The story begins with a warm bottle of Nor' Eastern from Captain Lawrence Brewing Company and a train to Grand Central with friends. The story ends with Edith Piaf.
There were five of us, two had fancy phones to guide us, one had an address scrawled on a purple sticky note, and the other two were just along for the ride. We stared at maps hung on white tiled walls and saw that we had to follow the yellow line to get to where we needed to go, which was the Bohemian Hall Beer Garden. When I say the "yellow line" I don't mean the subway line called "The Yellow Line" I mean there was a line of a yellow color that, if followed would take us to a black dot that was only a few blocks from the Bohemian Hall. This yellow line had three subway lines that rode on it, because this yellow line would fork at different parts throughout the city. We took no notice of this and jumped on the first subway that pulled up, the Q. If we had looked closer, we would have known to get on the R, instead.
Whoops.
After about 30minutes of riding, we all, seemingly at the same time, as if the conductor made a telepathic announcement to our group, realized that we needed to get off the Q immediately. We did, but then after staring at more maps, and asking an Indian man siting behind glass where to go, we were officially lost.
I asked the man where to go, and he leaned into his microphone and said, "AURHGORHGOUG and AUGHONRGGOORRR, but most importantly don't forget KKCCCHCHHHHHCHCHHH."
"Cool, thanks," I said.
"What'd he say," the group asked eagerly .
"I have no idea," I said.
The steps to the next track were roped off, and we had to get on the Q again, and go farther in the wrong direction. We got off at the next stop, found the R line, and, long story short, made it to the little black dot that was near the Bohemian Hall Beer Garden. After walking around for a while, we found where we needed to go. It even required breaking a few pedestrian laws.
The beer garden was nice. I expected a wider beer selection, but there was enough to chose from to be satisfied.
Gabby seemed to have a fun time, and she shot lots of video. In classic fashion, people continually thought that she was about to take a picture, and only after an awkwardly long amount of time, would they realize that she had no intent of taking a picture. The best part about it was that she never said that she was shooting video, never correcting their posing smiles, because she knew that these statuesque people would turn into the anti-paparazzi, complete with turned heads and waving hands.
I gave a speech to her video camera, explaining why it took us three hours to get to the beer garden instead of the estimated one hour. I have yet to see the video.
The beer garden, as you walk in, seems like nothing more than a small bar, but upon further review, there are two sets of stairs, one set leads into a quite basement/dining area, and the other leads to a concert hall and poker room. There are large doors next to the bar, at the main entrance. These large doors takes you outside to a large open space, complete with food service, another bar, and rows upon rows of picnic tables and a few trees. I'm no Matt Baile, but it looked like there was close to an acre worth of space designated just for the beer drinkers of New York City. I was content.
The night was cold, so I ventured inside for a while to warm up and explore. This is where I found the basement, the poker room, and the music hall. It wasn't so much a music hall, but more of a middle school multipurpose room, complete with large stage and basketball court. On stage was a young blond woman bowing and raising her hands in thanks. She walked off stage, walked away from a standing ovation from two dozen of her friends and family. As I leaned against the door I felt like a voyeur, and you would have never known that ten feet away was the largest, oldest, beer garden in New York City.
The woman came back out on stage again, and bowed, and nodded, and with her hands encouraged the two dozen people standing and clapping to go away. They continued to stand and clap, not giving into her demands. So she came out again and played one more song. As it were, she was french. Never seeing a blond french singer in the flesh I was taken back. I had been standing in this room for fifteen minutes watching this woman walk on and off stage over and over, and I had no idea we didn't share the same language. As she began to sing, I realized she was no Edith Piaf, the only french singer I know, so I left and had a pint of Franziskaner, instead.
As the night got colder, we all migrated back inside, and counted down the minutes until midnight, until Gabby's birthday. We sang, we drank, we hugged, and we left Gabby to run back to the subway to try and catch the 1:06AM train from Grand Central back home.
Surprisingly to me, we made it with plenty of time, and got home safely.
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