Babe: Collin in the Big City -or- Palz on a Three Day Bender

On Wednesday, February 4th, Collin and I were talking on the gchat (as two unemployed fellas are known to do), when Mr. McGregor mused that, perhaps this would be a good weekend to visit.

24 hours later he was on a bus to New York.

The first night in what would become a trifecta of drunken adventures found us out to dinner at a great tapas restaurant called Cafe Ronda, in the Upper West Side. Joining us were Melanie, Jonah, and Ashley- it had been her idea to meet up for dinner. The tone of the table was set by the decanter of sangria serving as centerpiece, which Jonah saw, and then raised the stakes with a six pack of Blue Moon (the spring one, which is passable at best). After dinner, Jonah and Ashley split for separate obligations, and Collin, Melanie and I continued our drinking at a bar down the street with the word "Inn" in its name. We returned to Melanie's apartment all a bit drunk and had a threesome I mean watched 30 Rock.

The next day Melanie left us for Vermont, a sad turn of events that nevertheless was probably for the best, since it kept her in good graces with her family and me in good graces with her, cus aint no kind of girlfriend finds drunken foolery attractive. So we bid Melanie adieu around Friday noon, and shortly after met Jonah and his ladyfriend at the Film Forum to watch I'm No Angel for 35 cents. It was entertaining I suppose, but I'm glad we spent only what we did on it.

Jonah busy with lady, Melanie in Vermont, Ashley doing some other thing, Collin and I began our night with pizza, Jeopardy, and massive Russian beers. I introduced Collin to the Courtelyou famous 51 oz. bottle of Baltika 9, which costs $3 at the local Asian Grocery. Leaving the house with feeling comfortably boogie woogie, we went to a bar in the East Village called Crash Mansion, which was basically as cool as the name implies (not very), but featured FREE PBRs until 11, a few shitty bands, and Harold and Kumar go to White Castle on a number of close captioned televisions. We mostly sat at the bar and got hammered to some hilariously stoned ethnic situations. It was there that Jonah and Erin, Collin's ex-girlfriend, met us. When we left around midnight, there was a sharp divide between the relative sobriety of Jonah and Erin and the brainfucked chaos of Me and Collin. We left. I recall dodging cars, pretending to hide from my friends, falling over. We wandered the East Village, peed in a Mexican joint where I got scornful looks for clearly trying to steal hot sauce, and ended up in a bar that I don't really remember beyond the awesome Batman pinball game I surprisingly didn't suck too bad at. Then Jonah got us hoofin it on a totally wacky route to the Canal Street subway stop (how did we end up in Chinatown?) and then home.

In the morning (read: 11:30) we had brunch (coffee, eggs Levy, bagels, plenty of ibuprofen) and dashed out the door, hoping to make it to the old school Nintendo competition at the Nintendo store in Time Square we had signed up for. We did not make it, which was for the best since our would be competitors turned out to be largely prepubescent. In lieu of intense/embarrassing gaming, we beat feet around the area, eventually finding ourselves in Central Park. The day was gorgeous, so we goofed around all the way from 57th to 85th, checking out statues and generally enjoying the sun and relative warmth. Since we were hungry, we got hot dogs and juice at the Papaya King. We saw Eliot Spitzer (seriously). I picked up the phone charger I had forgotten at Melanie's, and we returned to Brooklyn to get ready for the night.

Jonah's brother had told us about this party in Bushwick, a fundraiser some local hipsters were throwing in support of the building of three ships to sail from Slovakia to Venice harbor. Yes, this is what we were told. Enticed by the bizarre proposition, Jonah, Collin and I put on our best H&M and made the four transfers to warehouse town, where we met up with Jonah's ladyrfriend (Catherine, her name is Catherine) at her apartment, three blocks from the party. We had drinks and sushi and Catherine's friend Sarah joined us. Both girls are San Francisco ex-pats who hadn't spoken since High School but ran into each other on the street. Life's like that (-Avril Lavigne, 2002). Anyway, we hung out, and Catherine didn't believe me when I told her pagans brought trees into their houses for the Solstice, and then we went to the party.



This is what it looked like when we arrived. If you look in the back corner, you can see Jonah's brother Matt ("Evil Jonah"/"Luigi"). And at first things were great: the DJ was awesome and people were basically pretty genial. But the dance floor quickly filled up, and soon the whole place surpassed the dirtiest, drunkest Delta party in terms of packed bodies and rank stench. The. Place. Stunk. See the thing is, these weren't even really hipsters. These were gutter punks, that bizarre breed of social barnacles that never bathes, never wears deodorant, and considers these attributes commendable. Everyone on the dance floor was sweating and some people were naked in the worst kind of way. The dancing was good at first (Collin stood stoically in a dark corner and drank Budweiser tall boys) but eventually the smell became simply unbearable. Mark this as the first time I have ever abandoned a party because of the scent.

We took a train to Williamsburg because that's where the bars are and that's where Sarah lives. Jonah took his (by then very intoxicated) gal back to her place, so it was just Collin, Sarah and I. I bought the first round of PBRs and cheese fries, and then Collin one-upped me with a round of Delirium Tremens (thanks Col). We had some great chats about fashion, geography, and relationships. Once Sarah left, Collin and I had some Real Dude Talk, a long overdue tete a tete between budz.

Somehow we stumbled home. Early Sunday afternoon I brought Collin to the Fung Wah stop in Chinatown, and so concluded three days of drunken bro time.