A Long Weekend in New York

i’ve been on east coast time for the past few days. i flew to new york city  towards last week for the occasion of the tanya morgan moonlighting release party at opus 22. upon my arrival on thursday, it took an hour to get to the hotel; by the time I got there around six in the evening i had about ten minutes to get ready before the big event. despite my extreme fatigue (by the time the party was over i’d been awake for 24 hours) and hunger (i never did get to eat a meal that day), i was thrilled that it was all a great success.

monica came all the way from dc; von on the other hand calls brooklyn home sweet home.

ilyas!

von pea! (loves dilla!) together they plus donwill make up tanya morgan. duh.

tim and dwine. both are california transplants to the east coast. both are super tall. both are well-rounded gentlemen.

this is michelle the publicist and frank the graphic/web designer.

tara was there too, which was fantastic because she’s fantastic.

after the party a whole bunch of us went to triple crown where i met ali shaheed muhammad. ordinarily i would have been super excited but i was so tired that all i could see was mirages of my hotel bed.

speaking of which, my hotel was an unpleasant experience to say the least. i never could catch up on sleep since every few minutes i’d hear a door loudly (and i mean LOUDLY) slam shut down the hallway or overhear the pseudo-party a few rooms down at four am. and our bathroom was about the size of a shoebox. the room itself wasn’t much bigger. and the staff was rude. i’ll stop before this turns into a hotel review.

our group spent friday exploring record shops and wandering the streets. the highlight of the day was a visit to the offices of scratch magazine. the lowlight of the day was my decision to order chicken soft tacos at a diner for lunch. mexican food in new york city – what was i thinking?

at least i got to pose with dog the bounty hunter. hi melody.

saturday was a bit more eventful. despite the rain, we made a trip to the united nations after a disappointing faux vietnamese lunch. my main reason to visit was to purchase some iran flag keychains; the one i’d bought during my last trip had long fallen apart. it turned out the gift shop was out of keychains for nearly every country that begins with an “i.” i was heartbroken. stupid UN. thanks, kofi.

we got to pose with our favorite secretary generals, though. the UN had an exhibition of persian rugs featuring the likenesses of all the past secretary generals on display, courtesy of the iranian government. (the least they could do is carry their keychains in return.)

me and u thant. how cool is his name?

from there we took the metro to brooklyn.

grand central station. we saw two sets of newlyweds there.

brooklyn was fun but chilly. afterwards i went back to manhattan to meet dwine and his girlfriend for dinner. my tekka maki was the best meal i’d had since my arrival. afterwards tim and frank joined us at a coffeeshop for chess and hot mochas. then came the highlight of the day: our security-laden foray into the offices of hot 97. it was almost reminiscent of the time when i visited the state department.

for my last day in new york, i had gray’s papaya for lunch. i was surprisingly pleased with my humble hot dog and banana juice.

mmm, new york.

i made a disappointing trip to canal street where i attempted to hunt down a pair of lacoste sneakers. even though i was unsuccessful, i did run into a dean and deluca on our way towards brooklyn. from there it was more record shopping and then a quick dinner and everyone parted their separate ways. i had to be up early the next morning to catch our flight back, 3:30 am to be exact.

it was a great trip and i was thrilled to finally meet so many people i’d heard all about and to catch up with ones i hadn’t seen in a while. that said, i’ve been more than a bit sleepy all week long.