#73 - Virgin Pub Crawl on St Patrick's Day in Manhattan

Saturday, March 17

Today I am thankful that I do not drink.

I woke up this morning at 7.  I could not sleep any more - there was too much to do.  So I ate breakfast, showered, and headed over to the house.  My goal was to measure every room in the house, take a picture of every room in the house, and send the package to Katrina so we could start to game plan furniture placement.  I have no desire at all to move in and then move whole rooms from one place to the other.  The movers are supposed to do that, and if we're properly organized, they'll be able to.

We had noticed an unlocked window yesterday, and we had left it that way.  I made a stop at William Tell hardware to pick up a measuring tape and a USB charger for the car.  It was about 8:30 when I got to the house, and no one was home.  The place is vacant, and it was early for a Saturday.  So I let myself in and got to work.  I finished measuring everything, taking pictures and videos, locked the front door, and stepped out the window.  I took pictures of the outside, and as I came back around the front of the house to start the video, I noticed a car in the driveway.  It was a realtor, waiting to show the house.

I finished my video and left, hit the hotel, uploaded the whole set, did the data entry for the rooms in a Google Docs spreasheet.  Complete success.  I made some pasta for lunch (macaroni, broccoli, cheese in a bag with a large portion of added chicken) and hit the 2pm train from Beacon for Grand Central.

I knew it would be a crazy day already, and the platform confirmed it.  It was packed, lots of people in green.  And a beautiful day, too.  Bright, sunny, and nearly 70.  90 minutes later, I walked through a crowded and green Grand Central Terminal and found the 7 train to Queens.  And then I found that it was shut down for construction for the weekend.  So I took the 6 2 stops to the Q train, and headed to Astoria-Ditmars.  I got to my sister's place just after 4.  She and my brother and I hung out for a while there, then walked to Astoria park.  People with kids on bikes, people on picnic blankets, people jogging.  Nice view of the Hellgate and Triboro (RFK) bridges from there.  Pretty place, very much a classic NY-based movie location.

We then went looking for a restaurant.  The best places were packed - no tables open until 10pm at one place, another had a 90-minute wait.  We ended up at the standby - Telly's.  Amazing food, decent prices. Then we got on the train to mid town.  Not downtown, because we weren't headed that far South on Manhattan.  I got a quick geography lesson, and we headed for the West Village.

My weekends in NYC feel like a documentary of Simon and Garfunkel songs.  Today I passed the subway stop for the 59th Street bridge, and our entire evening was spent walking down Bleeker street.  The Irish bars were packed - standing room only, loud, apparently full of drunk people.  We tried a bunch of places, but didn't end up inside one until about 11, when we saw Terra Blues.  They both had been there, had a friend who used to work there, so we went in.  It was my very first time in a bar in the US.

The music was ok - the band was really talented, and I enjoyed it.  It was busy, though - we stood for about 40 minutes.  And then it was time to go.  We almost had to hijack a cab.  In that part of town near midnight, cabs only want to go to busy places.   Luckily, we were headed for Grand Central.  We got in, and 10 minutes later I got out and caught my train.

This was the last train North on the Hudson line for the night.  It was nearly completely full of partygoers in green.  A key difference in mass transit in NYC s Portland: in Portland, it seems that most mass transit riders are poor  - young, disabled, down on their luck.  NYC has no such distinction.  Mass transit is usually the best way to get around, so EVERYONE uses it.  A few minutes after we got moving, a guy across the aisle and one seat back from me threw up.  He was unconscious from binge drinking.  The car mostly emptied in short order.  The conductor got in an argument with a passenger who claimed his ticket had been stolen.  He came by, punched my ticket, and put the "paid" slip of paper on my seat.  A few minutes later, the conductor was on the intercom, telling all passengers to keep their tickets because a young guy was going through the train stealing people's tickets.  He never return to apologize to the guy had had the argument with.

A few minutes after that, some young ladies in front of me were asking questions of the unconscious guy's friend.  He blew up at them, called them fat in a few different ways, and after about 15 minutes of yelling he go up and left the car.  30 minutes of quiet later, the train arrived at Beacon, and I got off.

It was a busy day, lots of good experiences.  Maybe now I can take Katrina to a bar with music for fun sometime.  We've talked about it, but never done it.  Maybe in a couple weeks.

The pic today comes from the Terra Blues bar.