Not My Typical Thursday

I met Nurse H after work for a bite and a show. Sometimes, New York has a way of throwing in a few unexpected bonuses. The evening would have been satisfactory enough as is, but as we moved from one venue to the next, some flourishes were added.

The restaurant didn’t open for dinner until 6:30, so I met her for a drink at The Garage down in the West Village on 7th Avenue and Grove Street. As I came out of the Christopher Street subway station, I realized that it had been a long, long time since I visited this neighborhood. It was like seeing an old friend again. At the bar, Nurse H was nursing a glass of red wine. I had a post-work Belvedere on the rocks to decompress from a horrendous day. We chatted for about twenty minutes and then, right behind us, this began:

An early show! It was only 6:00 p.m! Where else can you accidentally stumble across a live jazz combo that early in the evening on a Thursday night? And no cover! A piano, drums, stand up bass and lead trombone. I love a good trombone solo, don't you? Seriously. Do you know who The Specials are? They’re a ska band extraordinaire. Great trombone solos.

They were all top-notch musicians and Nurse H fell in love with the drummer. We dropped a few dollars in the fish bowl and proceeded to the restaurant. We walked south on 7th Avenue and as we came to the corner of Bleeker Street, we stumbled across this guy:

He had a thick stick of white chalk and was tracing the outline of the shadows from the lamppost and street signs. It doesn’t look like much in the photo, but it was actually quite fetching. So simple, but so effective. Free art!

We ate here:

Charm city. Casa is a small, elegant Brazilian restaurant on Bedford St. It had just opened for the evening, so there were only three other couples there. I love empty restaurants the same way I love empty airplanes. I had Feijoada which, according to the menu, is the Brazilian national dish. It's a black bean and meat casserole with white rice and collard greens on the side. We split a cheese bread appetizer. The meal was so good that I had a dream about it this morning.

We walked half a block down Commerce Street to here:

This is the Cherry Lane Theater, an intimate and storied theater. Lots of early Becket and Albee were premiered here. We saw Fault Lines. It was presented by The Naked Angles Theater Company, who know a thing or two about drama. The first :25 minutes of the play consisted of some amusing dialog that introduced the characters and a slowly meandering plot. But after one specific line was spoken the play really took off and delivered some powerful plot twists.

You can take the boy out of Ohio, etc. All these years in the city and I still get a cheap thrill out of spotting celebrities in their native habitat. In the audience was John Slattery and sitting next to me on my left was the play's director, David Schwimmer.