1. Back on the train today -- the Deke buzzed me over to Tarrytown and I glided along the Hudson River to Grand Central and hopped on the subway to Bowling Green. I'm not very familiar with Lower Manhattan and, to me, it's a tangle of streets and I struggle to even get a sense of northsoutheastwest. I sat down, got out my trusty electronic tablet, went to Maps, and figured out how to stroll the short distance to Fraunces Tavern, New York City's oldest standing structure. If you'd like to see or read more about this place and how it's connected to George Washington and the American Revolution, among other things, you can go here and here.
I was at Fraunces Tavern to meet with Mary McGrail for lunch. Mary arrived and we dove into some wide-ranging conversation about plays and tennis and readings and the Shakespeare Showcase and her work with the Community Service Society of New York, here. She came to the tavern after attending a rally at the Federal Plaza to help in the fight against budget cuts to HUD.
2. As I finished my second glass of beer -- wow! -- get this name: it's brewed in the Bronx at Gun Hill Brewing Company, here, and it's a 2IPA called E. Pluribus Lupulin 4: Citrea -- I ordered it as "that Gun Hill beer you've got" -- and as I finished a ham sandwich on ciabatta bread that featured a cheese I'd never heard of and don't remember the name of -- it was kind of sweet and really delicious, yes, as I finished all of that, in walked Scott Shirk.
Scott jumped very smoothly into Mary's and my conversation, but Mary had to return to work uptown and Scott and I had plans to hit a dive bar in the Lower East Side. I think we all wish Mary could have played hookey and joined in, but, alas, that couldn't happen.
Scott and I waltzed over to the Broad Street station and lept onto either a J or a Z train to Essex Street and in a hop, skip, and a jump we were at the Parkside Lounge on E. Houston St. Immediately, I was elated to see that the Parkside had Bell's Two-Hearted Ale on tap.
Scott and I were the only patrons in the Parkside Lounge. Two televisions were playing two different movies, one with Harrison Ford that we didn't identify and the other a black and white classic movie we couldn't place.
Right away, Scott and I launched into scintillating conversation about LeVon Helm, The Band, Tom Petty, the Highwaymen, and other music and musicians before we got going on New Wave Australian movies from nearly forty years ago. Not long ago he and Cate had watched Picnic at Hanging Rock and I wished he could find The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and then I nearly fell off my stool with the special passion I feel for Breaker Morant and I rambled on too long about how Scott must watch it as soon as possible.
Time flew. Damn. We had to wrap it up.
I wanted to make it back to Nanuet, NY to meet the Deke at our favorite NY taproom, Growler and Gill, so Scott and I staggered back to the subway (at 2nd Street?) and he headed to Brooklyn and I took the F train to Herald Square and hoofed it down 34th to Penn Station where I found the New Jersey Transit ticket machines and successfully purchased a ticket to Nanuet, took the train to Secaucus, and transferred onto the Pascock Valley Line, got off the train at Nanuet, and had a nice short ride on Uber to the Growler and Gill with Hamed.
3. The Deke and I wound down and capped off our day at Growler and Gill. I enjoyed a shorty of Wolf Among Weeds 2IPA from L. A.'s Golden Road Brewing, but, even more, I enjoyed our charcuterie and cheese plate. The Growler and Gill was quiet, we were helped by the friendliest server imaginable, and it was relaxing and fun to shoot the breeze for a while before returning to Adrienne's for the night.
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