FIRST FRIDAY 2-6-04
The first Friday of every month Philadelphia has a citywide appreciation for the arts. The city opens up all their galleries with new exhibitions.
Ran-D knew of the existance of this phenomena because he went to art school in Philly a few years back. We hopped in my car and hit the road.
We parked on 13th Street and went for an early dinner. I've never had an authentic Philly Cheese steak so that was what I wanted to try, but we ended up at one of Ran-D's favorite resturants in Philly for some NY Strip steaks instead.
After diner we made it down to 2nd Avenue where the bulk of the art galleries lay. It was pouring rain, but we were down to see some art,drink, and mingle.
Ran-D really talked up the fact that all the galleries gave out free booze, which in NYC is customary for openings, but for every gallery to give out free booze all at the same time would be like a open-bar barcrawl. When we got in the galleries though, they were completly dry. The closest thing to free booze was one gallery giving away glasses of seltzer
After about an hour of art viewing the galleries closed down so we wandered over to Ran-D's favorite bar in Philly "Sugar Mom's" which Ran-d claimed was "Philadelphia's equivalant of Max Fish".
The bar was in the basement of an old sugar refinery. The building is supported by two rows of giant brick and mortar pyramids. They look cool, and make it a really intamate bar for couples, because from any place in the bar your field of vision is obsured 90 % by the brick pyramids.
Cool for couples, but if you are single and looking to mingle (As Ran-D was), it makes it very difficult.
I did a walk around scoping out the place to soak in the new environment. Having never been to a bar in Philly, and actually having only been to Philly twice in the last 10 years to meet with my manager I didn't expect to see anyone I knew.
As I was doing my first lap I heard my name get called from a group of people.
What are the odds of runnning into Mickey DeLorenzo,one of my childhood friends, in a bar in Philly? He was one of the kids that lived on my street in Jersey growing up. The only kid I knew (other than Ran-D) who went to college in Philly (although he's my younger brother's age).
Mickey and his girlfriend were chillin in the bar. Ran-D and I went over and started talking and catching up on old times.
After we finished our drink we split out and went over to another bar "CITY PAPER". I don't think that's the name of the bar, but the newspaper that is above the bar, but it's so much easier to remember the bar as City Paper because of the giant City Paper banner hanging over the entryway to the bar "Ya can't miss it!"
This bar was packed. We walked through the shoulder to shoulder crowd to get to the bar. Some chick grabbed my ass way too hard.
I stopped drinking (cause I would be driving) and Ran-D started mackin' to a whole crowd of ladies.
When we finally got back to my car there was a parking ticket on the windshield (so much for Ran-D's theory that parking meters aren't valid on First Fridays).
We got on the road, but realized we were hungry so we stopped at a diner, which is one of those old fashion diners. It must be famous because it's got the signed headshot of some weird woman in the most crazy smile on the wall near the door. I had Ran-D try to duplicate her expression for the camera, and then asked a girl waiting in line for a seat to give it a shot herself, she obliged. (SEE THEIR ATTEMPTS!, if you ever stumble on this diner, and see that head shot, send me a photo of yourself doing that pose next to the headshot and I'll post them all here).
We had food and then left. I was driving and Ran-D was drunk so I was getting drunk directions. We somehow ended up going over the wrong bridge and wound up in the ghetto town of Camden, New Jersey.
I turned us around at the first exit, Ran-D was starting to freak, because as he said "Getting stuck in Camden would be like a scene from Judgement night."
As we were pulling back onto the highway the road was completly flooded. I decided to slam through the puddle, which turned out to be a big mistake. The car went dead.
So now we were sitting in the middle of a giant puddle. It was freezing cold out, and walking through the puddle was like walking in liquid ice.
We hopped out of the car to try and contemplate our options. We were in Camden, on the side of the highway, 3:30 in the morning, it was freezing, and now there was a cop pulling over behind us.
We asked the officer if he could give us a jump, and of course he was an asshole and wouldn't. He did tell us that we can't stay parked in the middle of the road like that, but didn't bother to help us push it out of the road of course, he just drove off. I hopped out of the driver's seat and instantly went shin deep into the frozen water. I pushed the car out of the puddle.
Luckily there was a closed down gas station about 100 yards down the highway. I pushed the car into the gas station's parking lot to get us out of the rain.
Ran-D figured that it was probably our ignition caps that got wet under the car and weren't firing and we would have to dry them. We pushed the car under the gas station awning. I got an old shirt from the trunk and grabbed the flashlight from the emergency kit. The batteries had leaked and the flashlight was shot.
I climbed under the car and tried to dry whatever I could see that was wet, which was everything.
I then had the bright idea that we could get the gas station's air compessor (for pumping up tires) put some quarters in the machine and go under the car and blow it dry.
Good in theory, but after we paid the money we found that the only way to trigger the air to expell from the nozzle was to have it pressed down at the nipple (as when you push it into your tire) so it was basically useless.
Ran-D called AAA and they said they wouln't be able to come get us for 6 hours.
Ran-D collected a few rocks we could use as weapons in case someone tried to jack us.
We pushed the car to the side of the gas station and got the weakest / borderline hypothermic sleep of our lives. We were awoken by the flat back tow truck pulling up a the crack of dawn.
He put the car on the lift, and we piled into the front of the truck with him. His name was Art. Go figure.
A few hours later he dropped us off an dumped the car in front. It hit the ground kinda hard but I didn't think anything of it.
I tipped Art and he took off. A few hours later the car dried off and started working again.
I took it round the block later that day and it wouldn't pick up steam. It wouldn't get past like 40.
I opened the hood and found that the plastic container that holds one fluid or another had broken loose when that asshole Art slammed the car down into the pavement and had now been rubbing up against the belt that controlls the car's speed. The belt had cut through this plastic container and the liquid was everywhere.
I got home, quickly cleaned it up and duct taped it back into place. . . too much adventure for one night. I closed the shades and hit the sheets.
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo