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two diners and a movie
Friday, March 25 2016
location: 5th Street between 8th Avenue and Prospect Park West, Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York
This morning Gretchen was trying to round up some books she'd loaned to Erica, but Erica couldn't find them all and the ones she did find were all beat up and dog-eared. "I'm never loaning you books again!" Gretchen declared, only partially in jest. Erica was contrite and promised to buy Gretchen new copies of them.
As Erica was taking her decrepit dogs to physical therapy, Gretchen and I took our stuff to our car and then took a nostalgic walk through the Long Meadow of Prospect Park to a new vegan cheese shop in Prospect Heights called Riverdel. By the time we got there, I was pretty hungry, so I ordered a Texan, a sub containing spicy mustardy barbecue seitan. It was delicious, and on further inquiry, we learned the seitan had come from Blackbird Pizza in Philadelphia. Evidently their seitan is so good that they've started shipping it to other vegan eateries in other states. Riverdel stocked some of that seitan as a retail item, and Gretchen added a box of it to a rather large bag of purchases that she leisurely made while I read an old article about Michæl Bloomberg and Donald Trump in a copy of Best of New York. When I was done with my sandwich, I really wanted to get the fuck the out of there, but Gretchen kept finding new things she wanted to add to that bag.
On the walk back to our car, we went down to 7th Avenue to get a sense of what Park Slope is like thirteen and a half years after having lived there. We didn't find the current state of its retail environment all that compelling. There are a great many toy stores now that didn't used to be there, confirming a trend that was well underway when we left: the replacement of handholding lesbians by tandem strollers and other evidence of spawning Caucasians.
From Park Slope, Gretchen drove us northeastward to the neighborhood of Williamsburg. Our destination this time was an all-vegan diner called Champs, where we managed to get a tiny table crowded in tight among other diners. As usual for such places, we were the oldest people there. Though our waitress was a bit of a bitch to both of us (I picked up on a very subtle dismissiveness), the food was incredible. We started with "carne asada cheese fries" made with yet more Blackbird seitan, and it was disgusting heavenly in all the right ways. It put so much food in my stomach that I could only eat half of the "fish" sandwich I ordered. As for coffee, it was amusing to discover that Champs does not offer decaf; evidently it's never requested by the youthful hipsters that frequent the place. (And Gretchen's coffee habits are those of a woman twenty years older than herself.)
Me with my "fish" sandwich at Champs today.
With guts full of vegan diner food, we staggered around the neighborhood. Particularly in contrast to upper Park Slope, Williamsburg is a decidedly ugly place, with lots of vinyl siding and other unfortunate architectural choices, and nothing much can be done about it despite the ongoing gentrification.
By about 3:00pm, we were done with the City and Gretchen started driving us homeward. She talked to Sarah the Vegan, who was serving as Jeremy's helper on his project of painting our house, and the story was that much of the work was done, though it would require hours more work. Given Jeremy's manifest flakiness, this was unexpectedly good news, though it meant we'd have to kill more time than that required to get us home. So we decided to get a drink at the Huckleberry Tavern in New Paltz and then watch a terrible movie at the plaza cinema.
At Huckleberry, Gretchen got a beer that was as sour as vinegar (one I deemed "undrinkable," earning a high-five from the bartender). I started with a modestly-reliable Other Half IPA but then moved on to a little nine ounce glass of Tired Hands Double IPA, which, though strong, was not exactly in my wheelhouse. When the outdoor seats near the heaters were taken out from under us, we drank our beers in the spacious sun-dappled upstairs of Huckleberry. The only problem with that space is that the high ceilings of the first floor make the climb to the second more arduous than is normal for a flight of stairs. As always, the music coming from the Huckleberry sound system was odd and eclectic, eventually playing one of my favorite late Jason Molina songs, "the Dark Don't Hide It."
We were a little late to the cinema, and the line in front of us seemed to be moving slowly. At that point, Gretchen darted through the "out" door into the theatre, and I followed her. Everything would've been perfect had the craptastic movie we'd come to see, Batman vs. Superman not been in 3D. How were we going to get 3D glasses? We checked the trash cans, but there were none in there. So we decided to watch The Divergent Series: Allegiant. After only five minutes, Gretchen wanted to leave, and that was how we found ourselves sitting through an even less-watchable movie: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. It might have been the worst movie I've sat through in twenty years. But I was determined to burn the time we needed to burn so our house could be painted, and so I watched it the way I wash dishes, always with my attention on the goal of getting through some small part of it while having the assurance that at any time I could quit (Gretchen had told me we could leave any time I wanted to). I kept hoping that when the screen would go black that the credits would start running, but Gretchen had been paying close attention and knew about all the loose ends that needed to be tied up (such as the gay characters needing familial affirmation). When the credits did finally start rolling, I leapt to my feet, determined to get the fuck out of there. Sometimes Gretchen wants to stay and read the credits (something I never want to do even when the movie is great), but she was with me on this one.
By this point it was past 9:00pm and we had an appetite again, so we walked over to Plaza Diner to get spaghetti. Remember, Plaza Diner has the best spaghetti in the entire Hudson Valley. I was able to eat a full plate as well as a cup of soup. But I'd had so many french fries over the past couple days that I wisely didn't order any of those.
Back at our house, Jeremy and Sarah gave us the big reveal, and damn, the house looked great. The green in the living room looked very handsome, particularly near the bluestone behind the woodstove. And the yellow in the kitchen, though intense, also looked great. There was still lots of little bits that still needed doing, and Jeremy kept showing us things and talking about them. And, though I loved all the work that had been done and was appreciative for Jeremy and Sarah having done it, I was in no mood to socialize. I quickly became cranky, as my subconscious tried to send signals that I consciously know Sarah has difficulty reading. It seems Jeremy has the same difficulty. Eventually I just gave up and retreated to my laboratory. Poor Gretchen; she was feeling exactly the way I was, and yet she couldn't break free. Our friends stayed a whole hour after we got home.
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