Glastonbury, New York, and Some Poker Part III

I went to a wedding in New York a couple of weeks ago. We arrived on the Wednesday night, and the wedding was on the Sunday, on a beach in Long Island. With free bar! WOOOOO. If I’d bothered to read the invite, I would have seen that it wasn’t black tie, but given I’d brought my tux, goddamn it, I was going to put it to use and look better than everyone else anyway. Which I think I did, but I had no idea how to put on a bow tie. Team effort, thanks guys!

The cultural highlight of my visit was going to High Line Park twice. An old, overground subway track between 12th and 30th on the lower west side, converted into a park, with some art installations and phenomenal views. We spent perhaps too much time partying and drinking, rather than going to art galleries and museums and so on, but given our group of people, we struck a good balance.

The Monday night was the highlight of my trip. We went to see Rent, but of the six of us, two of us left after only ten minutes.The production was appalling, an assault on the senses. At the intermission bar, we drank cocktails, I introduced my friend to Patron Café XO, and we chatted with the barman, until it turned into a Karaoke night.

For two guys who’ve just walked out of a musical, to appreciate the music as much as we did, well, it was astonishingly good – both of us were gawking, mouths on the floor, fixated – every singer bore their heart and soul, and their hearts and souls shone more brightly than a newborn star.

Our friends soon joined us, admitting we’d made the right decision to leave after sitting through two and a half hours of virtual torture. We had so much fun that we attracted another ten hangers-on over the night, and moved onto the next bar, where we kept on singing and drinking for hours. Brilliant! If you’re in New York, I highly recommend going to the New World Stages on west 50th street on a Monday night.

Other than a relatively quiet game of Ring of Fire (I’m really, really bad at that game), Tuesday was the next best night out. My friends had flown home, so I stayed with a friend of my brothers. The night started weirdly, involving a bar almost-fight, and sitting in the back seat of a hipsters car as he snorted coke at every set of lights.

Things settled down at the next bar, where we stayed until 4 AM. New York is a strange place, much more accepting of strange people than, say, London or Paris, and I can see myself living there one day. Smoking is illegal in clubs and bars, but people do it anyway; the dress sense is much more chilled and varied than other places I’ve been to; in general there seems to be a lot more imagination with aesthetics, for example the architecture and décor.

We ended the night by going to a rooftop afterparty and watching the sun rise over the New York skyline with beers in hand. A pretty damn cool way to end the whole trip, in fact. Do want.

Since then, as promised, I gave up smoking, on the 1st of september. It turns out that giving up is easy when each cigarette costs you £200 – I’ve promised that for every cigarette someone catches me smoking, they get £100 and £100 goes to charity. Of course, I could just smoke when no-one’s around, but it’s just easier not to, especially given I live and work with two good friends.

I will be using the same method to give up alcohol – less of an addiction, but possibly more harmful – in January, obviously after New Years, in preparation for next years marathon. More than three months of clean living and exercise. Something weird is going on!

That’s all for now. I could go into more detail and tell you about any of a number of great nights out and events over the last couple of months, but I doubt you have the patience. See you soon!