Movin' on down (to the LES)

When my alarm clock went off this morning, I was not prepared to deal with the situation. I was sprawled out on my futon, cozy as fuck but extremely dehydrated and nursing a pounding headache. Saturday night was dancetastic. It was the only organized event I held in my west village place, and seeing as how the whole shit was an unequivocal success, I batted a thousand at that apt, good times-wise, and feel pretty damn good about it.

I should've gotten up immediately but instead I hit snooze for 30 mins. I got to the Uhaul place late, picked up my van, called up my favorite Belgian (MFB), drove home and fried a couple of eggs. I knew that in order to survive this ordeal I needed to eat stuff. What I did not know was exactly how critical that instinct would turn out to be....

MFB got there, and amidst a lot of giggling (I was still drunk from sat. night), we loaded up the van. I had to move it around a few times because I parked way far away at first, and then I parked in front of a driveway and someone immediately tried to drive out of it. While I was moving it I had the radio on and that retarded song came on, the one that goes, "This is why I'm hot, this is why you not, I'm hot because I'm hot, you not because you not....." or something like that. It's hilarious, and I commenced to singing it over and over and giggling some more as we loaded.

We drove down to the LES and all I wanted to do was drive all day. Driving's fun enough, but then you throw in the whole van thing and it's like God, I feel the innocent joy of a twelve year old playing a video game where you drive monster trucks around. We got there and I parallel parked that bitch beautifully, on the first try, which was a small personal victory for me. Then we realized we were in a no parking zone. It was cool though, because miraculously a spot had opened up not too far away, and I backed the van almost a full block and then backed into the space, beautifully, which by my calculation would be small personal victory number 2 of the day. We started carrying shit in to the new place and I realized really for the first time that I am now living in the heart of Chinatown. I'm not sure why this never hit me before, but suddenly the fact that me and MFB were the only non-Asians in sight and every store had it's largest sign lettering in Chinese totally hit home. Hey, fine by me. Everything's cheap as fuck (I got a lemon-lime kool aid-like drink in a corner store for a quarter; MFB got a liter-sized diet coke for a buck) and I'm like 2 blocks away from the Bowery Ballroom, where I'm pretty sure I'll be spending about 89% of my lonely Friday nights.

We had to carry all my shit up 7 flights of stairs. I completely underestimated the horrors of this fact, and I think MFB did too. I mean, once you got to the fifth floor, you had already been pushing yourself to the breaking point and could go no further. You prayed to the good, sweet Lord that when you looked up you'd see that you were there, safe on floor 7 where you needed to be. But every fucking time, you looked up and you were actually on floor 5, and in your fit of delirium from physical strain, you'd hear scary voices cackling at your weakness and see little elf-looking demons jumping up and down all around you and pointing their fingers and shrieking with laughter.

We got all the shit up there, though. And God, did that feel good! MFB's a superhero, no doubt. When we came back out to get in the van, I saw some dude shoot a big puff of confetti into the air and was like, wow, Chinatown's awesome. Earlier me and MFB had seen some kids throwing poppers on the ground and I had been like, wow, Chinatown's awesome. As we approached the van we noticed crazy loud music and colorful dragons going down the street. I'm like, dude, there's a parade. This neighborhood is the shit! MFB was like, oh yeah, it's the Chinese New Year. Crazy ass shit....

We started to drive off, got like 2 blocks and hit a police barricade. MFB went and asked the cop what was up, and come to find out we were in this tiny, 4-square-block area that was being cut off from the rest of the universe by the parade. We were literally trapped in there, and the cop's estimated time of escape for us was about an hour. Really, it was all highly comical. MFB was like "Welcome to the neighborhood, dude!" He was supposed to meet someone in Washington Square in a little bit, so he was forced to abandon the whole scene, which he could do, being on foot and stuff. Me, I was stuck--which was totally fine, because all I wanted to do was go get some Chinese and watch the parade. I got out of the van, asked the cop if I could just leave it there and wander off, he said no (granted, I was basically in the middle of an intersection....but who gives a damn, because no one could go anywhere), and I wandered off anyway. The hood was totally alive, people everywhere and all kinds of shit going on, and you could hear the parade even if you managed to get out of site of it. I came up on a small group of people gathered around a few dudes, one of whom was banging on a drum and one of whom had on one of those awesome Chinese dragon costume things and was dancing around and stuff. It was extremely cool. Weirdly enough, the people gathered around were looking on with just as much fascination and curiosity as I was, as if they had never seen anything like this before and were delighted and intrigued by it. I supposed that most of them (all kids) were much more American than Chinese, culturally, and I thought if that was true, it must be weird for them to behold something that was at once foreign and part of their traditional culture. Maybe they felt the same way I do when I see farmers doing what they do....I mean, coming from a (traditionally) deeply agricultural, uh, culture, you feel like you should know about that stuff. But you don't, because no one farms anymore.

Eventually, the cops started letting cars through intermittently, and I got out of there and started speeding up to 23rd, where I was going to drop a dresser off at Goodwill and then head west to return the van. This was a true adventure, akin to driving a jeep through the jungle at high speeds while being shot at. I was kind of having the time of my life, and seriously considered saying fuck it all and just turning that bitch around, taking the lincoln tunnel and driving to LA. I didn't, but I did crank the radio up loud as hell and enjoy it while it lasted.
I dropped off the van and headed towards the subway to go home, and then I saw this bar called "Trailer Park." I verified that it had food, went inside, and ordered a burger and some tater tots. Tater tots! This is the first place I've been in New York that serves the little suckers. I looked around at all the trailerparkiness in there, and I have to admit they had done a pretty sweet job of it. Lots of really nice touches....but ultimately not the least bit authentic, just a novelty act--everything available for purchase was expensive as hell, and not that trashy at all. But hey, it was fun to look at all that cool stuff, and listen to the music. I'll definitely be back.

I got on the subway and rode home. I was thinking of the parade again....all those happy people, singing, playing drums, dancing around in those cool paper dragon things, etc. Being an egocentric prick, I couldn't help imagining that the whole community was throwing me my own personal Hi Kenny, Welcome To The Neighborhood party. Which I was fine with. I walked down the street, past all the joyous little Asian kids, into the new year, and I was thinking these thoughts, colored confetti floating down all around me.