Nothing to See Here Part I

On Friday, August 15 I took a Martz bus to New York City for Mark’s bachelor party, and I told him next time I travel here I’m chartering a helicopter. For most of the way there was nothing wrong with the traffic, but once we got into Jersey City, it took us an hour to go 5 feet. I asked Mark if this usually happened, or if Governor Christie threw a traffic jam just for me. Mark said the traffic wasn’t anything special.

Once I got there, at about 4:40 instead of 3:50, Mark got my bag, after I kind of told him what color it was, I think, and we went to the subway station. Unfortunately, there were no sewer crocodiles running around or anything else, so we got on the subway. It didn’t fill me with confidence that the train’s brakes screeched and whenever the doors opened a burning smell wafted in. Also, you couldn’t hear the conductor announcing stops or anything else very well. No giant worms from Men in Black II chased us from stop to stop, and we eventually got off at ours.

Walking to Mark’s apartment building, we passed Jacque Torres Chocolate and an ice cream shop, and also a row of stacked bags of garbage. This row looked shorter than me, but not by much. The city should put a large trashbin there, much easier to keep animals out.

Entering the building, we took an elevator to his floor, and then went to his apartment to eat pistachios. They seem like more work than they’re worth, and I prefer almonds dusted with dark chocolate anyway. Putting all my paraphernalia down, Mark poured me the obligatory glass of water, and then we went to investigate chocolate and ice cream.

After looking through both, well him telling me what the places had, I got a chocolate chip ice cream sandwich from Jacque Torres Chocolate. Taking it back to the apartment, and eating it there, I give it two thumbs up. Neither Rodney, nor Matt was there, the other two groomsmen who could make it to the shenanigans, so we waited. Matt got delayed by—what else—traffic, and I got to watch the evening news in a different city.

Sometime after the news, Mark went to retrieve Matt, and when they came back we walked for pizza. At first, we stood in the line for Grimaldi’s, but then walked to the line for Juliana’s, both pizza places. After a pretty short wait, we got in, and were seated. We ordered one kind of pizza with buffalo mozzarella, among other things, and mushroom and meatball pizza. They were both very good but I liked the meatball pizza better. Normally, I don’t like mushrooms, but that wasn’t the problem there (the fungus fell off). The problem was that this pizza was flimsy. We also met the owner, who’s been in the business a long time. Juliana’s is named after his mother. For dessert, I had a “brookie bridge”—a brookie is a cross between a brownie and a cookie.  The brookie bridge is a brookie on top, ice cream in the middle, and a brookie on the bottom. You have to eat it with a spoon because the brookie I expect would disintegrate if you tried to pick it up. I’d definitely eat there again, but I also want to try the other pizza place five doors down or so.