|
|
|
moved from a polling model
Saturday, April 20 2002There was another rain shower this morning, though from what I've heard it could rain every day for the rest of this year and it still wouldn't make up for the rainfall deficit.
This evening Gretchen and I went to dinner with Gretchen's childhood friend Dina (the South African AP correspondent) and David the Rabbi (who met Dina independently on an Isræli kibbutz). The restaurant was a Vietnamese place called Monsoon on the Upper West Side. I was excited to go to the Upper West Side because of an article I'd read in the New York Times about all the unnoticed gargoyles living there.
I only saw a few gargoyles, but the food at Monsoon was excellent. The only negative about the place is how quickly the staff descends upon unfinished plates. I'd prefer not to manufacture yet another stereotype, but this seems to be a common problem in east Asian restaurants.
Gretchen and I dropped Dina and David off at his place and then walked up to 102 Street to attend a party hosted by one of Gretchen's old colleagues (from back when she worked as an intern at Farrar Strauss & Giroux on Union Square). That was back in Gretchen's "pink sheep of the family" days, and most of the people at the party were lesbians, although there was at least one pair of gay gentlemen as well. One of them, Toni, told a fascinating story about being arrested in Mexico and charged with possession of marijuana that had been planted on him. Toni ended up spending the night in jail, watching the prison guards beat the shit out of Canadian prisoner, and realizing that the only food prisoners et to eat in Mexican prisoners is brought by visitors. In the process of deciding how much Toni had to pay, Mexican authorities grilled him about his job and how much he made. "I work at McDonalds and earn $200 per week," Toni said. His get-out-of-jail price was set at $200, although he later learned that he could have bribed his way out of the entire situation up-front for a mere $20.
Being "4-20," the international pot smokers' holiday, there was a single glass bong in evidence, but it wasn't playing a very active role in the celebration. People don't seem to smoke pot all that enthusiastically in New York.
I got to talking with some of the ladies who live in the apartment and learned that they run a web design firm. "Business has been slow since 9-11, but it's been picking up since January," they told me. I told them that I could do some freelance work if they ever needed a developer, and they gave me one of their cards. I keep having this ugly vision, though, that the web is already built, like some sort of Aztec pyramid or the mission to the Moon, and will stand as-is forever in a gradually-deterioriating state of monumentality, to be discovered and marveled at (but never changed) by many succeeding generations. 
A random holy man on the subway.
A downpour overwhelms a downspout on the building behind our brownstone.
You can see Gretchen and me reflected in the subway window on the 2 train.
A woman with crazy hair on the 2 train. Also, a poster advertising a
Star Wars-themed exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?020420 feedback
previous | next |
