Could You Box That Up With Extra Roaches, Please? (Brittcon Day 2)

Thanks to Karen for a great post yesterday. The Summer of Love continues tomorrow with my friend, Kevin. I’ve known Kevin for over 14 years now. He’s actually one of my offline friends and he’s greatly responsible for getting me onto the Internet in the first place. Yeah, you can blame him for this mess. We used to work together at two different I.T. companies (long live Lotus Notes!) and he’s also the guy that got me started on Guinness.

Happy Fourth of July to all my American buddies out there. Drink a few for me.

Now onto another mammoth post. Day Two of Brittcon. I hope you packed a lunch, bitches.

We awoke at the asscrack of dawn and got showered (thanks to having 109 towels from our reconnaissance mission the night before). Then we went downstairs to head over to the Jewish deli called Milk & Honey a few doors down from the hotel. We just KNEW they had to have phenomenal bagels.

But no. Stupid Jews and their freaking sabbath. It was closed. And so was Jack’s World! Oh no!

Cissa met up with us outside and fortunately, the (presumably) Christians over at Manhattan Cafe across the street were open. And they were delicious! The food, silly, not the Christians. That’s Becky and Britt above. We each got a bagel (yum) and I also got an egg-croissant sandwich and coffee and orange juice. I can’t do a small breakfast because of my diabetes. I need to eat something substantial. That’s just the way it is.

Happy Feet! These belong to Britt and every time Becky looked at them she just smiled from ear to ear. That’s Becky, though, always smiling. Unless she’s drop-dead exhausted.

From there, we made our way back to Times Square, which was our daily launching point for all things bus-related. We took lots of pictures of the place again, which looks very different from the nighttime version of Times Square. Total tourist trap, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less amazing.

There’s Britt taking a picture of us taking a picture of her. Yeah, we’re all dorks. What can I say?

There’s Prince Charming riding his valued steed along the avenue.

That’s Mack Daddy Karl in Times Square. My shirt reads: “You read my t-shirt. That’s enough social interaction for one day.”

So we all got back on the Downtown Loop sightseeing bus, with the plan to get off and back on at various sites around the city. On the agenda: the Empire State Building, Chinatown, the World Trade Center, and the Statue of Liberty. One of those things is not like the other, one of those things does not belong…sorry, Sesame Street flashback. Yes, it’s true, we didn’t get to see one of those things. Bet you can’t guess which one. *cough*

This monster building is actually a post office. Yeah, how big a building do you need to sell stamps, seriously? New York City is full of monster buildings, though, and they’re beautiful old structures. The architecture in NYC is amazing.

We got off (TWKS) at the Empire State Building. I almost didn’t want to because our tour guide (unlike the night before) was really good and really funny. Quite an engaging fellow. So we got in a fairly long line that moved pretty quickly.

We headed up in two separate elevators. One goes up to the 80th floor. Then another goes up to the 86th floor, where the observatory is.

The 80th floor is really a dump in the Empire State Building. OK, maybe they’re refurbishing it, but still, look at that ceiling! It’s an eyesore!

There’s Britt and Cissa in the elevator to the 86th floor.

Waiting in line, of course, we saw this sign for the store, which we would naturally hit up for some souvenirs. When we got up to the top – well, not REALLY the top…you can pay another $15 to go to the 102nd floor observatory, but as I’ve already said I was on a shoestring budget here – we went out to some breathtaking views.

Lots and lots of people all around the square perimeter of the building. And there are fences up on the wall in case someone decides they’d like to make themselves into splatty wallpaper by jumping.

I can’t tell you what any of these buildings are, but the view was spectacular. Lots of haze over the city that day. It was really hot out.

Another view. It was from the Empire State Building that I saw Lady Liberty for the second time. The first time was with Britt on the plane as we arrived into Laguardia airport.

Apparently, this is the default money shot on top of the Empire State Building. Far be it from me to not get a money shot.

There’s Britt and I. You can see that fencing I’m talking about here and in the shot above, as well. To get clear shots of the cityscape below, you had to either zoom in so the framing was in between these diamond patterns or hold your camera outside the fence. I chose the former. The last thing I needed was to drop my camera 86 stories.

Britt, me, and Cissa on top of the world!

After taking tons of photos on all four sides of the building, we went back down to the 80th floor to the store. Lots and lots of NYC souvenirs. I shot this photo, which shows one of the many workers who built the Empire State Building. Crazy motherfucker to be sure. The Empire State Building, amazingly enough, was built in only 13 months. Apparently, they utilized the crew from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

I bought a few trinkets for my mom and my daughters. Nothing  major, I couldn’t afford anything major. But I certainly had my eye on the huge martini glass, one of which Britt bought for her world famous Brittinis.

We took the long elevator ride back down to the first floor and caught another red double-decker bus to our next destination, Chinatown. Problem was that the upper deck was full up, so we had to sit downstairs. The tour guide warned us that there was no air conditioning down below but we said fuck it. After all, how far could Chinatown be? It was only two stops away.

ANSWER: Chinatown could be 25 minutes away. With no air. When it was well into the 90’s outside, which resulted in a temperature of 213 degrees Fahrenheit on the INSIDE.

I’m a champ, believe me, I can put up with a lot of things. But after five minutes, I was really getting miserable. I pretty much insisted we get off at the next stop because it was just unbearable for me. Some of my meds don’t jive well with extreme heat. I would gladly have moved up to the top deck if a seat was to be had.

Instead we got off at the next stop to one of the bigger surprises of the weekend: the Tiles for America exhibit. Ceramic tiles all handpainted as a tribute/memorial for those that lost their lives in 9/11, all tie-strapped onto a chainlink fence. Just. Amazing.

I have a lot more photos that I’ll be throwing onto Flickr later. But there were many heartbreaking tiles here, hundreds (if not thousands) of them. I don’t know that there was a dry eye in the house. We hung out here for a good 20-30 minutes, I think. And if it weren’t for me being so bitchy about the heat, we would never have seen this amazing tribute. It wasn’t on any of the maps or brochures we picked up over the course of the weekend. I call this a God Thing. Maybe you call it meaningful coincidence, I don’t know. Either way, I’m glad for no air on the buses.

We got back on another bus, heading for Chinatown. Again. And again, no air. So I went up top with Cissa since there were two seats available this time. Thank God.

One of the things we’d learned the night before on the night tour was that Little Italy has gotten REALLY little. It’s maybe 2 or 3 blocks along Mulberry and is totally surrounded by Chinatown. Becky had her mind set on Chinese food, which totally rocks as far as I’m concerned. Course, I could have gone for Italian, too, but then I’m part Italian and I could probably have calzones for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So we got off at the Chinatown stop and walked the few blocks along Canal Street to Chinatown.

Here is one of the many, many shops in Chinatown. As soon as we got off the bus, in fact, there were 15 or so people holding up laminated cards with various handbags on them. “Handbags? Purses? Gucci? Louie Batton? Dolchee Gabanna?”

The girls loved these little sidewalk stores and Becky and Britt both bought some handbags. Really nice ones, I thought, even though I know about as much about purses as I do about cars. And it was here that I bought my now infamous “fuck fuck fuck” shirt, which would come into play strongly later in the weekend.

By now we were approaching 2pm’ish and I was feeling a need to eat lunch. For those of you that aren’t diabetic, it might be hard to describe, but when my blood sugar starts to get low, I get a little jittery and shakey. I also start sweating a lot – not that you could tell the difference because we were already in the Seventh Circle of Hell, temparature-wise – and just feeling unpleasant all the way around.

I wasn’t quite at THAT stage, but after 6 years with diabetes, I’ve been low enough times to know when the shakes are just around the corner. So I put the shout-out to my lovely ladies and let them know that I needed to eat within the next half hour for sure. So we searched for a good Chinese place. In Chinatown.

I’ve often wondered, when you go to Chinatown, isn’t ALL the food Chinese food? Wouldn’t you just call it “food?”

We asked a cop for a good restaurant and he pointed us toward one. We ignored it and kept walking for some reason (I forget). Finally found a place where we could go inside and sit down in some air conditioning (always a good thing).

We sat right next to the kitchen, which has never been a problem with me. You get to see all the yummy things coming out as you make up your mind. Here’s Becky with her new pretty bag.

And Britt with her purpley bag.

And Cissa without a new bag, but who bought t-shirts and hats for her hubby and kids. And who ALSO was incredibly sweet, bringing us all pressies of Navy t-shirts and baseball caps. Very cool indeed. You’ll see my hat in a lot of the Day 3 photos.

I love me some Chinese food. And General Tsao’s chicken is one of my faves. I have no idea who General Tsao was, but the fucker knows how to make some yummo chicken. My food came out last, which is just as well. Because I took maybe four bites before…

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!”

“Oh my Gawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwd!”

What the fuck is wrong? Becky and Britt both jumped up from their chairs and were screeching high enough notes to break glass. All I saw was Becky’s phone vibrating on the table.

“What?” I said, “It’s a phone. Are you insane?”

“A – a – a – BUG!” screamed Britt, pointing to the phone.

Meh, a bug. Big deal. I looked and didn’t see anything.

Becky said, “Karl, get your ass over here and kill it.” Ah, it’s always good to be a man.

“OK, OK, calm down,” I said. I wandered over to the other side of the table. “Where is it?”

“Right THERE!”

Finally, I saw it. It was a bug. A small bug. A small COCKROACH. “Oh, shit no!” I said. I batted at the thing with a napkin but it was a slippery little bastard and fast, too. It fell onto the floor to escape my manly grasp.

So I started stomping on the floor like I was doing a Mexican hat dance or maybe some fucked up mutant square dance. Missed. Missed. Missed again.

*SPLAT!*

Got it.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand scene. I was done with my meal, after barely touching it. It was, for the record, pretty freaking good food. But I can NOT eat food when there are cockroaches around. Just. Can’t. Do. It.

Britt had already finished her food, but Becky was with me…she wasn’t eating any more. Which meant I really hadn’t yet eaten lunch.

The checks came around and I told the waitress that I wasn’t going to pay for my meal since (1) I had barely touched it and (2) we’d just killed a fucking cockroach that was crawling around on our table. This made Britt really uncomfortable.

“You’re really not going to pay?”

“Of COURSE I’m not going to pay,” I replied. “Are you kidding me?”

“Well, I’m going to go wait outside, then, while you fight with the staff.”

“There’s not going to be a fight. I’m not angry or anything. I’m just not eating food when there are roaches around. And I’m not paying for food I didn’t eat.”

And off Britty went with the speed of a cockroach in a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown.

Then the waitress had the audacity to ask if we wanted to box up our meals. Hmm, I don’t know. Does that come with extra roaches?

There WASN’T a fight. Not even an argument. I walked out, watching all the people at the other tables put food in their mouths, thinking, “You are some crazy bitches.”

During all this time, I was texting back and forth with Robin, who had answered my shout-out to NYC area folks that might want to hook up during BrittCon. She couldn’t make phone calls for some reason, but could text, so for hours we were texting back and forth while she drove in from Long Island (my home area) to meet up with us. Logistically, this was tough. I couldn’t pinpoint where the hell we’d be when she arrived, since none of us actually knew WHERE we’d be.

Finally, I just said that she should text when she got close or arrived and THEN we’d arrange a location. I knew what our agenda was, but we’d been very clear with each other that we wanted to make this a fun and CASUAL weekend, not sticking to any tight schedules. Some places took longer than others, plus there was all the walking and time that it took on the bus, etc.

Robin texted me while we were still in Chinatown at a very cool little shop. I told her we were meandering back to the bus area, still blocks away, and then from there we were going to the World Trade Center. Or what USED to be the World Trade Center.

This was the shop we spent about half an hour in. Britt was haggling like a professional. “How much for this?”

“For you? Five dollars.”

“Hmm, I don’t know.” I think she wound up with 86 bracelets for $2.

I got a pair of stress balls. Need to take a picture of them but this post is already too long as it is.

Can you hear me Nao?

We walked back to the red bus and hopped on (again, no fucking air) to go to the World Trade Center. And we stopped a block or so from St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was already world famous even before 9/11. But when the towers came crashing down nearly seven years ago, St. Paul’s amazingly stood fast, even though it’s just a block away from Ground Zero.

During the aftermath, St. Paul’s became a refuge center for all of those involved. The victims, the policemen, the firemen, the EMT’s, everyone. They provided shelter, a place to sleep in the pews, food, supplies…everything. And now it is the official memorial to the World Trade Center.

They’ve since ripped out all of the pews because I think they’re planning on a refurbishing. But the whole place is filled with memorials. Photos, newspaper clippings, letters, hand-drawn cards from children around the world…

These are badges from firefighters and cops and EMTs around the world. They were all sent in as a sign of love and support. I even saw one from Alamogordo, New Mexico, where I graduated high school. Little tiny town. That photo will be up on Flickr later today.

There really are no words for how powerful a place St. Paul’s was to me. I teared up on several occasions. It ripped me up to see those displays. I also found it weird that they were actually selling shit at the front door. Granted, it was stuff like rosary rings, but still…

Then it was time to see Ground Zero. Cissa and Robin stayed behind in the cathedral. They just weren’t up for it and I can’t say that I blame them. But for me, I HAD to see it. I’d come this far, I couldn’t NOT go.

There it is. That’s it. It’s nothing but a construction site now, literally. That’s why all the memorials have been moved into St. Paul’s. I think Britt and Becky agree with me…we really didn’t feel ANYTHING seeing Ground Zero. We were already kind of spent emotionally from spending all that time in St. Paul’s. I’m sure it would have been different if we’d been there during the clean-up phase. But to see just a construction site (where they’re going to build the Freedom Towers)? Nothing.

The one thing I did note, however, was the sun. I told Britt, “You know, if those buildings were still standing, we wouldn’t be seeing the sun right now.”

“I was just thinking that same thing,” she said.

Where there should be no sun.

Oddly enough, I was still hungry, so I stopped on the corner at St. Paul’s on our way back to meet up with Cissa and Robin and I got a Sabrett’s hot dog. Remember I’d had four bites of chicken for lunch. During this entire stay, we were buying inordinate amounts of cold water. Gotta stay hydrated. Bottled water ranged from $1 (if you were lucky) to $3.

I quickly scarfed my meal down and we went around to the front of St. Pauls to meet up with the other ladies. There, they bought some Italian ices (too much sugar for me, alas) and we geared up for our next venture: The Statue of Liberty. FINALLY.

It was 4pm. Did any of us think to check and see what time the Statue of Liberty closed? No. Not until we were sitting on the wall there. Robin pulled out her trusty Crackberry and discovered that Lady Liberty closes her legs at 4:30pm.

WTF?!

Long story short, in a comically tragic fashion, we acknowledged that Lady Liberty was not meant to be. Yeah, the one thing I REALLY wanted to see (again) was denied me. We discussed going on Sunday morning, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. We were going uptown the next day so we could go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Britt joked that I was cursed. In Philly, I wanted to see the Liberty Bell, but only got a photo through a window. And now the Statue of Liberty…again denied.

*sigh*

All of our cell phones were running out of juice, so we decided to take the next couple of hours to go back to our hotels and charge them up and rest a while. We were due to meet up with Poppy and Dawg and Neil for dinner and karaoke at St. Mark’s Place in the Village later.

So off we went to the subway. Because you can’t possibly visit New York City and not go on the subway.

There’s Cissa and Robin giving the thumbs up. Thank God the subways are air conditioned. Not the tunnels, mind you, just the cars. So the wait for the train was hot, but it was nice and refreshing on the train.

We hung out in the hotel room for a while. I desperately wanted a nap. My feet were killing me. I was hot and sweaty and beat. But no sweet sleep happened until much later. Instead, Neil called and said he was right down the street, so I told him come on over!

I stayed downstairs for 15 minutes or so with Neil while Britt and Becky showered and got dressed. Yeah, I’m a gentleman like that. Much as I may WANT to peek (and I did see Becky’s bra…woo hoo!) I don’t. Stupid fucking scruples. So I stayed outside where it was pouring rain, under the hotel awning and made out with Neil. OK, he didn’t make out, but he stood by me while I did.

We went back up to the room. I introduced Neil to Becky and Britt and we joked around a while. Then we went back to the subway, took the shuttle from Times Square to Grand Central, and hopped on another train to Abbot Place.

Got off the subway, back to the surface where we met up with Cissa and Robin again and walked a few blocks to St. Mark’s Place. On the way we met up with this guy, who seemed friendly enough and thought it was the most amazing thing in the world that we had all met online and most of us had flown to NYC strictly for this weekend just to hang out together. His name was Keith and we all thought he was gay.

There’s Dawg and Neil outside of St. Mark’s Ale House where we went for dinner.

And Poppy and Dawg. Awwwww. They make me jealous. I need to find Internet romance!

It was Poppy, in fact, who pulled me aside and told me that Keith was not only gay, but was hitting on me.

“Really?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “We all know it. Just thought you should know.”

Huh. Well, there was no way Keith was getting in MY pants. Unless there was at least $100 worth of alcohol involved and I started peeing on the floor.

As it turned out, though, Keith was NOT gay and certainly NOT interested in me. He wanted Becky. And who wouldn’t? She’s spurned every one of my advances for months now.

Here’s Becky, Cissa, and Robin. Becky is saying, “Keith does not want Karl. He wants ME. I mean, seriously, look at my rack. It’s FABULOUS!”

The Ale House was fun, though it was loud and hard to hear people, unless you were sitting right next to them. Neil and I decided that we might as well make a go of the gay thing, since we were sitting next to each other, we already knew each other, and we wouldn’t be offended if we fell right asleep after sex. We’ll try that in the future, maybe. Didn’t happen that night.

We had a lot of laughs as we downed a couple of beers and (most of us) ate burgers. Then a bunch of us went outside for more making out. Little did we know what we were missing inside. Becky and Keith were still in there and (little did THEY know that Neil was at a nearby table on the phone).

Neil comes outside and tells us, “I think Becky just KISSED the gay guy.”

WHAT?

We dropped our cigarettes and rushed back inside to see them just sitting there, as if nothing had happened. And we all twatted our asses off. I think I said something like, “Rumor has it that Becky just kissed the gay guy.”

Sure enough, she looked at her phone, saw my twat (That’s What Cissa Said) and laughed. I shouted over the music, “WELL? DID YOU?” She nodded.

Holy shit!

Well, Keith turned out to be a schmuck. Several times he tried to get Becky to go back to his apartment and she said no.

So after much ado about something, we headed across the street to go to Sing Sing, a karaoke joint that I was really looking forward to.

But not before this.

That’s Cissa Fireheart and Emerald Robin after procuring some badass wigs.

To make an epic story a teeny bit shorter – because my back is giving out on me after all this typing – the karaoke place was not a smashing success. It was rather tiny and nobody wanted to pay $24/hour for a private room to sing. On top of that, the place charged $2/song to sing. I have never before seen a karaoke place charge you to sing. Fucking ridiculous.

To be fair, during the week, you get a free song ticket with every $6 beer you purchase. But on weekends? Nothing. So we sat in there a while, nursing beers and a few people weren’t all that happy with the place, which made Cissa not very happy because she felt people were disappointed in HER. That wasn’t the case, really.

I used to work karaoke as a side job and I’ve never seen a place charge you to sing. The whole point of karaoke, from a business-owner’s standpoint, is to get people to buy more booze. The more booze they drink, the more they sing, and the more booze they drink. THAT’S how you make money with karaoke. It’s the alcohol.

Anyway, we tried another pub down the street, but it wasn’t really any good. Wasn’t a pub, as far as I’m concerned. It was another bar with really loud music. By now it was close to 11:30pm, most of us were tired to the extreme, and some of us were a bit cranky. I felt old. The Village is for young people. Everyone in there but us were in their early 20s.

And I was there to hang out with all of my friends, to TALK to them and have a good time, not to SHOUT at them over very loud music. I’m not an old fart or anything, I crank the tunes in my car. But when I’m with friends I want to have conversation.

So we all split up from there and went back to our respective hotels and homes. Britt, Becky, and I took the subway back to Times Square. And I saw this.

This was in the subway tunnel.

Sadly, it was the only beaver I saw the entire weekend.

Back to our hotel, where we immediately crashed without so much as brushing our teeth. I didn’t even care that I was on the floor. Again.

And that was Day 2.

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