This post is more-or-less a continuation of one I made in the wee hours two nights ago.
First of all: happy birthday to me! Today I am 28 years young. Moving on…
My flight to NYC was delayed so I didn’t get into Manhattan from JFK until after 9 PM (6 PM my stomach’s time), not having eaten since breakfast (seeing as they didn’t offer us any complimentary snacks on the five-hour flight), exhausted and stressed from the trip, and just the tiniest bit motion sick from the cab ride over. I was ready to start my vacation.
Actually, I barely even got out of luggage retrieval (which took over an hour, and I have a notion who might be to blame for that, CM) before I was assailed by Big Apple predators… as I walked to the taxi stand a man from a Gypsy cab immediately asked where I was heading. I told him the East Village, and he quoted me $75. I was in the fortunate position of remembering from all the times I had been sitting in the back of NYC cabs with nothing better to do than read the fare descriptions that he was attempting to majorly dupe people. I told him that sounded awfully expensive, to which he explained that it was “standard car service to Manhattan”. I said “I’m pretty sure that taxis are cheaper,” to which he replied “maybe three, four dollars cheaper.” I said “yeah right” and walked over to the taxis… where sure enough rides into Manhattan were $45. I guess getting lied to like that the moment I exit the airport shouldn’t be such a big deal, but it struck me what kind of a city this was and how much business that man and his ilk must do preying on visitors who don’t know any better.
Notwithstanding stuff like that, the trip was fantastic and I had a blast there, managing to compress a ton of stuff into only two days and three nights. I saw a bunch of friends, ate some great food, got to see some excellent sketch shows at The PIT and even perform briefly at an improv jam with an old teammate. On a total whim with a friend I was visiting, I even managed to see both Curtains and Mary Poppins, both of which were pretty fantastic. (The sets on Poppins were incredible!) An old improv teammate very kindly put me up at his place in the East Village, so things were about as convenient as humanly possible.
Monday I flew back to Toronto, where a record-setting snow dump had occurred the previous day (although thankfully it had stopped snowing by my arrival). Many people have already heard me trumpet Catch23 Improv as the best weekly improv show to be seen, pretty much anywhere, and I certainly wasn’t going to miss their final show of the season. It was there I nearly got into my first bar fight.
The story goes something like this: I’m sitting at a table in front of the stage with one of my old university friends. Behind us at another table are five or six kids who look to be pretty young… not necessarily still in their teens, although it’s possible.
In the middle of a scene I find myself distracted by someone talking at that table. I glance backwards, to see the girl closest to me hunched over on her cell phone, chatting with some friend, other ear plugged so she won’t be disturbed by the performers. Her friends seem pretty wide-eyed in disbelief, laughing nervously and tapping her to get her to stop, but she just brushes them away annoyed. This goes on for a couple of minutes, until I ball up a tiny piece of paper and toss it at her neck. She stops shortly thereafter, and I enjoy the remainder of the scene.
In the middle of the next scene, she suddenly grabs my arm and says “who the hell do you think you are throwing food at me, you asshole”. Shocked, I come right back with “who do you think you are, talking on your cell phone in the middle of a live show”. She comes right back with “I can talk on my phone if I want to” and proceeds to curse the hell out of me. I roll my eyes and say “whatever” to her, then go back to watching the scene.
After the show, she gets up with two of her guy-friends flanking her, and starts to get in my face about what happened. I say to her: “look, you were the one who was being obnoxious on your cell phone. Your friends tried to stop you and you wouldn’t. The door is right over there but you wouldn’t go outside. All I did was toss a little ball of paper at you to try to get you to stop.” Between curses and threats from her and her guy-friends she responds with “I don’t care what you threw; you don’t tell me what to do, I can do whatever I want.” To which her guy-friends chimed in with “yeah, she can do whatever she wants, who do you think you are?” To which I told them to grow up and learn how to behave in public. They continued to shout and swear, and one of her girl-friends suggested “maybe we should start throwing stuff at you” before rather comically reaching towards a table that didn’t have anything throwable on it. We volleyed a few more times – I’m proud to say that while I certainly had a hostile tone I didn’t feel the need to resort to cursing in the slightest – and I suppose when they saw I wasn’t backing down they figured they either had to start a fight with me, appeal to a higher authority (none of which imaginable could have possibly sided with them), or give up and leave, and finally decided to choose the latter.
After they’d left a bunch of people who’d also been annoyed by the woman came up to shake my hand, including one of the performers. (I wasn’t particularly intimidated by this group even as they outnumbered me, as they all looked pretty young and scrawny, but as the amazingly beefy performer assured me that they would’ve leaped to my defence had things started to escalate it still felt nice to know.)
So yeah, that’s how I nearly got into my first bar fight.
I’ve managed to see a respectable number of friends in my time here since then, but it’s still all too short. Tomorrow morning I cram into my parents’ van with them and my brother and we drive down to Florida for my remaining vacation. Should be interesting.
Cheers,
Dan.