2 train from Times Square to the Upper West Side at 8pm. Crowded, but in my heels and giraffe ears I am the tallest person in the car, hanging on to the rail and towering over all the others in their gray and black coats--not a one of them festive. There is a polar bear too, but she's with me. We grit our teeth as the train inches forward at a pace 10x slower than usual, but fortunately makes only express stops.
We disembark and walk 6 blocks to our friends' apartment. There we are greeted by a Tea Partier and Scott Pilgrim's blue-haired girlfriend. Soon and suddenly a penguin joins us and voila! We are an impromptu zoo: the brown spotted, the white and fluffy, the bird with a bowtie. More characters arrive--Cleopatra, Bella the vampire-abused, a Twister board, a video game-inspired deep sea diver, and Chilean miners whose only known word in Spanish is Hola. The couple wearing jeans and sweaters are given judgmental looks and slink to the sofa corners.
Soon it is time to depart to the chilly night air once again, and the Chilean miners escort us zoo animals back to the subway from whence we came. On the downtown platform one of the miners indulges in a gooey lizard treat and mercifully the train arrives promptly. A man missing several teeth vacates his seat for us and attempts to joke with one of the Chilean miners about fried rice; he keeps winking at me to keep me in on it, but the miner grows palpably more offended as the comments continue. Somehow soon enough we arrive at Christopher Street and return again to the wind and the cutting cold.
Another apartment, another odd assortment of guests. We stay for awhile and sip beers while admiring the setting. Exposed brick walls and a fireplace mantel decorated with candlelight and dragon statues downstairs, pink lights strung from the ceiling upstairs and a kitchen painted teal and yellow. There are also body parts hanging from the ceiling and blood smears on the floor.
We get a call to meet up with some vampires at a bar across town, so we bid our hosts David Beckham and a police officer lady goodnight and venture out to try and find a cab. We walk and flag and walk and flag. I take off my heels now, as by this point I am a giraffe with a hobbled gait, instead of a graceful stride. We walk some more and there is nary a cab to be had on streets or avenues, so we put our heads forward and determine to make it to 2nd avenue by foot.
By the time we arrive it is 2am and the party at the bar has begun its descent into pairings-off and unfortunate bathroom sicknesses but despite these peripheral goings-on, the vampires are still in the full swing of things. Some dancing, some drinking. People slowly but surely begin to beg off, and I have a pleasant conversation with Count Chocula about the perils of crafting wooden furniture before the polar bear and I agree to retire for the evening. This time, we manage to secure a cab home.
Sunday night we encounter the same west to east problem, as the other half of our party is once again on 2nd avenue and we are on the west side of 6th. Only this time the streets are completely choked with every creature real and imagined, which makes even walking difficult, descending into the subway near impossible, and hailing a cab completely out of the question. We blend in now but are also differentiated by our purposeful strides through the crowds, our desire to move as rapidly as possible away from the parade everyone else is surging towards. We make it to our destination eventually, limping and hungry, but the bar houses sustenance in the form of both ale and friendly socializing.
Later there is a stark contrast between the quiet of east 7th and the perpetual rowdiness of St. Mark's. As we round the corner on that block, it's clear the west side parade has made traction over here, but by now we generally ignore the revelry and instead make a beeline for a yakitori restaurant. By the time we emerge, satiated with grilled meat and peppers and tofu, it is officially November, but the zombies and faeries and ninjas are all still out to play, and it is clear they will extend their stay into the wee hours of the night.
I smile to myself at the childishness the city has revealed this weekend and climb into yet another cab. After all, 363 days a year the sidewalks are dominated by somber suits and down jackets in the winter, sundresses and short shorts in the summer. Yet underneath this society-accepted outwear lurk Mad Hatters and star athletes, XMen and butterflies and giant boxes of Cheesy Poofs. Once seated in the taxi I take off my giraffe ears and set them in my lap, thinking as I gaze out the window, What sort of interesting characters will gestate over the next year, finally manifesting themselves at this time in 2011?
tournament scoreboard
tournament scoreboard
middlebury chasing the snitch
snitch evading the pitt seeker
looks like the tufts seeker is flying, right??
the pitch
final match between middlebury and tufts, just to give you an idea of the size of the crowd. and at this moment all 10 or so of the snitches from the entire tournament rushed the field in order to confuse the seekers and protect the actual snitch. good stuff.
