Upper East Side

1986 was the last time I had been to NYC and even then it was a day trip due to my college internship primarily being on Long Island. This time I was with my fiance and we got to stay wit her college friend who lives on the corner of 63rd St and 1st Ave. The hustle and bustle is amazing, the horns, the shouting, the hooting, whistles are simply just a part of life there. To say I was out of my element would be a understatement of the truest kind

Even getting into the city was a challenge, give me a logging road with rocks and mandatory crick crossing any day. It seemed like everyone but me knew where they were going and they were very unforgiving. I did learn that there's not time for turn signals and if you see daylight in your mirror you just go. Sheepishly I was able to inch my way to our destination.

Once there I was in awe. The place truly never sleeps and you can do whatever you want at anytime you want. We hit the Spotted Dog for happy hour then off to Rudy's for some more libation. Rudy's ( http://www.rudysbarnyc.com/ ) was my favorite bar we went to. It's a true shot and a beer kind of joint. If your sitting at the bar and NOT drinking you are asked to find another spot to sit or stand. The booths are completely covered in duct tape and they even have free all you can eat hot dogs, a Rudy's tradition. The place is so cool with a total kick ass jukebox. Everyone there is simply having a good time.

As I woke up the next morning they were setting up for the NYC marathon.
Yep, that's a band setting up. It was the first thing I noticed when I looked out the window.



Watching the elitist runners in the world was amazing. The corner of 63rd St and 1st Ave marks mile 16, they went by SO fast one would've thought they just started.   The cheers, the band, the horns, the whistles, the hooting, the hollering grew ans the runners neared our spot on the corner. Excitement filled the air. Then, as if that wasn't enough, we were off the the Giants game. After a series of subway rides and train rides we popped up from underground and were right in front of Metlife Stadium. As it turns out subways and trains aren't my thing. I felt like a woodchuck living underground the entire way there. Stale stagnate air was all that was seemingly available to breathe.  


My first Giant game turned out to be the 3rd biggest ass whoopin in franchise history --- LOL
However we didn't  we didn't care. The box seats, free beer, wine, food were all we needed to have a great time. Others said it was raining, we didn't notice . Honestly I never need to go to another professional football game ever again, or if I do, it will be with our friend Michelle. She knows how to travel.

We hit a series of other bars on the way back to the Upper East side. One of our final stops was American Trash (http://nymag.com/listings/bar/american-trash/). Once again I felt right at home with an old skewl Rossi 440 nailed to the wall.

All in all our trip was a total 5 star --- can't wait to go back. I couldn't live there, nor do I want to, in fact after a couple days put me back in the woods. I certainly won't wait another 31 years to go back

Looks like a great weekend, glad you had fun.

very nice...
my kid lives on 80th near the park, she shares a 2 bedroom with 2 other people..4k / month.it's not bad once you get used to it..

Nice seats for the migets game...they ain't Giants..

FKNA thanks for posting this!

Yea, that's no shit! Our friend lives in a 350 sq foot studio --- $1500/mo and that's a "deal". She's been there so long that for some reason she's grandfathered in and her rent can't be raised. I don't understand that but I don't have to. She's been to my house, and once I told her that her rent was more than double my mortgage she flipped out. LOL

Harvey wrote

FKNA thanks for posting this!

Of course. You referenced this when I first had mentioned I was heading to NYC:


Ironically I had my pocket knife (super sweet American made Case too) confiscated before I could enter the stadium. I even heard the guy questioning people ahead of me if they had any knives in their pockets etc. I remember thinking, well, a pocket knife really isn't a knife --- LOL --- I was wrong.

HA! I forgot about that. Senility I guess.

Best OT post ever.

campgottagopee wrote

Ironically I had my pocket knife (super sweet American made Case too) confiscated before I could enter the stadium. I even heard the guy questioning people ahead of me if they had any knives in their pockets etc. I remember thinking, well, a pocket knife really isn't a knife --- LOL --- I was wrong.

Damn, Hillbilly, that’s one of the biggest straight off the turnip farm fuckups I ever done seen! 😜🤔😂💩  You got to keep your corncob pipe though, right?

Sounds like a great trip, and a suite at MetLife will render even the worst of Giants teams irrelevant.

LOL!!  ^^^ I even said to the guy, "shit man - a person could do more damage with a nail file". He laughed, agreed, but couldn't let me keep it. I pleaded with him to not throw it out but to keep it for himself. He smiled and put it in his pocket. Hopefully he cuts himself, it's pretty darn sharp

Harvey wrote

HA! I forgot about that.
 

I totally laughed when it happened, Harv. Told the girls I was with (all three of them ) about what you had said ----- they got a real kick out of it.

JTG4eva! wrote

 

Sounds like a great trip, and a suite at MetLife will render even the worst of Giants teams irrelevant.

for sure! honestly it was as much fun, if not more, watching the Marathon. Total excitement and party scene.

The marathon passes right in front of my girlfriends house in Greenpoint - about the halfway point...   Was crazy watching the front runners FLYING down the street..    Sad thing was towards the end..  Just like the walking dead limping along..  Good times

Nice! It was amazing watching the leaders. First the wheelchair division, then the pro ladies, then the pro men. Like you said they FLEW! Sadly I didn't get to watch the masses as we had to get over to the game.

Counterpoint: NYC sucks and the reason you felt like a woodchuck is that you ARE a woodchuck.



Kidding.



Mostly. Glad you had a good time.

campgottagopee wrote

Nice! It was amazing watching the leaders. First the wheelchair division, then the pro ladies, then the pro men. Like you said they FLEW! Sadly I didn't get to watch the masses as we had to get over to the game.

Masses were cool... Lots of people in costumes.   We were giving high 5s and screaming peoples names.. Had a couple friends that I connected with while they were running the route.  

MC2 5678F589 wrote

Counterpoint: NYC sucks and the reason you felt like a woodchuck is that you ARE a woodchuck.



Kidding.



Mostly. Glad you had a good time.

dmc_hunter wrote

campgottagopee wrote

Nice! It was amazing watching the leaders. First the wheelchair division, then the pro ladies, then the pro men. Like you said they FLEW! Sadly I didn't get to watch the masses as we had to get over to the game.

Masses were cool... Lots of people in costumes.   We were giving high 5s and screaming peoples names.. Had a couple friends that I connected with while they were running the route.

Yea that's how it was explained to us. The girl we stayed with has run it 3 times in what she calls the last squad. Even still quite an accomplishment in my book. She says the comradery  from fellow runners and the cheering from the crowds is what gets you through.

Yo DMC ---you ever been to Rudy's??? I just read up on the history of the place, it's no wonder I liked it.


Come on in, darlin’. Dive into New York’s most famous dive bar, right through the original wood door, carved down the center with the name of the first owners, the Rudy family. Feels like you’ve stepped back in time, doesn’t it? Maybe even as far as the Hell’s Kitchen rumor that this joint was first a speakeasy in 1919, frequented by the likes of Al Capone (remember, the guy grew up in Brooklyn before he hit Chicago). Rudy’s got one of New York’s the first liquor licenses when prohibition ended in 1933.Al Capone James Gandolfini Paul McCartney.Don’t mind the six-foot pig parked outside unless you’re looking for a touristy photo opp. Rudy’s porcine mascot, the so-called Baron has stood vigil at the door for about twenty years, and was only stolen twice before we bolted his big butt down.
Scoot past the bouncer, who’ll ask for ID if you’re a young’un. Under our low lights, one famous actress used to slip in as a regular until news of her 20th birthday hit the papers: “The saddest night I ever had in this bar was when I had to tell Drew Barrymore she couldn’t come back ‘til she was legal. I hated to do it because she was so nice,” said Danny, the bartender-turned-general manager. But count yourself lucky you have only a bouncer to contend with. According to Jack, the former Merchant Marine who bought the bar in 1982, but had been drinking there since the 1940s, Helen Rudy kept two big German Shepherds to mind the door. If a customer fell asleep, or became unruly, she’d give a signal and the dogs would join the customer at the bar and growl. If that didn’t work, the dogs would bark and bare their teeth. At that point, you bet the customer was behaving – or gone! Sidle up to the original mahogany bar, custom-made for $300 on the Bowery. You’re hip-deep in good company now in our legendary microcosm of New York, as friendly, unpretentious, and wildly diverse as the best of the city itself. We’ve got folks with names like Bobby the Boxer, Justin the Butcher, Shorty, Cowboy and CP3, the legendary urban poet and bearer of birthday cards, squeezed together with yuppies, hot young actors, and Hell’s Kitchen locals in what former manager, Ernie, called “an upper-low class” cocktail lounge. The drinks are cheap, and the hot dogs are—gasp!--free (even famed chef Anthony Bourdain has eaten a few). And in 1996, Rudy’s was voted Best Jukebox in the city by Rolling Stone for its famed selection of jazz and blues. Although the jukebox has been mainstreamed considerably to accommodate changing tastes, you can still get a wailing sax or Rat Pack harmonies if you choose.
The three mosaics commissioned by Ernie in the early 90s, including ones of Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, and a 12-foot sax. They serve as beautiful reminders of the bar’s jazz legacy. As “Trainspotting” author Irvine Welsh, said of the neighborhood when The New Yorker interviewed him in one of Rudy’s beat-to-hell red leather and duct-taped booths, “Hell’s Kitchen, one ay the few good uns. It’s still becoming yuppified n gentrified, bit eh’s one ay the last bastions.” When the movie about the Westies - “State of Grace” was being filmed, Ernie, who was the current bar manager, refused to close the bar to use as a set, out of loyalty to Rudy’s customers.
Speaking of the 70’s, where else might the guys from Steely Dan have been talking about, when they wrote in “Black Cow”, “I saw you at Rudy’s and you were very high...” Along with Steely Dan, Paul McCartney, Julia Roberts, James Gandolfini, Lauryn Hill, Tommy Ramone, Dexter Gordon, Sonia Braga, Ethan Hawke, Slash (of Guns ‘n Roses), Colm Meaney, Christina Hendricks, JFK Jr., Morley Safer, Timothy Hutton, Johnny Knoxville, Halle Berry, Pauley Perrette, Jimmy Fallon all have drunk at Rudy’s. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner frequented the bar to keep a low profile, before they made their relationship public in the late ‘40s. Hell, even the Mets have spent many a night here winding down straight from the game—check out the ‘06 Division series shirt they hung on the far wall, signed by John Main, Oliver Perez, Ramon Castro et al.Rudy’s most memorable characters include not only media celebrities, but also our hell-raising regulars: the Afro-Cuban beauty Carmen, who’d been a Broadway dancer, a dominatrix, and a postal employee. She dated Joe Louis, roomed with Eartha Kitt, and in her later years, beat people with her cane from her seat at the bar. here was Clarence the Cabdriver, who went to sleep in a back booth about 15 years ago and never woke up. On a happier note, besides all the hooking up that obviously goes on here, some folks have even gotten married right in our backyard, which is currently under renovation. The backyard will re-open in the summer of 2010. Drinking Liberally, the progressive social club of “left-leaning individuals” who meet to drink and talk politics, was founded in Rudy’s in 2003 and has now grown to over 300 chapters nationwide. You can join them every Thursday night, promoting democracy one pint at a time.
Longtime bartender Steve walked in one night to start his shift, and was startled to see writer Norman Mailer drinking in the front booth. “You know who that is?” he asked Vicky, the day bartender, excitedly. “Ah, that’s just Normie,” Vickie said. “He’s okay, but I’ll throw him out if he gives you any trouble.”That’s just the kind of bar it is, Rudy’s. To quote Vicky one last time,
“Less talkin’ and more drinkin’!”

campgottagopee wrote

for sure! honestly it was as much fun, if not more, watching the Marathon. Total excitement and party scene.

The NYC Marathon is definitely one of the greatest experiences around ... I've run it a few times, and you just can't beat the experience ... The crowds make every runner feel like an Olympian!!! There's nothing like the roar of the crowd as you come off the 59th Street Bridge onto 1st Avenue ... It's absolutely deafening.

Another really awesome time is Ironman Lake Placid ... You should definitely check that out some time if you ever get the chance ... It's absolutely inspiring to be at the finish line in the last hour or two of the event as the final competitors struggle to get across the finish line before midnight.

Definitely makes you think about what's really important in life ... family ... friends ... accomplishing the impossible!

Love the kid with the "Nobody Poop" sign!!!