Right Coast, Part 2

     Right Coast, Part 2! Three days in the making, spent trying to remember how the hell I stumbled all over the East Side drunk after opening night.  Beers are drank, hats are purchased, memories are erased.  I think this is the gist of it- let's see if this makes any sense.  More after the jump!


    The first morning I woke up in the hostel, showered, and went to get coffee before our tech rehearsal at the IATI theater.  This would be the first chance any of the ensemble had to see the venue where the show would be performed.  We had a few hours to figure out the light board, block the show for the stage, and run through the script before our 5pm opening.

     The tech rehearsal went well- the show needed to be adapted for the stage there, a large flat space surrounded on three sides by seating.  The biggest tech struggle was figuring out a light board with software  written in QBasic and no working blackout button.  We broke for an hour before showtime   I'm not going to write in incredible detail about the show- I spent a week watching it over and over in rehearsals and a week watching in performed, so at this point I'm a little Unhappiness'd out.  Suffice to say, the opening night went so well we all decided to celebrate in the traditional manner: getting absolutely blitzed barhopping.

The beginning of tomorrow's hangover.

1. We started at McSorley's Old Alehouse.  
MrSorley's is New York Cities oldest operating saloon, and it feels that way.  This place bleeds history from it's taps.  Originally opened as an Irish working-man's watering hole and survived prohibition serving "Near Beer."  The floors have sawdust and the walls are covered in newspaper clippings yellowed by time and a century of cigarette smoke.  When you get a drink, they bring you two mugs full of brew, so if you have a party of nine, you will have 18 mugs on your table after your first round.  While we were there, a group of twentysomethings in polo shirts (collars in both popped and unpopped positions) were drinking loudly and quickly. They didn't surpass us in actual volume consumed, but by the time we were getting up to leave they had 2 guys passed out at their table.  They were either in college, or stockbrokers.  We left a table full of empty mugs behind as we shuffled down St. Marks to our second stop.

Outside St Marks,  from K-Pat's POV.

2. We landed in St. Mark's Ale House, surprisingly located on St. Marks.  If McSorley's is an "old ale house" than St. Marks is a "new" one.  It has that sort of sports bar feeling that I tend to avoid when seriously drinking, but they had food and we were all starved.  I drank Brooklyn IPAs and ate ridiculously sweet chicken wings while beginning the slow descent into booze-madness.  We irritated the bouncer at the bar by crawling in and out of the window behind us to get outside to smoke.  I had reached the point where I become frighteningly gregarious, and ended up buying a hat for my lovely friend Michelle Kable from the little shop next to the bar.  She wore it for her birthday, which made me particularly happy.  It's a fine hat.  Also, we ended up meeting up with Phoenix poet Kevin Patterson, who is basically one of my all-time favorite people in the god-damn world.  Drinking with him in New York was like surfing with Moses- religiously rad.  He joined our mob as we migrated to our next location.  I think we lost some people on the way, but it's getting blurry.

Like this, but blurrier.

3.  I think you might know the Cakeshop.  A tremendous list of artists has played there, from rock to chiptune to bizzarro.  Allow me to point out the many reasons this is one of the best bars ever.  It is a record store, a bar, a coffee spot, and a bakery. Downstairs is the basement club where bands play, and upstairs is lit with strings of lights like my first apartments bedroom.  Cakeshop felt like a memory of being 24, surrounded by records, beer, and bad lighting with my friends.  We came here a couple of times over the weekend, and I'm already homesick for it now.  If there was even one place like this in downtown Phoenix, it'd be so popular they would have to take the doors off their hinges.  Please, someone build me something like this to go to every night.  Here, people started to get a little messy, and I made out with Kevin Patterson at the command of our friends.  I have that on film, if anyone wants to pay me for a copy of wet, hot, K on K action.  We slithered out and rolled down the sidewalk to our final stop of the evening.

I think this was the place? 

4. The Suffolk, an old schoolhouse converted into a theater and bar.  This was where alot of Fringe Festival folk were hanging out, and I was intoxicated enough that a guy in a space-age centurion costume seemed perfectly normal.  There was a pool table and little elbow room in the bar area, and we drank our last few beers while everyone reached the point of being creepy, weepy, or sleepy.  A friend of mine commented on me being older than her with a stream of friendly "Fuck You"s that seemed to never end. Somebody grabbed my ass.  I think I grabbed somebody else's.  Hedwig was playing on the TV, and a man dressed as an orange Pac-Man ghost drifted away.  We fell outside, some people held onto each other for support, and we lurched off into the humid night looking for the succor of a flat surface to collapse on.  I'm told this place has a "beach" out back, and that might be true.  You tell me, cause I don't know.

     With some serious help from Hannah, we made it back to the Hostel where we crashed, tired and drunk and wondering if it was really 3am.  We had a show in a few hours, and I drifted off to sleep wishing I had eaten something other than hot wings.

Come back for more Right Coast, Tomorrow!