Saturday afternoon, I jumped onto the 11a bus for Manhattan and immediately fell in a dead sleep. I’ve been working too hard for months now, and I pass out whenever I get these spare moments of quiet. By the time I met up with my friends, Margie and Suze, at the Barnes and Nobel on W. 8th St., I had come out of the post-nap daze.
We didn’t have a real agenda for the afternoon, though we never do. After 20 years of friendship, we’ve perfected the fine
art of roaming and talking. We usually pick a neighborhood and walk through the streets, window shopping and stopping into places for food and drink. We did this roaming/talking/drinking/eating/window shopping thing for about five hours through the West Village.
We passed some old haunts — the Art Bar, the White Horse Tavern. Over the years, the regular handouts have rotated. We tried to remember the period of time that we met up at the Art Bar after work. What else was going on in our lives at the time? Was I dating Steve then? Was I in grad school? Was Suze still working at the big publisher? What other friends were in our lives at that time? It all merges together after a while.
On this trip, I added another activity to our adventure. I took lots of pictures.
Apt. 11d 
That sounds really nice.
I happened to pass Art Bar a few weeks ago. I hadn’t been there since I think 2000, definitely since before 9/11. It was so odd to think of people continuing to have the kind of late nights I remember there from the dot-com heyday (those chips and guacamole at one or two in the morning, yum!) Some of my ‘new’ favorite spots are just around that block, so for a few steps it was like being in two decades simultaneously.
I noticed two of your eight pix had scaffolding. It seems to be *everywhere* in the city now!
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