Beautiful and grotesque

Ani DiFranco has a song where she describes someone as "beautiful and grotesque" ("and all the rest of that bug stuff"), and that's how I feel about Manhattan, particularly in the late night/early morning. Tonight I had the pleasure of waiting for the J Shuttle in what has got to be one of the absolute ugliest of the Manhattan subway stations--Chambers Street. There's a lot of Chambers Street Stations (not all connected). The Chambers Street (A/C) and World Trade Center (E) stop is kinda nice...although it has these freaky mosaic eyes. But this isn't that one. This one is falling apart. Perhaps the freakiest things about Subway stations at night is the absolute quietness, which you never get during the day. I could hear water dripping; people tapping their feet. I was wondering if I was completely ridiculous to wait for a train to go one station over, but I know I always get lost when I try to walk. (I seriously need to buy a compass). Besides, it was 2 a.m. As it turned out, half the people waiting with me got off at the same station.

Tonight, while waiting for a friend to meet me outside of a Subway stop, an MTA employee asked me for 2 dollar bills in exchange for her 8 quarters. I'm thinking "this COULDN'T be to get to work, could it?" Sure enough, it was. They have to PAY to go to work? There's something pretty sick about that.

Why is it that junk food/fast food tastes and smells absolutely amazing after midnight, particularly when alcohol has been consumed? I never want McDonalds, and I was going crazy at the smell tonight. So now I'm eating 'Pizza Rolls' (I think that's what they're called), which also happen to taste amazing.

So I met my friend (Justin Clarke-Doane) in SoHo, and we went to two bars on the lower east side. The first was fairly empty when we got there, not as cheap as we expected, and showed bad 80s porn. The second was 3-stories. The bottom level had a band ("Afro Punk"--which, while Afro, was not at all Punk); the middle story had a DJ and a lot of people ghetto-booty dancing; the top floor open-aired, and had a place where you could both drink and smoke at one time--a real rarity in NYC. We moved down to the middle level after they kicked as out of the top level. Justin convinced me that I should dance with him. Ha! At this point all the good, black dancers on this level had moved out and been replaced by less-than-good white dancers. As I told Justin, I sometimes do things just because they make a good story. That's why I danced for a few songs. It was fun though. It was totally just like being at a Wall. Pretending I could dance while being surrounded by people who weren't much better. Awesome. Plus, ghetto booty music: the one type of music I can sorta/kinda dance to.

All-in-all, it was a pretty good night. I feel much better about starting my second week of law school.