Sunday 29th of January 2006

Illog

Permanent Link
A , posted by Anthony around mid-afternoon.

I went to a doctor on Monday. He said if I’d gone to him a week earlier he would have given me antibiotics, but I was basically well so there was no point. I was starting to feel better, which was a relief. Then on Tuesday night I headed out for dinner with a few friends, and was struck by food poisoning. This blog is rapidly just becoming a catalogue of my infirmities. I wonder should I re-christen it.

I deduce it was food poisoning because I started to feel ill about six hours after we finished eating, which is I guess the way that goes. After I threw up I had thought I would be ok for work the next day, but when the alarm went off and I got up I found that I couldn’t plausibly maintain any kind of verticality without feeling extremely indisposed. Thursday I made it in, but I had to leave early – I just didn’t have the stomach for it. I’m feeling better now, but this is being a quiet weekend; I could have gone to a party in Brooklyn last night, but opted instead to go to a child’s first birthday party in the Manhattan Theatre Source. Happy birthday, Luca!

In between the meal and the vomiting on Tuesday night I stopped by the Scratcher to say goodbye to Anita – she’s heading back to Canada for a while. I met Anita back around January 2004. I’d been in New York for just a few months. I’d gotten over the excitement. I was broke, not having much luck with work and I was starting to feel lost and anxious. I was sitting around on my own in my apartment in East Willamsburg and I became aware of a slow depression stealing over me. I decided to not just let it happen, but ward it off with human contact. I got my coat and headed in to the Scratcher.

I picked the Scratcher because I had met Karl Geary while working on Timbuktu. He is one of the owners, and he invited me to come and visit him there when I hit New York. I’d already tried a few times, but in actual fact he was hardly ever there (even less now). I had decided that even if he wasn’t there I would try and have a conversation with someone – get out of my own head a little bit.

That’s another reason why New York bars are better than Dublin bars – they’re more sociable. It’s all to do with the tipping. Here, you’re expected to tip a Dollar a drink to the bartender. It can vary with the relationship, the order and so on, but that’s pretty solid. This is extremely shocking coming from a country like Ireland, where you don’t tip the bartender at all. You might tip floor staff, but not a Euro a drink! It seems extravagant.

Once you get used to it, it actually vastly improves the experience. Financially it’s not even that significant once you factor in buy-backs – this is where the bartender will give you a free round. If the place is good about buy-backs you might even come out ahead, getting free drink worth more than you contribute in tips. It greatly increases sociability – as a customer you want the bartender to remember you so they’ll get you a buy-back, and the bartender wants to make sure you keep tipping them. I don’t mean that everybody is pretending to be best friends LA style, but there’s a lot more eye contact, nods of gratitude and so forth going on and the whole thing has a friendlier cast to it. This extends to situations when you’re on your own and they’re not busy – they’ll talk to you. You’re as likely to get a good conversation as you are with any random stranger, but at least the opportunity is there.

This has further ramifications. It means that people who are just killing time and in feeling like a chat might very well just pull up a chair at a bar to make small talk with the bartender, so even if the bartender is busy (or boring) there is very likely to be somebody else sitting at the bar who is open to a bit of meaningless human contact. New York bars are just friendlier than Dublin bars.

I know that in Dublin there are people who have a regular relationships with bars. They have a local. They go in there all the time and know everybody. That’s not what I’m talking about. In New York you can walk on your own into a bar you’ve never been in before and, if you want to, have a pleasant conversation. This is much harder in Dublin. As an example, I went to a bar over Christmas, a bar I’d been to many times (although obviously not recently). I was a little early. I ordered a pint and waited. I grew a little bored, so I tried to engage the barman in conversation. He seemed like a nice guy, but he clearly had no interest in talking to me. He answered my question and walked to the other end of the bar to clean glasses.

That’s just the way the bartender/stranger dynamic works in Ireland, at least in the cities – before I’d been in New York it never even would have occurred to me to talk to him. You order your drinks, pay for them and drink them. If you’re lucky they’ll care enough to ask you if you want another when you’re running low and maybe even remember your order, but rarely anything beyond that.

There were two people in the Scratcher when I arrived, Anita behind the bar and an older man talking to her. I sat at the bar, got a Guinness, listened for a bit, and joined in. I ended up talking to him for a while, I’m not sure about what. I have a vague memory of a story about blowing a tire in Monument Valley and not having a spare. He left. Anita had mentioned being an actress, so I asked her about that, and we talked for a while. She was the first Scratcher employee I talked to who actually had hard information for me about when in fact Karl was likely to be in evidence, so I did eventually manage to meet him. I left after a few pints, considerably cheered – the tactic had worked. Not the drinking, the human contact.

I started heading in there on afternoons when I was free and Anita was working. Even if she was busy it was a good pub to have random conversations in – I’ve met quite a few interesting people there. It became part of my routine, part of my New York experience. Since then I’ve been to parties and gigs with Anita and her friends, and introduced her to some of mine. I helped stage manage her one woman show when the person who was doing it couldn’t do it. She and the Scratcher pop up in the blog from time to time – do a search, I’m too lazy to link to all of them. I haven’t seen so much of her since I started working regularly – my afternoon pub hours have been severely reduced.

Anyway, I’m sorry to see her go, and I hope she’ll be back at some point. Good luck, Anita! Hopefully my next entry will be illness free. Please continue to de-lurk, even if Dean does start randomly abusing you. I’m glad to see there are people out there.


Back to Top

Sunday 22nd of January 2006

Drain

Permanent Link
A , posted by Anthony in the late morning.

First, a link (via Grumpy Gamer). This will probably be a post of links.

The Best Blonde Joke Ever

I’m sick – again. This isn’t funny! This time it’s a sore throat with a cough. I think it’s an infection, but I haven’t had time to go to …

Show the other 443 words.

Ooh, 49 Comments »

Back to Top

Sunday 08th of January 2006

Comings and Goings

Permanent Link
A , posted by Anthony during lunch time.

I saw an accident a few days ago. Myself and a couple of colleagues were returning from lunch, standing on the Northeast corner of the intersection of Houston and Lafayette waiting to cross. A pickup truck was reversing out of a parking space on the opposite side of Lafayette. It …

Show the other 1109 words.

Ooh, 78 Comments »

Back to Top