Get Offa My Street

There was nothing like being in Madison Square Garden during Madonna's Confessions Tour when, during I Love New York, thousands of New Yorkers pumped their first in solidarity screaming over and over Get Offa My Street ... GET OFFA MY STREET!

You'd have to be a born and bred New Yorker to truly understand.

Half of the joy of living in New York is having the city to yourself while everyone rushes off to East Hampton or Montauk or wherever they go for the last-shebang-long-weekend-before-the-kids- go-back-to-school. Me, I like to stay in town and spin down the middle of Times Square with my arms wide open and relish the solitude. HA! Come on! New York is never THAT empty, and besides -- the tourists are flooding the traps like crazed maniacs (Looky here, Shirley, a real live Broadway Show poster! Right outside the real subway! Getcher camera out! Take a pitcher!) but the other places, the places WE go ... those are blissfully empty.

On Friday my Boo Quibbit and I met up with Quimica (the lil gal responsible for putting us together almost two years ago) and Ookanuba (my oldest love-her-like-a-sister gal pal) and hit the MoMA where we touched the Richard Serra exhibit (inside) and got corrected by a museum guard (but could run our hands along it outside in the garden to our hearts content). Quibbit had a great time making "oooooh!" noises to hear the resonance in certain spots. Had we been the only four people there I'd have suggested a little impromptu doo-wop but we were creating a bottle neck so we moved on. Also, despite my ability to get us all in for free with an old ID from a past job it was also one of those Target sponsored Free Nights so we could barely get close enough to other paintings to get yelled at again.

Afterwards, since Quimica is a vegetarian and Ookanuba leans towards it much of the time, we all went to Zenith where I was able to have sushi and share an order of scallion pancakes with veggie ham. The four of us haven't been together in a long time and conversation was fast, jumbled and exploded in streams of consciousness. We discussed In The Bedroom and its themes of vengeance and loyalty, we spoke about Goethe's Faust, and the very disturbing version that Ookanuba has on VHS that scared the bejesus out of me even though we watched it in the middle of the day in a well lit room. (No, I never wish to see it again.)

We spoke about the probability of artificial intelligence becoming self correcting/assembling enough to take over the world. We allowed for the possibility and dissected the need for humans to make correlations based on emotional reactions which computers can't mimic. We spoke about the periodic table and my three dinnermates got very excited about a bookmark Ookanuba owns that includes the actinides and the lanthanides which are usually left off though I don't know why ... I'm not quite as scientific as they are but I'm an enthusiastic nodder.

Ookanuba and I recounted stories of when we were little girls and spent summers on the stoop making up plays and dances and treating our rehearsal time very seriously ("Luvvie! Get out here! We're losing the light!!!"). We spoke for so long that we didn't even realize the restaurant had emptied. But not because we closed the joint down ... because it was a long weekend and no one was in town!

We continued the conversation at Thalia (equally dead) where talk turned to riddles. (Ookanuba's contribution: what's long brown and sticky? A stick. Quimica's contribution from Gollum: Alive without breath, as cold as death; never thirsty ever drinking, all in mail never clinking. Answer: A fish.) Ookanuba and I ordered vodka and grapefruit juice remembering that they were called Greyhounds -- and already a little buzzed thus amused at the notion of being 1950s housewives entertaining on the weekends in our backyard cabanas, serving up a tray of Greyhounds to Millicent and Bud and Mildred and Ace while the kids played in the kiddie pool. Things are funny when you're buzzed. Quibbit stuck with tonic water.

Other highlights of the weekend include long brunches with Quibbit (a beef brisket sandwich beyond compare served up at Chicory Brooklyn), movies, reading, walking along the promenade to take in the view and enjoy the beautiful weather, and a very enlightening episode of Daisy Cooks! which included a recipe for Ropa Vieja that was so mouthwatering that it made me cry. Not figuratively, LITERALLY cry ... as if my salivary glands were so over-worked that they had to borrow some tear ducts in order to convey to my face just how much I wished I could be eating this amazing dish of beef, tomato sauce and heaven. Thank God I'm no cook or I'd have been holed up in the kitchen for the rest of the weekend freezing individual portions of sofrito to add to my next batch of Ropa Vieja. (My one attempt at pancakes one morning was fine, except that when I flipped one over somehow I got a damn spatter of grease above my right eyebrow that immediately blistered).

All in all, a totally blissful three day New York weekend. Stay tuned tomorrow when, in the middle of Union Square you'll find me screaming at tourists to get offa my street. Or at least mumbling at them under my breath ...