magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

Sarah.P was having a dinner party at her house in Greenpoint tonight, and Chris assured me that it would be all vegan. I took the 7 train into Queens after work, and walked down across Newtown Creek into Brooklyn. Picked up some beer. Even as different as Greenpoint is from Bushwick/East Williamsburg, I found a part of me thinking, 'I miss Brooklyn.'

At dinner were a handful of RISD kids (plus Julia's roommate Jessie) and a few of Sarah and Chris's co-workers. Dinner itself, vegan lasagna, was good. Sarah wasn't happy with it, but I thought it was tasty, it didn't have too many tomatoes, and was of course vegan. Plus a friend of Chris and Sarah's from work brought a tofu dish and a salad. Everyone else brought wine, but as I had started with a few beers after work for Emmett's birthday I stuck with that.

And afterward we went out to a new bar in the neighbourhood, Van Gogh's Ear for a few more drinks, and then into Manhattan to The Delancey, where a band that Chris and Sarah's other co-worker knew from North Carolina were playing at the weekly, free Death Disco.

When we got there a shoegazer-y band, Gold Streets, were playing. Quite Cure inspired, I remember Bret telling me a few months ago, after seeing the Cure on their reunion tour, about how so many new bands, even if they're playing in a very different genre, seem to owe a lot to the Cure. And I've noticed that more and more as well. Which I guess makes sense, kids in these bands are about our age, mid-twenties to early thirties, and like us, grew up with the Cure. In any case, I rather enjoyed the bit of Gold Streets set that I heard, but I guess that Sarah didn't, and she and Chris took off.

We had a couple more drinks, skipped the next band, and then headed back downstairs for Valient Thorr. The description that came to my mind when they started playing was hippie-core. Social consciousness meets performance art prog metal. If this sounds like a parody, it's only enhanced by their bio, travelers from the planet Venus, stranded on Earth. But, and this is the really significant part, they are insanely talented. Even playing in a style that I'm not particularly font of, with antics that I find juvenile, and a message that I already believe in, I still found myself rapt in the sonics of it, in their playing and in their song structures.

I left and walked to the subway station, with plans to take the F to West 4th, likely wait around forever, then transfer to the A. But when a train pulled up to the platform after a few minutes it was an A. Sometimes weekend construction changes actually work out in your favour.

Probably about half the cars in the fleet of A trains have a random smattering of one-off ads along one side and the MTA's own 'Sub-Talk' ads along the other. One of these Sub-Talk ads was a poster for the Gates in Central Park, which is an event long over, like those on many of the ads, but unlike many of the ads it's also a piece of artwork itself, taken from one of Christo's drawings, and so I had been thinking about taking one for a while. However the trains are usually too crowded or I'm otherwise too self-conscious. And lately, when it's been late at night or early in the morning or I've been drunk, I've noticed less and less of them. Other people must of course have the same idea.

So on this A, on the way home, I made my way from the very back of the train all the way up to the front looking for one of these ads, only to find none. I spent the rest of the ride at the front of the train, looking out into the tunnel ahead, something I did on the L almost exactly one year ago.

And at 207th, walking back towards the south end of the station, and peering into the train across the platform, I saw one of the ads. I veered into the car. There was only one person on-board, sleepy. I pulled the ad out, tearing it a little, unfortunately, rolled it up, stuck it under my arm, and left the station. I was paranoid the whole way home that someone was going to come running up behind me and confront me about it. Even though it's an ad for an even that ended over a month ago, and will just be thrown out when it's replaced with something else. No one came running up behind me, so mission accomplished.