7/09/03 Rich Roasts Peppers; Cards w/Rich Scott & Aaron; Late Night Biking with Rich and Aaron; Trolley Tracks Exposed; Manatus @ 5am:







This is the display case in the hallway that leads to my building's mailroom. Everyone in the building passes it to get to their mail, and to get to the "valet." I took this picture as part of my resolve to get a poster of my own posted in it, advertising the many wonderful videography services that I offer. So there.




In this colorful moment, Richard is in Zeytuna, our gourmet market in Downtown Manhattan, picking out the side dish for this evening's Ulivella Special.




He picked out some fresh peppers to roast them. I had mentioned that roasted peppers would go nicely with our mutz, and showed Richard a jar of them in the market, but he scoffed, and decided to roast the peppers himself. First, they needed to be cut open, and into the right shape.




Then drowned in olive oil.




And then, of course, roasted. The peppers, having only soaked for a couple of minutes in oil, were still quite firm, and refused to sit down on the skillet. So, Rich manually held them flat, one at a time. In the end, they tasted amazingly like the real thing (because they are,) but needed to have gotten softer in the oil. The texture was wrong, and now we know.





Richard had better luck with another idea. He has new black serving bowls, and he was able to use one as a sort of mold, to speed up the process of turning the meat into hamburger patties.




He also shucked corn.




The burgers came out of the kitchen like this.




Onions and ketchup make them look like this.




After dinner, Aaron, Scott Finkelstein, Rich and I played Spades. This was Scott's first attempt at the game, and he did quite well at it, except for one particular rule he forgot over and over, which added a unique kind of fun to the evening.




As Scott's frustration grew, so did the hilarity of the situation. And we're not laughing at him. I believe Scott would tell you that were were definitely laughing with him, and he thought it was funny as well.... but not in these photos.




Because I pulled out the camera when Scott and I abysmally lost to Rich and Aaron in an exciting game.




Rich and Aaron loooooooove to win.




Scott had to go back to Long Island, but Rich and Aaron were jazzed by their victory, and when we discovered that the night air was absolutely perfect, we went biking!




Here we all are at the 70th street pier. I used the auto-photo feature. I put the camera on a low, yellow light on the pier, as an impromptu tripod, and I didn't use the flash.




We biked all the way to 125th street along the water, and back. Rich often rode ahead (speed devil) as Aaron and I made our way slow and steady, discussing life, the future, and what we want to do with ourselves. Late night biking provides some really Zen moments, I think. Then, we went all the way back south, past the apartment, all the way to South Ferry, right next to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.




I yelled "Wait a minute! Stop!" When I saw this on the ground next to the construction site. The terminal is being rebuilt, even though it still has ferries running to it. Part of the construction involved digging up some nearby pavement, and these ancient tracks are lying uncovered for the first time in probably almost a century!!! These are TROLLEY TRACKS IN MANHATTAN! So, as you can tell, I was having a little party. Rich was pretty excited about it. Aaron, less so.




Cool picture. We biked back to my apartment, and then decided we were hungry. It was almost 5am. So... we biked back uptown on the bike path, to Manatus Diner in the West Village, about 5 minutes away by bike, with the intention of leaving the bikes next to our outdoor table.




Rich had eggs benedict with fries. I partook of a huge freshly squeezed O.J.




A random guy on the street (Bleecker), took this photo at his insistence with my camera. You know, a borderline crazy. He was functional and polite, but he still inspired the desire to keep the interaction short. So we biked back home, (Aaron walked back to Water Street), and we slept.