Day 13 -- New York City--The Sequel

Day 13 - New York City --(again)- March 2

Arriving in New York for the second time was just as striking as the first. After circling around several times (you thought parking in downtown Austin was bad...hah), we found a spot and walked over to the Bowery Poetry Club on Bowery street. Chris Schreck parted ways with us to take a subway down to a train that would take him to Newark to catch his flight. After a short trip to get some guitar strings with Alex, I was back at the venue and set up to play with Balmorhea. The set was short, and we did all guitar songs. Started with Summer, which moved seamlessly into Soft Rustling to Divisadero, to Cabbage Town, to Windansea to We Will Rebuild. Everything sounded really well. Our playing's gotten really tight. I remember Alex saying that he thought we picked the perfect set for this venue (I say we meaning Rob and Mike. I am not quite the set list maker).



After that, Trapdoor was up. I think this was an especially fun show for Alex because he had a good size group of friends from high school and college there. It's always fun to see your friends from home in other places. Anyway, Things went well. Set (as I remember if): Light, Sarah is Rising, Shekinah, Revolution Choir, What is Born in the Winter, Elizabet, Bottle Bell, and Ship of Death. Light has been a little different lately, a little more laid back and open sounding. It's got that horse gallop feel. So does Revolution choir, which is sounding pretty open these days too. i think the piano usually fills that space I'm feeling. Ship of Death was my favorite. I'm trying to come up with interesting bluesy lines for that song. It's funny how I couldn't write down my part for that if you asked me to, but I'm still really comfortable playing it. I try to improv a little each night and make new variations on old ideas. So far so good.

After the show, we walked a while to put up our things, then marked down to this pizza place in a party of 12. It was pretty fancy pizza with fancy pizza names like "The Angelina." I sat between Mike and a girl named Meredith, who went to high school with Alex. She was really cool. She just graduated from the communication school at UT so we talked about the craziness that is Bob Jensen, comm. jobs, living in NY. Whenever there are girls around, I tend to flock to them. I love hanging with guy friends but it's nice to have another girl to talk to. Not because i want to talk about celebrities, make up, and clothes, Lord no. It's just different kind of conversation. The female readers understand. And I always feel more free to be my weird quirky self with girls. With guys, I feel like I've got some image to obtain, lol which is ridiculous and makes no sense. But it's how my brain operates. Anyway, I digress. Dinner was really fun. We talked and laughed together and conversation hopped. Then Balmorhea and Trapdoor separated for the night. We decided we'd be less of a burden on whoever we stayed with if they only had to harbor half of us. So Alex, Adam and I began what would turn out to be a 30 minute walk. Yes, a 30 minute walk with all our bags in the New York City cold. We didn't realize we'd parked so far from our destination. But the time went by quickly and we stayed with Liza (friend of Alex and company) and Meredith in their apartment near NYU and Washington Square Park.

Their place was nice! Lots of space. We were all thankful that they were willing to take us in. We stood around drinking water out of goblet-looking glasses that Liza got from somewhere, before setting up our sleeping bags and calling it a night.



New York City is loud. I remember hearing sirens outside the window soon after I closed my eyes. I got used to the sirens. But the garbage trucks, the honking, the sound of cars flying by, it's all so loud. I guess they don't call it the city that never sleeps for no reason.



Tomorrow we meet up with CJ Boyd.

-Aisha