Yesterday, however, was a great day. Someone Liz works with jokingly said to her "I order you to have fun this weekend. You're young - young people have fun all the time!", so we looked into doing something. The decision was made to go to New York for the day and hang out. Liz looked at what was going on in the city yesterday and we made some plans.
We woke up to find the sky slightly darker than it was forecast to be, but decided to plow on. Arriving in the city at our first destination we found the air full of smoke. But not the bad type of smoke - this was the smoke of the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party!
(click on photos to see larger size)
Madison Square Park and it's surrounding streets had been transformed into a massive block party, with around 15 awesome barbecue stands being set up along the closed off roads. There were "pit bosses" there from all around the country. Reasonably long lines greeted you whenever you wanted food, but it was worth the wait. After finding a venue map we thought about the foods we wanted to try, getting more and more hungry by the second. Our first stop was Ubon's Barbecue of the Yazoo for some pulled pork and coleslaw. While in line we saw a guy with some good-looking ribs, so I asked him where they were from - our next stop was decided. The pulled pork was good, and the coleslaw was awesome.
Next up was Baker's Ribs. The guy who runs Baker's Ribs opened his first restaurant in 1979 - so we figured he had to know something about ribs. While in line we saw this guy carving brisket:
The line at Baker's moved the fastest of the 3 lines we waited in, and we moved straight past the guys who were cooking the ribs.
The ribs from Baker's, which came with Jalapeno Coleslaw, were the best thing we ate at the Block Party. The coleslaw wasn't as good as Ubon's, but the ribs were awesome.
After those ribs we wanted to try a dish that had baked beans with it, and given how good the ribs we had just eaten were we headed for the 17th Street Bar & Grill stand for Baby Back Ribs and Beans. Waiting in line I saw a barbecue sauce fountain, a guy unpacking ribs and a guy saucing and cutting ribs with a weird looking lady behind him.
The Baby Backs weren't as good as the ribs from Baker's, but all the food was starting to hit the spot, so we left the Block Party and walked out of the park, which is adjacent to the Flatiron Building. Looking around the skyline I spotted this. It's part of an art exhibit, and there are a few of them on top of buildings around the park. On the opening day the police apparently got calls about jumpers on rooftops.
Next stop was a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. Neither Liz nor I had ever been to Brooklyn before yesterday, so we jumped on the subway and headed down there. The train out there was cool - it was one of the older trains which you don't see in Manhattan. Coming up from the subway we were both struck by how quiet Brooklyn is compared to Manhattan. There was a park nearby that only had a handful of people in it, so we stopped for a while before heading for the bridge.
The bridge was cool - it didn't take long to walk the entire length. We saw the Statue of Liberty etc, and once we were over we started heading towards the area where we were going to get dinner. After dinner we decided to grab some dessert and started walking. That's when we saw something disturbing. From behind us we heard people yelling and cheering, and the sound of bike bells. A huge group of people, probably over 100, rode past us on bikes. All naked or near naked. It was bad.
Eating dessert while walking uptown we found ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time again. This time we were walking towards the naked bike riders. All we could do was avert our eyes.
Our last stop on our day of fun was an improv comedy show. Tickets were $5 each, so we figured even if it was terrible it wasn't that much for entertainment in the city. The show was at the Magnet Theater, and was done by a group called 4Track. They had their moments, but one of their members just wasn't funny.
A great day in the city, apart from the naked bike riders. I don't know why we don't do it more often - we live so close and there is always something different going on down there. It's not like there are naked bike riders every day...
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