Soon I am heading back to New York after spending 3 months traveling abroad in Mexico, Cuba, Haiti and Brazil. Spring is by far my favorite season to be in NYC. The streets come alive with happy people liberated from their coats after freezing their asses off all winter. This spring I am most excited about the 13 Portals experience which will take place in the East Village over Spring/Summer/andFall. In the meantime, I’ll tell you a story about a party we threw one spring.
To protect the innocent and/or the guilty, the following may or may not be true~
My friend Nathan Austin, who is one of the sharpest and slickest cats I know, told me of an empty storage room that sits atop a tower on the Williamsburg Bridge. We went that night at 2am climbing over a small gate and then a tall gate and then over a tricky door at the center of the bridge under the towers on the Manhattan side. From there it was a majestic climb up seven flights of stairs overlooking the sparkling East River along the glowing Manhattan skyline. At the top was a manhole secured with a chain and padlock, cracked just enough for us to squeeze through.
The Williamsburg Bridge. The storage room I am speaking of is at the top of the tower pictured in the foreground. (Photo courtesy of AmericasLibrary.gov)
The space was spectacular. I was freaking out.. The cables of the bridge run through the middle of it and a catwalk connects an identical room on the other side of the bridge tower. This place was magical. Nathan had the smashing and gutsy idea to do a secret party there. I imagined that. 30 people. Get them over the fences, the door, up through the manhole. To share a moment in that space with 30 people all experiencing it for the first time would be pretty sweet.
Looking out the tiny windows of the storage room with a view down Delancey street (Photo by Tod Seelie)
So we decided to go for it. We picked a date, I made a little poster, we called it the Third Annual New York Under-Covered Errantry Clandestine You-Might-Get-Arrested Trespassing Adventure Party. We told the 30 RSVPS to head down to this Mexican Restaurant on Grand Street at 1 am to ask the bartender for a 1,000 year old egg.
If you were going you would wander down to Grand and Suffolk and you would ask Bobby at La Flaca’s for this egg and he would tell you, “Well, Were fresh outta 1,000 year-old eggs, but here, have a fortune cookie.”
You would crack open your fortune and find the message,
You soon will be on top of world
You will met a agent
Follow the rainbow
Upon stepping outside, you would notice the stringy beginnings of a very long rainbow. And so you follow it~
To be continued…
The long stringy rainbow leading to the bridge