Sun­day after­noon I bussed down to NYC to spend New Year’s with Eben and his brother Ethan under the Man­hat­tan Bridge. We bought sand­wiches and Goose Island Honker’s Ale, drank and played gui­tar. Lis­tened to The Clien­tele, Ariel Pink, Beach House, Life With­out Build­ings, Girl Talk, Belle & Sebas­t­ian. Played catch with a rac­quet­ball and a chihuahua/terrier mutt. Got some bracelets and tick­ets to join the multi-floor party else­where in the old con­verted fac­tory, and spent an hour or two explor­ing the extrav­a­gantly dec­o­rated, spo­rad­i­cally peo­pled, gen­er­ally dull though labyrinthine and costume-filled pas­sage– and stair-ways. There were feath­ered columns, stuffed ele­phants, fish­net stock­ings, dig­i­tal pro­jec­tors, and seem­ingly count­less hours of prepa­ra­tion for some­thing that Ethan and I agreed failed to deliver, just before I spent the pas­sage of mid­night stand­ing in a line with four sweaty drink tick­ets in my hand.

The eight of us stayed up till 3 or so drink­ing out of bore­dom, answer­ing phone calls or not get­ting phone calls, lis­ten­ing to The Beach Boys and Ratatat. Even­tu­ally we ran out of beer, giv­ing us an excuse to go to sleep. I woke up around 11:30, starv­ing, and snuck the last half of my sand­wich out into the filthy hall­way to eat with­out wak­ing any­one up, look­ing out the brown, open win­dow at the soft, gray, fall-like rain and into other win­dows of the same building.

I joined the block-long line for the return trip around 4, boarded at 5, had a Snick­ers for din­ner, then unwound on Mike’s porch with a cou­ple beers before call­ing it an early night. That was only yesterday.