The drive from Philly to NY was great...seemed to *fly* by. The rainy dreary landscape with leafless trees and occasionally tiered terrain made it depressingly beautiful. We listened to some tapes: some music from Ranjit's, some bootleg Pixies, some Melba Mix-tapes. Jesse was sad that he didn't have a song as cool as the Pixies' "Ed Is Dead" for his name... he only had "Jesse's Girl"... so I immediately thought of an excuse to play my favorite Cat Power song (from a Melba-tape)..."Nude as the News".... which has a line that croons "Jackson. Jesse. I've got your son in me."... we just changed Jackson to "Reklaw" and everyone was happy. Lenara never complained about not having a name-song.

(friday)
Burrowed our way in via the Holland Tunnel listening to Sugarhill Gang and Michael Jackson songs. Confusing streets, but we finally found Amy Ilyse Rosenthal's apartment. She had had to leave the night previous at the beckoning of her new job in San Francisco(!), so she'd instructed the doorman(!) to hand over the keys to anyone named "Ed Stastney". It was as simple as that... "yeah, I'm here to pick up the keys for Amy Rosenthal's apartment.... Ed Stastny". He didn't care that I didn't have the extra 'e' at the end. Jesse, Lenara and I spilled into the empty apartment (the movers had been there the day before) and looked around. Second floor, moderate size for one person, wood floors. I learned that Jesse wasn't staying that night! I thought he was... I was disappointed and felt guilty for the fact that he had to drive us to NY. He said it was "on his way" back to New Haven and Yale. What a guy. We got some cookless food at the grocery store...and some Guiness beer, of course. We sat around on the floor, ate salsa and chips and some Melba(!) toast and got littered (not trashed) on the Guinai. Time for Jesse to leave. He almost forgot his coat. Hope he got home okay.

Len and I decided to use the web to find something to do in NY that night. We fired up the laptop and turned off all the lights for cool hacker effect. Yahoo NY linked us to the Village Voice info...and we found a club to go to (SOUL COUGHING WAS HERE LAST WEDNESDAY!). The Tunnel Club. We got there around 11pm. $20 to get in (yack!) and the doorgoon made fun of my shoes. It was a massive club... very much what I expected. We BOOOO-gayed till after 4AM. Techno in the big room, 80's stuff in the furry lounge. Both were fun. We chilled out in the transvestite/bondage lounge upstairs.... Lenara actually fell asleep at one point. They played a cool mix-up of the Police's "Walking on the Moon" up there.

Sweaty and tired... we cabbed "home" and fell asleep with visions of meeting up with Leanna and Mary for lunch the next day dancing through our clubbed heads.

(saturday)
Our plans fell through when we couldn't find Mary and Leanna at Mary's building. I guess there was a misunderstanding and they were waiting at the subway stop. Doh! Lenara and I lunched at Le Petit Cafe in SoHo. I drew a portrait of her there. Good and reasonable (prices). We did some shopping at Tower Books (more zines!) and looked around. Bought some space-goo at a toy store. Ended up on Fifth Ave via subway. Lots of shops... lots of people with lots of money and lots of makeup. Disney Store, Warner Bros. Store, Coke Store! No Tron. No SpaceGhost. No Max Headroom. (pout) Central Park was our next stop. By this time, we'd given up trying to call Mary and/or Leanna. What could we do? We watched the ice-rink skaters and Len ate the rest of her hummus from lunch. We headed back, got ready and took Len to the train station via cab...via Times Square. Yum.

Our goodbyes were short...probably for the best. I was quite sad walking away from the terminal and away from Penn Station. Two weeks of good times and good friends... and now we were all split up. I bought myself a grape-cran drink from a vending machine and got all mushy on my bad-ass self as I walked home through the hectic neon of NYC.

I'm so glad I took this trip.

And, before the train I spent 24 wonderful hours in New York. I wish I had more time to stay there! We went dancing at a huge dance club where I left many of my green dollar bills and saw a pseudo-art gallery (the 'pseudo' in the sentence refers to the art. The hearts at the Mutter Museum were a lot better than the pseudo-artistic one exhibited there). I liked very much the fluffy room, with all the curly mirrors, lava-lamps, spiral lights and furry walls!

I've also been in SoHo and Central Park. And, took the subway - of course, we first entered it the wrong side of the platform and spend a subway ticket and some minutes just for looking at trains going to the opposite direction we wanted to go... There were no suit&tie+valise bussines guys in a hurry, cause it was Saturday. A very nice Saturday indeed.

I chomped a donut for breakfast and downed it with Evian. Did some email and got prepped for lunch with Mary Hawkins. I set out on the streets thinking, maybe, I could find my way around on the Subway. As the buildings' shadows grew shorter and sun penetrated the deepest of the urban canyons, I gave in and snagged a taxi to Dojo's in-on-around St.Mark's Place. Arrived right at noon and rushed in... Mary wasn't there yet. Ah-ha! Whew. Waited outside and presently Mary came up, hand outstretched.

We got a nice little window seat and got acquainted. It was awkward for both of us, barely even emailing each other except to organise this meeting. She ordered broccoli-something. I ordered a grilled- cheese and homefries. I talked a lot, but didn't feel all that self-concious about it. Mary listened politely and offered encouraging nods and uh-huhs. When I finally let her get a word in, I found out she's studying set-design in New York and is a relatively new transplant (came in last fall?). She is from Kentucky originally (no accent I could detect) and is a freshman. It was all very polite conversation, nothing too deep or forboding. She gave me a list of cool places to go, which made her feel like a New Yorker for the first time. We paid up and headed back to her dorm so she could give me some prints that Leanna had left for me the day before.

Parting company, I wandered out to explore some shops and areas. We were in a San Francisco-y part of town, dense with little record shops and curiosities. I stopped at a collectible toy-store first. Much more pleasant than the one in Philly. Nothing too exciting for me there.... everything hovered *just* outside my "cool" threshold. Toy snob is me.

Stopped at See Hear next. The best zine store I've ever been to. I picked up even more z's, left an Impulse Freak for their perusal and stocked their freebie shelf with Transplan(e)ts. Zines I got: Tiki News #9, Cometbus #39 (all autobio comic), Browbeat #2 (with DOG FACED HERMANS Interview!), Multiball #10 (pinball and stuff), and Tape Op #4 (audio independence).

Picked up SOUL COUGHING's "Sugar Free Jazz" single at some music/video store called Kim's. I really made the security guy there nervous. First, I walked in, right past the bag check (being the dumb Middle Westerner that I am)... yikes. That got him scowling and he kept an eye on me as I strolled lazily through the rows of CD's. I then tried to walk "upstairs" holding the SC cd. Nope! Silly me, I thought it didn't matter since it was the same store. Had the counter-guy hold it for me. Rude counterguy. I nicely handed him my payment and he slapped all my change up on the counter. Shrug.... dang ol New York Boys.

Found myself a cozy little unhip diner and got an egg sammich (I was still a little hungry for some reason) and coffee. Hung out there for an hour or so, just watching the people and the shadows of the buildings. Read most of that Cometbus too and caught myself debating with a the author/artist. My whole nice warm experience at that diner only set me back $4! Cheee-heep.

I just wandered for awhile and found myself in the chilly shadows of an old-folks' neighborhood. Lots of stooped grey-hairs wandering around. No fear of getting mugged, I guess.

The streets of New York are like energy seepers... as you walk, you don't get tired, you get inspired. Like there's some electric wiring underneath that soaks up into you if you're wearing the right shoes. It's that or seeing all the trendy young ladies with blue hair.

After a time, I found myself near Thompkin's Square (wasn't there some sort of homelessness riot there?) at a cafe called, cooly enough, _alt.coffee_. I made that my home from about 4:30pm until midnight. Is that obsessive? I left only to go get some cash at an ATM. I sat and read and drew and smiled and chatted with a few people briefly (not enough). I felt kind of guilty... but even more comfy... in that cafe. Everyone seemed cool and friendly...and they had net access of course (though I didn't use it). It was exactly the way I would want to do a "cyber cafe". It didn't look like a cyber-cafe. It had all these assorted comfy chairs and interesting photography on the walls. The music was never bad and often terrific. Jazz to Bowie to Lou Reed. I kept expecting them to play Cat Power. I drew a lot of Tiki gods (inspired by the zine) and wondered if the British countergirl was making eyes at me. Two lattes and a raspberry drink under by belt and I beat a woozy retreat back to the apartment. I was feeling kind of dizzy hot and sick. Probably because I didn't eat dinner... just a brownie. Guess this is as good a time as any to plug the NYC cab-drivers, the god-damned lunatics. Wide-eyed two-fisted flights through the concrete skyways of the city.... weaving and speeding and making it all seem so natural. I will probably still be having dreams about those cab-rides for weeks.

Oh, and I picked up an ATARI SHIRT near Thompkins Square!

Tomorrow, I leave. Maybe meeting Mark Napier for lunch.

(monday)
That final day in New York, I didn't get to report much. The highlight of the day, of course, was meeting up with Mark Napier (NAY-pee-ur, au contraire to du Frances) for brunch at 11. We FTF'd at alt.coffee and went to a place called "Life"(?). Friendly waitress served an egg-burrito and coffee for $3.50. Yum.

I felt Mark and I hit it off pretty well. We talked non-stop and freely about a trans-net public net art project using either the INFINITE GRID or GRIDCOSM models. Basically, our passion is to put up a huge videowall that consists of a net-linked ever growing changing grid that passers by could navigate brainlessly. We both shared an enthusiasm for the material, for populist art. Proposed schemes and ideas flew from our faces...eating up most of our short time. Mark had to get some stuff done before flying out to Spain later that night. We talked and walked to Broadway together. We exchanged promises for further development of this project. I have no doubt that it will happen.

I was in NYC and was going to miss the Indy Film Fest later that week, so I needed to see a movie I'd never see in Omaha. I just had to. Mark pointed me to Film Forum and I navigated like a regular native to get there in my quickly deteriorating and bouncer-ridiculed Converse All-Stars (with heel-to-toe scribbles). Film Forum was playing a few movies... I chose a French noir-flick called "Le Samourai". English subtitles. Didn't start for another 90 minutes, so I wandered that little area down there. Stopped in a few t-shirt shops only to have them scoff at me when I asked for all or any of the following: Dangermouse, Max Headroom, Tron, Pac-Man. Wonder if they'll catch on that these are the next-big-things and will have shirts next week. Got a fruit-punch Snapple and wandered. This was about the seediest part of New York I'd been in... but not bad at all. Only a few seemingly dangerous individuals... and of course the fashionable young women with their blue-hair and animal-skin-print scarves.

Every chair in Film Forum is dedicated to or by someone. Every chair. I've never seen anything like it. Cool. I wonder if the person sponsoring the seats is responsible for anything left on or under them. Lucky it wasn't a porn theater, I guess. FF also has its *own* trailer lead-ups... bumpers... "Coming soon to Film Forum". I've only ever seen either supra-generic bumpers or chain-wide slits of film. Wow, and FF's were about a billion times cooler than those computer-generated crappies I usually see. Guess they had some film-school genius do it. New York rules. I sat there for a half-hour sketching out ideas for the project Mark and I had talked about. Doing that and dozing off. I hadn't slept well or long the night before. I was afraid I might not last through the film.

"Le Samourai"... I thought it might be some Japanese theme... but no. The basic plot is about a swinging hit-man who is double-crossed and then triple-crossed by his employers. It's got a very dark James Bond feel to it. Beautiful Euro-babes (UBs!), some gadgetry, nice cars and lots of cash floating around. I guess it was made in the 50's or 60's. I recommend seeing it if you like crime-movies.

Even though it was overcast and grimey when I got out of the movie, I didn't want to leave. I liked NY way more than I thought I could have. Maybe I'll live there someday. I cabbed to the crib, said goodbye to the apartment, took a sip of apple juice, handed over the keys and went to Penn Station. More fun with cabbies. God, they have no fear.

NYC HIGHPOINTS

  - Driving there with Jesse
  - The Tunnel
  - sad goodbyes in the apt (J) and in the train (L)
  - Lunch with Mary
  - See Hear
  - alt.coffee
  - Lunch with Mark
  - the cool apartment (home base)
  - itself
  - cab-drivers