Dear New York, my thanks, and my rants

Dear Overnight guy at Duke Cafe in Soho,

You're rad. Thank you for always just charging me only my $6 voucher from work, even though we both know the things I buy go over $6. You should put out a tip jar. I would tip you.

Dear Bike-shop guy on Lafayette between Prince and Spring,

Calm down. I'm glad you feel that you are too good to help me because the child's bike that I brought from work, just to put air it its tires, was not good enough for your time. I'm also glad that your time was good enough to tell me that you wouldn't help me because of the bike I had, and I should never bring it to your shop again because you will still not work on it next time, in your "I'm too good for this" way. But thank you for letting me put air in the tires myself. I hope you found all the adapters your slightly nicer, barely, co-worker gave me out in the street where I left them, so I wouldn't have to deal with your snotty mid life "I still work in a bike shop with my long gray ponytail" crisis.

Dear Ramon's Dry Cleaning lady,

Thank you for the lollipop. It was really good. And after my Bike-shop experience just 10 minutes before, having someone be so nice and helpful was refreshing.

Dear guy at the pizza shop near Penn Station,

Calm down. You're right, we are not friends. But your wrong, I was not all over your food. You see, you were standing right in front of my drinks. So in a sense, you were all over my drinks. So calm down, when I told you it wasn't a problem when you freaked out at me for being "all over your food" and told you not to worry about it, I was serious. Lighten up, it will make life a little better.

Dear Gimme! Coffee,

Thanks. You fuel my addiction to your delicious beverage with you masterfully roasted beans of coffee. I can't get enough of it. Each new roast I try is incredible in it's own way, you have even managed to break my hatred to regional and organic coffees. Thanks for always talking with me, except that one time, about what each roast is like so I can try to pick a new one. And thank you for the free stickers. I know they were free anyway, but still.

Travel to the edge of the Earth

So I was talking with a friend the other night, or morning. We were having what turned out to be on of those "life conversations." We both spoke of our need to either travel, or move. She did me the favor of telling me exactly what I think I needed to hear. I've put it all together into the sort of fantasy of what I want to do.

I recently got worn out with where I was living, and seeking change, moved to New York. This is great, great city, great friends, the works. But now I think the need to get out of Maine was more than I originally thought. What I thought was just a need to move, I now think is need to travel. Nothing too soon, I just got here, but I really want to really experience my whole country. I want to just kind of pack up and leave, and see where things take me. I am in New York for at least another year, but I'm thinking maybe after that just leave. I guess I would just have to drop everything and do it. I could try to work things out with work, and roommates and what not, but it would be easier to just leave it all behind. What my mind has created for me is basically the money in my pocket, and a backpack containing some necessary items: change of clothes, tooth brush, soap, flipflop, water bottle. Just the basics. Probably a camera too. Thats it really, I just want to backpack across the country.

What I would be looking for is experience. Meeting all kinds of people. Seeing all kinds of places. Just doing whatever I can to get a place to sleep and a ride to my next city. I know this is all outrageous. The journey would be grueling, sometimes dangerous, loads of fun, and unlike anything most people would ever dream of going through. Knowing what I do of myself, I know that I could do this, but I think that, at least at times, I would need someone to do it with me.

That, I think, will be the biggest problem. This would be a HUGE commitment. Dropping everything for 2 months, maybe longer, to take some wild journey. I know the idea sounds sort of like a dream, most everyone I tell this to says how awesome they think it would be. The trouble will of course be finding someone who would do it. For real. The girl this all started with told me she'd go. I have trouble not believing her. We'll see in a year or so I guess.

Don't waste time.

I haven't had a really good nights sleep in a while.

I'm going to be really bored soon.

Erin came to visit on Tuesday, all the way from Chicago. She leaves tomorrow, Sunday. I have to say I was worried about what on Earth we we're going to do when she was here. The thing is, Sean, Furman, and I don't ever really go that often. So showing someone fun things to do in the city seemed like it was going to be harder than one would think. It wasn't though.

Here's a quick, boring overview:
It has been pretty rad having her here. A lot has been done. We've done shopping, of course. Hitting up Soho, two days in a row, was fun but no one bought anything. Either day. She, Sean and I went out to eat at "Sea" in Brooklyn. Awesome. There was basically lots of stuff like that, cruising around the city just doing things.

Now for the actually interesting, even if you weren't there, stuff:
Yesterday Sean and I both called out of work to find an uninviting rainy day. None of us were prepared to let that ruin our plans though. Erin had caught an ad on the Subway for the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn museum.



It was incredible.

On Thursday, backtracking for the REALLY cool part, we got tattoos. We had all briefly talked about getting matching tattoos, but didn't get much further than they couldn't be lame, and had to be well done. During our walk around Soho Erin and I stopped in to Kid Robot and I just said, "Let's get zombie tattoos." It obviously went over well with everyone, and Sean added a a little zazz by suggesting that we put the words "Eat meat" under the picture. It was a bit of a struggle, spending the better part of a day or two on the phone and interweb trying to track down good artists that had time to do them. Finally, walking to get coffee in BillyBurg after dinner at Sea on Thursday night we walked past Flyrite tattoo shop. Sean had called to ask them about the weekend, and they were full, I then pointed out that Thursday was not the weekend. We hurried back to ask, and a few of the artists agreed to stay late (2AM) to get them done. This is the aftermath.





And now, for perhaps my favorite part, just the company. Honestly, I couldn't remember what it was like to hang out with someone my own age. Not having to ask, "Will they card me?" every time I left the house was a nice change. It was really nice having someone to just sit around and drink coffee with in the morning, and also in the afternoon, and through the night back into the morning. Yes, we drank a lot of coffee. Day one we had plans to get out and do things, which has almost ruined by sitting around for hours just drinking coffee and catching up. We did a lot of that, sometimes it looked like this.



Basically, this past week has been a blast. Tiring, very, but loads of fun and memories. And now instead of worrying about finding time to meet people my age between work and my existing friends, I can be happy just hassling Erin until she sucks it up and moves here.

What did you do tonight?

Not to brag, but I'm pretty sure what I did was better. I saw Tegan and Sara. That's right. I went with Sean and Jessica, and Furman was there too, although we never saw him.

It would have seemed as if Brooklyn didn't want us to make it to the show. The L train took us to Bedford, and then said, fuck you I'm not going any further. PANIC! at the L train. Quick solutions, call the car service for a ride! Uh-oh, they are out of available cars. What? Does that ever happen? It took us a few tries but we eventually caught a cab and ended up spending another 6 bucks each, on top of the ticket prices, to get to the show. Totally worth it.

FanFuckingTastic show. We got there literally a minute before Tegan and Sara went on. By the time we made it to the crowd everyone was already cheering as the girls walked out on stage. Perfect timing, all that running we did from from our second train stop was clearly needed. The show was full of all my favorite songs, which I didn't realize before how many there are. They played for about and hour and 20 minutes and there were only like three songs that I wasn't completely psyched to hear. And that was only because they were off the album that I'm not too familiar with. Although Jessica worried me by telling me that their live DVD was not too impressive, I was pleasantly surprised by their performance. Lets face it, they have sort of awkward voices. Don't get me wrong, it works very well, I was just worried that it wouldn't be so great live. Not true. Their live voices were great, just as awkward as I'm used to. It was good. They were really good in between songs too, funny stories, and good sisterly banter.

All in all, just awesome, be jealous you weren't there. Unless you were. In which case, kudos to you.

Today in racism and pigeons:

Funny things that happened bright and early on this Sunday morning.

I was walking from work to the local news shop to pick up some news papers that did not get delivered this morning. I noticed 4 or so mostly white pigeons picking at something on the ground. The funny thing was, waiting eagerly behind these pigeons were 4 or so more pigeons almost totally black. Not just humans are racist.

Again, on way home from work I was walking from Union Square to the third ave stop on the L to kill some time on my long wait for a train. I was still in my work uniform, black shoes, black pants, nearly black sweater. There was a homeless black man walking around talking to who ever would listen, in between sips of his glass bottle of, wild guess, booze. No joke, you've all seen it. His eyes fall to me, and he starts to talk. "Look at this N-WORD!" he said the real thing, of course, "All black! Aint' he white? Something funny is going on."

True stories from the always interesting life of James, the observer.

Last night was for REAL.

It appears that I've beaten to this post twice already, by Sean and Jessica. I don't have any awesome pictures or anything to show you, just my words of excitement.

Last night I'm standing in line at the Grocery store and decide to check my phone in case I missed anything over the noise. It's about five past 8, I see I have not one, but THREE new text messages from Sean. At first, I assume that he's just texting to rub it in my face that he got a free ticket to see Motion City Soundtrack. But no, my phone holds messages explaining Jesse left TWO tickets and that I better get my ass in gear before I miss their show. I debated dropping all my groceries in the line and just running out. But I was next, and really did need to buy food. I then ran all the way home groceries in hand, threw what needed to be kept cold in the fridge, threw on a clean shirt and put my feet to pavement. I ran every second that I was not on a train, making it there around 9ish, I think a little before. I went to the desk to ask for my ticket and they were reluctant to give it to me since it was under Sean's name. I had to do some serious name dropping, like "The guy in the band playing RIGHT NOW left it for me." But I got it, got in, and saw about half of their set.

Then we watched Panic! and left for food and drinks with a huge gaggle of people. We got to some Hawaiian themed place, basically just and excuse to dress all their girls in bathing suits. We bought food and drinks like it was our job, receiving a shocking bill. Haha. Things got a little crazy afterwards at some other place when Erica and friends took charge of the Juke Box and Sean Adam and I totally played air guitar and sang our brains off through some Weezer, and even some Natalie Imbruglia. It was pretty awesome. Sean slept at work. I got some pizza to prepare myself for my very long subway journey home. It was for real.