Washing the Karma down with Beer

One great thing about NYC is that friends are always coming into town. I met my friend Matt (from the Chicago Fleet Feet running group) out at a pub Friday night. He is on sabatical for work (seriously, they give him a five week vacation to go out and refresh himself). He traveled thru Italy and now the new England area. Here is a link to his blog that details his adventures: http://viaggio-italiano.blogspot.com/

Here is a picture of what Matt calls a crime against beer (serving a light beer in a Guinness glass).

Later I skipped out to Brooklyn to check out Farrell's place (oh and to drink cheaply). He made me do a beer run out there which turned out to be a wild goose chase since all the deli's were either closed or didn't sell beer. The "those couples" group (Farrell & Bethany and Marshall & Me) headed out to the divest of dive bars. One was bartended by this old lady and it only sold mini bottles of beer. The night ended when Marshall had to "take a walk" which basically meant he couldn't see or walk straight.

Saturday morning came quickly. I rushed out to East Harlem to join Phil in some community service. Actually, it is this organization called Publicolor and they do paint jobs (among other things) for inner city schools. There is much more to this organization but you get the idea. I figured I could even out the Karma scales by doing a good deed and then get rowdy at the game. Here is a picture of the wall I helped paint. The painting methods were interesting to say the least. You would be on a ladder with one foot balanced on a window sill, etc. One girl was standing on the shoulders of a guy. The question of the day is: how do you make a 6'-5" guy (Phil) taller? Answer: you put him on a ladder and give him a stick with a paintbrush taped to the end. Very humourous! We all had good laughs at the circ del sole acrobatics we were doing to paint in the most hard to reach areas.

With the good deed under my belt, I headed off to the Kansas State / Kansas (KU) football game. The bar (Central at 9th st. & 3rd ave.) was nice enough to give us the entire upstairs and a projection screen TV. The game was almost cut prematurely short when a birthday party showed up early. Sadly the game did not fall in KSU's favor, and we blame the excessive celebrating that must have followed after the Texas win. We did put our maturity aside and started making fat jokes about the KU football coach (hey if you saw him, you would understand). Afterwards, the crowd went to one of the oldest bars in NYC. It was some kind of Irish name like Mcfaddys, Mcfedricks, Mc something. It was awesome! The waiters were all old men who shoved people aside to get thru and could carry as many beers as a German maiden. The place only served light or dark beer. Seriously, I do not even know what kind of beer it was, but you just told the guy "light" or "dark". Oh and you have to order two at a time (that is a rule I guess). Anyway, with a table of 10 people, we had a massive collection of beers. Here is a picture (with Jeremy and Marshall in the background) of our drinking conquest.