We headed into the city and ended up eating Indian food again. At the same place. Cuz we love it. We were getting free internet on the street, so I walked around checking out some cool toy stores and such while Eric tried to keep up with the machine. Steve met us after work, and Marty came and met up with us once again. We had several more friends come down for this, our final NYC show on this tour, which was very exciting.

The Lit Lounge is very cave-like. Dank. Dark. Crooked walls. Little pockets of magic. Basement. It was fantastic. Sounded great too. We did get the chance to see a huge cockroach down there, so the trip felt pretty complete at that point. We played with a solo artist from a band called The Study. He was nice. Helped us carry our gear down the crazy steps into the dungeon. He was good too. We all really enjoyed his set. His name was Eric.

Joseph von Stengel came down from Oneonta, NY with his partner Hope to do projections for our set. Really fun having them there and to have him onboard with the visuals as it seemed to add a lot to the overall ambiance. Was pitch black other than his moving pictures. Joe got some good video footage of a couple of tunes. We hope to share it with y’all at some point.

The show was a lot of fun, and the best crowd yet for a NYC show for us. We did get a few new people who came out, or just happened to be there. A couple of Hasidic Jews seemed to really like it, and they spoke to us briefly after the show. Nice guys. Cool that they dug it. Steve brought a couple of friends out. Cam also had a friend from High School there. It was a fun show, and it was a nice way to end our stay in the city that never sleeps. And as we loaded out, some go-go dancers started doing their thang to help fire up the dance party. It was, uh, pretty epic.

After the show, we decided to hit up a French fry place that Steve had told us about called Pomme Frites. They only serve fries. We tried to go by verbal directions that were a little sketchy, and then decided to look it up on our handy dandy direction giver. We got there just in time to get some amazing Belgian-style fries. They offer at least 28 different dipping sauces. They were super good, a bit extravagant, but mighty mighty tasty.

We drove Marty back to her hotel and got to see Times Square all lit up like Vegas. All the flashing lights made Eric very happy. We then headed on out of the city and used our friendly direction giver to avoid paying any tolls, so the trip out of Manhattan was a little convoluted and windy, but cheap. We slept about 45 minutes outside of the city in a parking area in the hills.

reporting for all of us finn rigginses,
lisa the simps

Note: check out Joseph von Stengel’s work at www.culturerecycling.com

Note: the Ghost Ghost spent two whole nights parked on the street in Brooklyn, we were somewhat surprised and mostly glad that it didn’t leave the city looking like this:

apologies for the long blogging break… sorta lost control in NYC. weird, huh? after that, the whirlwind just kept carrying us forward and sneaking away to blog about it all got deprioritized amongst it all… however, Lisa started picking up the slack during long drives… so we’ll pass the torch over to her to tell the stories… i may augment here and there. let’s see what she reports:

Our return to NYC… without paying a ton of money to get into the city? Well, just a little to go through the Holland Tunnel. We landed in Manhattan in the midst of a characteristic sea of cars, taxis and people and slowly made our way to Arlene’s Grocery where we would be playing. Arlene’s is located in the lower east side, close to where the Mercury Lounge is, and also close the yummy Indian restaurant we had eaten at in the fall: Indian Mahal Curry. Once we found some parking we headed to eat some Indian food for dinner. It was a splurge dinner for Eric and I of veggie samosas, coconut soup, banana pakuras, and lamb curry. Holy heaven. So good. Cam was able to meet up with a family member he’d never met –Jordan, the step-son of his mom’s cousin. He joined us for dinner and jumped right in with both feet. Rad guy. After dinner we all headed to the venue for load-in.

The first act cancelled after a drunken string changing debacle and general drunkenness really. Oh my. The sound guy – Howard – was hilarious and full of east coast sarcasm. He was fun to work with. Midwestern implant to the city, Dan Hawkins, kicked the night off just him and his guitar slingin folk tunes. It was great. Hank Williams, Dylan, traditionals, his own… Sounds like he’s gonna jump trains this summer. See the country. All wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. Dig it. St. Louis rock trio Riddle of Steel played next. They apparently had a lot of friends in the area, had a great crowd, and played a long set for them all. They were tight and rocktastic.

We played last to our small collection of friends: Jordan; Marty – a new friend from Chapel Hill, NC who was in town for work; Steve – a NH transplant now living in Brooklyn and our host for our time in the city; and Jenna Malone – a fellow UI grad of the Lionel Hampton School of Music and former theory student of mine in Moscow. Representatives from all over this great nation. There were a few other stragglers in the room as well. We had fun with it. Nice club.

NYC can be a hard market to break into. It really takes a lot of work to build a crowd there and after chipping away in the fall, we scheduled ourselves three nights in a row in the area to try and get to know the place a little more and hopefully vice-versa. I’d say night one was a good start to our NYC residency.

After the show we all headed across the street for slices of pizza… of course… then cruised to Steve’s place in Brooklyn, where he introduced us to “drinking out of cups”… which would become a major theme for the rest of tour. and continues forward to this day… oh my. check it. watch it more than once. it will become you. you will become it. no way.