sabado gigante

hey all.

this last weekend, i was graced with the presence of two good pals of mine from way back, lisa and aaron. they were visiting from minneapolis for a few days. we spent a great saturday together.

here is a rundown of events...

1. the gates.

it was a bit cold, but we managed to enjoy them anyways. the park was CROWDED. oh, and we saw someone else there too:

a small motorcade came driving through and inside of this car was Christo and Jeanne Claude themselves. it was pretty funny to see them. it looked like they were being interviewed for tv. not many people noticed them.


2. chelsea galleries (not pictured)
we went to a few galleries, saw nothing too impressive, and then decided it was time for coffee. this led us to...

3. mud cafe in the east village (not pictured)
right before we went in, i got a phone call saying that a really, really great relative of mine had just died in pittsburgh. it was a total surprise and completely came from out of nowhere. she was one of the main reasons why i ended up in new york.

it's really a sad, sad thing.

here is a nice article about her.

after talking about this and all sorts of other things over coffee, lisa wanted to get some sushi.

4. shima sushi.


mmmmm....

but then we were thirsty, so...

5. holiday cocktail lounge.

one of my favorite new york bars. it's super cheap and super comfortable. we had three or four drinks here and then it was off to visit our friend jamila, who was at her permanent hangout, rififi.

6. rififi.
in the back room, they were playing great early 60's dance music. so...


it was really fun.


this was in the bathroom. batman hates irony. one of the many reasons why i like batman so much.

after a few more drinks here, we took a cab back to brooklyn. before we went to the next establishment however, it was time for pizza.

7. the pizza place on bedford avenue.

i have probably eated a million slices from this place.

8. the royal oak.

hmm. i still can't decide whether i like this place or hate it. some nights it can be lovely, but this night it pretty much sucked. there was no dancing here. (unless you consider dancing to be a hundred kids straight out of vice magazine smoking in the backroom.)

9. sleep.

it was a fun, sprawling day.

the next afternoon, i met aaron at the magnolia bakery in the west village. he wanted to get a cupcake. the line for the place was about 50 people long though so we decided to get a beer instead.

we headed over to the white horse tavern. this is the place where dylan thomas drank himself to death.

i thought i'd try to eat myself into a coma in his honor. they have the most fucked up tuna melts that you have ever seen.

they are soooo good though.

it was then time for aaron to catch his plane back home. i headed over to williamsburg to meet up with my friend adam at a bar.

later on, at another place, pete's candy store, i met another pal, eric, for a couple more drinks. on the way home, we decided to play this game where you had to hit a target with a snowball made from the freshly fallen snow before you could move on to the next one. sort of like frisbee golf, except maybe dumber.

wait, maybe not.


if you look at the bottom photo, you can kind of see this small white sign that we were trying to hit. the evidence of our drunken aiming surrounds it.

anyways, it took a really long time to make it home.