The Gayborhood... and other points West

For my second full day in New York, we did so many things (again) that it seemed like 2 or 3 days. It's no wonder that now, on my last day, I'm in love with the city, but all I want to do is nap.

Steve had a ticket for another Broadway show at 2pm, so we planned to get up early (despite our late night of drinking) and head to the Upper West Side for a Gray's Papaya hot dog. However, unbeknownst to us, some idiot took a flying leap in front of an A train, closing that track and making all the other lines run in unusual ways. Add to that my less-than-expert ability to read the subway map, and we ended up stuck on an express train heading 50 blocks further north than we wanted to go. Because we had also overslept, we didn't have time to correct the error. Steve headed straight back downtown to the theatre, while I made the trek to Gray's Papaya alone.

After the long ordeal to get there, I only spent 5 minutes at Gray's Papaya. It was cheap. It was a good hot dog. But -- and I believe saying this automatically issues a warrant for my arrest in New York state -- it wasn't go-30-blocks-out-of-my-way good. Since it was really more of a snack than a meal, I decided to take a stroll down Central Park West and stop at whatever little lunch spot caught my fancy. Nothing did, and before I knew it, I was back in Midtown eating a street gyro. I checked out the New York Public Library, Bryant Park, and Rockefeller Center, then met back up with Steve at the hotel to regroup for our Big Gay Night Out.

We were so totally sick of tourists that we decided to wait for dinner until we got the hell out of Times Square, and hopped the 1 down to the Financial District to visit the World Trade Center site. There's not much of anything to see there, and it kind of looks like any other construction site. To me that seems like a good thing, because it means something productive is finally coming out of the rubble, without forgetting the tragedy that happened there. We popped quickly into a store front displaying all of the plans for the memorial, then got on our way down to the West Village.

Sadly, when we emerged on Christopher Street, there wasn't much to eat within our price range, so we settled for a strange (but not terrible) little pizza and pita diner, then headed to the landmark of gay history known as the Stonewall Inn.

We actually quite liked the Stonewall, in spite of the tourists and $7.50 bottled Blue Moons. It was just a laid back divey bar, with a pool table in the middle and sports on TV. We couldn't afford to stay, and our tradition is bar hopping, so we moved down the street to a little place called Pieces. Again, it was very much befitting our preference in public houses, and bottled beers were only $5. Unfortunately, there was a sewage smell permeating the place, which was battling, but not covered up by, the Glade candles set up 3 feet apart all over the bar. We threw back our beers and left.

The rest of our night was happily spent in the upper section of the Duplex. It was busy with midrange prices, relaxed and a lot of fun. Our bartender Poppi reminded me a lot of my friend Julie in Seattle, both in looks and attitude. She gave us a free drink and asked us to come back and see her when she was less busy and could "do some shots with us." Jay joined us briefly, we drank and laughed a lot, and we stayed there until almost 2am (including the extra "fall back" hour).

After a subway ride and a stop at the Halal cart, we were back at the hotel ready for bed. We also spent the last part of our night laying out all of our requirements to move here. Yeah, it was that good.