New York Bar Hopping …and subsequent stumbling

The last few weeks I’ve begun reverting back to some of my old partying habits that seem to spur from a love for the adventuresome. Of course it’s not Man vs. Wild adventuresome, but there’s something about just moving from bar to bar, party to party that keeps the night exciting. With each move you never know what you’re going to get…unless that next move is to McSorley’s on 7th St. and 3rd Ave. in which case you know exactly what you’re going to get, lights and darks. McSorley’s is what I would describe as the epitome of a man’s bar, dirty, grungy, loud, packed with men, a layer of sawdust blanketing the floor to soak up booze and vomit, and most importantly light and dark ales. It’s definitely not an experience for everybody but I think it’s certainly an experience everyone should try once. Which is what I told a co worker when I dragged her there to meet up with some of my college buddies. It took some particularly convincing rhetoric to persuade this wine drinking, low key, conservative summer intern to accompany me to a vulgar scene of obscenities and inebriation. Naturally I just told her there would be a lot of single guys there, neglecting the fact that there are a lot of single guys at every bar in New York…it’s where we go to feel especially single when even the most desperate of girls still won’t talk to us.

So, after finishing some delightful apple flavored Belgian Beer at the more local Beer Bar, on 45th and Vanderbilt we made our way to the 6 train. After pounding a few darks and lights while watching my poor friend labor through a mug of light we did the inevitable talking with strangers that happens there. There are no select tables of private parties at this place. They will literally sit you down with anyone if you ask for a table. You just hope to get sat next to the guy just offered a job by a big bank (a rare occurrence given the current economic climate) and have him buy everybody round after round. When I thought she had absorbed all the intenseness of the place she could we took the party to a near by favorite, Phebes, on 4th St. and 3rd Ave. Phebes was the place everyone ended up heading at the end of the night. Close to campus, with great bar music, and just…well it was just popular among us NYU students for some reason. Here we had a few more rounds of drinks along with a bit of awkward, unskilled dancing by yours truly before deciding to call it a night. Fatigue had set and the effort of a work week was wearing on me. I only just made it home after passing out on the subway, luckily missing my stop by only one.

The very next night I found myself out at a friend’s apartment sharing drinks on their East Village Rooftop absorbing the stunning full circle view of Manhattan with both rivers plus up and downtown immediately at hand for my viewing pleasure. The company was good, the drinks were alcoholic, and the weather was divine. It was a clear night with a light breeze drifting west to East while the temperature rested in the mid seventies. Giving into the urge to head out we made our way to a trendy place called Side Bar on 15th and Irving. Well, it tried to be trendy but after interacting with its occupants I was disappointed in the quality of drinkers. The place was too crowded to just hang out and relax with an overpriced beer in hand. So I decided I’d do something I almost never do, hit on a complete stranger or strangers in this case. With nothing to lose and the possibility of an entertaining story to gain I decided to put myself to the test. There was a side area raised a bit above bar level and I spotted a group of cute, dancing girls happily enjoying themselves while the guys with them sat brooding over to the side with grim, serious faces refusing to smile or do anything that might make them less cool. “What a bunch of uninteresting losers” I thought to myself. Then I strode up there, with blind, ignorant confidence, chugged the beer in my hand, turned smiled at my friend who I told to watch and walked right up to one of the girls. “Hi, my name is Matt and I just wanted to tell you that you looked beautiful tonight.” It should be noted that this is the most forward line I’ve ever used. Initially I think she was in shock because she took a step back, but I knew the one thing no woman can resist is a compliment on her appearance. She quickly smiled and actually extended her hand, introducing herself as “Alisha.” “Alisha,” I said, “it’s very nice to meet you.” As I began speaking with her I noticed out of the corner of my eye some definite unease growing among the guys from the group, huddled over by themselves off to the left. I didn’t let it bother me though, these self absorbed, over serious deuchebags were the worst kind of people and I could care less what they thought. At this point I was now talking to two girls, I don’t remember the other one’s name but it turned out they were both interning at Investment banks, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Their voices peaked with delight as they told me this, clearly pleased with themselves and their prospects of earning obnoxiously large amounts of money. I couldn’t have cared less. When they asked me what I did I put them to the “Matt Wealth Importance test” (trademark pending). It’s a little test I’ve devised to see how invested a woman is in wealth and occupation as far as determining the quality of a person. I comfortably responded that I had just graduated and was just hanging out, unemployed at the moment. They weren’t able to hide the ghastly look on their faces as they heard this. The test was done and they had failed…miserably. These two well dressed, cute girls had transformed into hideous ghouls right before my eyes. They tried to hold their composure but still almost walked away from me mid sentence before I decided to just keep the conversation going by telling them I was only kidding and was in fact a financial analyst at one of the most well known companies in the world. The damage was done though and I had lost any and all interest in knowing these two superficial money whores. I did, however, find it quite amusing when the guys around them decided to hone in and really mark out there territory. As we were in mid conversation their guy friends would come up and start trying to grind with them all the while trying to give me tough, get the hell out of here, looks. It was enough to make me laugh right in their faces and feel embarrassed for them all at the same time. How anyone like that could take themselves seriously is beyond me. I walked away without saying good bye, happy that I had dared myself to engage in conversation, disappointed it had been with people of no substance.

View From the Past: Constructive Alcoholism

It’s funny how it’s rarely alcohol that kills you, but the stupid things you inevitably let yourself to do while under its influence. Tonight was one of those nights. Precociously drunk and lively, my roommate and I were just waiting for something to dare us into adventure. That dare presented itself in fabled double dog form as an unguarded construction site on Mercer St between Broome and Grand. We were supposed to be innocently heading towards a bar of deplorable taste, treading away on foot with the cheap meagerness of college preventing us from riding extravagantly in a cab or even comfortably in a subway. However, the allure of that swinging make shift wooden door opening up into a dangerous fun house of scaffolding, ladders, and an array of building materials proved far too great to ignore.

After my co drinker sarcastically dared me to go in I threw that snark comment in his face by causally meandering my way under the caution tape and through the door. Damn that bastard I thought drunk or not drunk I like exploring. He quickly followed me in, excited at my thoughtless choice of adventure. Peering around we quickly discovered two hard hats (regrettably lacking the cool flashlights on top) and obnoxiously adorned them disregarding any concern of hair carried diseases or just common cleanliness. We scampered around like second graders in the attic, marveling in drunken stupor at the grandeurs of modern construction. Then came the exhibitionism. Despite being blurry drunk I had enough faith in my coordination…and my God, to climb up an unfastened, unsecured 40 foot ladder to the top floor. After succeeding that, my arrogant and athletically gifted drunk bastard of a friend continued to push me still further to test the limits of my ability. He confidently strode over to the edge and without hesitation hopped over the guard railing and jumped to the fire escape of the neighboring building. “What are you fucking crazy? You’re not spiderman you crazy shithead! There’s no way in hell I’m ending up sprawled out on the pavement below to impress you.” My unrecoiled shock at his stupid risks only provoked him further laughing at my nervousness. I was now holding onto the railing, still trenched on the safe side, pleading with him to stop the dumbass antics and come back to the safe side. As he hopped back over I uselessly tried to reach out my arms in the case that he did slip I’d be able to catch him…thinking back I doubt I would’ve been able to even delay a fall let alone save him from one.

He was not to be done there, and frankly neither was I. We saw what looked to be the makings of an elevator shaft on the rear of the building and made our way through the maze of rubble and dust to that side. This side of the building was encased by scaffolding and so with the thoughtless permit that alcohol allows we began climbing through it making our way higher and higher. Upon reaching the peak of scaffolding I was horrified to see a single beam leading across a deep abyss of darkness to the far side where the elevator shaft was being built. It was straight out of a tragic movie scene. Two innocently drunk kids engage in stupid horseplay and one of them ends up dead while the other regrets it for the rest of his life. It was at that moment I decided if anything I would be the one regretting it because there was no way in Hell I was gonna try to test my balance against a single high beam and a 60 foot drop. To my horror my friend had come to the complete opposite conclusion and was already swaying his way across, holding his arms out for balance. Balance? What fucking balance? We had chugged eight beers each in the last hour and a half; there was no such thing as balance at that point. I held my breath, closed my eyes….and almost passed out. When I opened my eyes moments later he was on the other side laughing at me like it was some big fucking joke. “Life isn’t a joke!” I yelled. “Yea, but you are for being too much of a pussy to cross!” he replied. That insensitive prick, he was actually mocking me for not committing what amounted to suicide. There was no way he was gonna bully me into this one. Uninterested in seeing my roommate plummet 6 stories I began making my way down through the scaffolding without seeing if he made it back across (he did).

There was really no topping the excitement of the last encounter so we resigned ourselves to leaving the site, but not without two souvenirs, hard hats for the each of us! We paraded up through Mercer Street in common street wear and hard hats now just as drunk from euphoria as booze. We also developed the highly catchy phrase “It’s ok we work for the city” that night which we repeated to each stranger unfortunate enough to pass us. We entered the bar like conquering heroes, blazing our fake ids at the bouncer without even once lowering the bright plastic caps from our heads. After our entrance we realized we were yet again near the sad state of sobriety and with the lightness of our wallets decided it best to head around the corner to Space Market to pick up a couple more forties. We decided we needed to maximize return so we each swagged a forty of Ye Olde English Malt Liquor and I confidently handed the cashier my university ID and promptly paid for the booze in campus cash.

As we idled around outside the deli wondering where we could toss these babies back, we caught sight of that large imposing building known simply to the NYU community as Bobst, or in other words the NYU Library. We both looked at each other and all I had to say was “Open 24/7.” Of course we made a pit stop and took a few gulps in the park for mere effect. Giddy again with excitement at the prospect of risk taking we stumbled into the great edifice completely aimless in direction. All we had were two paper bags wrapped tightly around brimming bottles of OE and clearly misused hard hats. Luckily all we needed was the swipe of an ID to get in, and then, “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

We froze. The guard had seen us…as if we didn’t have to walk right past him. We were caught, shit we were gonna get busted, they were gonna kick me out of school, tell my parents, put me in time out…I don’t know what I feared but in that split second all I had was fear. “I beg your pardon sir?” I stammered.

“The upstairs is closed between the hours of 12 am and 7 am. Only the downstairs is open.”

“Sorry, first time studying this late on a weekend.” Like anyone would believe that line, hell I looked like a homeless village person.

“Do you two even go here?”

“Yea of course, we swiped in” and then without stopping we just walked straight down before he could ask us any more questions.

The NYU library was just as unexplored as the construction site for me but even so we managed to locate a staff locker room and continued our nefarious drinking exploits there. We turned up the stereo and delighted in hearing Queen blare through the locker room. The world was ours…or at least that staff locker room. We were only there for ten minutes before we had finished swallowing that bitter drink. We stumbled back up and hustled hurriedly past the guard not wanting to answer any of the obvious questions.

Now on a rush that comes with accomplishing great things, i.e. trespassing and public intoxication in a college library, we once more set out for that lamentable bar that our sorry friends were at. Of course this harbor of boredom and irritating banter could not hold us for long and before another hour had passed we left that forsaken place for the last time. We threw our fate to the wind and wandered back downtown along Broadway before shifting still further East to Lafayette St. Then we saw it, a bar we had passed many times always admiring its sleekness but never daring to venture in. Tonight was the night though, we were invincible. When we walked up the bouncer knew two things: that we were both underage and that at 3:30 in the morning we had lived tonight and he was going to let us in. After laughing and making a joke about my ID he stepped aside and let us in.

The interior of the bar had smooth gentle lighting only in the corners and around the bar, with deep red velvet furniture and bar tenders in all black. Oh, and there were eight 52 inch flat panel high definition television sets on the walls each playing a different showing of lesbian porn. Eight! We sat down not knowing if it was polite to stare open mouthed at the screens surrounding us. After being haggled by the bartender to do a repeat of the ID bit and having yet another joke at our expense we each ordered a victory shot of patron. The night was complete, the sweet savor of that Mexican Tequila signaled an end to our journey and our glorious night; the girl spread eagle on the screen behind me even told me so. We walked home triumphantly as the sky was beginning to light and our eyes beginning to close.