a show in brooklyn...

so, funny story:

a few months ago, at the recommendation of a good friend, i bought some tickets for a tiger lillies show. i was new to this group, but i'm always up for tunes that someone else exhibits a passion for. it usually offers something novel, an experience, at the very least. this show referral was from a fellow music-bud, a seeker of sonic sublties (oh hey, guys. say hello to the juicy!) so it meant more than most.

there was one momentous catch - this evening of live entertainment was happening in brooklyn!

hey, man, don't mock me. my abode's upper upper west side! i reside in the birthplace of cool, baby - harlem. so a venture out to another borough was no foray to the corner bodega, or even a trip to the theater to catch a flick...or two. a brooklyn visit required planning, determination, and most of all, ahem, desire...

i dialed up mi amiga el supremo, kara, and pitched the show. it took a second or two for approval - it was on the far side of a body of water, after all - but being the creature of curiosity that she is, not unlike this writer, she was in.

'road trip', we hollered!

yeah, so...

i know hollering 'road trip' in unison sounds a little gay. but, hey, we did it. and? and?!

fast-forward to a mid-december night, the day after the first major snowstorm of the year. the night of my agency's x-mas party. the night of two invites for manhatten-based shenanigans. the point is that there was an overwhelming, some would say staggeringly overwhelming, number of reasons not to cross that bridge into no-manhatten-man's land.

but i had mi amiga el supremo, and she with me create worlds of fun.

my music-bud, originator of the original referral, had emailed me the lyrics to one of the tiger lillies' songs the day prior. check this:

...uh, guess not. sorry. apparently i deleted them in a fit of inbox cleaning...

anyway, well written, political with a touch of humor. yet kinda aggressive. i liked it. anticipation of a good show and kara at my side was more than enough reason to forgo all and forgive the rest and set out on this trek.

after schmoozing with the executive management from my agency for an excruciating - and i do mean slow-removal-of-my-lil'-curlies-one-at-a-time-from-my-scrotum kinda pain - hour, i left to meet up with kara. this was about 6 pm.

we'd decided before to take the train, so when we left her place at about 6:40, we thought we had ample time to get to the venue. hopstop.com plotted the course with an estimated travel time of 56 minutes. the show start at 8. we were on schedule for a chill, hassle-free ride.

we took a puff or two of the requisite travel hit (always the juicy, my friends) and were on our way...

got on the 1 train at 103rd street. we easily procured some seats and settled into our train mode. train mode's just finding people to laugh at.

kara'n i are experts at train mode. those that have witnessed it and recognized our genius have called us grandmasters of this underground entertainment. it's not as easy as you think. many misguided individuals believe they possess the capacity to readily access train mode just because there is such a preponderance of the funnily-faced in this city. for sure, there are a lot of funny looking people, but train mode's more than just pointing out the obvious. the disfigured proportions and mouth-agape-inspiring attire gives you a second or two of funny, maybe enough for a guffaw or half-hearted chuckle. the genius lies in maintaining a continuous flow of gut-spasming, funny-as-shit observations, whispered behind raised hands and turned heads, for the duration of the trip.

yeah, we do it for the whole trip.

jealous?

juicy fruit helps. just helps, mind you - it can't augment what's not already there.

30 - 40 minutes and many annoyed glances later, the train arrives at our stop. and get this, it's high street! really! you want to get to the dumbo area in brooklyn? get off on high street.

after train mode, we were in the best of spirits - super psyched about the show and looking forward to some good tunes.

while still underground, i grab my phone to pull up the hopstop directions to ensure we use the correct exit. after doing a u-turn we find our way topside.

this is where the funny begins.

it's about 7:30, so we still have time to maintain a leisure pace and enjoy our first look at brooklyn in a couple of weeks. i think it might've been a couple of days for kara. why was i making a big deal about this trek to brooklyn, you ask, it we had both visited it as recently as that? whatever, man, it's still brooklyn.

the first sign of trouble: we get curbside and can't find the cross-streets our directions use to orient us. no worries. there's a dude on his cell and he sees us looking around, slightly confused. he asks if we need help and we tell him where we need to be. he points to where we should be - on the other side of eight lanes of brooklyn bridge traffic - and how to get there...he thinks.

we're cool. we're happy. i've still got a mild high going and the frigid air has yet to register as anything other than 'crisp.' we go in the direction he had pointed with such authority. i figured that he put us on the right path and sooner or later his directions would merge with hopstop's.

and it did!

this confirmation that we were minutes away from the lillies revived our giggles. we weren't positive of the direction to head in at the intersection, but hopstop said something about 'go left at brooklyn bridge' and in one direction we did see the unmissable bridge. off we went.

a minute or two later we come to a stop. the next street wasn't what it was supposed to be. 'fuck,' we murmured.

our high was slowly dissipating and the weather was losing its shyness. its hands were all over me. and, yes, weather's hands were fucking cold.

we turn around thinking the road we're looking for is in the other direction. we stomp back with noticeably less enthusiasm. even with a touch of doubt. we pass the subway station. we come to another unfamiliar and, therefore, unwanted street.

'double fuck,' i said, watching my breath crystallize in front of my face. kara suggests calling the venue; while she's doing that i pull out my phone to mapquest from our current location.

both results are inconclusive and we revert back to the hopstop directions. this has taken about 15 to 20 minutes. the show will start in about 15 to 20 minutes. we were almost completely un-high, a very uncool place to be when that place is brooklyn in sub-freezing weather with no idea in which direction to go.

then it hits one of us - i'm not being evasive here, i really don't remember whose insight this initially was - maybe we're not in brooklyn yet?! still in manhattan?! maybe when that oh-so-helpful stranger was pointing to where we should be, he was pointing to the shore on the opposite side of the bridge! maybe his vague finger-pointing towards the bridge and hopstop's directions meant the same thing: go across the bridge and your show will be right there!

could it actually be easier to walk across the bridge to brooklyn than take a train farther into brooklyn and backtrack to our desired location? cold and humorless, we shrugged and decided to give it a shot. so we're up on the bridge walking up the pedestrian pathway trying not to get run over by psychos on bikes exercising in the silliest of weather. really? you guys might be fit, but you're retarded as shit.

anyway, speaking of retarded...

being the optimists we are, kara and i were both trying to make the best of it. a quarter of the way across, we're still talking up the show, attempting to glean something noteworthy on our first bridge-crossing, enjoying the billions of lights from all the buildings of........manhattan?!

it seems we had been in brooklyn. yep, yes we were. there's the empire state building right over there...

i turn to stare at kara, seeing a reflection of my own despair in her eyes. we turn around. again.

we're just about to give up when, arriving at the pedestrian entrance we had used to start that fateful trek across the bridge, i notice another pedestian exit a little farther along. it looked like this one could get us to the other side of the eight lane exit ramp that kind stranger had said we needed to cross.

kind stranger, my ass. at times like this, i begin to believe in a god. a sadistic, petty little bitch of a god.

it turns out this pedestrian crossway didn't so much as cross the lanes as run parallel to them - right down the fucking middle.

8:15.

caged in by a fence on both sides of this sidewalk, we trudge pass our subway entrance. separated by two lanes of traffic, kara gets a glint in her eye and suggests we scale the fence. i laugh, haltingly. her glint doesn't go away. i point out the barbed and mean-looking tips at the top of the fence. her glint fades and resignation sets in.

our faces are frozen and our coats feel purely decorative. only in the distance do we see the exit from this pedestrian prison i regrettably misidentified as our salvation.

five minutes - hours? - later we arrive at an intersection. we're frozen and our bodies feel beaten from the wind and walking, but we're allowed out. we're free.

kara looks at me. i back at her.

'hey, we made it to brooklyn,' she says.
'yes, we did,' i concur.
'i have tenacious d on dvr back at my place.'
'i have some new american dad and xavier shows on my pod.'
'wanna head back?'
'yeah, let's head back.'

'we did make it to brooklyn,' she says.
'yes, yes, we did,' i concur.

only when we see the green globe of the train station in the distance do the smiles try and crack through our frozen visages.

hey. we made it to brooklyn.

that's worth something. right?