Packed Saturday

Saturday really summed up neatly what New York is about: lots of great things to do and too many people wanting to do them. Ed and I had plans to meet my friends Courtney and Aaron, who were visiting from Boston, for brunch at a restaurant in Chelsea called Elmo. The hostess would not let us sit down until all four of us were present, though, and because of construction on the 1 line, Courtney and Aaron were taking so long to arrive that all of the empty tables - of which there were plenty when Ed and I got there - were soon full. We decided to ask them to meet us at a bagel place instead, thinking that this would be a faster option, but by the time everyone got there, stood in line, ordered and ate, I really think a sit-down brunch would have been about as fast. Next, we spent almost 15 minutes waiting for a train to Brooklyn (construction again).


Once in Brooklyn, we were joined by more out of town guests, Mike and Erin, and we all  thoroughly enjoyed the Brooklyn Museum of Art (which was not too crowded).  My favorite thing about it was the eclectic  nature of its collection. We saw a mixture of paintings, sculptures, furniture, silver, vases, Native American jewelry, film reels, and innovative old bicycles all scattered about in various rooms. It felt wonderfully like wandering through the home of an eccentric collector of antiques. I'd heard of very few of the artists whose work was displayed, though there were some paintings by Georgia O'Keefe, Paul Cezanne, etc., but I sort of liked that; I didn't feel obligated to be too reverent about a piece just because of the person who'd made it and so tended to look at things with a less biased eye. The museum is situated next to Prospect Park and the Botanical Gardens, and I look forward to going back in spring or summer when I can check out these outdoor attractions, too.

"Tour"

Next, we had to call a cab because the L train, the only way to get from place to place in that part of Brooklyn, was completely shut down for more transportation, and there are no cabs just wandering the streets there like we have in Manhattan. We waited outside for about 10 minutes, shivering in the biting wind. The cab took us to the Brooklyn Brewery, a very successful microbrewery that I've been wanting to visit for ages. They were supposed to have a great tour. We waited in a long line outside for about 20 minutes, again in the frigid wind, before we were finally let in moments before the tour was set to begin at 5:00. "Tour" turned out to be the wrong word. We gathered with about 75 other people in the middle of a room filled with pipes and shiny tanks and listened to a charismatic brewer talk us through the process of making beer and the history of the brewery. He didn't actually take us from place to place, but the facility was small enough that we could see most of it from where we were standing. He was very funny, and the presentation was interesting (and free).

Beer-making equipment

Following the tour, we joined our fellow tour-goers and several hundred other people in the adjoining tasting room where we waited in a long line to purchase wooden beer tokens (1 for $5 or 5 for $20), then waited in a much longer line to exchange them for beverages at the taps. It took somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes to finally get to the front of the line, and when we had our beer at last, we were faced with a conundrum: Each member of our party was holding either two or three cups of much-anticipated beer, but the place was so crowded that we didn't have a place to set them down. We jostled our way to an unused edge of a round table at the edge of the room, sipped, and tried to be cheerful. With six of us lined up side by side, though, conversation was tough in the noisy room.

Mike and Erin

Then, our luck changed. A party left a picnic table near where we were standing and we swooped in. The experience suddenly became incredibly pleasant. We enjoyed discussing the different brews and watching the antics of people at other tables, many of whom were playing drinking games and looked like they'd been sitting there for most of the day. My favorite beer ended up being the Weisse, a wheat beer, though I really enjoyed Mary's Maple Stout, too. It smelled of maple, but did not really taste much like it and was therefore not too sweet. Courtney and Aaron had to leave a bit early to catch their bus back to Boston, but Ed, Mike, Erin and I leisurely finished our beers before heading back into the city for dinner.

Courtney and I celebrate our good luck at our table.

Had the L train been running, it could have taken us back to Manhattan, but we had to take a cab instead, which took forever because of traffic on the bridge and Lower East Side. We found a great Indian restaurant for dinner, but before gorging ourselves, spent yet more time waiting in line for the bathroom (a necessity after all our beer-tasting) of which there was only one. Our last stop of the evening was Fat Cat, a bar and jazz club that happens to also be equipped with a bunch of pool, ping pong, air hockey, and fussball tables. Chess and Scrabble sets are also available for borrowing. Alas, we were not the only ones who'd thought of spending the evening at Fat Cat, and we had to stand in front of the stage area to watch the band for quite a while before a couch finally opened up. Ed also put our name down for a turn at one of the ping pong tables. We were #182, and the electric board read #138 when we arrived. By the time we left about an hour and a half later, it had gone up to #145. I spent about 15 minutes waiting to use the one unbroken women's toilet in the place. I was pretty ready to go home by 12:45, when it was finally time to escort Mike and Erin back to my apartment where we all collapsed onto various beds/air mattresses/couches, for which, thankfully, there was no line.