Today I went shoe shopping.  I was looking for a specific pair of shoes.  I’m always looking for a specific pair.  Could I find them?  No.  Not even at Sak’s Shoe Boutique, where it’s sooo big that it has it’s own zip code.  What a disappointment.

Last night I went down to B-Side for a few beers.  Damn you CB Six for being closed!!!  There I ran into another Jayhawk.  This one grew up in Overland Park, which I immediately made fun of–I blame the 4 beers.  Today I got an invitation to a cruise for Jayhawks.  I’m not sure I really want to spend 4 hours with fellow Jayhawks on the Hudson.  Maybe…maybe.  It may be interesting to meet more carnies.

The photos from the previous post are not from any of the dive bars that I visited.  Oh no.  Rather they are from my once home bar, CB Six.  I say once because they are currently closed for 30 days.  30!  The bar was sold and is changing hands.  I’m only a little scared that it won’t be the same.  We’ll see in 30 days.

By the way…I’m not real sure how that night ended.

And to prove that I am still around and not in the gutter next to the old woman who got mugged.

Anyway Matt tagged me instead of writing about our dinner and my retelling of interviewing a sex-worker. Lucky you guys I just finished the new Chuck Palahnuik & David Sedaris and have moved on to more boring reading. So I give you an excerpt from King Arthur: Hero and Legend:

But the ultimate effect of the Grail story is to produce a hero who fails, an important step towards the modern novel; for Lancelot is still the hero after his failure. Malory might have preferred to make Arthur the central figure, but the French stories did not provide enough material on which to build his reputation. As it is, he is the hero of the first two parts, and Malory pays him the highest compliment he knows: ‘of him all knights may learn to be a knight’.

Where did I get this stimulating reading you ask? Well, a couple of weeks ago, May 27th to be exact I went up to the Cloisters to take a look at the Unicorn Tapestries. This is something that’s been on my list since my junior year of undergraduate studies. I took the Arthurian Legends literature course and learned a whole lot about a basically fictitious character and how it tied in the legends of unicorns. The professor told us about the tapestries and said, “if you are ever in New York make time for them.” So finally I did (besides the museum is mostly outdoors & gardens so no point in going during the winter). I bought a the preceding book on King Arthur as well as one on Merlin. That day ended with the premiere of Sex and the City Movie. The best part of that was…oh wait. There wasn’t one.

You guys just wish that I was at home right now and was closer to my Blackbeard book. I picked up that one while down in North Carolina. A little local color (from NC) to liven up the dreary NYC days. I was looking for a decent book on Coney Island to compliment the Coney Island Lagers & more importantly my ride on the Cyclone, but alas…bookstores in Coney Island are not just right there. It’s not like they are dive bars or shoot the freak shows.

I suppose I could have pulled something from the other book in my bag, but on page 123 there isn’t 5 sentences let alone three more after it. In fact it only has the following:

• Best Bathrooms
• Raccoon Lodge
• Barrow’s Pub
• Leisure Time Bowling Center
• Motor City
• Rudy’s

This book is actually coming in pretty handy. My favorite bar has closed. That’s right it happened again. CB Six is closed (for 30 days). So I’ll take the time to explore the “best dive bars.” The goal is to hit every bar in the book by the end of summer. I’ve done okay so far and have been to 12 of them (of course that counts the bars that I would go to when I was living in the East Village). We hit three bars last weekend in Park Slope after going to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, not to be confused with the one in the Bronx mind you.

So…now I’m suppose to pass it on right? Well I’m not going to! I won’t submit to your tyrannical demands. I won’t do it. So there.