A Night In Red Hook
After spending the early evening listening to the bartender at Brooklyn Crab tell us a story about how he did an eight ball of cocaine, then took two Ambien, then got a blow job from a hooker in a Starbucks in Times Square, DEH and I were ready to escape for the night.
The conversation started when I arrived alone, and the aforementioned bartender served me not only a Piña Colada, but also a wheat beer and a glass of white wine, which someone else had ordered before storming out of a restaurant. “This looks like the bottom of a toilet,” I thought to myself.
So I gave the beer to the career alcoholic sitting next to me—who sipped it, declared it disgusting, and drank the whole thing anyway—and the white wine to DEH, who arrived soon after me. The piña colada, served from a drink machine, I kept for myself.
The new world trade center.
Off to Red Hook with DEH, which looks a lot more ghetto-hipster and winter-desolate today than it did in photograph, from the summer of 1942. Together, on a strip of ersatz speakeasies that dribbles into Fairway, we’ll waste away the evening.
Live Blogging: Hurricane Irene
(The East River from Brooklyn, Yesterday Evening)
There’s nothing much to do in New York City today besides wait for Hurricane Irene. The subways are down, the streets are desolate, and most of the stores are closed. I actually have no idea if the stores are closed, because I’m still in bed. BUT THE SITUATION SEEMS EXTREMELY SERIOUS, AND I AM WORRIED THAT I MIGHT STARVE TO DEATH IF I CAN’T ORDER FOOD FOR DELIVERY.
The talking heads wearing pancake make-up seem to think that this will be one of the worst storms ever to hit New York City, which is kind of awesome. Except, of course, if I die, or lose power, the latter being worse, because then the cable will go down, and I won’t be able to watch the absolutely riveting coverage on the Weather Channel.
I’m three blocks from the East River in Williamsburg, buffeted from the water by the hulking condos on the shoreline, which look like Sheraton Hotels transplanted from Fort Lauderdale for douchebags retiring from decency. They were evacuated yesterday. If you gather together all of the people not in their right mind in New York, and subtract my family, all you have left are homeless people and the 20 people living in those condos, so the evacuation only took six minutes.
