2000-09-13 | 10:22:55

new york stories.

so i'm back in cali now. i think so.

i left for new york solo and came back with a man.

i left for new york to conduct a test of the emergency moving system. it was only a test. the findings? new york is a challenge i want to take. i just don't when.

now, back to me in the studio.

so i flew into nyc on a red-eye last week and actually slept a bit. fortunately, i did wake up in time to see the breathtaking skyline of the city as we made our decent into gotham. i can see why batman loves this place. the magnitude of it blows me brain. i was going to say "sheer magnitude," but everyone says that, you know?

i ended up in soho to visit my newly transplanted friend stephanie at her cool web-related-job office. since she had to go to a meeting, her co-worker ken, who i had met on my last visit, took me out for lunch. he was mulling over where we should go when he remembered the fish tacos and hot waitresses at little havana. now, i love me some fish tacos, but i can't get enough of hot waitresses, so i was in. afterwards, we did the daring act of drinking alcohol-based substances in the bold-faced afternoon sunlight at a cool, orange-based bar for models who lunch. hmmm...the place was empty. go figure...but it was great sitting at the bar and shooting the breeze with ken doll. that boy cracks me up.

then off to shop. heh. yeah. yeah. i bought a lot of stuff. i am a taurus. we are supposed to be into owning things. i guess i'm a textbook bull. a bull in a clothing shop. i had to get cool nyc shoes. c'mon!

that night, ultrasparky's 30th birthday party. it was super-keen. the cabbie dropped me off in williamsburg in a post-apocalyptic world of industrial lofts. definitely a cool place to live, but a bit intimidating. just you, the great indoors and desolate quiet. i kept waiting for mad max to step out of an alley with a beat-up bazooka.

i entered the rumpus room that is ultrasparky's home. it was candlelit and full of his good friends. he came up and hugged me hello. we were meeting for the first time after reading each other's pages and e-mailing the last couple of months. he is so darn cute! so sincere and smiley and, and...sparkilicious! i dug him and his huge apartment.

me buddy proven was in da house, as well as andy pressman of the uber.nu pressmans. those boys are funny, man. shit. it was entertaining hearing them volley bon mots at each other. we discussed the nerdiness of making friends online. heh. *push up taped-in-the-nosebridge glasses*

proven was then gentleman enough to escort me to the thunderdome of williamsburg--the subway. we chatted against the backdrop of the shucketa-shucketa-shucketa sound of the train agaist the tracks. i saw something in his eyes and heard something in his words that said that new york was getting a bit wearing. i guess the city's energy gives, the city's energy takes away. of course, he just got promoted and has been working his butt off, too, so it can't all be blamed on the city.

saturday, me and steph did the museum thing. the cooper design museum was closed. doh! i missed the vitra (sp?) furniture exhibit by two days. double doh! i love me some eames. we were bored at the guggenheim with its exhibit of art of the 1900s. their intro sign said something like: "there were several cross-currents informing the work of this crossroads period, causing juxtapositions of form and subject, etc., etc." translation? "we put all this stuff that doesn't go together together. now give us $12 bucks." the best part of the exhibit was seeing the models of the new guggenheim. damn amazing.

so then, our culture quotient fulfilled, we wandered down madison avenue window-shopping. we wandered for 50 blocks, finally pulling into the famed H & M hipster clothing mercantile--the closest humans get to mimicking piranha behavior. retail on speed.

saturday night we had this really cool dinner in brooklyn, where stephanie lives. her roommate, ally, came along. i love the way so many new york restaurants leave their windows open to the street. the fresh air, the passing canvas of people walking by, the candlelight, the incredibly delicious food. ahhhhhhhhhhh! the host gave us a couple free drinks and asked where we were going after, so that he could meet us there.

the answer? good world. but we accidently gave him the wrong street coordinates. doh! we thought "mott and prince," but we were wrong, so we had an uncomfortably confused hike through chinatown before stumbling onto one of steph's l.a. college alumni members. forget about good world. let's talk about small world!

the girl, yasmin, was going to the bar, too, and directed us. whew! it was a pretty cool place. no real theme to it. nice back patio. we sat there and talked to steph's friends, david and thai and tom. then this guy in a gilligan hat started talking to me. i was wearing this top which is "illustrated" with two women on the front and a man on the back. gilligan began to ask me about the illustrations as if they were real people, so we made up a pretty good story about them. how the women were both in love with the man, an international gambler, etc. pretty fun for bar talk.

sunday, breakfast at balthazar with a bread basket that contained enough carbohydrates for a rowing crews' sustenance. the ambiance can't be beat, though. i heard that they transported a parisian cafe piece-by-piece to new york and reassembled it. it is a beautiful place. brass-tacked leather seats, gigantic gold-veined mirrors. manicured staff. a man seated at the table next to us nervously asked stephanie if his soft-boiled egg was done, spooning its watery interior as a demonstration.

shopping in soho followed. much shopping. then a trip to the movie theater to see "dark days," a documentary about homeless people who live under new york. fascinating. the interviews were often hilarious. "ya know what i'm saying" is the phrase of choice down under.

then a delicious, quiet, thai dinner in chelsea with steph's super-nice, engaged-couple friends. after dinner, i walked the streets alone, but not for money. the air felt great and i wanted to drink in a bit more of the lights and action before hitting the hay. all that talk about the energy in the air of new york is true. hopped-up and shit. this trip to nyc, i wanted to experience new york solo a bit more just to see what it was like to be on my own-- making my way in the big city. i got a lot of chances to do that. i was so proud of how well i figured out how to get around. hee.

monday i went to bergdorf goodman to get some exclusive perfume at a co-worker's bidding. the concierge directed me, in a heavy french accent, to the "escalatauhres." i descended into the beauty-level bowels of the store. when i inquired as to the location of the perfume in question, i was directed by a kathy najimy-type in a chanel hair-clip to "stay here. i will bring it to you." she took the post-it note i had written the designer's name and the name of the particular desired scent on and toddled off. a few minutes later, she was back with the perfume's representative in tow.

"we have never carried this particular scent," the rep said semi-sternly, looking up at me with a creased forehead and blonde ponytail. "we have other scents in the line, but not this one." i responded with thanks and reached for the post-it, thinking my work there was done, but she pulled the post-it to her chest and began an intense interrogation that went on for a good five minutes...

"someone told you you could get this here? we have never carried it. never. where did you get this in the past? bergdorf only has three locations in the united states and we are the only store that has this designer's fragrances. only our london store has this particular scent. so this is for a friend? has she traveled abroad? has she lived abroad? what is her number?" geez! you'd think i had asked for plutonium. i beat a fast retreat and then had a great vietnamese sandwich lunch with stephanie.

by coincidence, a co-worker of mine was in new york on business, so we met in soho and took a cab to the empire state building. i thought it was going to be a cheesy tourist thing to do, but it was amazing. a 360-degree view of the city. wow. i fell in love all over again.

then onto return flight hell. a storm had closed the chicago airport. long story short, i ended up waiting behind 80 other people for a cab at 1:30 a.m., trying to get to a voucher-paid best western in the sticks to sleep two hours before i had to catch a cab back to a make-up flight to l.a.--which was also delayed. hellacious. the good news is that my good travel karma bank account is now filled to the gills. i should be good to go, literally, for awhile.

sharing this return flight hell was a sweet little man named mendel. he is approaching senior citizen land. a russian/polish jewish new yorker who grew up in costa rica. we bonded during the trauma, like "survivor" members forming an alliance. he helped me with my yiddish "slang" pronounciation and told me that while most of his friends are jewish, he does not insist that his lovers are. mkay. gulp. don't be saying "lovers," k, mendy?

when we landed, he asked me out to dinner. i was busy, fortunately. he said it was a pleasure to meet me as he glanced down to my chest. grrrrrrrreat. we traded business cards in case we're ever in each other's towns again. after the travel trauma, it was like we had served on the frontlines together. me and mendy were platoon-mates, but there ain't gonna be no other mating goin' on. i don't know how those gold-diggers do it. yes, he was the man i came home to l.a. with. i was kinda pulling your leg up there at the top, man. heh.

it's good to be back in l.a. it's good to not be stuck in an airport. after running the chicago storm gauntlet, i don't want to travel for awhile. the funny thing is, i already want to somehow make my way back to the city that never sleeps. just like the cheesy t-shirts my co-worker and i bought in the empire state building gift shop say, i heart new york.

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