Joel’s Brain Blurps

See this photo gallery of happy, smiling people drinking and having fun?

I was supposed to be one of them.

But as I learned for the 2,123rd time, no matter how many times I go into New York, or how well I think I know the city, something will happen that proves that the city is still capable of grabbing me by my underpants and giving me an atomic wedgie.

And when that wedgie happens because of a brain blurp, it makes the waistband over my head feel all the tighter.

Here’s the skinny: Whitney Matheson, a pop culture columnist for USAToday.com, was holding a meet-up of her column readers at a Lower East Side bar called Lolita. Since I’ve been a loyal reader of Whitney’s for many years, I figured a slow but painful trip into the city from my suburban New Jersey hidey-hole would be worth it. And, as luck would have it, I had been to that bar before, since a writing acquaintance of mine holds debates there every month. Huzzah! All I needed to do was shoot through the Holland Tunnel, make my way up Houston, and I’d be there.

Famous last words…

Now, despite what I’m about to write that shows evidence to the contrary, I’m not an idiot. I know that certain sections of the ride to the Holland Tunnel will contain massive amounts of traffic. But I tend to leave myself plenty of time to accommodate for that. That’s why I left my apartment at the insanely early hour of 4:30 PM; the meet-up was supposed to go from 5:30 to 7:30, and I figured that even if I got to the bar at 6, there would still be plenty of time to mix and mingle.

So I set out on my usual route. It was a nightmare. Traffic on 24. Traffic on 78. And — in the part that determines just how much traffic one can take before going insane — traffic before the covered roadway that leads to the Holland Tunnel. If you see traffic there, chances are that you won’t even see the tolls for 45 minutes or more.

At this point, you may be asking, “Why didn’t he take the commuter train?” After all, I do live a block or so away from a NJ Transit station. Well, there’s a simple answer to that: I can’t stand NJ Transit. The trains come at inconvenient times, and even the Midtown Express is painfully slow; I almost never bother with the train when I’m going to lower Manhattan, because it just takes too damned long. But you bet I was regretting that decision as I was crawling through the covered roadway.

I sat in that mess and looked over to my right. The folks who took the Turnpike to the tunnel were streaming along. But I made the “impatient and cheap” decision to take the shorter — and free — Pulaski Skyway. Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn’t. Today it didn’t. 6:00 rolled around and I was still four lights away from the tunnel.

So I decided to veer off and take the PATH in. I figured I’d get to the bar at around 6:30, still giving me plenty of time to have a drink and thank Whitney for all the links she’s given to the blog I write for, TV Squad. But as the train was pulling out of the station, I realized something: I have no idea where to get off. I usually plan these things in advance: where to get off, what subways to take, where to walk. But I was so sure I was going to drive in that I didn’t make those plans. I got off at Christopher St. and walked to the nearest subway station.

Looking at the map, I knew Lolita was on the part of Broome St. that was not far from where Houston St. crosses the Bowery. But exactly where it was in relation to the subway, I wasn’t sure, and the subway map wasn’t going to help me with that. New York is weird that way; it’s mostly a pretty easy-to-navigate grid, but when you get down to the lower tip — which just happens to be the oldest part of the city — the streets become a spaghetti bowl of curvy streets and streets that get cut off or where the traffic suddenly changes direction. Broome does both. You might as well be in Boston, it’s so confusing. Since I couldn’t figure out where to go, I took an L train across town.

I know what you NYers are thinking: “Big mistake, B&Ter!” I knew the L was too far north, but I decided to take it anyway, getting off at 3rd Ave. and 14th St. From there, I walked all the way down to what Cosmo Kramer called “the nexus of the universe,” 1st St. and 1st Ave. During that trip, I had to take a detour or two, one of which had to do with a massive fire that seemed to involve about three dozen cops and firefighters.

The entire time I’m taking this walk, I’m looking at my cell phone. 6:30. 6:45. 7:00. Time always seems to move faster when you’re either stuck in traffic or lost, and I had experienced both that day. I was just envisioning the minutes circling a big drain that only flowed faster the more I walked.

But I was determined to get to Lolita. It didn’t even matter to me if Whitney was still there or the party was still going; I just wanted to prove to myself that I knew where the bar was. By the time I got to Houston St., it was after 7. “Well, there’s still a half-hour left. Maybe it’ll go late,” I thought. I got my bearings; I remembered that in the car, after I crossed the Bowery, I’d take a left by a park, then take the first right. So I kept walking around that area. Couldn’t find Broome. Wasn’t even close. I don’t know if dehydration was starting to take hold, but at a certain point in my wandering I was starting to think that Broome was some sort of magical street that comes and goes, protected by little pixes that made it disappear when someone deemed “uncool” passed by.

I finally decided to cross Houston and explore the named streets. For some reason, I didn’t think Broome was there — again, dehydration — but I walked around anyway. I was being stubborn; I didn’t want to grab a cab, and I didn’t want to ask anyone for directions, thinking it was a sign of weakness. By the time 7:30, and the nominal end of the meet-up, came around, my shoulders slumped and my gait slowed, but I was by no means ready to quit. Even if I walked in and found an empty bar, I didn’t care. Now, it was personal. Where the hell is this goddamn bar?

At a certain point, I decided to ask someone for directions. Of course, as New Yorkers are wont to do, everyone was wearing the signature “don’t talk to me” iPod earbuds. But I saw a woman that was taking off hers and decided to ask. But before I could get out my question, she had one for me first:

“Excuse me. Do you know where Rivington Street is?”

I chuckled. “I was about to ask you where Broome was.”

“Oh, I think it’s that way.” I thanked her and walked in the direction she was pointing. Lo and behold, what did I find when I walked another block? Rivington Street, the very street that Samaritan was looking for. But Broome was nowhere to be found.

At about 7:45, I gave up. Well, not completely. I caught a cab and said to the driver, “I need to get to this bar on Broome St.” To ease the embarrassment of asking to be driven to a place that was, for all I knew, a block away, I added “It’s not far from here,” with as confident a tone as I could muster. I had no address; I just relied on the driver’s “knowledge” of the city he works in by saying, “It’s not the Broome that goes into SoHo. It’s the Broome that’s up here.” So he drove around, consulting a map, and ends up starting down the part of Broome that I knew wasn’t right. “Near West Broadway, right?” he asked. I had to correct him once again and tell him that it was the part of Broome that changed directions after being cut off by a park. Miraculously, he seemed to know what I was talking about, and turned. He went back up Houston and made a right at Allen St.

Allen St.! Dammit! Right there I knew that my entire sense of how to get to Lolita, either by car, train, or foot, was wrong. I think I had made that left to go to some other bar that I had been at multiple times; I had completely forgot that I had to make a right off Houston, not long after passing Katz’ Deli. I felt like a complete moron; even if I had gotten up there with my car, I would have gotten lost. But at least I’d be lost driving 20 miles per hour and in a bubble of air conditioning. The way I did it was probably the dumbest way I could have gone about getting lost. But there’s one thing I hate worse than getting lost: sitting in traffic. And the only way I was going to keep myself from going semi-postal was to get out of that Holland Tunnel snarl.

We turned right onto Broome — the correct section of Broome — and I relaxed. Finally! Three-and-a-half hours after I left my door in Morristown, I was at the Lolita bar. I had no idea who would be there. Maybe I should just go home at this point, I thought. After all, there’s more dignity in not showing up sometimes than showing up extremely late. I could write Whitney a note and make some excuse, apologizing for my no-show and joshily offering a “maybe next time.” But I was was parched and curious, so I walked into the bar, ordered a Guinness and a water, and walked toward the back.

Whitney was still there, talking to one of the four people that were still hanging out back there. I went up and introduced myself. The look on her face was a mixture of surprise and puzzlement. “Nice to meet you, finally,” she said. “What happened? We’re about to leave.”

I wanted to explain the entire sordid story, but common sense told me otherwise. “Let’s just say it was a matter of a lot of traffic and me not remembering where the bar was. But I’m here now, so cheers.” I clinked her glass.

“Uh, ok…” she said, still puzzled. “I got lost on the way over here, too.”

Of course she did. She’s not from New York. But I bet she didn’t get three-and-a-half hours, wander-around-like-a-deranged-tourist lost, like I did. At that point, I felt like that guy from The Twilight Zone who found out he had all the time in the world to read right before he broke his glasses.

“You missed it,” Whitney said, “We had like 50 people here. It was fun.” Oh, those dreaded words. Everything is always more fun before I get there. It can’t be a coincidence.

Anyway, we chit-chatted for another second or two about Katz’ deli or something, and she turned to talk to the two people she was talking to when I walked in. Since I was in no mood to speak to anyone else, I sat on a cushy bench with my water and beer and just decompressed. I felt very alone at that point; due to my stubbornness and thickheadedness, I was sitting by myself at what was supposed to be a fun event. Whitney broke out her camera to take a few final pictures, but didn’t ask me to pose. I don’t blame her; she was probably taken aback by my sudden and very late appearance, and didn’t know what to think. I should have just taken my own advice and gone home without setting foot in the bar.

Whitney and most of the remaining meet-up-ers gathered their things and made their way out. “Nice to meet you,” she said to me perfunctorily as I sat and sipped my Guinness. I made my way to the bar as the group left and contemplated the trouble I had to go through for ten minutes of meet-up time. I spoke to one of the remaining fans as she went up to the bar to get another drink, but aside from that, I was decidedly anti-social. I’m not good in these situations to begin with, but I was so angry with myself that I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

I finished my beer and left, walking towards the subway station I saw next to a park along Grand St. (that was the park where I needed to turn!). On the way over, it started to pour. I ducked under an awning for a few minutes, but decided to brave the storm. “Fuck it,” I thought, “the worst that could happen is I get wet. I couldn’t possibly get hit by lightning, could I? Nah…”

(P.S. My route back was the way I should have gone in the first place, except in reverse: B or D to Broadway/Lafayette, F or V to 14th, then the PATH back to Jersey.)

(P.P.S. The picture is from one of my favorite sites, Despair.com. The saying under the word Stupidity? “Quitters Never Win, Winners Never Quit, But Those Who Never Win AND Never Quit Are Idiots.” Seems perfectly fitting to me.)