Next time we'll wear sneakers

Amazingly, we can't find a place to get a cup of coffee on this part of Broadway at 1 in the morning.  Coffee's probably nearby if we just hunt hard enough.  But one of us is wearing a pair of brand new shoes that have been doing a number on that one of us' feet and a lot of walking's not in the cards.  We wander a block, down to 8th Ave. and have a choice between a too brightly lit bread and dessert place and a not too dimly lit bar.  We choose the bar where the one of us with the new shoes thinks she can kick them off under a table where no one will see or care.

Close to last call, the place is nearly empty except for a group of tall, burly middle-aged men in jeans and workshirts at the bar.

"Bears," Uncle Merlin tells me the next day when I tell him about it.  He's thinking like a gay man.

"Stage hands," I counter, thinking like a theater buff who knows the bar's around the corner from Studio 54 where the Roundabout Theatre Company's staging Threepenny Opera and figuring that at this time of night, the final curtain having been wrung down a couple of hours ago, the props have all just been put away and the stage dressed for tomorrow's performance and now it's Miller Time.

I suppose we both could have been right, though we were both just as probably wrong.

Whatever they were, they all smiled at us and nodded as we came in, and the middle-aged waitress who had just cashed out and was on her way home welcomed us and showed us to a back table as if she had been able to tell at a glance we were looking for a little quiet space to ourselves and she apologized in a sincere and friendly voice that she couldn't take our orders herself but, she said, the bartender would be glad to help us, which he was, and he didn't care that all we wanted was a couple of sodas and he pretended not to see when the new shoes were kicked off and so we finished the night there, talking quietly, sipping sodas, relaxing and unwinding, content and happy, but thinking next time we'll wear sneakers.

Comments

[Brandy]

Yowza! Sounds like the perfect romantic evening in the booth in the back in the corner in the dark. I'll never tell.

[DuWayne]

My geuss would likely have been bears too. But that's because I assume most groups of big hairy men in a bar are bears.

Coming as I do from the 24 hour mid west I have been surprised to find that it is hard to find much open 'tween 3: and 6:00 in every major city I've spent a lot of time in. Chicago, St. Louis, Miami and Portland have nothing in the way of coffee available in that tinme slot. Detroit (where I have been and apparently Seattle (where I have not) are good for coffee any time. Detroit is also home to 24 hour grocers, something that much to my dismay does not exist in Portland. Spending the last several years in a city of little more than 300,000 but a lot of 24 hour factories (thus why detroit is 24 hour too) I have gotten used to shopping at 2:-3:00 am to avoid seeing more than a dozen people in the store - mostly stockers.

NYC is my least favorite city but it does have it's good points, theatre in quantity, enough to see something virutaly every night and never see the same twice would be one of them. But Portland has nearly to many people for me to handle - after a day or two in the big allpe I am gettign the shakes and want to run for my life screaming.

[Idyllopus]

The one thing I miss about pre-H.o.p. life is grocery shopping at 3 am in the morning. Seriously, that is the only thing I miss, which isn't much,is it. But grocery shopping at 3 am in the morning is the only way to do it as far as I'm concerned and is the way we did it for years, considering the night-oriented schedule. I could dance up and down the aisles to Muzak and those empty aisles made for a wonderful dance floor. Now Marty does the late night grocery stop on the way in from the studio or gig, and the security guard one night stopped him and asked him about his philosophy on life because he said he spent lots of time watching people come and go, those late night hours, and out of everyone he always seemed very serene.

There's often a coffee pot brewing at 3 am at the studio but I don't think they'd appreciate people showing up, grabbing a cup and settling in. But it is an idea for a new occupation for me, isn't it.

Glad you found your cup of coffee and a place to rest the weary feet.