Rap Battle Day

My feet are killing me. I've been wearing tennis everywhere, but all this walking is more than they can take. It's weird because we consider ourselves regular excercisers, but being here makes you realize how much you truly rely on your car. Not that we can walk everywhere in Boulder -- the middle-of-the-night trek from Pearl to our house can be a bit much -- but it's kinda strange that we even drive to go workout in Boulder.

To add to the pain in my feet, we decided to finally leave the apt at about noon to go for a jog along the Hudson. It was beautiful, but I felt sort of embarrassed to be sucking wind so bad in front of the statue of liberty. I think she actually turned away. The path from our place down the river to battery park is really nice and had many joggers and people out meandering, only a few of which seemed to be in an argument with themselves. (There appears to be many people around here whose inner voices spill out so that the rest of us can hear). Jason enjoyed watching me try to get out of the way of passersby -- arms flailing and apology spouting on my part just added to the show for him.

Once we made it back home, we took it easy for a few hours, actually getting some work done and dozing off and on. Jason took comfort in a PB tortilla, and we were off wandering again. Following the advice of the cheap guide, we headed east to a free open-mike night at a comedy club. Turns out that it's kindof a support group -- you pay $5 and you can try standup in front of other comics. As both of us chickened out, we decided to go back on a night when we paid to watch someone else try to make us laugh.

After stopping to purchase my first pair of from-New-York shoes, we headed to the village for a cowgirl-themed restaurant which turned out to be a little too close to home for J's liking. We could have been in the 'Trose -- the only thing that made it NY-like was the terrible service and the prices. For $30, we had two thimble-sized margaritas and a cool dinner of fritos with chili on top served from the bag. At least we enjoyed the sweet sounds of Willie and Kenny Rogers while complaining about the place.

Just across the street was a pub that gives out free hot dogs during happy hour on Mondays, so we enjoyed a few beers among 20-something up-and-comers, then headed to a really cool corner bistro that served great beer for $2 a pint. All of these places are only a few blocks away from our place, but the west village definitely has a different feel than our street (which is referred to as the west village but definitely has a different feel, perhaps because it is a subway hub). Our street is a little more "real" as J likes to call it.

All of this actitity was to keep us up and awake long enough to actually go out, and the night's destination was a live hip hop show and rap battle across town. Yes, I said rap battle. Leave it to platinum fubu J to find 8 mile in Manhattan. After wandering in the wrong direction after getting off the subway, we found some kids who helped us find the place. Even the high school kids are nice, and we felt safe knowing that people seem to be gruff on the outside, but are really nice when you need it. The actual battleground was a little bar that had a pretty diverse crowd. There were hip hop guys, literary poet-type dudes, and many hangin' on the arm girlfriends.

No matter where we go, we're so amazed by how integrated the diversity is. It highlights the sad situation back home that people here don't even seem to notice how different everyone is. Maybe it's just that everyone is so different and speaks another language and has a completely different history that it truly equalizes things. It is so ridiculous that I don't speak Spanish...

Anyway, back to the battle. J and I stayed up against a side wall to enjoy the whole situation as much as the show. They had a wheel that picked the topic, and each guy got 30 seconds. It seemed to always go from the topic back to tearing up the other guy, but it was pretty entertaining. We stayed til the end when some guy whose name I still can't figure out killed the other guy after four additional rounds of competition. It appears that the ability to creatively insult your opponent's mother, hair, and sexual prowess is the winning ticket. We'll have to try this with the Giers' karaoke machine at home. Exhausted, we followed a sprightly little rat up the stairs at our subway stop and were quickly lulled to sleep by the firetrucks and cop cars down below...

BTW, thanks for all the comments and hellos -- it's comforting to see you guys are laughing at us all the way from Colorado.