A Tale of Two Cities

I know I'm long overdue in sharing my Arizona adventures. But, since this blog is primarily about life in NYC, I figured I could hit two birds with one stone with a comparison of two Girls Nights Out--NYC versus Phoenix.
For my Phoenix night out, I met up with three friends--Del, Michelle, and Beth--whom I'd known when I lived in Arizona in the '90s. Del was an East Coast transplant and friend from grad school, and Michelle and Beth are both reporters and former colleagues. It'd been months since I'd seen Del or Beth, and years since I'd last seen Michelle. Since Del lives in Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix, and I was crashing at her place that night, we opted to meet at nearby Kona Grill, "a stylish Pacific Rim restaurant that attracts lively bar scenesters," according to Citysearch. Actually it's one of five Kona Grills in the Phoenix area, which posed a problem you'd rarely have in New York (unless you were meeting at a Starbucks--a friend once mistakenly told me "the Astor place location" and I spent half an hour at a Starbucks across the street from the Starbucks where she was waiting, until she called to clear up the confusion).
Similarly, I had to specify which Kona Grill we were meeting at to Beth and Michelle, which proved especially confusing because I'm not at all familiar with Chandler and at least two of the locations are in similar-sounding suburban malls or "fashion centers." I gave them each the street address (which proved meaningless, since I later learned it belonged to the mall, so Kona Grill was one of dozens of retailers or restaurants with the same address). Both of them got lost at the mall and had to call me on my cell phone for more specific directions ("southside, across from Dillards"). Apparently, mapquest had mistakenly pictured it on the other side of the massive mall.
Beth arrived first, with a new pixie-ish haircut and tiny diamond stud in her nose, which intrigued the hell out of Del. By the end of dinner, she'd nearly convinced herself, and us, that she was going to get her nose pierced that night. In the end, we opted for cherry-apple flavored tobacco instead, but I'll get to that in a bit.
I drank wine. Del sipped at a stronger drink, but only one since she was driving. (Public transportation was not an option, and neither was walking. This was Phoenix after all, the largest metropolitan area in the country by size, where it took nearly 10 years just to get approval to build a one-mile-long light rail track downtown that has yet to actually be constructed). I kept peering over my shoulder to catch the final minutes of the New Jersey Nets game on one of the large-screen TVs that hung from the bar (they lost to the Miami Heat in a second OT, 108 to 105).
Michelle called from the bar a couple minutes after Beth arrived, and I directed her by phone to our table. It's a good thing she spotted me and waved because I hardly recognized her. She'd lost 70 pounds since the last time I'd seen her during a visit to New York, and she looked about 10 years younger. I'd barely gotten over the transformation in her appearance when she shared news of another major change in her life. After 21 years of marriage and four children, she was getting a divorce! And a new tattoo.
I'd just pulled out pictures from my wedding last year, and was sharing my plans to remove the belly ring I'd had for more than six years and my efforts--eight laser treatments, so far--to try and remove the tattoo above my hip (which, incidentally, have cost me about $950 more than the tattoo itself did, but that's a different story). Not only was I the only married person at the table, but I was the only one who had not recently had, or was currently considering, any piercings or tattoos. I found myself in the strange position of cautioning Michelle, who is a decade older than me, about the permanence (or painful reversal process, at least) of tattoos. I didn't need to dissuade Del from piercing herself. By the next morning, she had changed her mind--or at least, lost the urgency--about getting her nose pierced.
In the midst of our discussions on the pros and cons of tattoos, piercings, and marriage, smoking hookah somehow came up. And we all agreed it seemed like a good idea (better than heading to the piercing parlor that night, at least). So after dinner, we drove in three separate cars to a Middle Eastern place in a strip mall in central Phoenix, where a mostly college-age clientele clad in tank tops, T-shirts and flip flops sat on chairs or cushions around two-dozen tables, taking drags of flavored tobacco from two-foot-high water pipes. We ordered a combination of cherry and apple tobacco flavors, along with rice pudding and baklava. Alcohol, fortunately, was not on the menu.
Smoking hookah, I learned, is perfectly legal in Arizona (though smoking cigarettes is now prohibited in most Phoenix bars and restaurants). So is carrying a firearm, if it is not concealed. I'd forgotten about this law, which doesn't exist in NYC, when I initially spotted a 20-something guy in tight jeans and cowboy hat with a gun strapped to a holster on his hip. At first, I thought, "I gotta stop smoking this hookah."
Even after I'd been assured I wasn't hallucinating and he wasn't breaking the law-- well, assuming he had a permit--I had to question the logic of carrying a loaded gun in a place where half the customers were clearly drunk and the other half were high on the potent tobacco blends. Then again, this is the state that nearly passed a bill allowing residents to carry loaded firearms into bars.
By midnight, all of us were having trouble keeping our eyes open and soon decided to call it a night. So, there is at least one similarity between my night out in Phoenix and last night's festivities in Manhattan. They both ended--at least for me--not long after midnight (though midnight in Phoenix was really like 3am for me, since I was still adjusting from NY time).
Last night, back in New York, six girlfriends and I took our friend Joy out to celebrate her 32nd birthday. I headed out just after 7pm, taking the subway to 8th Avenue and walking down about six blocks to meet two friends, Laura and Jen at Employees Only, a relatively new bar in the West Village that is recognizable only by the subtle "EO" on the awning and a fortune teller in the window. The three of us were scouting out a potential after-dinner spot. And this was the perfect place--at least at 7:45, when it was crowded enough to be interesting but empty enough to find a place at the bar and get the bartender's attention in less than a minute. (Even he warned us that by 10 or 11 it would be "much beezzzier"). It's located in a narrow space that's dimly lit and Art Deco-ish with walls covered in wood paneling. My friends were sitting at the curved bar, looking over the cocktail menu. The bartender, a tall, balding man with a wide smile and faint French accent who introduced himself as Duchamps, fixed Laura a lovely gin cocktail infused with lavender. I opted for a peach cocktail, made with homemade peach bitters. At $12 the drink prices seemed a bit steep, but they were well worth it. Jen sipped ours then ordered a glass of Riesling.
At 8:15 we headed over to the appropriately named Macelleria in the Meatpacking District. Much of the menu at Macelleria, which means "butcher shop" in Italian, is devoted to different cuts of steak and there's a helpful drawing of a cow at the top of the page, with its various parts marked and labeled. Laura and Cindy split a prime rib. But I ordered baby squid in black ink and split a salad with Pam. Dinner was supposed to start at 8:30 but it was 9 p.m. before the birthday girl and Stephanie arrived, complaining that their cab ride from Murray Hill had taken twice as long as expected because several blocks had been closed off for a street fair in Chelsea and the detoured traffic was at a near standstill. (The rest of us had walked or taken a subway). By the time we got the bill, we'd gone through two bottles of sangiovese, several pitchers of water, three baskets of bread, a half-dozen cappucinos and an apple struedel, tiramisu, and almond tart--in addition to the appetizers and entrees. We lingered even after the plates were cleared, talking and trading "regifts" (Amy's idea--I gave away a copy of "Life of Pi" and the galley for a Candace Bushnell book and netted a shower rack with some sweet-smelling magnolia scented soap, body lotion, shower gel, and bubble bath). By the time we finally got up to leave, the restaurant was almost empty--and so was my wallet. But the bars in the neighborhood were just starting to fill up. There was little reason to trek back to our original spot, which was several blocks away, so I promised to go back with Joy another night. She was anxious to check out the rooftop bar at the Hotel Gansevoort across the street, and two other single girlfriends agreed to join her. Citing colds (Cindy), husbands (Jen and I), age (Pam) or plain exhaustion (Laura), the rest of us headed home. I took the subway and got back to Brooklyn at 12:58, just as Johnny Knoxville was signing off as the guest host on Saturday Night Live and the midnight munchies were catching up with me. I dug into box #2 of my chocolate Panda faced cookies while Victor entertained me with Jay Z videos from the AOL Music on Demand channel. And we were both in bed by 2--well before, I'd imagine, the birthday celebrations had ended.