Wednesday was the Fourth of July. Independence Day. Our country's birthday. What else could we do but go to Coney Island? We took the F train all the way down to the very bottom, wearing fabulous outfits even though it was a little chilly. Okay, H. and A. were completely sensible and wore jeans and t-shirts, but I went for a cherry print dress and victory rolls, which I have finally mastered. H. sprayed them really well for me and they survived the entire day, which included the Nathan's hotdog eating contest, the sideshow, the wind at Coney, a few rounds of skee ball, and the Scrambler. A. and V. took off for Battery Park to watch the New Pornographers, and H. and I took off for the Village, after eating hotdogs and French fries and attempting to find a penny squisher that worked. No luck.
It was starting to rain a little bit by the time we got to the Village. We found the closest bar and went to have a beer - are you noticing a theme yet? The bar was called Crime Scene, and they were playing 80's music. We were enjoying ourselves immensely and chatting about walking around to find the corner where CBGB was so we could pay proper homage, when V. called. We had had tentative plans to go to a rooftop party with her, but the weather was crap,and we didn't feel like hanging out with strangers, so we met up with her and A. at the Strand, but soon parted ways. V. and S. went on to the party, and we went to eat Indian food. It was terrific. We were back in the room watching One Hit Wonders by about 9:30 and completely missed the fireworks, but what do you do? It was a fabulous and tiring day.
On Thursday we decided it would be a good idea to dry run the route to the school. We ended up in the right place but thought we weren't, so it took us a bit to decide to trust our instinct. When that was accomplished, we went back into Manhattan into the Village. I had a moment when we turned the corner and the Blue Note Cafe was in front of me. Then we went to a record store that H.'s dad used to take her too, and I spent a long time just smelling the vinyl I wasn't going to haul all the way back to Alaska with me. We had a good time wandering, went into a little vintage store, and met up with V. at a Cuban restaurant that was wonderful. Then we decided to go to Midtown, because the whole of my previous experience with New York was a few hours in Times Square, and it just seemed right to see the things from the movies in real life. We went to Macy's and rode the wooden escalator and bought new lipstick at MAC, and then we went to Rockefeller Center and saw the ridiculous sculptures and the amazing Rivera mural. I had never seen a Rivera in person, and was suitably impressed and dizzy from it. We walked to Central Park, and somewhere along the way we lost H. and A. in the teeming crowds of humanity when V. and I stopped to look at the Tiffany's window display. It was frustrating. Finally we found them at the entrance to the Park. I really wanted to go to the little zoo that's there, but we showed up too late, and the zoo was closed. I paid $4 for a tiny bottle of fizzy water and the girls got ice cream. We sat on a bench and watched a few passersby. V. suggested we go back to her apartment and eat pizza and watch a movie about New York, so we did. It was raining so hard by the time we got off the subway that we had to run inside a deli and grab umbrellas. I picked a hot pink one with Barbies on it. Some parts of my brain will be six forever. When we were finished eating the vodka and fresh mozzarella pizza, we settled in to watch Woody Allen's Manhattan. I think I would be perfectly content to watch almost every Woody Allen picture ever made with the sound off. I fell asleep a little in the chair, and when I woke up, we called a car to take us back because tomorrow we had an agenda. Tomorrow was finally Rock Camp.
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