NYC Free and Drunk, Philly Dreaming
My final court appearance went as smooth as something like that could go, I'm done with all of it. I capped the morning by getting a needed new camera and enjoying a beer with friends in midtown.
I do love beer, there's good places in the city to pick up a six pack with a variety of choice, so I've enjoyed some new tastes. Saturday night brought more drinking than I expected, or rather more alcohol. I met some friends at a bar birthday party downtown, my first question to the bouncer was what kind of beers were going on. He later found me and told me the name of a great bar down the road. Before I had gone to the party, my friend Carl had loaded me up good with a drink called Devil Springs, it's 160 proof Vodka and even more lethal than it sounds as I would find out later.
Mark and I broke off and headed for the place, walking in we both stared up at the giant chalkboard filled with the selection of beers, mostly on tap. I turned around to tell him what I was getting, before I could say anything he said we should try the Unearthly IPA, the very beer I was about to suggest from the list of close to a hundred.
We sat at the end of a long wooden table, talking between scrolling through the beer list more. The bathrooms were downstairs, 5 unisex doors, my second trip down I found myself going through a 6th door, unfortunately not a bathroom but rather the storage room. With my drunken explorer hat on I crept all the way down and the room twisted in another direction. I treated the darkest corner as a bathroom, and made my way out, not before stuffing two mystery bottles in my back pockets.
This last bit was not very discrete, I immediately saw the watching eye of a bus boy as I stumbled out of the room into the crowd of people waiting for the regular bathroom. I headed up the stairs quickly and went for the door, waiting for me was the bus boy and the bouncer, I slid right past them as they pulled the bottles from my pockets, seemingly unconcerned with a drunk as they were with creating future drunks. I called Mark and told him to meet me at Union Square, the general direction I was running towards. I took turns running, walking, and having drunk conversations with drunk people along the street, apparently Mark had a bit of the same time and we hopped the subway towards Astoria where we ate, played video games, and passed out.
The next day I recovered, all day, the following day I found myself on a bus headed for Philadelphia where I met Heather after work. We had beer and fries, a night. The next day I looked forward to the Lakers game, and found myself in an Irish pub at tip off with Heather and her friend. Heather left just after halftime, right around when the Lakers chances of winning left. I stuck around talking to her friend, a conversation about his dreams of riches, a wife, kids - he didn't seem to care about the path to riches or how long he had to stay on it. My glass was empty, I left.
Heather had similar thoughts to add in the dark as we laid on her bed, my eyes were out the window on the only visible star past the buildings, I was hardly tired and a beer shy. She somewhat defended her friend's comments from the bar, "The dream of everyone is housing, money, and love. The American dream is a bigger version of that, it's what everyone wants". Simple as that. Being homeless, generally broke and on the go too much to hold on to a love, and happy all the same, I questioned her generalization. I don't remember the last thing said, but silence came and I forgot why I was laying in that bed at all. I wanted to go into the night and find a mind I liked, hear a story, have a beer, kicks. Sleep.
In the morning we parted ways and I hopped the mostly empty bus to NYC, I had the driver let me out at a red light once we made it and I walked up Broadway. I took a seat in madison square park to soak in the scent of Shake Shack, and then met Sean and Kelly for lunch in Bryant Park. Back in NYC I'm looking forward to some good times, and a potential mini road trip starting this weekend, let's see what time brings.
I do love beer, there's good places in the city to pick up a six pack with a variety of choice, so I've enjoyed some new tastes. Saturday night brought more drinking than I expected, or rather more alcohol. I met some friends at a bar birthday party downtown, my first question to the bouncer was what kind of beers were going on. He later found me and told me the name of a great bar down the road. Before I had gone to the party, my friend Carl had loaded me up good with a drink called Devil Springs, it's 160 proof Vodka and even more lethal than it sounds as I would find out later.
Mark and I broke off and headed for the place, walking in we both stared up at the giant chalkboard filled with the selection of beers, mostly on tap. I turned around to tell him what I was getting, before I could say anything he said we should try the Unearthly IPA, the very beer I was about to suggest from the list of close to a hundred.
We sat at the end of a long wooden table, talking between scrolling through the beer list more. The bathrooms were downstairs, 5 unisex doors, my second trip down I found myself going through a 6th door, unfortunately not a bathroom but rather the storage room. With my drunken explorer hat on I crept all the way down and the room twisted in another direction. I treated the darkest corner as a bathroom, and made my way out, not before stuffing two mystery bottles in my back pockets.
This last bit was not very discrete, I immediately saw the watching eye of a bus boy as I stumbled out of the room into the crowd of people waiting for the regular bathroom. I headed up the stairs quickly and went for the door, waiting for me was the bus boy and the bouncer, I slid right past them as they pulled the bottles from my pockets, seemingly unconcerned with a drunk as they were with creating future drunks. I called Mark and told him to meet me at Union Square, the general direction I was running towards. I took turns running, walking, and having drunk conversations with drunk people along the street, apparently Mark had a bit of the same time and we hopped the subway towards Astoria where we ate, played video games, and passed out.
The next day I recovered, all day, the following day I found myself on a bus headed for Philadelphia where I met Heather after work. We had beer and fries, a night. The next day I looked forward to the Lakers game, and found myself in an Irish pub at tip off with Heather and her friend. Heather left just after halftime, right around when the Lakers chances of winning left. I stuck around talking to her friend, a conversation about his dreams of riches, a wife, kids - he didn't seem to care about the path to riches or how long he had to stay on it. My glass was empty, I left.
Heather had similar thoughts to add in the dark as we laid on her bed, my eyes were out the window on the only visible star past the buildings, I was hardly tired and a beer shy. She somewhat defended her friend's comments from the bar, "The dream of everyone is housing, money, and love. The American dream is a bigger version of that, it's what everyone wants". Simple as that. Being homeless, generally broke and on the go too much to hold on to a love, and happy all the same, I questioned her generalization. I don't remember the last thing said, but silence came and I forgot why I was laying in that bed at all. I wanted to go into the night and find a mind I liked, hear a story, have a beer, kicks. Sleep.
In the morning we parted ways and I hopped the mostly empty bus to NYC, I had the driver let me out at a red light once we made it and I walked up Broadway. I took a seat in madison square park to soak in the scent of Shake Shack, and then met Sean and Kelly for lunch in Bryant Park. Back in NYC I'm looking forward to some good times, and a potential mini road trip starting this weekend, let's see what time brings.
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