All in the family

Just got back from a show featuring my really awesome cousin Michael Hurder and his really awesome band, Green Grocer. Took the L train way out into the wilds of Bushwick/Ridgewood and had the first Budweiser of my entire life (it's true).

In case anybody actually reads this thing, I should say that Green Grocer will be back again on Sunday, playing at Piano's with Invisible Circle (very strange, somewhat wonderful, involves oboe), and also on Monday, playing outdoors somewhere in connection with Make Music New York.

Woot. If not for Michael, I might never have an excuse to go out and pretend to be one of the cool kids.

Eric's visit

My good old friend Eric breezed through New York this Tuesday in between visits to other friends in Connecticut. Because we needed to pack all of our fun into just one day, I had to choose our adventures carefully.

I collected Eric from Grand Central (I love going there!) at around 11 AM, and then we stopped at the Mouse House for a (very) brief tour, a rest, and a glass of cold cider. Next, we met Ian at Katz's Deli for lunch, where Eric ordered brisket and made his mother proud. I had a giant potato knish and half of Ian's corned beef, plus about a million pickles and a piece of (amazing) cheesecake, which we shared for dessert.

 Hal, with brisket

Because Eric is a science guy (going to be a doctor, you know), I thought the American Museum of Natural History would be fun. It was fun, although many of the galleries were closing early that day, so we had to hurry a bit. We dashed around and looked at the dinosaurs and other strange creatures, and Eric made a ridiculous video of himself going into space. My favorite part was when we got to jump up and down to make earthquakes that could be measured by a real seismograph. (Mine weren't very large.)

 My favorite creature in the whole museum: primitive Stereospondyls?

After the museum, we met Ariell in Central Park and lounged about for a while, because it was actually nice and not muggy. We even walked all the way around one of those giant lakes. (I never know quite where I am in that vast park.)

Finally, we met Ian, found Eric a few slices of yummy New York pizza, and then put him back on a train to Dane and Debby in New Haven. If only all Tuesdays were so lovely.

Breaking News

WE HAVE A BOOKSHELF!

Our days of living like highly educated savages are finally over. $20. Real wood. Found on craigslist. Fits perfectly in the corner.

Next order of business: a TV stand. Preferably free. (The TV was found on the curb in front of our building. Yay!)

 Doesn't it look cozy? The plague rat has a new home.

The minor downside to buying craigslist furniture is that you often have to transport it (more or less fully assembled) yourself. We ended up carrying this bookshelf AN ENTIRE MILE from Bayard St. and Bowery (in Chinatown) back to our apartment. The friendly couple selling it had taken the shelves out, thinking that would make it easier for us. I carried the shelves, and Ian carried the giant frame. We looked ridiculous. It was ninety degrees that day. Afterward we went directly to the Crocodile Lounge.

Happy books—home at last.

Coney Island

Because we are crazy fools whose tastes oscillate between the snobbishly refined and the firmly lowbrow, we went to Coney Island on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. It was a beautiful, cloudless day, although very hot, and the crowds were flocking to the newly re-opened Luna Park. We bought $15 wristbands and rode as many rides as we could without throwing up. Some weren't even running yet. I've never seen so many people in one place.

Highlights of our trip:

• I almost threw up on a kiddie ride. It was torturous. Who ever got the idea that spinning is fun?
   
• We rode a very silly, brand new roller coaster ("The Tickler") that goes BACKWARDS at the end! Our companions were a very cute, very serious little boy, and his mother, who giggled and shrieked the whole time. I loved them both. The little kid bonked his head when the ride screeched to a halt at the end, and I worried about him all day.
   
• Those strange men who dance on the boardwalk had actually drawn a crowd this time.

• Ian made me ride some terrifying thing where you sit in a tiny swing and then are lifted into the sky, where you go into rapid orbit around a pole. I closed my eyes.
   
• The hot dogs (and fries!) turned out to be totally worth the chaos that is waiting in "line" at Nathan's.
   
• We changed $2 into quarters at an ancient arcade, failed miserably at skee ball (the only game we remembered how to play), and won a pitiful amount of tickets, which we proudly exchanged for two plastic treasures: a spider ring and a purple frog.
   
• We made it to the very front of the line for the Cyclone, that famous rickety wooden roller coaster, and then they closed it down. The grizzled ride operators gave us our money back and shuffled us out as fast as they could, as though they didn't want us to ask questions. Quite sinister.
   
• Half of the people waiting in line for the Wonder Wheel were under the impression that they were waiting in line for the bathroom. Confusing discussions ensued.
   
• The Wonder Wheel, which opened Memorial Day weekend in 1920, is not your ordinary Ferris wheel. Each little cart is held from its own curvy track, so that at certain points during the ride, the whole cart and its occupants go lurching forward, sliding to the end of the track, and then abruptly heaving backward again. This cycle continues, getting faster and faster, until you finally come to rest and begin trying to slow the frantic beating of your heart to a non-lethal rate. Depending on where you are on the circle, the lurching forward can make it seem like you're going to be deposited into the bowels of the ride and digested by the gears, or flung off the machine entirely and dropped to earth several hundred yards away. Remember going to your own humble county fair and braving the Ferris wheel with a boy who insisted on rocking the little cart back and forth to scare you when you were stopped at the top of the ride? This is nothing like that.
   
• I got the second sunburn of 2010—a dusty pink on my shoulders. (The year's inaugural burn came about six weeks ago, when Schuyler and I sat on the roof of her apartment building for hours while we thumbed through library books and fretted about—but did not write—our final papers. It was near the end of the semester. We were starting to crack up. I got a pretty serious burn on one knee and the opposite shoulder. Very attractive.)

• At the end of the day, we finally escaped the throngs of screaming (now exhausted and dehydrated) children and headed to a peaceful spot called Beer Island. It's just an enclosed sand pit with some umbrella-shaded tables and '90s hits playing over the loudspeaker. An outdoor bar painted in cheerful colors offers an impressive selection of beers on tap; apparently Coney Island has its own brewing company. (We approve.) We sat in our plastic chairs, enjoying the (relative) quiet, the pretty, late-afternoon light, and the hint of a breeze while sipping our beers and admiring our skee ball loot.

•  Back in the city, we went to Polonia, our favorite funny little Polish restaurant around the corner, and I ordered a starch-lover's dream: sauerkraut and mushroom pierogi with potato pancakes and a blintz. Mmm hmm.

I'm not an html whiz (yet), and when I embed a slideshow, the pictures come out the size of postage stamps. I think if you click directly on a photo, you'll be taken to the Picasa web album where the images are more reasonably sized.

Time Out also has a really great slideshow of Memorial Day weekend at Luna Park. See if you can guess which ride is which.

Cheers!

To New Jersey, with love

Much as it pains me to associate myself with any sports franchise sponsored by a toxic drink, Ian and I have decided that it is our duty as soccer fans to support our local MLS team, the New York Red Bulls. One recent Thursday night, we made our first pilgrimage to the shiny new stadium in Harrison, New Jersey to watch a game. We bought Subway sandwiches before we left town, hopped on the PATH train, and were at the stadium in a little over half an hour. The weather was beautiful, the beer was (relatively) affordable, and I even found a new player to hate—curly-haired Columbus Crew forward (and brute) Steven Lenhart. Not bad for a weeknight adventure. We weren't even too depressed that our, er, beloved Red Bulls lost 3-1.