New York Part II

So, New York, right. Where was I?

After leaving T and her lovely Baby, I traveled to Park Slope for dinner with my friend the (former) speechwriter boy. We went here, which he declared to be the "gay" restaurant. At the time I argued that he had insufficient evidence to identify it as a particularly gay destination (Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just wanted proof that it was.)

I mean it is named after a Cole Porter song.

And Cole Porter was pretty darn gay.

And I have to say, now that I look at the web site, it looks like it does have some, ummm, tendencies.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

After dinner we watched a tivo'd 24 (which I am going to be totally un-American and admit I don't like) and then I headed back to Manhattan to meet up with B and W. B is my best friend from college, the Will to my much less financially successful than the TV version of Grace. I've bragged about him before here. He is one of the forces that has gotten me through the last decade.

Anyhow, his boyfriend W was in town for the big gift show at the Javitz center. He runs his mom's antique shop in Delaware and was buying for the next season.

So B leaves me a message to meet them at "the place with the bear in front" at Broadway between 75th and 76th.

I occasionally went to this very place when I lived in NY because a friend had a crew of people she hung out with there. It is pretty divey - cheap beer, all country jukebox, and a half-hearted attempt at a Hogs n' Heifers like bra display.

Not the kind of place I expected to find my two dear, beautiful, fashionable gay men.

Nonetheless, I headed up there, and walked in to a crowd even more unlike my soon to be company than I anticipated. Very frat-ty, or stock-broker-y, or whatever that crowd of white hat types is in NY now. But the beer was cheap.

So, to recap, my evening thus far: dinner with the straights in the gay restaurant, then beer with the gays in the very-straight bar. I love NY.

And here's the good part.

As we were sitting there, we became aware of a group of very Aryan looking young people behind us. They were speaking some guttural sounding language and some had tattoos and shaved heads.

Straight edge or neo-Nazi youth? Always the loaded question...

So we notice that they are playing some sort of sporting game - all gathered in a circle, two guys (there were women, they weren't playing) would go to the middle, and then the circle would close in.

I thought they were arm wrestling.

Then we saw the tell-tale "one, straw, straw, shoot" motion. Were these guys playing rock, paper, scissors?

Yes. They were. Skinheads. Playing. Rock, paper, scissors.

My friend since alerted me to a huge Rock, paper, scissors resurgence in this country, and apparently, all over the world (we later learned the big-boned blondes were all Swedes. Of course.)

Yes, I love NY.