Sunday, June 26th 2005, 6:46 p.m.
Continuing with the chronology, after leaving my Dad's house I head down to the city. The city, as in The City, New York City. So after kissing my dad and step-mom goodbye, I take a train and arrive in the Big Apple at 6pm, with my two GIGANTIC suitcases and a heavy backpack, ready to take a taxi to Inga's apartment, where I will be spending the weekend. So I get off the train and navigate my way through Penn Station, ending up at the taxi line. It is very long, but I think "Hey, I'm in New York. All the lines are long." Little do I know ... So these two New Yorkers behind me start bitching about the line, this is the longest they've ever seen it, it's amazing, they can't believe it, they're just gonna take a cross-town bus if it doesn't move in 15 minutes. It doesn't move in 15 minutes. They leave. It starts to rain. Mysteriously well-dressed people shriek at their Brooklyn cousins to tell them to hurry up - they're getting wet which will make their hair flat. After 45 minutes in line and only having moved up halfway (and more importantly, after finishing my book), I jump out as well. I figure I must be able to get myself a cab faster than THIS. So I schlepp my two gigantic suitcases behind me, pick a direction and just start walking. Thank goodness for NY being a grid - I was able to get my bearings within a block - which coincidentally took me to Madison Square Garden, where I solved the mystery of both the lack of taxis and the well-dressed people: it's NYU graduation. The city is a mess within at least a 3-block radius of the actual ceremony, and pretty much everywhere besides that because of all the people stuck without cabs.
So now it's raining, I have gigantic luggage, and the chance of me finding a cab is nil. My solution? Walk. I walked all the way across town from Penn Station to 28th and 2nd, getting looks and comments along the way. Ahhh, New York. I proceeded to then spend a rockin' weekend with Inga in NYC. Just to show what kind of a person she is, I hereby include her invitation to her close friends to a dinner party I was lucky enough to attend that Saturday night: (plus a few responses to it)
"As the end of our second year in New York comes to a close, our small Kips Bay community of bankers, paralegals, and glorified paralegals (Jeff) has many good memories upon which to reflect and many memories yet to make. Fresh out of college we moved to the big city and learned that nothing smells quite so bad as a fetid Chinatown gutter in mid-August, that when you have an important appointment downtown the subway invariably stalls, that free coffee always tastes like shit, and that a hangover at work is ten times worse than one on Sunday morning. We discussed the merits of various apartments for hours on end without boredom, paid $3.95 for a half gallon of orange juice and didn't even bat an eyelash, woke up in the morning half dressed on the couch and wondered what the hell happened to all the cash we had withdrawn the previous evening, and feasted on brie and French bread in Central Park on those rare, crisp spring afternoons when the world was so right that one overflowed with goodwill towards other New Yorkers (except the asshole who shoved you on the train that morning). Some of us will be heading off to professional schools and the fabulous careers that follow, some of us are moving to Jersey (Jeff again), and some of us will stay right here in place, just trying to make it big in the Big Apple. To celebrate our various comings and goings and the bonds of friendship that hold us together (of course we wouldn't be so tight if we actually KNEW other people in the city), the fabulous girls of apartment 8C propose a dinner party. It will be held on Saturday, June 4th at 7:30pm, but please feel free to come a bit early if you'd like a head start on the wine (Jeff?).
As I've been known to say when I'm on my fourth or fifth drink, staring at the bottom of my glass and melancholy at the prospect of loosing my two favorite roommates, "Dude, I'm like, so drunk right now."............er, I mean, "I'll really miss you guys. It's truly the end of an era." Let's end this era on a high note! RSVP to me, if you wouldn't mind.
Inga
Reply from Jeff, Inga's fun and (dare I say it?) flirtatious friend:
Inga you are tres witty. Forget the banking world and become a writer. haha
The only thing worse about being hungover at work is being hungover and going to dirty chinatown
Count me in! And of course I'll show up early to down the wine.
Richie wants to do something after his CFA test so count him in as well.
who are mbcurtin and seonyun?
Reply from seonyun:
seonyun is the third roommate's friend who unfortunately cannot make
it to the dinner because she realized she has a huge exam on the 11th
that she has not studied for at all. so sad. she will just remain
anonymous.
Reply from mbcurtin: fun
mbcurtin is the author's friend from middle school, high school, and a
semester abroad in Japan, who is in NYC for a crazy week of
adventurous escapades with her long-lost faux Japanese compadre in the
urban jungle, rather than the real Hawaiian one. She may or may not be
assisting in the preparation of a delectably winsome tofu dish."
Besides this barrel 'o laughs, we also had fun catching a bus because I forgot my ID at the first bar we went to (hey, I hadn't been carded in 9 months. I don't even think Europeans know what "carding" is), walking around Battery Park, missing the water ferry, getting kick-ass margaritas and Mexican food, singing our way through Union Square, missing a downpour in Chinatown while sipping on bubble tea, playing beer pong with her Penn friends, remembering Matt Pennaz' name, and going to a lame sample sale.
Language spot: Do you know the difference between dingy and dinghy? The first means dirty and the second means boat.
Quote of the Inga trip: "Mel, talking to you is like being at a slumber party: you share things you normally wouldn't."
