Breukelen Part 1

I slept for 13 hours. It was beautiful. I charged into Gabe's kitchen to start some breakfast. I heard some construction going on in the stairwell but didn't think much of it. Just as I put a bagel in the microwave, I hammer burst through the kitchen wall and chunks of drywall flew all over room. I managed to block all the flying drywall with a frying pan. I let the workers in and they helped me sweep the floor and get pieces of wall dust out of the open butter container. I caught the subway out to NYU to meet up with Gabe once he got out of class. I was not spiritually prepared for the epicness of Manhattan. It's not human sized. It's a city made for giants. We got some falafel sandwiches in an old heroin neighborhood. Back at NYU, I met some of Gabe's theater cohorts, one of which was wearing bright red rain boots and a bright blue kashmir sweater. We watched an extremely avant-garde play. The dialogue was originally in Russian but they decided to translate it into English word by word. This made for some awesome one liners. Everyone looked like steampunk Moorish motherfuckers. The play was about...nothing in particular. I liked it a lot. We got some dinner at a silly Asian restaurant that didn't have a name and had a serve-your-own cotton candy situation after dinner. Fucking delicious. We charged back to Gabe's and once again hit the hay.

This next day I will dub the "day of economic differences". I had to go to the UPS ground center to pick up my travel debit card. It was on the outskirts of Brooklyn, in Brownsville. Gabe told me to avoid Brownsville. Some notable residents of Brownsville are Mike Tyson, Rza and Gza from the Wu-Tang Clan and Larry King (wtf?). Brownsville is the motherfucking PROJECTS, where all the pussy ass ghettos in other US cities go to get murdered. So, I jumped on the subway and headed out. I don't deal very well with sketch situations, as some of you may know, but I figured it would be a delicious experience. It was a cold, sunny day, with large square buildings sprawled out as far as the eye could see. There was garbage covering the edges of the streets and every fence was barbed. I was the only white dude for miles and miles and miles. Every once and a while I would pass by someone listening to headphones and singing maniacally with the music, cracked out on some vicious drugs. I finally made it to UPS only to be informed that the package wasn't for me but for Gabe and that only Gabe could pick it up. I was a little pissed. I ran over to FedEx conveniently located across the street. I was informed that my package could only be picked up with the package receipt that I left at Gabe's apartment. I was double pissed. I decided to call it quits and get the fuck out of Brownsville. I jumped the L train and traveled all the way to Central Park. It was so mind boggling being in the most impoverished ghetto ever, getting in a train and emerging in a beautiful city park surrounded by skyscrapers, millionaires and little drooling babies wearing sweaters. I wandered around the park listening to Blind Pilot. I felt wonderful. As night drew near, I got a baller cappuccino and wandered around upper Manhattan. I somehow stumbled upon Times Square on a Friday night. I was not emotionally prepared for the visceral assault of the lights, the people, the advertisements...it blew my fucking gourd.

I met up with Gabe and we made our way over to a house party in Brooklyn that Sophie had invited us to. This part of Brooklyn was also quite ghettolicious. It was hilarious to walk up to one of the old houses in this neighborhood and see a little hippie living room with dozens of hip kids sitting around some guy playing guitar. He was in the middle of a song so we decided to watch him from the window until he finished and people clapped. His song went on for about 30 minutes, with silly tape loops and one epically emotional chord progression on repeat. Gabe and I noticed Sophie sitting right next to the window so we decided to imagine what she was thinking. "What the fuck am I doing in Brooklyn?" She looked like she was about to fall asleep. We sent her a text message - "I CAN SEE YOU". She finally picked up her phone and turned around. She almost lost her shit. We laughed. We came inside, drank wine and met some of Sophie's friends. They reminded me of folks back home. We watched a girl do an excellent dance performance where she led a game of charades and contorted her body in absolutely beautiful ways. I introduced myself after wards and we talked about the possibilities of dance and performance art in house show settings. We had a little 60's dance party and danced the night away.