Manhattan early in the morning is a scary and surreal place. The bars are open until 4am and you can bet there are still plenty of people roaming about at 1am when we find a parking spot. There are also rats. Big rats that dig through the trash, skittering in packs and slinking into the gutter when the light or people get too close.
To our good fortune, Eric has a friend Matt who lives in Manhattan and has enough room for us to stay on his floor. During the day, Nic and Eric head to Times Square to shoot more of our Kickstarter video while I hang out at Matt's to catch up on blogging and email.
Around 3pm, my blood sugar level has hit the crisis point and I am forced onto the street to scrounge for food. I don't think to wake Matt to grab a key to the apartment because I figure Nic and Eric already have one...or they would have called me, right? More on that later.
Anyway, after wandering several blocks past a few parks and tons of trash and graffiti, I buy a gyro combo with fries and a drink for $6! It doesn't get any cheaper here. I take a seat on a worn bench in the park across the street, start munching on the fries, when I notice a squirrel that has already eyed the food in my lap. So this squirrel keeps inching closer and closer until he's about a foot away from my fries on the bench. I bark at him to scare him away. But this is no Michigan squirrel. Manhattan squirrels are fearless scavengers conditioned to constant human interaction. Next thing I know, he's creeping up behind me, then from the other side, then by the bench again. I must have scared this squirrel off at least five times before he left me and my meal alone. In the meantime, he disturbed my peaceful meal and made me paranoid that my fries were going to disappear up a tree.
While waiting for Nic and Eric to return at coffee shop across the street from Matt's, Eric sends me a text asking if Matt gave me a key. 'No,' I reply, now a little worried. Turns out, I missed Matt by minutes who did not give a key to Eric or Nic and the keys to the van with all of our equipment is locked inside...and Matt is working in Brooklyn.
While I chill with an almond croissant, Nic and Eric take a taxi to Brooklyn and back to pick up the key from Matt. It takes two cabbies turning them down before they jump in the third, shut the door, and announce their destination.
We make it on time to set up for our 45 minute set at The Local 269 (sounds like a fire station but it is not), but by the time Eric finds a new parking spot, we play for much less. I play on the house kit consisting of an old, beat up Slingerland set clearly picked out of the garbage on a stage so tiny that I am hitting my elbows on the wall every time I turn to perform a fill. Not a ton of people at The Local 269 before 8pm, but we manage to sell a single.
We return to Matt's to hang out and avoid spending more money.
Pictures and more stories on the next blog including my review of watching 'Die Hard' for the first time, it its entirety and completely uncensored by daytime cable.
