May 17, 2005

• IN A NEW YORK MINUTE

  
  

   

  
  

  In a few hours I’ll be hopping on a flight to New York for a meeting tomorrow in the financial district where everyone’s shoes will have cost twice as much as my suit.

  
  

   

  
  

  I don’t go to New York on business often but it always seems to be an adventure when I do.  The last time I was there was for the national Audio Engineering Society Conference (can you think of bigger gathering of geeks? I can’t).

  
  

   

  
  

  There were two of us attending from our firm and we met up with another friend of ours who worked for a manufacturer who was there exhibiting their wares.  His boss gave him a wad of cash and told him to take us out on the town one evening after the conference.

  
  

   

  
  

  We had a nice dinner, made our rounds to two or three of the manufacturers “after parties”, and wound up in a bar on Times Square.  The place was nearly empty and we sat down on three adjacent stools right at the bar. The bar tender sauntered over to where we were sitting and ask where we were from. “We’re from Oklahoma” we responded in chorus with accents thick enough to make Barney Fife sound like John Houseman.  He replied “Well, isn’t that a coincidence, because we’re running a special tonight for everyone from Oklahoma.”  You may find this difficult to believe, but we were actually naïve enough to think he was on the level. He continued; “Everyone from Oklahoma gets free shots of Jagermeister tonight.” He then proceeded to set us up. Not believing our good fortune, we began to partake.

  
  

   

  
  

  I’m assuming that everyone reading this will have had Jagermeister, but just in case you haven’t; think of it as licorice on steroids. We had already had a couple of drinks at dinner and a few beers at the after parties. Jagermeister on top of that is not a good idea.

  
  

   

  
  

  After a shot or two (or three or four…I’m a little foggy on the details), a very attractive young woman walked in and sat down next to us. The bar tender fixed her a drink without saying a word to her. After a couple of minutes of awkward silence she turned to us, and the first words out her mouth were; “so…you guys wanna go f*#k?” If there ever was a Polaroid moment, it would have been capturing the look on our faces. My buddy who had taken us out replied that he couldn’t do that because he was married. She stared at him with a look that clearly said “what potato truck did you fall off of?”, and replied, “trust me honey, I’m not gonna tell her.”  We politely declined, but my friend did get up the courage to ask her how much she charged. She said she would do all three of us for a $100.00 apiece. Trying to be glib, I asked if she accepted coupons. Apparently, that was not an appropriate comment in this type of situation. Seeing that she was not going to find any customers among these rubes from the back woods of Oklahoma, she downed her drink and walked out of the bar. Suddenly, the free drinks dried up. We left the bar happy though, content in the knowledge that our trip was complete because us boys from Oklahoma had done gone and met us a real live woman of ill-repute.

  
  

   

  
  

  My flight gets into LaGuardia at 1:00 a.m. and I’ll be taking a taxi to a hotel directly across from Grand Central Station. If I live through that, I’ll post again from New York and let you know how things are in the Big Apple.

  • 11:42 am
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