[I'll be editing this with more details in the near future -- but meanwhile it seemed best to get the story on virtual paper! -- Shava]

Thursday night we were up nearly all night preparing for the trip, and after a couple hours of sleep, I took my mom to the doctor’s for a check up, and we gathered our “tour kit” (several days of clothes, the laptop bag, and various promotional materials) for departure.

We left for NYC on Friday’s 3pm Fung Wah bus from Boston to NYC, arriving about 7:30pm — and our tickets for The Residents (Fish’s 40th birthday present) were for an 8pm show at The Blender Theatre, twenty minutes away.  We cabbed it, and got to the line, finding Frog Foden and Spagandy (Frog and Spagandy of the Singing Lawnchairs) in line with friends from the area.  They had come all the way from Florida for this show.  We’d never met in person, so it was one of those odd first-meeting-and-reunions one has with friends from Second Life the first time you meet in the flesh.

The show was amazing.

The Residents are an experimental music band with over three decades of history — but in concert, their work might be better described as experimental theater.  The current Bunny Boy tour features music and multimedia around a one man show — a crazed character initially introduced as “the bunny boy” who is seeking help through youtube and email to find his lost brother.  To give the barest indication of the performance, the first act of two, the character made me think of aqualung, powwow fancy dancing, and an excellent portrayal of Caliban I’d seen in a community theater production of The Tempest.

It was a dense and powerful performance.

Everyone was excited about our upcoming show and plans for the company, but with people leaving town or with other obligations, none could come to Jack the Pelican on Saturday.  But we got a recommendation to check out Eye Beam, which we decided we would on Friday sometime, or Saturday between tech check and the show.

Afterward, Fish and I found some great Bangladeshi food, and walked (entire kit in hand) to Penn Station, taking a train to Jordan’s place in Freeport, out the LIRR.  Jordan and Fish were great friends in high school.

We made a sleepy greeting, and fell down asleep.

The next morning, after nearly no sleep for a couple days, we decided that lingering might be smarter (and cheaper!) that a day adventuring in Manhattan.  But in the early afternoon Jay from Brooklyn is Watching called and recommended that we come to the opening for the painter whose work was being installed in the main part of Jack the Pelican Presents, that evening.  It sounded like a good plan to meet Don Carroll, see the space, and meet Jay in person in advance of our tech check the next day.  And more good news!  Our tech check was moved from 8:30am to 2pm on Saturday, so an early morning on Saturday was no longer required.

We made it to the gallery a bit after the reception started, met Jay and Don and the artist, checked out the space, the art.  And Pernod was there serving the modern incarnation of The Green Fairy — both in the traditional sugar-cube drip treatment, and in an absinthe martini named “The Pelican” in honor of the gallery.  I was familiar with the home-distilled and more powerful absinthe popular in some circles in the pacific northwest, but for Fish this was his first exposure to the artist’s traditional muse.  The classic treatment was sharp and anise-y, but the orange-juice buffered martini was surprisingly mellow.  Fish decided he preferred the old-style treatment.

After a wonderful time at the opening, we went to Bedford Avenue in search of food and adventure.  Finding some very decent and moderately priced Thai food, we continued in search of coffee and something sweet to split.  Checking out a little Italian coffeeshop on a corner, I ran into a guy at an outside table holding a fuzzy polaroid.  “Hey!” he said, “I got a picture of a ghost!”  He showed me the image, which looked like it might have been an image from the mirrors behind the counter in the shop, taken with a moving camera.  “A ghost, right?  I took it inside.  Here, you take it.”  He was a lean muscular guy, with greying hair in a near buzz cut, in loose sweats and a hoody.  His eyes were a little wild. I laughed and took the photo, thanked him and admitted, I had never owned a picture of a ghost before.
We continued on — Fish said about ten blocks — into the Hispanic section of Bedford Avenue, before we decided to turn around.  “Let’s go back to the little Italian place,” I said, “maybe the ghost-guy will still be there.”

His table was empty as we approached the cafe, but when we went to the counter, he was there getting another coffee.  I smiled and greeted him, and he told the people behind the counter to take good care of us.  After getting a couple coffees and a wickedly indulgent chocolate mousse cake — and two forks — I grabbed a table near The Ghost Guy, who we learned was named Michael.

Michael was an off duty Brooklyn cop, born only blocks from where we sat.  We talked about the neighborhood and how it had changed.  He told us about how he kept a camera on a tripod on his roof to catch pictures of the NYC skyline, and how on the morning of 9/11, he had been on the roof taking pictures when the first plane hit, and captured an entire series of images — never showed them, never sold them, just kept them in a box.  How he’d volunteered the next day in the city, and how the people with signs (“Have you seen this person?”) touched him so deeply.  We talked about how America squandered the sympathy of the world after that, and about the upcoming election.

When we finished our coffee and cake, Michael asked us if we liked to walk, and of course we said yes.  He showed us the building he’d grown up in, and the roof he’d taken the pictures of the twin towers from.  He took us walking through Brooklyn, Michael bumming cigarettes from folks as we walked, including a couple of men visiting from Amsterdam with whom we had a great talk about international and American affairs and politics.  Everyone in Brooklyn seems to be talking about the election.

Michael took us down to the waterfront, to see the city lights.  You could tell just how visual this cop-come-artist was, and how much he loved being where he was.  He knew the security guys at the buildings by the water, and they let us through to see the city from vantages we might never have seen.  Eventually we even ended up walking over the Williamsburg Bridge — a train bridge with a bike and pedestrian way on it — to Manhattan and then to Chinatown in search of late-night cheap eats.

Finding none — but talking all night — we grabbed the subway to Penn Station, and found that the next LIRR wasn’t for 90 minutes.  We grabbed a bite at McDonald’s, and sat on the steps outside Madison Square Gardens talking about our lives, with Michael greeting some of the late night folks on the street he knew on sight.

Michael, whose been a sponsor in AA for decades, was fascinated with the therpeutic possibilities of our tech, and is going to keep in touch as we verify and develop those aspects.  He thinks he might be able to find us some serious investments from his connections in rehab, AA, and law enforcement circles.

All his stories didn’t quite jive — I have a feeling his idea of what to tell us about his life changed as we got better acquainted — but we left with two phone numbers and followups to come.  Even if there’s not another connection here, we got the most amazing window into Brooklyn and Manhattan after midnight that anyone could imagine.

Although it was a great adventure, we didn’t arrive home to Jordan’s until 6am and were glad to fall down with an alarm set for late morning.