Day 283 (Wednesday 23rd) - MoMa And Clare's Last Day
Due to the lateness of the cinema we didn't manage to get anywhere useful until after noon. We headed straight to the Museum Of Modern Art, which was really interesting but far too much to deal with in one day. Clare finished first, at which point I had only just made it onto the third floor (modern design), having started at the fifth. Pat was way behind me. He caught me up and we breezed through the rest of the exhibits, but I got to the the design stuff which is what I wanted. We went for a cocktail at a place called Katwalk, apparently mentioned in the Sex And The city movie (Pat and I tried to care - we failed) then we came back and Clare packed for her early morning departure. We had intended to spend some time meandering around SoHo, but in the end we didn't get out for dinner until 9ish. We ended up just going to Joe's Pizza as recommended by my friend Hans in New Zealand, which turned out to be just another takeaway pizza place. Well, I say that, it was actually delicious and possibly the best pizza I had had in quite a while. We decided this was our appetizer, so we rushed over the road to Trattoria Spaghetto for some reasonable pasta and wine. The meal was actually very exciting, mainly because there was an enormous thunderstorm in progress, with the loudest thunder I have ever heard. In spite of the downpour, due to the heat all the doors and windows were thrown open, making for quite a unique dining experience. After this, and after the rain had died down enough for us to find a cab, we went home and discovered it was somehow half past midnight, and Clare and I had to be up in 4 1/2 hours.
Day 284 (Thursday 24th) - Hasta La Vista Clarey
Clare and I were up at 5 am (5!) to head out to the airport. We got a cab, and it took a very short amount of time - so short in fact that we needn't have got up until half 6, which is somewhat annoying. Clare should be waiting at the gate as we speak, I would say I am sad to see her leave but I'll be seeing her in about 48 hours, so I'm not too cut up about it all. I got the subway back, and thanks to the entire musical output of M.I.A. I survived without falling asleep anywhere along the way. It is now 0804 and I'm going back to bed for a bit.
Pat and I made it to the American Museum Of Natural History around half two - god knows what we did for the rest of the day. We stayed in there until closing time, and had a great day. Our favourites were the Dinosaur and Pacific Peoples exhibits - there were some incredible fossils and skeletons on show, and we both learnt a lot about Micro & Polynesian places too. We had a bit of a nostalgic look at the Asian Culture section too, with plenty of "Hey, I've been there!" from both of us. ALso we went into the planetarium. I have never been to one before, and this one was quite an introduction. It looked like Cerebro from X-Men, and the show started with an incredible line - I quote "Hi, I'm Robert Redford. Welcome to..." A very troy McClure moment, awesome. when we were kicked out we headed to American Apparel where we stocked up on various things for 60% of the British prices, then headed home and started packing.
We had dinner en route to Devin, who had put together an itinerary of bars, all of which had some unique feature about them. We started in one called the Three Cups, which had an awesome girl behind the bar, all tattoos and pushed-up things jiggling at us. After a couple of cheap pints we headed over to a little bar called KGB, which is apparently very popular with writers and others in the film profession. The main reason we went there is because 2 x 4, our original destination, was dead when we went in, so we decided to give it some time. On our return, we found the place to be much busier, so we remained. The unique feature about 2 x 4 was that it is an extremely American bar. It has road signs all over the (plank covered) walls, a bar with two poles attached, a pool table and a soundtrack that mainly seemed to consist of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bon Jovi. Awesome. Another great feature is that, at seemingly random intervals, the ladies behind the bar (neither of whom were stunners, but one of whom was surgically inflated to the point where noone cared anymore) would jump up and do some frankly impressive poledance routines. We watched this, played some pool, and generally had some raucous fun for a while before moving on to our next destination, The Box. This is a burlesque place that Megan recommended to us as being somewhere a bit sexy and a bit classy. Whatever it was, it was also a bit exclusive. There were no signs outside, we only knew when we got there because of the address, and the fact that there was a small queue outside as well. This queue was mostly girls, who weren't being let in, so there was no hope for us. After a few failed attempts at gaining entry, we carried on wandering and ended up at Famous Ray's Pizza, where I had had the rather unpleasant stromboli last Wednesday. Our pizza was far more agreeable, and afterwards we managed to persuade Devin (who had to be up at half four to fly to a wedding) to come for one more. This we did at Devin's favourite bar in New York - called Welcome To The Johnsons, it is a little place decorated to look like a 1970s American basement, down to the large brown fridge, plastic covered couches and family portraits. I was a big fan of the place, but unfortunately we could only stay for one, as we had a final destination - Max Fish (also somewhere we had been to on Wednesday). As we were leaving Devin engaged in some banter with some girls outside, and finished with "well you all found it funny - except this dude" with a casual wave at a serious looking short guy nearby. For some reason he took great offence to this (he also happened to be with one of the girls Devin had been talking to), and walked up swinging his bike lock in what he thought was a menacing fashion. Devin however was having none of it, and once he had established that the guy wasn't going to anything with the lock, he ripped into the guy mercilessly, making him look like an idiot in front of his friends. fair enough for a guy who, finding himself the foil for an innocent flippant comment from a stranger, decides the best way to regain dignity is to threaten said stranger with a massive lump of metal.
Anyway, en route to Max Fish we met a girl and some guys who were also going there, but who warned us that it would be "cock soup" according to the girl. I assured her that it was fine, and that we had "previously frequented the establishment". This was met with a snort of derision, as she tore into me for being overly English. I spluttered protests, but Devin chimed in and told me that she was right, which is fair enough - I have been playing it up a little. Anyway, Devin left, and Pat and I went into Max Fish and were quickly seperated. I sat down next to a girl on a sofa, and asked her what was troubling her - she looked perturbed. She told me (with surprising frankness) about her dilemma - there were two blokes here that she was seeing, neither of whom knew about the other, and between whom she could not choose. Together we deconstructed them both, listing pros and cons, until she came to a startling realisation - "This is going pretty well, right? Maybe I should just leave with you?" I told her this was a great idea. She looked around, saw that dude no. 1 was at the bar facing the other way, and then turned round and kissed me I was surprised, but did not object. This continued for a time, foolish as it was. Whenever both the blokes were looking away, we'd make out for a few furtive seconds. At one point dude no. 2 came over, sat and chatted to us for a bit, then wandered off again. I should mention here that both of them were enormous black guys, and that Daniela (for that was her name) had many and varied tattoos, including a large red 'D' on her neck, that I thought was beautiful. Anyway, to cut a long and rambling story short, eventually she decided it was time to leave. I walked her to a cab, got a kiss goodnight, and strolled back into the bar, where I was met by dude no. 1."Hey, I just saw you leave with Daniela" he said. "Where did she go?" Buoyed by unwarranted confidence, I replied "Dunno mate, she just went to get a cab and asked me to help find one for her" with not a hint of panic or worry. He thanked me and left, at which time I spied Pat and decided it was probably time to leave. I don't know what time it was when we departed, but I do know that we saw the dawn break as we arrived back at the hotel. All in all, a very fun last night.
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