week would at a high school. The whole band wore fake-U of I cheerleader outfits and they had little cheers throughout the concert. It was sad to see the Illinois flag on stage and cheer for Illinois knowing that I no longer lived there. But the concert was fantastic (although I don’t think I will go see him when he comes to DC given my monetary and class schedule).
We got back at around 2:00am and I retired briefly before waking at 5:30 to go to the airport and fly to Richmond for my last week of work.
It was a good trip, and I am glad to have been able to see Sufjan, my friend, my other friend, and meet some of the first friend’s friends.
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