Thursday May 1st

Thursday May 1st
New york, New york

2nd Ave and 2nd St.
Lit Lounge
w/ kampion, algorythm & blues, Gringo Star

We put the venue's address into the GPS even though we were about 12 hours early for the show. We were able to find street parking pretty quick and we walked around the area of the venue for an hour or two, grabbed some pizza, I grabbed a glass piece.

After hanging out in that part of town for a minute, we decided to try to find somewhere to dump the van; this is where the trouble began. Couldn't really find anywhere to park; most places charge retarded money for parking vans in Manhattan. So we did some more street parking, thinking we could move the car a few times and avoid being ticketed. We were wrong. We dumped the van around 30th street, had a quick smoke, and started walking around. After walking around a bit and checking out some parks, we went back to the car, ticket number one ($65) was stuck to the window of the van.

This was pretty depressing to me since we were already losing crazy money on gas. 14 miles a gallon combined with >$3.50/gallon petrol prices is a fucking tragedy when you're averaging about $50/show. So I called Whitney and she transferred some more money into the band account.

If it was my car, I wouldn't even pay the tickets. But we weren't supposed to take the van to Mexico, Canada, or the state of New York. So, just so the van people wouldn't know we were in New York, we're probably going to have to pay the tickets, probably.

We moved the van up the street to a more legal parking spot, stuck some money in the meter and walked around some more. I have no idea what happened between then and the show. The next thing I remember is driving over to the venue, driving around for 45 minutes, and finally giving up on a legal parking spot. We parked in a spot that looked legit, but had a no parking sign next to it.

I saw a Chomp, but it was too high to Womp.

Lit Lounge has two levels, there's a regular bar type area with a DJ on the main floor and the venue was downstairs. It had a nice dungeon feel to it, everything was kind of sticky. The sound guy here was really nice and chill, especially when compared to what we'd been dealing with up to this point. Just to get it over with, we loaded all of our shit down the stairs and into the back room. Then we sat around for an hour or so while these two guys from Mexico - Kampion and Algorythm & Blues - tore it up in front of nobody. They had some really interesting music, lots of weird moans and ambient noise mixed with oddly timed beats. It was legit. I'm supposed to contact Kampion "via the myspace". He wants to do a remix of a few of our songs.

Sometime during their set, we got another fucking parking ticket. I went out to the van for a second to test the new piece and saw the proof on the windshield. This was depressing for a few reasons, on top of cost of the ticket, now I was worried that we were going to get our van towed during our set, and I didn't have time to move the van, we were supposed to already be on stage playing and my pedals weren't even plugged in yet.

We played a 20 minute set in front of maybe ten people, it was fun and noisy and a nice release from the stress of having to deal with a van in the city. as soon as we got into the noise part of the last song, i tossed my guitar down and ran out of the venue, imagining i'd be getting to the van just as the tow truck was pulling away. But the van was still where it was left, I pulled it around into the bus lane in front of the venue, put on the flashers, and went back downstairs to start loading our shit out.

After we loaded out, I drove around and smoked for about half an hour looking for a spot. I finally found a non metered legal parking spot only a few blocks from the venue, i can't even being to explain how excited I was about that, seriously, parking a van in Manhattan is impossible. I got back to the venue as the next band, Gringo Star, was starting. They were pretty cool; people were starting to show up and things were feeling better. We'd played a fun noisy set and our van wasn't in an impound lot, I'd already forgotten all the tolls and tickets from earlier.

Trevis found a sweet deal on pizza, there was a grand opening of some pizza place right around the corner from the venue and they had huge slices of pizza for $1. Deal of the century.

During the last few bands' sets, we were all in and out, and James was trying to see if we could get some money. The door girl said there was no door money, but James talked to the owner and they gave us fifty bucks. Some guy hanging out with the owner gave James another hundred, nice.

James told me how much money we made, then about an hour later he came and talked to me again. It turns out the guy that gave James a bill wasn't a gift; he was expecting at least a blow job. So James gave him back $80. I told him he should think about taking a shot in the mouth for the team, he could pay for the whole tour in a few hours.

The highlight of the tour for James goes as follows. While he was talking with the owner about the money situation, he met Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Skunk, Zwan), Matt was looking to smoke, so I went to the car and grabbed what we had left. The bar closed about five, but because Matt was in with the owner pretty tight, me, Allen, and James were able to stay in the bar talking/smoking with Matt until about 8 in the morning. James smoked about five of his cigarettes. He was full of sagely advice.

By the time we left, it was light out and we had to move the car so the street sweepers could come through. While everyone slept, I drove around Brooklyn looking for a safe, but cheap, place to park the van while we walked around the city on our day off.