Marianne Mancusi: Saturday Frustrations and Fun

Yesterday was one of those lessons in patience that only New York City can teach you. Nothing went horribly wrong - yet nothing went smoothly either.

Jacob and I woke up and headed down to Soho to get our haircut (him) and colored (me). Yes, now we officially go to the same hairdressing place, which officially makes us geeky couple of the year. What can you do? Maybe you'll give me a few coolness points back if I tell you my new hairdresser is a tranny? She/he did a great job on my hair, too. And the place is nice - small, quiet and you don't feel like you're in a hair factory - something I hate at the larger salons - even the expensive ones like Fredric Fekkai. (Though I must admit I LOVED LOVED LOVED the end result the one time I went to FF. If I could afford them, I'd go everytime, despite the hustle and bustle of the place.)

But I digress. We got out of the hair salon and went to find food. The deli was out of bagels. The crepe girl was out of strawberries and then it started to rain and my beautifully blow dried hair was out of non-frizziness.

Ducking into an East Village Starbucks, we waited in line as a bathroom bouncer checked each stall after each person exited before ushering the next person in. Now a while back, Liz was wondering why everyone took so long in Starbucks bathrooms and I said that it was a great place for people to duck in and do drugs. They're on every corner, after all, and each bathroom is private. I'm not sure she entirely believed this could possibly be true, so I took my chance and asked the bathroom attendent why he was checking the stalls. Sure enough, they were looking for evidence of drug use. If they find it, they call 911. I felt extremely validated, though also a bit shocked when the guy told me he'd had 7-8 episodes of someone trashing the bathroom this week. It seemed impossible - yet I suppose it must be true; after all, they have to pay this guy to run the bathroom line. They must have felt it necessary.

After Starbucks, we headed to the train, which we found out was not going to Astoria since they were working on the tracks. So we walked up to Union Square and hit Forever 21 and H&M (which were both packed beyond belief - rainy Saturday = long dressing room lines). Still I ended up finding an outfit for the party that weekend, so this was good. Leanna met us at H&M and we took a cab back to Astoria. Long, expensive cab ride, I might add, since everyone who couldn't go by subway had the same idea.

We hung out in Astoria and watched a movie as Jacob fixed Leanna's laptop. Then we got dressed and headed out to Elizabeth "Bitsy" Mahon's birthday party. It was held in a very cool bar called The Dove Parlour in the West Village. We mixed, mingled, took a bunch of photos, then walked to the East Village to go to Pyramid Club to dance the night away to classic 80s tunes. Besides an unfortunate incident with a club tool spitting water at everyone on the dance floor, a fun time was had by all.

The night ended with a $30+ cab ride home since there were no trains and the bridge was closed to cars as well. The cabbie had to take the Williamsburg bridge and then completely went the wrong direction to Astoria. Much grr'ness for that.

In any case, here are some pics from the night! Thanks to Morgan for some of these. No thanks to slacker Liz who hasn't uploaded hers yet... :)