Fast Forward New York: I think I'm going to puke, Part I

I feel terrible.

I didn't go out on Friday, but I still didn't do anything during the day Saturday either. I slept until 1pm, peeled myself out of bed, slapped together a PB & J sandwich, chugged a glass of OJ, saw my roommate depart to defile his body with his awful ex-girlfriend, and dove back into bed. I expected to be back up in an hour; I opened my eyes at 8:15pm. 4 missed messages. Where are you? Come to dinner.

Well rested, I was. Time to cause trouble.

So I met my buddy Dylan at Vertigo, he and his new wife Sarah, just married in a shotgun wedding I attended at City Hall about a month ago. No word on if she's pregnant, and I surely hope she isn't- she sure seemed to be tossing the drinks down with impunity. Frankly, I have no idea why they told me on a Saturday that they were getting married on Wednesday. I have even less idea why they went ahead and did it. All I have are the photos to prove it actually happened, which is more than many of my comrades can comprehend. I guess they're drunk on love. And tonight, drunk on booze.

Speaking of disorientation, Vertigo (dig that segue!) is a decent enough, if unspectacular, bar. The ownership might have done well to go with a Hitchcock theme of some kind, maybe with a creepy Jimmy Stewart statue that would say creepy Jimmy Stewart things like "Heeeey thar young fella!" in a creepy Jimmy Stewart voice like you might find in a crappy state fair shooting gallery. Sadly, it's just a bar. The things that make it work are the things that make just about every semi-decent bar work: good drink selection, decent food, modern-but-not-intimidating decor, flatscreen TVs on the wall behind the bar. Oh yeah, the waitresses are H-O-T. Dylan likes to go there because it's roughly 50 feet from the entrance to his apartment; I like to go because they serve Kona Lager, an excellent Hawaiian beer that never fails to make me wax nostalgic about the week I spent last year on the Big Island. Anyway, Vertigo is one of the very few watering holes in the city to find this beer on tap, and as such it's never a chore to stop in for a pint or 15. In the summertime, their front wall folds up, giving the place a nice outdoor atelier feel to it. I'd recommend grabbing a table near the sidewalk, ordering up a Kona and a Vertigo Burger with blue cheese (medium rare of course, never ever give anyone an excuse to overcook your burger), and chilling out until the trouble starts.

Of course, the trouble would start soon. Dylan and Sarah were not in this for the long haul, as they rarely are- Dylan and his hedge-fund eyebags constantly belie the fact he could collapse in a narcoleptic heap at any moment, and as such I can't even give him too much crap for going home to plug his leaking tampon-hole. Pressing on, a few text messages later and I'm off to Level V to meet my buddy Tony and his girlfriend. Alone. You know what's coming next.

So I'm waiting outside with maybe 10 other not-quite-cools, as I expected I would be, because this place is apparently fairly popular and I wasn't towing half a dozen chicks with me. Tony had told me they were downstairs enjoying bottle service, and as such I figured I'd be able to get in eventually because he was spending some coin inside. Sadly, it's underground, so he wasn't getting my text messages imploring him to come get me, and the just-past-her-prime blonde running the door was being a... well, it rhymes with punt. After 15 minutes or so of pleading my case and getting nowhere, Tony comes out with his GF to have a smoke, sees me, and begins negotiations with the blonde, which leads to this priceless exchange:

Tony: "Listen, are you going to let us go in and drink or not?"
Blonde: "Ummm..." Looks at me. "No." What the....

No seriously, what the fuck!?!?

Tony informed me the place was totally empty and the line was there to make it appear popular. My recommendation: Don't ever go to Level V. Let someone else make it appear popular. Off to Brass Monkey...

What is there to say about this place? It's in the ass-end of the Meatpacking district, that's one thing. It was cooooold on Saturday night, and walking there from Level Vagina with two Cali kids was like trying to give a cat a bath:

We made it eventually, though, and it became clear to me that Tony and the GF were hammered. In a good way, though. Good hammered prompts them to do things like invite me to Vail for future weekends, which I'm not sure they recall now, but I'll be damned if I'm not showing up. Good hammered also foretells that our visit will be short, which was fine with me because the Monkey was crowded as all hell. Generally speaking, past visits to Brass Monkey have left me with positive impressions; the massive space (ridiculously scaled by Manhattan standards) for the most part prevents the place from getting overloud or overcrowded, which I tend to like. However, this night seemed an exception, as it was packed from front to back. So, after a few drinks and some drunkspeak, the three of us stumbled outside for a cab. I dropped them off at their apartment and continued on home.

Or did I? I think this is a two parter- all these words and I don't even feel sick (yet!) Tune in tomorrow or the next day for the exciting conclusion to "I think I'm going to puke."

Vertigo