The night after doing Broadway, I was invited to have some drinks with a few people from work. People in New York actually do drink; they just do it at insane hours. His little drinks get together started at 11pm at a place called Village Underground. It was bizarre. Firstly, you had to give your name at the door and tell them which party you were with. If you weren't on the list, you didn't get in. Secondly, they're pretty serious about checking IDs here. I haven't been asked for ID yet in New York, and it's not something that's enforced emphatically either, possibly because I don't really look under 21 any more. The NY night scene seems a little different. I've got a New York ID card which they not only looked at, but inserted into some machine which read the barcode on the back to verify that it was legitimate and that I was over 21. You'd really have to have your act together if you were going to produce fake IDs here.
Finally, I found out later in the night that the guy whose birthday it was had to book a certain number of people to get in, which cost him about $250. He then had to guarantee that the group would spend another $250 on drinks. It was certainly a happening place, and when I left, there was a queue a mile long (not quite, but there were hundreds of people), but to spend that kind of money just to get people in seems a little crazy to me.
Long story short, there were a lot of people from work there, so it was my first opportunity to actually kick back and have a drink with these people. They're normal people as it turns out, just being American seems to be their only major problem. Once it got to about 12:30, I called it quits. The best thing about living in New York City is having the subway. The Village Underground practically on top of the D Line, and I was home in about 15 minutes.
I was speaking with the birthday boy a few days later, and he said they went until about 4am, and he passed out in the cab on the way home. Good luck to him; there are too many things to do in New York without doing that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Mmmmm.... the club's name has a special kind of 'seedy' about it. I'm so glad your collegues are actually relatively normal (if you don't hold the American thing against them) and know how to drink. ;) Shame about the crazy hours. You'll have to teach them all about Friday lunch.... you should ALWAYS be erring on tipsy for the Friday afternoon shift!!!
I tend to agree with Sara, very seedy name.
There has been questions over night clubs scanning licences and then selling that information to third parties. Something to keep in mind.
Dave
I got the name of the place wrong - it's the Village Underground. So called because it's in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Sorry. I've changed the blog accordingly.
Post a Comment