Disney & Drinking (perfect pairing to the modern celebrity baby)

As a way to nurse our ailing legs and vicious hangover, I took my sister to my favorite NYC brunch place….Vinyl. Now the previous two days, we had taken in all of the Midtown and Lower Manhattan tourist sites. Frankly we were almost out of ideas and locations. We decided to head down to Canal Street and try to score some imitation purses and sunglasses. If you have never been to Canal Street, then you have never been properly assaulted with illegal merchandise. Seriously, the street is lined with little venders and Chinese (assuming since you are near Chinatown) people just randomly approach you whispering “Gucci Gucci, prada, coach”. I got some fake Chanel glasses at a vender when she asked if I wanted some real looking purses. I said sure. She then pointed to a shady looking old woman on the street and said “follow her”. I guess the as good as real stuff has be done in secret manner. My sister and I decided not to bother with it (and plus we were too tired from walking to follow a random stranger to a “secret” spot). On our way back to the train, we saw a ghetto girl fighting with a Chinese woman. The ghetto girl was screaming “I said two purses you **swear** **derogatory term**!” She then started swinging a black garbage bag (most likely the purses since they have to hide them) at the Chinese woman who was probably shouting back in Chinese “if this was Hong Kong, you would be dead by now!” Okay, that was a racial stereotype, but I called it as I see it. Poor Tiffany doesn’t see much of that in Nebraska where we are polite and marry our cousins.

After taking a tour by Madison Square Garden and the fashion district, we headed back home to nap, eat, and change for the evening. I scored us tickets to the Disney Broadway Musical ‘Beauty and the Beast’. One note about Disney musicals, they are totally for children (seriously, I mean groaner obvious cheap humor and over the top cheesy acting) but the sets, costumes, dances, and songs are A++. Although Tiffany is only a few years younger than I, she totally favors those types of shows over whit and charm of adult shows (she hated the Producers).

After the show, we met Ali, Bree, and Dave at a Hell’s Kitchen bar “the snug”. This place had a special from 11-midnight, $2 off all drinks. Not bad since most of the drinks were not priced over $6. Tiffany is used to paying Nebraska prices, so she snatched up drinks double time before our power hour was over. Amarillo sour - $4…..watching your baby sister get bombed – priceless. Ah ha ha.

After midnight, we headed down to a club in Soho. It was Fadel’s (Ali’s friend) birthday and we all were on the list. Sadly, we had to stand behind the velvet rope for a few minutes because our group didn’t have enough girls in it (or too many guys, whatever). Finally when they decided there were at least eight girls to one guy, they let us in. I don’t understand that theory. It must be flawed because us ladies hate to pay for over priced drinks. In fact, the ones who go to swanky clubs expect not to pay for anything. Plus if you have to buy a drink, you make sure to nurse the hell out of it until you can find some dumb guy to buy you another. So if this place is full of high end girls, who is buying drinks?

Anyway, we head up to the VIP room, and with a little name dropping, we walked right in. We were enjoying the last of Fadel’s bottle service when I hear “oh my, I know you” shouted out behind me. I turn around and see Kristy Shoemaker. She was the little sister (four years my junior) of a good college friend. I should note that her older brother was infamous for being the only mega hot guy in the engineering college. Anyway, I got to know her thru her brother when she would join us at the bars (yep, we were 22 year old seniors drinking with an 18-year old who somehow always got into bars).

The night ended around 3am or what I would like to call “can we go pleeeeease, I’m tired”. Ali had a much more interesting end to the night (or greeting to the morning), but I cannot blog post it due to sensitive material.

The next day (Saturday), Tiffany and I only had a few hours to kill before sending her off to the airport. Being the big movie buff that she is (she kept wanting to go to places where they have filmed major motion pictures, etc), we took a ride on the Roosevelt Island cable car/gondola. If you have seen Spiderman 1, then it is the gondola at the end of the movie where Spiderman has to choose between saving MJ or the people on the gondola. For a cheap $2 each way, you can get great views of the river and east side. Here are some pics (I caught the other cable car coming back the other way and a cool shot of the cable car’s shadow on the road).