Thursday, October 13, 2011

Late(ish) Night on the LES

I had an Improv show this week.

LES Kebab

It was held in the back room of a bar, down on the Lower East Side.

The show started at 10pm, but my team didn't go on until about 11pm.  Which is admittedly not rock-and-roll late, but is still kinda late for a Wednesday.  No?  I think yes.

Remedy Diner

En route to the bar, I was tired, and a little grumpy about being tired.  I whined my way down Houston Street to the tune of "It's late, I wanna be at home, I wanna be asleep."

But there's an energy in that part of town, at that time of night, that isn't easily ignored.  There's neon lights and basement bars, hipsters and regulars, knishes and noodles, high-end gelato and run-down bodegas, skate-boarders and shifty characters, an historic past and an ironic present.

And the energy - the aliveness - interrupted my whining to remind me that I was really so very lucky.

Katzs Deli

Lucky to have performance opportunities.  Lucky to be able to stay out late, and go where I wanna go, and do what I wanna do.  Lucky to live in a city that never sleeps.

That hasn't always been the case.  It won't always be the case.  I'm a lucky girl that it's my case for now.

I'll sleep later.

3 comments:

stephen said...

I was in your town today. I don't know what you look like, but I pretended like I saw you. You were one of those girls I saw. :-)

Hit up PB & Company for the first time, went to visit those noisy kids in the park, tried to get non-existent standby tickets for the 9/11 memorial, hit up H&H, made a maiden pilgrimage to Levain Bakery, and tried to get rush tickets for "The Mountaintop.

A fairly successful day considering I was in town for all of 8 hours or so. And I'm pretty sure I sat opposite Chris Katan on a NJ Transit train. Crazy.

KristyWes said...

Well, I was wandering around town on Saturday, so I may very well have been one of those girls you saw :)

(And Chris Katan! Glad to know he's alive and well and riding the NJ Transit!)

You covered a lot of ground in 8 hrs. Tell me you tried the chocolate-peanut butter cookies at Levain!? Because - ohmygosh - those suckers are winners.

stephen said...

regrettably no. Actually, that's not true. No regrets. I got the choc chip, the choc choc chip and the choc pb chip. I ate the first two, but was saving the choc pb chip for a co-worker.

And she did enjoy it. So it was totally worth it.

But now I know where they are for next time!!!