So I have no idea where to start with this one. Probably with blaming Jim the bartender for telling us about that 1929 party, damn it Jim. Something that starts out so innocently.. this whole ordeal kind of makes me think about how one small decision can change THE WHOLE FUTURE.
Ok, so I should stop doing that and carry on with the story.
So, Tasha and I spend new years eve scouring thrift stores and costume stores for our outfits for the evening (LITTLE DID WE KNOW...ok I'll stop that). We start off in Bedford again at the Salvation Army where I find the majority of my outfit, a purple flapper dress, long green bead necklace and a black sequined purse. Tasha manages to find a pretty awesome brown hat and couple dresses that she would like to try, but with no sight of a dressing room so I ask one of the workers there and it's fine "there are plenty of spaces at the back there, just hide behind something", great. We then head over to the East Village and wander around there, find something to eat and another thrift store with not much luck. We walk down 3rd ave
(I think) and come across a weird little store with vintage clothes and toys/figurines run by this asian woman with really long fingernails (as in curled around long) dressed in some rainbow coloured baggy shirt and pink stripes running across her face. Yes strange. They only had the one rack of clothes, and again no changing room but we are successful at finding Tasha a brown dress to go with her brown hat, hurrah! Then of course we need feather masks as required on the invite so off we trot to Union Square to one of NY's biggest costume stores. Inside is everything one needs for... anything! Pirates, cowboys, aliens OH MY. We also buy Tasha a car phone charger because her cell is dead only to find out it doesn't work =/
So I'm going to fast forward and say that after that we headed back to where the car was and decided to drive around to Target on Flatbush Ave, picked up some shoes (yes, all out for this thing) and then tried to find our way to Williamsburg where we were staying... A metro map and a mini map in a guide book are not very sufficient for driving directions I'll tell you what. It also doesn't help that most streets in Brooklyn are one way and have street cleaning on certain days so one side you can't park Mon/Thurs and the other Tues/Fri. By the time we find a spot a couple blocks away I am just about ready for a nap. Of course we get back to the apt with all our loot and find out our key doesn't want to work in the front door so there we are jiggling around with this key for I don't know how long until someone hears us from upstairs (I guess) and comes down to let us in, "it jams sometimes because of the cold" which makes sense because the cold did the same to the back gate at work. So by now it's about 7.30 and I decide to take a nap and then get ready to go. In the purse I throw our masks, some lip balm, my whole wallet and wonder about my passport but then decide to throw that in there too. I offer some space in there for Tasha's money and keys but she declines. It hits around 9 and we decide maybe we should head out so up the stairs we go and out the first door TO FIND! To find that the radiator in front of the apt is spewing water everywhere like a fountain, wtf. Maybe we should tell the people upstairs? "yeah, we know it's going, can you leave a note for Charlie to call us when he gets in?" So... they know it's spouting water everywhere but choose to leave it like it is? Ok... So we go back inside and write a note, I'm feeling pretty helpless, I mean, wtf is that water going? Note written we're about to head out again when Tasha rushes downstairs for something ONLY TO FIND! Only to find that there are two leaks in the ceiling, one on the desk where her laptop was sitting for most of the night before she moved it 20 mins earlier to the bed (whew) and another on top of all the old roomie's stuff. Oh dear. So I find a bucket, thankfully a large one, nearby and put it underneath while Tasha takes care of the smaller leak in the room we were occupying. What more can we do? So off we go to edit the note to mention the leaks, lock the first door behind us, then wonder about how we'll get back in through the first door if it's going to be as hard to get in as earlier. So Tasha runs upstairs to talk to one of the guys who lives there (bound to love us by now) and ask when they'll be back etc so that if we can't get in at least someone will be around to let us in again. He agrees to not lock the door and runs back upstairs, but Tasha is not satisfied. Even if the door is unlocked the door handle doesn't turn so we wouldn't be able to get back in anyway... so a couple plasters and a bit of cardboard over the inside of the door (I don't even know what to call that part) later the door is easily pushed open (which leaves me worrying) and we head off to the subway, by this point it's already about 10:30.
Onto the train we go and not without some entertainment. Actually I'm not sure this happened on this night or the night before but I don't think I mentioned it in the last post. It's strange what happens on the subway sometimes, lots of people shouting something or another asking for change. This one occasion about 4 old black guys were all like "happy new year everyone, happy new year" and then started singing jingle bells while holding out a gift bag, they were actually pretty good, but a little scary. Oh and there was this one time, I think Tasha and I were heading back to the car in Brooklyn and there were these 3 kids, two of them "popular" and one of them like one of those kids that wants to fit in etc, it was kinda sad and funny at the same time. The loser kid reminded me of a Ben Lee character in The Rage in Placid Lake. One of the guys was talking on his cellphone (these kids couldn't have been more then 14) while the other loser kid was pretending to talk on his "oh yeah, you can't hang out today, oh ok, ha ha ha, see I have friends too but he can't hang out today" and then the other two were all like, go to the other side of the train "oh yeah, I get it, ha ha ha" and I'm pretty sure he was crying some or at least "pretended". Tasha and I were like wtf and trying not to smirk, I felt so sorry for the dude.
I think I drifted off topic there. Anyway, so we reach the end of line E which dropped us off at the world trade centre and we wander out trying to find this street, now as I said earlier, metro maps are terrible things to use for directions. We wander around and by this point it's waaaaay too cold to be anywhere outside so Tasha decides to wave down a cab. We hop in and tell him where to go, get driven around the block and told to walk down one street and we'll hit the road we want, Tasha pays the $5 it costs and we get out and walk down to where this party is. By now it's about 11pm and the line to get into this thing is huge. We wander down the end of the line and ask how fast it's moving but apparently they only just got there as well. I'm thinking it's probably best if we go somewhere else then look down TO DISCOVER! To discover that my purse is no longer swinging on my arm AWW SHIT.
So of course we panic. We start heading back the way we walked, but I'm pretty sure I left it in the back of that cab, Tasha waves down another and asks what we can do, maybe they can radio around or something but all we get is "call 311" so it's off to a payphone. So I call them and they file a report "blah blah blah call this number in the morning see if anything's been picked up, that's about all you can do blah blah blah." Terrific. Also I couldn't feel my hands after that call so we run into the McDonalds across the road to warm up. She buys me a latte and some chicken nuggets (neither of us had eaten since lunch) and we're talking about what I can do when I look at the time and it's 0009, well happy new year. So not only do I lose my passport and my wallet, I also get to be in McDonalds when the clock hits and finish my 10 year streak of boycotting anything by McDs. Greatest start to the year ever. Thank goodness for Chinese new year.
So we decide to head back to the apt and on the train are some drunk kids trying to open a bottle of something without a corkscrew. With some kind of lighter they end up pushing it down into the bottle but not far enough, maybe if they had a pen? So this one chick starts stumbling around asking if any of us had a pen they could use. Hmm. We get off the train and start running back to the apt because it's freeezing, race up the stairs, try the front door AND someone removed our device and now we're locked out. The night just keeps getting better. Luckily though we had moved Tasha's car just around the block so off we run to get out of the cold and she drives it just down the street from the apt so that we can keep an eye on the door in case someone comes back. Annoyingly we can see that the guy in the upstairs apt is home but of course their buzzer is broken so we sit and wait. Thankfully not long afterwards Charlie, Matt's roomie comes home and opens the front door with ease and Tasha runs after him. So there we are with some other guy we don't know and the radiator still spouting water in the hallway and he is freaking out about it. Wait til we tell him about the leaks in the ceiling. Turns out that the basement where the boiler is has flooded as well, yay! So here come the firemen to turn off the boiler and hot water much to our pleasure because of course that means that the house is stone cold and Tasha and I get to sleep in near freezing conditions. I love 2009 already!
Morning comes and Tasha is due to head home, thank goodness she didn't leave her keys and money with me. She lends me $100 and drops me off at the hostel I'm staying at next. From there I have access to phone and internet so I try and figure out my next steps and I call the numbers I've been given for the lost and found precincts the first who was none too helpful. So I basically figure out that I can't do anything until Monday because the 1st and 2nd are considered holidays and the consulate has weekends off, zzz. So I decide not to stress so much about it and get whatever I can ready for Monday. Fast forward and I'm told that I can get an ETD ( emergency travel document) that will get me to TO in no time and from there I can apply for a new passport. If I get everything sent off today then possibly I could get it by Weds. Of course I need to go file a report at the police station etc. So I go to the first precinct and file a report with some angry police woman. I'm not sure if what I was given counts as a copy of the police report so I ask Amy who is my case worker at the consulate and she's not sure either so is waiting for a reply from Jason who is in charge of processing it. A couple delays later I get a reply and am running to find a post office before 5, I get everything sent out to DC but then there's delay in finding a confirmation that Mum paid for the processing fee and I'm still here in NY waiting for it, thinking perhaps it would have taken the same amount of time to just get the passport.
So it's now Friday the 9th. I've been staying at Joey's mum's friends apt in the west village for a week and I'm hoping that my ETD turns up today. I haven't done too much besides sorting all this mess out but I have been wandering around a bit. The other day I went to Chinatown and Little Italy and visited the buddhist temple there with a giant gold statued buddha which was pretty neat. I've also walked around Greenwich village and along Bleecker Street scouring record stores for K again to no avail, although one guy recognised the name which was a good sign, I was beginning to think she'd made them up! Wandering up Bleecker St I came across this little bakery that had a huge line up waiting outside to get in, Magnolia's? I take a peek inside and nothing looks at all worth the wait but I find out later that it's a huge tourist attraction because it was featured in Sex and the City, hooray? I've also watched way too much TV lately. It's strange how NY is everywhere in TV and films, well, perhaps not strange really, but Jon, the friend I'm staying with, was saying that it's always Manhattan that gets destroyed in disaster films, and it's true. I don't remember where else I've been. I went to Coney Island yesterday, mostly because I remember it being mentioned in a DCFC song. It took forever to get there, mostly because it was at the end of the line in Brooklyn. It's basically a carnival area with freakshows and rides etc and in summer they have things on the beach. When I arrived though it was all closed down for the winter and the whole place was desolate. The beach was a proper beach though! I walked around a bit and took some creepy photos and then left because, well, it was kind of scary. I still have yet to go to the Met. Apparently I should try and make it so perhaps today.
Ok so that's all of NY that I can recall... Hopefully I have some better news coming later.
xo.
