Look ma I’m tech (or the new bike plus rain)

So I’m typing this at Starbucks on Caras i-Pod touch while waiting for her to get done. My giant thumbs are bumbling around this teeny screen like Andre the giant trying to build a faberge egg with oven mitts on.

It is kind of like a cool little laptop though,if you dont mind a teensy tiny screen. It’s like deciding to ride in the tour e france but with a dahon folding bike. I have no doubt that it could be done, but it would take a long ass time. Im a big fan of new toys and techy stuff, but trying to do anything more important than texting your friend on something this size is ridiculous.

In the interest of full disclosure I must now confess that the rest of this entry is being written on my home computer with a human being sized keyboard.

After my much beloved Trek Soho S was stolen a few weeks back I was suddenly (and involuntarily) in the market for some new wheels. Some folks believe that God has a plan for their lives and while I would never assume that the great universe has a specific map of exactly how my life is going to go I do believe that the man upstairs does have certain bullet points on the heavenly to-do list with my name at the top. Certain things seem to happen with such stunning regularity that it stretches the limits of credibility to deny that they can be the result of anything less than Gods sense of irony

One of these things is the fact that it will rain on the day I am buying a bike. You can bank on it. And trust me Ive bought a lot of bikes this year alone and It has rained on every single day i rode the new one home. In fact at this point Id like to hire myself out to desert communities struck by drought, all they need to do is pay me to fly out to Arizona, lets say, walk into a bike shop and the second I hand my money over to the cashier the heavens will erupt in biblical levels of rain.

Which is a long-winded way of saying it rained when I was shopping for bikes the other day. Once again i hit 3 or 4 bike shops but this time I had a much firmer idea of what I wanted. I looked at SE’s lager and premium brew bikes, and a fuji track bike at Thick Bikes, then I checked out the KHS urban soul (which should be the label for a section of Keith Sweat records NOT a bike name) and the Surly Steamroller at Iron City bikes, I was damn close to a Felt Dispatch or jamis beatnik at BikeTek in Squirrel hill, but i was finally sold on my new bike at Pittsburgh pro bikes.

See, this time I knew I wanted to stick to a light frame, which meant aluminum for my price range. I wanted it to be single speed, to have some V to the rims (for my fat ass) and to have front and rear brakes. I wanted straight bars and I wanted to spend less than $600.  unlike the Soho S i also wanted it in my size, i had settled for a 47cm frame and now i knew I needed at least a 50 or 52 . The result is this little guy:

It’s a Giant Bowery/mashup. and so far i love the shit out of it! My Trek was a great bike and really let me hit when i wanted to go fast, but this guy really wants to go fast on its own! the frame fits perfectly, on my previous bike i was forever messing with the seat height and saddle position to try and get comfortable, however on this bad boy I just set it up and its been perfectly comfortable from day one. The only downside is the presta valves on the tires, which has more to do with the fact that Ive never used that type before and I dont want to fuck the tubes up pumping them up with that tiny delicate looking stem.

I still store it in the lobby of my building but these days there is a giant kryptonite cable lock lashed to a 5000 pound radiator bolted to the floor that I lock it to. If the thieves get it off of that monstrosity then im giving up and riding a unicycle to work.

This Tuesday I will be tattooing a crazy cool Ganesh on a good friend of ours so pictures soon!

Updateless

canttalkplayingfallout 3.

ohandiboughtanewbikeitsagiantbowerymashupmoresoon. . . .

the almighty punk band FEAR once wrote

I love livin’ in the city

Spent my whole life in the city
Where junk is king and the air smells shitty
People pukin’ everywhere
Piles of blood, scabs and hair
Bodies wasted in the street
People dyin’ on the street
But the suburban scumbags, they don’t care
Just get fat and dye their hair

I love livin’ in the city

well at this particular moment I dont love living in the city quite so much. My beloved Trek Soho S was stolen along with the daughty but faithful KHS Urban X right out of the apartment building we live in. In a way it is my fault since I didnt lock the bike up, but supposedly we have a “security” door. it wasnt very. Secure that is. So we’ve had Caras mom car with a break in last month ans two bikes stolen this month. Im not terribly upset or even angry, im more disappointed than anything.

Of course when you decide to live in a city you are tacitly agreeing to take the bad with the good, in this case an increased chance for petty theft is the price I pay for living withing walking distance of work, art stores, 10,000 restaruants, 20 cofee shops, 3 supermarkets, 10 book stores, and a vibrant art and musical scene. Frankly its totally worth it. I have lived in the burbs and it is slow death to me.

On the bright side I do get to get a new bike now and with my birthday right around the corner it will be like a little present to myself. So Im off to look at whats out there!

Trek Soho S Review

Ive now owned and ridden a 2009 Trek Soho-S for 3 months. I ride it daily to and from work (which is a relatively short mile or two) and have ridden it for 10 to 20 miles for fun and exercise once or twice a week. All my riding is in traffic, in a city, on city quality roads with city enraged car drivers all around me.  I have not gone more than 2 days in a row without riding it and it is my sole method of transportation since i don’t not own a car, so I feel like I have a very good idea about this bike and how it performs as a ‘daily driver’.

Before I bought it in mid May I did some research and read quite a few reviews. I decided on this bike because it was an aluminum frame (very light), a single speed (I ride freewheel not fixed), and it was surprisingly affordable (mine cost $499) for an aluminum frame bike.

The reviews had some complaints that seemed to crop up  over and over no matter the reviewer.

1. the brakes sucked.

I found this to be true, my previous bike, a KHS urban -x would stop on a dime and had the same basic caliper style brakes as the Treks tektro. The trek, however takes far longer to stop even with a death grip on both front and back breaks. Once you get used to the difference its easy to compensate and Ive had to do some fishtailing/back tire lifting breaking now and again and they have performed just fine in those emergency situations. I replace the front pads with some better pads and found they made zero difference. I have a feeling that the cool black rims are simply more slippery than the unpainted KHS rims were. Its not a deal breaker by any means, just be aware of it.

2. the handlebars are too wide

true, it was like holding the steering wheel on a bus. I lopped about 2 inches off each side so that the width was about even with my shoulders and its been fine since.

3. Aluminum transmits more vibration

If going from a steel frame you will notice every bump and crack much more. While this was a little disconcerting at first (I kept thinking my fat ass was breaking the frame) once I got used to it I enjoyed the fact that i could really tell exactly what was going on. I managed the additional booty vibration by changing the saddle, which leads to. . .

4. the equipped saddle sucked

It certainly made my pooper sore, I changed mine out within a week for the older spring dampened one on my KHS. It might not look as streamlined and hipster as the smaller phoney san marco style saddle that came with the bike, but i ride a lot and my ass thanks me for it. The springs seemed to suck up the worst of the additional vibration caused by the frame material and I have no complaints on either ride quality or ass comfort front now.

5. the chain derails/the back wheel moves forward to easily in day to day rising.

this one has been the worst for me. After a month of riding I came off a small curb on a driveway into traffic and my chain jumped off wedging itelf between the rear sprocket and spokes. In heavy traffic I rode it fixed gear style til i could pull over praying i wouldn’t shear off my spokes. Once I got somewhere with wrenches I re-tensioned the chain and cranked the bolts down pretty well. About a month later I noticed there seemed to be more slack in the chain again and sure enough a day or two later it jumped again in heavy traffic and wedged itself between the cog and spokes. This time when I repaired it I cranked the rear bolts til they squeaked and cried for their little bolt mommies. If I detect one millimeter of looseness in my chain this time Im going to the trek store and demanding and entirely new drivetrain. This is insanely dangerous and most likely the result of the neato painted frame, some simple lock washers or toothed washers could eliminate this (or stripping the paint from the dropout area, its an aluminum frame, it wont rust.)

The pros are numerous as well, however. For one thing it is miles lighter than other single speeds Ive ridden (SE’ draft and Torker U-district) and i never ever have felt that the bike was holding me back. In fact it feels like the little guy wants you to push on a little further, a little steeper. ive often found myself looking for the steeper route just to see how well it climbs and the fun of cresting a monster without the aid of a granny gear. This is its greatest asset and makes it a pure pleasure to crank on even on those days im tired as hell after work, by the time i get home I seem to have more energy instead of less.

It looks very cool with its matte black/stealth paint job, far from being ugly in a hipster studied way or pretend retro its simply a businesslike clean machine. It looks like a serious tool not a fashion accessory which is beautiful to me. Its thin tires have not slid once on gravel sand or dirt, and seem to hold like glue even in the rain. I didnt know much about bontrager tires, but i will be using them again when its time to replace these.

Speaking of tires, I have had zero flats of any kind, pinch or puncture. Whether Ive had the tires as taught as a drum or saggy has made no difference to their resilience, im still riding on the original tubes. Ive accidentally hit potholes with my full 190 pounds and the tires and v-rims held up as if it were nothing. Caras cute torker had a flat within weeks of purchase and needs to be re-inflated about twice as frequently as my bike.

The cranks and gears themselves have remained smooth and silent even as Ive ridden through water and smacked it against numerous curbs and parking meters when i lock up. Some reviewers criticized the petals, once even say9ing that they had broken, Ive had no problems at all. they are not as spikey as some but have held my feet just fine and have withstood tons and tons of standing in the saddle riding without a a peep.

Final verdict is that I would buy one again if I had to get a new single speed commuter bike. What it lacks in cool hipsterness it makes up for in performance and pure pleasure in riding.

Bike love

stolen from the Bike Snob. . .

Grumpy old man list

Im not really grumpy (or even that old. . .I think) but some things sound more profound if they come from a grizzled veteran. In all honesty I think of myself as more of a grilled veteran than a grizzled one. . but anyway, we have  LISTS!

.1  there is only one way to accomplish anything in the world. Be it losing weight, becoming proficient at a skill, learning anything. There is no short cut, there is no quick way and there is no ‘natural talent’ that will make up for. . . work. Hard work. Hard repetitive, boring work. The plain fact is that for whatever reason the universe decided that for everything you get out of this life you must put something back in, in equal measure and with equal grace. Im sorry but years of caring a lot, worrying a lot, visualising, anger, desperation, cynicism wont get you even one tenth of what a few hours of hard work/practice will. The good news is that when you do earn whatever it is you have been striving for there is more than just the joy of accomplishment, there is pride of craftsmanship. In the end, it turns out that what you really wanted isnt half so pleasurable as what you went through to earn it.

.2 Smoking pot really is destructive. I didnt used to think so, in fact i used to believe (still do actually) that it would be far better to legalise marijuana and ban alcohol. I dont do drugs myself, but Ive lived long enough to meet several 40 and 50+ year olds who have smoked weed daily and while they are not the wreckage of human life that a daily drinker is, they are all. . .well. . .dopey. Its kind of sad to watch these folks i know and respect wandering through life like an ox someone brained with an ax handle. Glassy-eyed and with the mental and physical reaction time of a tree sloth these folks have one calamity after another befall them (i.e. real life) with their only ability to deal with it in the form of a forlorn “aw maaaan, that sucks.” What is so insidious is how gradually this toporific trance sneaks up on them, after years of toking up they slowly morph from laid back jesters to sprawled out Hutts. Pot, it turns out isnt necessarily a gate way to hard drugs, its a gateway to a stinky apartment, 3 months of unpaid bills, and the complete inability to do anything even remotely proactive about .. . anything.

.3 What your brain predicts  is seldom, if ever, what happens. Your worst fears turn out to not be quite so bad and your fondest goals turn out to be a let down. What you want most in the world doesnt seem to satisfy and your darkest fear reveals itself to be just another turn your brain poops up. Its almost like real life doesnt even care what you and I think. its like real life is somehow always in the middle of our percieved highs and lows. if only there was some way to walk in the middle, to take some kind of middle path as it were. But what does this ‘middle way’ look like. . . . . ? Oh well i guess we’ll never know.

.4 Driving a car seems to have a magical effect on people. otherwise calm, rational folks turn into ranting juvenile assholes as soon as they close that door. Ive seen road rage incidents countless times and the common denominator is always the same, as soon as the person steps out of their car (or someone reaches in and pops them in the mouth) they get this stunned look like, “hey where did my power go!?  Just a second ago i was king of the world and now some skinny bike rider guy has rearranged my bicuspids with a u-lock. . . ” I imagine its sort of how a hermit crab would geel if you popped him out of his shell, all the sudden his soggy weak ass is hanging for the world to see. A car, it seems, is like giving everyone in the world a suit of armor and a gun, despite the bizarre utopia the NRA espouses it turns out that giving any idiot over the age of 16 the means to drive over other people doesn’t result in a ‘polite society” but instead a nation of childish hatred and insularity. Ride a bike for a week and I promise you will feel like the only sane person left on the planet.

.5 Language is, at best, a way to convey the wondrous complexity of the universe into a form that, hopefully, can inform another of your particular unique experience without the need for them to actually share your brain. In person language can do this tolerably well because the words themselves are given life via tone, volume, gesture, timing, bearing and all the other tiny things that make a face to face conversation so compelling. Some writers can do nearly as well with the written word, though even the best wordsmiths can only convey half of what any live person can in a few spoken lines. So when you then take that incomplete experience and compress it further into texting or email you lose all but the simplest factual information and even that reads as somehow mysterious and arcane. If you have ever had an argument or disagreement viea text or email you can attest to how it is nearly useless to try to convey anything! One ends up being more frustrated at the fact that your point is simply misunderstood than whatever the argument was about! At the same time we humans find it much eaier to be douche-bags via the typed word then in person. In my own life I have tried to institude the 2 text rule, if what we are discussing requires the both of us to text more than twice then its time for a phone call instead.

Single mindedness

Ive been cranking the single speed bike for a week or two and I must say I’m feeling it. (especially in my calves). I really like the simplicity and sense of mechanical unity with a bike that light and responsive. When I’m riding I often realise that Im banking a turn or swooping around a pothole without even making a conscious effort to do so. Sometimes it feels like I’m not even turning the handlebars, i just need to go left and the bike does it. Maybe that is what is so amazing about a bicycle, its a machine that (unlike a car) doesn’t separate you from the tactile presence of the world. The smell, temperature, light, the texture of the road, the sound of a car turning a block away are all present, immediate, a part , an important part, of the act of riding a bike.

On top of all that i swear i can actually feel myself getting stronger with every ride, not just in my leg muscles either. My lungs don’t feel like they are going to explode even on a climb and my heart rate doesn’t become alarming anymore, I can and do ride for hours at a time. I may be waxing poetic, but in a very real physical sense riding a bike is making me a better person.

Sick of hearing about bikes yet?

Ok then how about some BIG NEWS? Well its big to me anyway.

It is no secret that for years I have wanted to move the shop. When it was still Eye Candy, Brian and I looked at a few places, even took a few tours with landlords. Nothing ever seemed to fit the bill for us. Partly it was because the rent where we are now is really low, however every year it goes up slightly, after 10 years it has gone up to the point where it no longer feels like the insanely good deal it once was. As the rent has gone up the neighborhood has gone down. I say “neighborhood” but in reality its just the block that we are on that has slid into the shitter. One by one the ‘nice’ businesses went under leaving us with 3 shitty, drug dealer infested bars, a beer store, and various shady cellphone stores and fly by night barber shops as neighbors. The local crackhead/panhandler population is at an all time high and I’m sick of feeling nervous for my clients when they have to walk the gauntlet of cat calling shitbags and scroungers just to get to my door.

When the shop became mine I decided to put some real effort into improving the shop. We accomplished a lot in a short time but I began to realise that no matter how cozy and comfortable I made the shop itself, the area was going to drag down the enthusiasm of my clients. For all I know the neighborhood has already deterred customers.

So I began looking around for locations that would suit my artsy fartsy nature. Anyone who has had the misfortune to hear me talk about this subject knows that I have always had my heart set on South Craig street area. Its only 3 blocks from where we are currently but aesthetically it is a world away. It is home to an assortment of comic shops, art stores, coffee shops, restaurants and bookstores. In short, the kind of place we want to be. Having spent the majority of my life as poor white trash, I’m ready to make the move up to arty pretentiousness (just kidding. . .mostly). Its between CMU and Pitt universities, and I don’t feel that vague undercurrent of criminal danger when I’m there, frankly I can relax walking up and down that part of Craig without having my ‘game face’ and attitude on. After 10 years I’m tired of having to do that.

The first place we seriously asked about was huge and was $4000 a month! My heart sank, if that was the going rate, I figured, I was just going to have to be satisfied with the ghetto. However, the next place I looked was well within our budget, much smaller (which appealed to me) right in the heart of the area I had always wanted to be. Cara and I told the building manager we would take it!

But nothing is that easy.

The buildings owner is a retired Syrian who is currently living in Syria. Tattooing is completely alien to this poor guy and I’m sure this caused him some serious doubts. Fortunately the other tenets of the building know and like us and the manager of the building seemed to dig on us (and the fact that we were ready to jump on it) so he put in the good word. The Owner had the manager call the health dept to see if it was kosher and we finally got the nod.

We sign the lease on Monday.

I cant fucking wait.

There will be some work to be done before its ready, Ill have some pictures up shortly of the progress. Wish us luck!!

My Brother from another mother

Our friends Kyle and Daniel invited us to their house for some amazing fish tacos yesterday. We rode over and met up with some more buddies, while we were waiting for the food to be finished Cara noticed something weird. . .

"Hey is there another bald guy with glasses over there!?"

Daniel (the one pointing) and I bore a striking resemblance to each other because of our “outfits”. This kind of freaky occurrence is usually accompanied by the revelation that both our dads were travelling sales men and end up being the same person or that we were twins and one of us was taken by a secret cult and raised by pumas. In this case it seems to be more the result of how middle age former punk rockers dress and my new found thin-ness. Believe me we have hung out before and while Daniel was always the svelte male model he appears here i looked like Jabba the hutt, no one mistook one of us for the other til yesterday.

"Look! Jason is down to 2 chins!"

The food and company were awesome! Daniel and Kyle are some of the nicest people on Earth and Cara and i adore them.

Speaking of Cara, after bathing in the glory of my new bike she felt like she needed something that weighed less than a ton as well and picked up a super sweet U-District  by Torker. We went over to Thick bikes on the Southside and I was amazed. The guy working was helpful and gave off zero hipster attitude, like the awesome dudes at iron City cycles they are locals AND know whats works for a rider and what doesn’t. He stayed late and went out of his way to be accommodating as we bought what is probably the cheapest bike they sell. If you need a bike, go to these guys!

The days have been beautiful and we have been enjoying them, something about strolling with your sweetie and a miniature dog feels like heaven to me. I really think that kind of contentment and comfortableness is as close to heaven as we can get, Im a really lucky guy.

YAY!

Before the cooking and stuff yesterday i had to do a little work. A really nice customer who I have been tattooing for years was home from Iraq for a week and wanted to get a tattoo in honor of his new son. I don’t really do a lot of black and grey work but i really wanted to do this justice for a great guy. Im pretty booked up for weeks now, but since he was due to be shipped back in a week I went in on tuesday and we put 4 1/2 hours into this poor guys riblets and came up with this bad boy.The tattoo gods must have been smiling on us because not once in the whole time did the phone ring or a customer come in asking if we do piercing, nothing, just some jazz on the radio, the buzz of the machine and AJ occasionally groaning as I tore him up.

brand new, still a lil red

If the rain holds off Im gonna ride my ass off today!

Burgers n Bikes

This memorial day Cara and I rode our bikes over to my parents for some cook out action, Ive been thinking about getting a single speed, light bike for some time so for the whole day I left my bike in one gear to see what hitting climbs and starting from a dead stop at traffic lights would be like. Even the relatively steep cobblestone hill leading up to the street my parents live on was no real problem.

I also learned that one of my brothers reads this blog. (Hi Kevin!) Which is sort of strange in a way, mainly for the fact that I actually talk a lot more about my personal feelings and life on here than I do to my family. Lambert gatherings tend to be closer to a celebrity roast than a Hallmark moment. We are not big huggers or vocal with our affection, its more of an understood thing, but that didn’t stop me being jealous of my friends who talk openly about their love for each other with their families when I was younger. Still, we have much more fun and almost none of that family drama of most folks I know and I have yet to visit for a holiday where I’m not laughing my ass off most of the time.

For example, as we were all sitting around the backyard with various kids and dogs running around everywhere, my dad starts talking about a person he knows with different colored eyes.
“Hes got one Blue eye and one Brown Eye” and with consummate comedic timing (a Lambert genetic trait) one of my brothers calmly adds “Yea, Ive got two blue eyes and one brown eye”.

Now we were all busted up by this, including my mom who tries her best to be un-amused by everything and yet can not hide her emotions at all. At the same moment she will say something like “that’s disgusting” she also has this giant shit eating grin on her face totally negating her attempt at moral reserve.

By the way, the burgers were delicious.

Anyhow Kevin mentioned how this has been slowly turning into a bike blog. I cant really deny it, in fact I cant even really say that it wont be about making taffy or the grapefruit diet by this time next year. Like a lot of guys I tend to pick up a hobby, some small thing will spark an interest and all of the sudden I’m reading everything I can on the subject and talking about it non-stop (poor Cara. . .). I get obsessed by something for a while and then, eventually, I put it down again. . .forever.

Sometimes stuff is useless and transient, my once all consuming love for cameras is long gone and I rarely take pictures at all unless its of a tattoo. The same goes for my fascination with handmade knives or military history. But, sometimes it sticks around like my 7+year love affair with Buddhism and my 12+ year fascination with tattooing.

The jury is still out about bikes. Maybe a harsh winter will kill it, maybe a wreck, or maybe Ill just see some other newer thing that is shiny and pretty and my bike will gather dust and cobwebs while I’m off kayaking or basket weaving somewhere. However,in favor of its lasting.  riding has led to some pretty incredible changes in my life.

For one thing I have lost nearly 12 pounds in 2 months and I have drastically altered my relationship to food. Instead of eating food for boredom or as a comfort, I treat food as fuel, I eat amazingly less than I did, crave almost nothing anymore, and am careful to burn more calories than I take in. Food has ceased to be a love/hate relationship and become simply a fact of life that I enjoy in moderation. When I ride a bike I don’t want cupcakes and giant bowls of cereal, I actually find myself looking hungrily at a pear or a handful or raisins instead. No one is more surprised by this than me!

When I first wanted to buy a bike this past February, I had a very specific idea about what I wanted and why. I wanted a commuter bike, with fenders and racks, I wanted to be able to haul stuff and I wanted a bike I could oaf around on, crashing pot holes and curbs without worrying about too much. In short, I wanted a beast. So I bought one.

I love the bike I bought, I commuted with it every day and on my days off I would take it on long long rides around the city. As I got closer to some form of physical fitness (still far away, but not as far these days) I realised that in some situations my bike was holding me back.

It was heavy as hell for one thing, the wide tires seemed to drag on long climbs for another, at the end of a few hours ride I literally felt like I had an anchor chain wrapped around the bike. I seldom used the gears anymore except to get a quicker start at stop lights. It was time to go lighter. I began to look online at lighter, single speed bikes.

There is something in the male mind that is obsessed with simplicity.We love nothing more than to pare every item down to utilitarian minimalism, I suppose it appeals to our macho need for effectiveness.( To this day I still cant look at a peacock without wondering if he wouldn’t just be better off with one feather and some bells rather than to lug that ornate feather duster around everywhere. I wanted a bike that simple, minimal, like if the Vulcans and Japanese got together to make a bike as functional and basic as possible. No hipster fix gear dangerous trend-monster either, I needed  a functional daily ride that didn’t drag my ass down more than my own ass already did.

So on my search I went to 4 different bike shops yesterday. I may impulsive, but I am impulsive with an obsessive thoroughness that makes it OK, right? There were several contenders, one shop turned me off with the kind of hard sell bullshit we used to pull back in my camera shop days (“Yea I know you told me your upper price limit, but just look at this beauty for only a couple hundred more!”) Another apparently only had bikes for 6 foot 5inch giants with 52 inch inseams. Finally I found the right one at the right price. Here she. . .er. .I mean. . .here IT is.

Trek Soho-S

Did I mention that it was pouring down rain all day yesterday? Oh I’m not only impulsive, I’m impulsive and pig-headedly stubborn which makes it OK, right? So I rode my new baby home in the rain and It felt amazing. I think it weighs a third of my old bike, its aluminum frame can not rust and its tiny inch wide tires seem to bear up under my bulk without a complaint or a flat (yet).

How much do i like it? Well, im going to ride it right now.

bye.

thought for the week and more

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.  Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.  ~Ernest Hemingway

So The Cara-nator and I will be visiting our crazy awesome friends the Dennys in their little town of Delta PA. From there we head to Newark NJ for easy access to NYC. ive never been before and am quite excited. As a kid New York was almost mythically scary to us, every movie and cop show basically implied that to set foot in new york was to invite instant knifing/shooting/raping/and-or haunting (ghostbusters. . .). the funny part is while I was all terrified of ever having to visit the big rotten apple I was living in Miami which was nearly awash in blood from gang and drug running related murders, I guess the palm trees made it seem safer. . . .

I will try to play the tourist and take some pictures, if anyone knows of a super awesome place we HAVE to see while were there let us know, we have 3 days to see stuff and no real firm plans except to attend the Roseland ballroom convention one of those days.