Saturday Night After Dark

We had a fun filled day on Saturday in New York and I'll catch up on the morning in a future post. But I needed to blog about the evening from my point of view because our night involved being a guest on Marty After Dark.

I've wanted to tag along on Marty's blog since I started following him on AGuyWalksInto365Bars.com. The opportunity came up on my visit to see Britta and Tom in Pennsylvania. My cousin Ruth was going to be out of town and very graciously allowed us to stay in their apartment while they were gone. So Saturday night Tom stayed and wrangled the kids and let Britta and I go out for the night.

Off to Chelsea to meet Marty. I'm really glad Britta was with me because I think I would have just stood and stared at subway maps a lot longer on my own. The London Tube seemed a lot less confusing. But we made it to Marty's house and the certified snackologist had a custom potato chip mixture waiting for us. It was delicious.

Marty has a very cool, very New York apartment. There was tons of stuff, but my favorite was this metal bird. I forgot to ask him if there was a story with it though.

I'm glad Britta was with me because I feel very lame on my pop culture knowledge. Because of Tom, Britta knew how rare this Beatles album was. And I guess if you're a true fan you will too.

Gumby is a frequent guest on Marty's blog, and I was surprised to see him banished to the corner.

Marty very graciously let us have a couple copies of the fanzine he used to write/publish, fishwrap. I can't wait to read them. I also later harassed him into signing my copy of his book The Boy Who Would Be a Fire Truck.

And off we go, out on the town. We walked over to the Old Town Bar for Cheeseburger Saturday Night. This bar was in the old opening segment of the David Letterman Show. Good taste of a New York bar.

Since becoming a fan of Marty's bar site, I've always wanted to be able to watch the behind the scenes stuff he would have to do to get his post. Especially the part of just walking up to strangers and asking them to take their picture. Maybe because that is so far away from my comfort zone. We did get to see that part first hand as he just walked over to a table of strangers and asked if he could take their picture.

As we were watching the interaction Britta and I talked about what we would do if some stranger came up and asked us to take our photo. I don't like having my photo taken by people I know, let alone someone I don't. I don't think I would be that willing. But these people were.

Marty's not as fond of having his own picture taken.

Britta was a little more willing to pose.

The bar is in a cool old building and has beautiful tin ceilings.

And a dumbwaiter that they actually use to get the food from the upstairs kitchen, and to send the dishes back up. I thought it was really cool. Marty said its the only one he has seen still working in NY. Our lovely waitress joined in for the shot.

After dinner Marty asked if we wanted to walk down and see the Flat Iron Building which was just a few blocks away. It took us a few extra blocks and asking a stranger to help find it, but we did. Marty had warned us that its hard to get a good picture at night because its not lit up at all. This was the only picture I could even get my camera to take.

The Empire State Building had really cool clouds right above it, but also something hard to photograph.

We had a great night and a great host to show us around a few blocks of the city. While we were out walking we talked about the rep that New York has of being an unfriendly place. Definitely not the experience we had and Marty felt the same way from the time he has lived there. New York was very open and accommodating to us. I can't say its a place I would want to live, but definitely a nice place to visit.

And just because its a Marty tradition, a closing bathroom shot.

Good Night New York. Thanks for the memories.