Right Coast, Part 1.

    Fresh from my trip to California, I return to Phoenix, put in my two weeks at the bookstore, and book a flight to New York for early August.  I spent a week in the Lower East side eating street pizza, studying rat/squirrel relations, eating street falafel, nursing hangovers, and eating more street pizza.  My second travelogue, (cleverly named "Right Coast") begins now.....right now!




     In downtown Phoenix is my favorite theater, Space 55.  Not only have I seen lots of incredible theater their stage, but they've let me perform at their 7 Minutes series consistently over the last year.  Due to their hard work in bringing experimental and unrepresented theater to the valley, I've seen sharks on dates, naked magicians, and all sorts of unmanageable chaos on stage.

     One of my favorite pieces of theater to grace their stage was The Unhappiness Plays by Greg Kotis.  I saw the show a couple of times in January/February of this year and absolutely loved it.  A few months ago they submitted it to the New York Fringe Festival and were accepted.  Initially, I was so excited that they were going that I considered going to New York for the weekend just to see the show and support my friends, but after tripping through California for a week I realized that I really wanted more than that.  I offered to work tech for the show.  I started going to rehearsels.

     Just two weeks after returning from California I was on a plane with JFK airport as the destination.  I'd booked a two-person room at a hostel in the Bowery to share with my good friend, humorist Ashley Naftule, who was also going out to support the show.  Neither of us had every been to New York before.

    Firstly, I'd be landing in NYC at 6am, local time, after a red-eye flight.  I used to have a serious problem with flying- the entire experience would leave me completely drained an I was not looking forward to flying overnight across the country.  Despite my hesitation, the flight was basically fine.  I sat next to a recently discharged marine who had come to Phoenix to see his girlfriend only to find out she was breaking up with him.  He was headed back to Baltimore to see family instead.  He asked me why she wouldn't tell him they were through before he got on a plane to see her.  I told him I didn't know.  He was polite and wide.  He slept like an infant the whole flight.

   I didn't.  How some people get comfortable enough to fall asleep braced against a plastic window frame is beyond me.  I spent the flight in a sleepless trance before giving up and trying to read something instead.  I read the Public Play issue of Kill Screen, which has amazing articles and a great "how-to" guide to the folk game Ninja.  I touched down in NYC with a carry on and my backpack (bought in Chinatown while I was in San Francisco) and waited for my friends Richard Briggs and Michelle Kable's flights to arrive so we could split a Taxi from JFK to the East Side.  We met up and taxi'd through Brooklyn while the screen in the cab played the same 4 clips of news over and over again- my favorite being a bit about a local children's theater performing and abridged Hamlet.  Hearing a child melodramatically shout "Hamlet, what have you DONE?!" over a dozen times burned the sound into my memory forever.

      When we arrived, we ended up eating breakfast in a hotel restaurant (deceptively called "Co-op" and not clearly a hotel to our jetlagged eyes) across from Economy Candy in the Lower East Side.  I've never wanted or needed coffee as badly as I did that morning.  This was also my first exposure to NYC cost-of-living.  My two scrambled eggs, potatoes, toast and coffee were almost $20.  They were good (in fact, I didn't know scrambled eggs could be so good) but I was shell-shocked by the cost of a good breakfast.  I secretly swore to eat more cheap street food from then on out.  We met up with more members of the ensemble there, talked about the plan for the night, and where the show would be.

     I arrived at the Bowery Whitehouse Hotel hostel a few hours earlier than Ash and had to wait for the room to become available so I could drop my bags off.  A few things of note about the Hostel:

The Most Common Review, in DragonBall format..

1. It has horrible reviews.  Most hover around 1 star, claiming bed-bugs, soiled sheets, loitering bums and rooms without ceilings.  In place of a ceiling was a metal lattice work to keep people from scaling the six foot wall that divides your cubicle from your neighbors. Every noise made in any room on the floor, from the humble cough to the deafening morning fart, can be heard by every single person on your floor.  That's right, other hostelers.  I heard everything.

2.  I actually liked it alot.  Even if the "rooms" were a little prison-cell like, it worked perfectly for our purposes.  I didn't plan on spending much time in the hostel, and really just needed a safe place for my luggage and a place to sleep.  I was pretty much going to just pass out there and shower.  I didn't have any bed-bugs the whole time, and really, what more can a person ask for when your paying 40 bucks a night to stay in the heart of the east side?

No bags required, kids!

3. I was poisoned by glue fumes.  I crashed at the hostel to catch up on some sleep before we all went out on the town that first night.  I woke up shortly after falling asleep to find myself mind-numbingly high.  I sat up slowly, everything drifting like plastic kelp in a dentist's aquarium.  Someone walked down the hall shouting "Is someone huffing fucking glue up here?"  I realized that was precisely what was happening- powerful fumes were heavy in the air and I threw some clothes on in staccato slow-motion and stumbled downstairs for air.  When I drifted up to the reception counter (booth is a better word) I said something like "I'm not shhhhure but there's like, like, like....glue?  glue fumes....glue upstairs..."   The woman at the counter informed me that they were re-epoxying the showers on my floor and that the poison should be gone by the time "you get back."  I hadn't planned on going anywhere yet, but it seemed like I should.

     My brain cells cried.  It was still day out, and I was fatigued from not sleeping on the flight, jet-lagged from the time difference, and brain-damaged by glue.  I was ready for New York.

The Tarot for "joyful social contact."

    That night we met up with the bulk of the Space 55 ensemble at an Italian place called Three of Cups in the East Village.  Throughout the trip, it was very rare that the ensemble was all in one place at the same time unless that place was the stage at the IATI Theater, where the show was being performed.  At Three of Cups I ate a calzone the size of a baby and listened to people outside hawking flyers for an upcoming comedy event.  They professed, I'm told, it was "to help animals, and stuff."  Three of cups has a longsword on the wall that, from where I was sitting, seemed poised to drop on the head of one of the diners across from me at any moment.  I know with the advanced parts of my brain that the angles were all wrong for that, but in my heart and reptile brain, I hoped.  I dreamed.

This, without chairs, and with more existential questions.

     Afterward, we attended the Fringe mixer at Chinatown Brasserie.  "Mixer" is not a great word to describe the experience of being in a standing room only, extremely loud and cramped underground bar filled with other performers hyping their shows.  In a way, it raised a question in everyone's mind:  95% of the people there were performers or affiliated with a show happening at the Fringe- would passing flyers to everyone in the room really increase the volume of people going to your own show?  Admittedly, I did see Theater of the Arcade because they came to the party dressed as Pac-Man ghosts (More on this awesome show in a later post, I promise.)  But really, were any of the people there going to come and see our show because we handed them a flyer?  I was burned out when we got there, but I remained jovial.  I even tried to dance with a friend there, but the floor was so packed it was impossible and devolved into hand-jive that irritated everyone near us.  We booked out of there relatively early and headed back to the hostel to prepare for the next day, which would be our sole tech rehearsal before the show began it's run.

    Let me be perfectly straight with you- I spent a large amount of the time I was in New York drinking.  I'm going to be doing my best to piece together what basically feels like one very long day into some kind of chronological form, but if you were there and something seems out of sequence or the names of places are wrong, please, please correct me.  As T-Pain might say, blame it on the alcohol- and the glue fumes.

    Tomorrow!  Tech, Booze, Blues.  Tune in!