Where Dave Is

Kingsley is…

Getting married.

Congrats to my dear friend Kingsley (the guy on the right) the pope of Kumba. He was married today to his new queen.

Dave is…

Not alone.

Templeton arrived today, in a box of items from home. Perfect timing as today I got a mattress. Total credit to Meeta and Justin for lending me their extra mattress.

Though I confess, considering that I’m bumming a mattress from them, conned another friend into using her zip car account to get the truck to move it, and yet another friend to come over and help me haul it up the stairs and I have taken leeching to a whole new level. I’m like a parasite.

But a parasite with a mattress.

And a giant plastic rat.

Dave is…

Not eating.

Apparently the only way to eat in this damn neighborhood is via brunch. I walked around this afternoon trying to find some damn food and it doesn’t exist. Every restaurant is a silverware joint (meaning it has place settings), not the paper container, take-out, food of the people style joints to which I am accustomed.

I had to walk seven blocks just to get a damn chicken cutlet sandwich. And don’t dare dream of eating late. Springfield has more late night dining options than the area around my place. Denny’s and Steak n’ Shake is twice as many options as I got here. And with the nearest grocery store a decent hike away I might just not eat.

Dave is…

Out for brunch.

I ate Brunch today. BRUNCH! What is Park Slope doing to me?! I’ve been here a week and already I’m paying $12 to wait in line for eggs. I’ve only ‘brunched’ once before in the near ten years I’ve been here and that was a Sterling led adventure that ended 6 hours later at a Japanese restaurant on St Marks with him yelling after he discovered the menu listed cow penis.

No cow penis at this place. But even without it this neighborhood is dangerous. What if I end up owning my own stroller by the end of the month.

Dave is…

At the meeting of the old and new world.

Course the guy who inserted himself most prominently in the foreground is the only one who doesnt go back all the way to 2000

Went out to dinner tonight with Meeta and co. at Madiba the South African restaurant near their place in Fort Greene. There were five of us at dinner and for what has to be without question people turned to me for advice on the food because I knew the most.

And I got to eat bunny chow again for the first time since Cape Town. Of course it was four times the price, half the size and only a third as good, but hey it was bunny chow and we got some peri-peri chicken so that was nice.

Following dinner Hannah and Jeff came with me to Amanda’s birthday party. Already there were Jay, Rob, Kieran, Lydia, Blanton, shoot even Richa was there earlier. It was probably the largest gathering of the 2002 era crowd that’s happened, well, since 2002.

It was a good time, made even better that thanks to my new living location I could leave their party at 3:30 and be in bed by 3:35. Guess there is a benefit to caving to stroller filled hell of Park Slope.

Dave is…

Stylishly out on the town.

You know what impresses people out at the bars on a Friday night? Carrying around a large white trapper keeper style binder containing the 496 page Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report.

Chicks cannot resist reparation recommendations.

Dave is…

No longer homeless.

After almost a full month back in New York doing the couchsurfing thing, a full month wasting all the time I should be spending avoiding my homework on cruising craigslist, sending out inquiries and trekking all over three boroughs looking at places, I finally have a home.

I haven’t had my own place since the end of November. Since then its been friends’ house, my aunts, my parents, more friends’ couches. I’ve been all over the place. I’ve looked at rooms in Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn. I’ve been turned down three times (me! Me! Someone actually rejected me!). I’ve looked at places with no windows, places that don’t allow guests, places with furniture, and places without, shit I even looked at one Rasta crash pad that had an enormous 2 foot tall parakeet in the living room that shrieked like the tortured soul of Haile Selassie anytime anyone moved. Never have I enjoyed an experience less.

But its over. I signed the sub-lease this morning, moved my stuff in this afternoon.

And by stuff I mean the essentials. That would be a suitcase full of clothes that I brought back from Illinois, a bag of stuff I dumped off en route back from Africa, a bag or two of accumulated stuff that got left in NYC when I moved to Africa and…a five foot tall Zulu shield and spear.

Just the essentials.

So my new room has clothes in the closet, books on the bookshelves, an inflatable mattress on the floor and assorted Zulu weaponry littering the floor. The feng shooey of this room is intense.

Least the rest of the apartment is fully furnished and well put together. Credit to my new roommate for that. Though it makes a stark contrast to the college style shambles of my room.

Dave is…

watching Alberta Cross at the Bowery Ballroom.

Good show, good band. Have a little My Morning Jacket thing going. But damn if that crowd didn’t suck. The worst of the indie/hipster concert attendees. Don’t move, express the enthusiasm of the crowd at a symphony, all wearing the latest in hipster approved threads.

Still, the band puts on a solid live show.

Dave is…

Being evacuated from the subway.

On my way back downtown from a scholarship dinner on 86^th Street my train got stopped. Apparently someone got hit in the station up ahead so after a long delay in the tunnel the train advanced far enough so that the first car reached the end of the next station platform and the entire trainload of passengers had to slowly work their way to the front car and out the one door.

I’ve spent a scarily large amount of the last ten years on subway trains but this is the first time I have ever actually been on a train where this has happened. It wasn’t pleasant.

Least we didn’t have to walk along the tracks. That’s how all those NYC subway horror movies start.

Dave is…

At Roseland for Moe.

Man I haven’t seen a proper show in a looooong time. So returning to the domestic live music scene with the opening night of Moe.’s 20^th Anniversary Tour, a guest star laden benefit concert, was pretty spectacular.

A collection of moe.rons

It may not have been one of the top ten shows of the decade like their previous benefit show here in 2006 but it was damn good.

I: Timmy Tucker > Bearsong, Capt’n America*, Caveman**, Nebraska**, Happy Hour Hero^, Whipping Post^^

II: In Memory of Elizabeth Reed$, Shoot First**, Waiting for the Punchline $$, Real Morning Party&, instrumental**, East Nashville Easter**, Blue Jeans and Pizza&, Mexico$

Encore: The Weight&&

Notes: * with Danny Barnes on banjo and Marco Benevento on organ
** with Barnes, Benevento, and Jeff Austin on mandolin
^ with Benevento, David Sanborn on alto, and Butch Trucks on a second kit
^^ with Benevento, Sanborn, Trucks, and Austin on vocals
$ with Benevento and Trucks
$$ with Barnes and Austin
& with Benevento
&& with Barnes, Benevento, Austin, and Trucks
[Caveman is a Danny Barnes song; Whipping Post is Allman Brothers Band; Real Morning Party is Marco Benevento; East Nashville Easter is Yonder Mountain String Band]

The Whipping Post and Liz Reed were hot (sucker for Allman covers)  HHH with David Sanborn and Punchline were raging and I could never hear The Weight live enough.

Sanborn was a fun addition to the band, though sadly all too brief and Jeff Austin brought his usual high energy and excessive in-between song banter but really it was Benevento who added the most to the evening. I wouldn’t object to him joining the group full time. The keys really filled out some of those classic Moe. songs and added a whole new element.