New York City 2006 : A Travelogue
Thursday, November 2
Today was Music Day. By complete coincidence, the annual CMJ Music Marathon was in town that week, so Tara and I made our way to the Lower East Side, but not before spotting some lovely gang runes on the subway:
And then we passed Paul's Boutique.
Which wasn't far from Moby's shop, Teany, where we had several cups of tea. But before that, though, we ate the world's largest, most delicious Reuben at the landmark New York deli, Katz's.
Holy crap this thing was bigger than my head! Tara and I split one and still couldn't finish the tubby bastard. It was amazing, though, and I don't usually care for Reubens. Afterward we parked ourselves at Piano's, where we saw Little Rock homeboys the American Princes, Jon Spencer's new band Heavy Trash, Cities, and The Apples in Stereo.
In the upper room, I struck up a conversation with a group of people who just so happened to hail from Springfield, Missouri, not far from where I grew up. Because New York is freaky like that. I wish I could remember their names so I could look them up on MySpace.
After that we had some decent Indian food in the Village and I dragged Tara over to The Lion's Den to see my friend Ross Rice play with hardcore punk legends Darryl Jenifer and Dr. Know (formerly of Bad Brains) in their new dub reggae band:
Ross is the skinny gray-haired white guy on keys, obviously. I shook Dr. Know's hand and he complimented me on my Mos Def t-shirt. Could a music nerd get any higher I ask you?
After that, Tara and I went to the Comedy Cellar to catch the 11:30 show. I laughed so hard my face hurt. Good times.
Friday, November 3
I didn't take many pictures this day. It started off with Tara and I shopping at H&M, which has two floors for women and one floor for men, so it only made sense that I shopped for an hour and Tara shopped for two. It took me awhile to find a pair of jeans because H&M has 6 kinds, and they're all made for small gay men. I also bought some shirts. We caught up with Joe and went to Little Italy for lunch, which took forever because apparently Little Italy isn't an especially amazing place to eat because its income is entirely tourist-derived. Arika met up with us and we all had a fantastically basic meal.
Arika and I went off on our own to Chinatown and the Lower East Side.
We stopped off at Economy Candy and Ludlow Guitars (my new favorite guitar shop in New York).
Later that night our gang got back together for dinner at The Jazz Standard, where we paid the most amount of money for food and music on the trip and it was still completely worth it! We ate amazing barbecue and watched the George Cables Project featuring Gary Bartz, Eric Revis & Jeff "Tain" Watts. Tain was Branford Marsalis' drummer in The Tonight Show Band for many years, and also played the part of Rhythm Jones in Mo' Better Blues. These guys burned it up for about 45 minutes of pure bliss.
They shuffle you out pretty quickly at the Standard, which was fine because Frank was waiting for us topside. We all met up with Joe's cousin and her people and at a very expensive yuppie bar called 235 with an amazing view and absolutely silly prices ($250 for a bottle of Jack Daniel's? Are you f*cking kidding me?). Still a neat place to hang if you don't mind paying $10 for a Stella.
After that we adjourned to a much more reasonably priced bar in Alphabet City called B-Side, where we stayed until like 4AM or something crazy like that.