Best End of One Year, Start of Another

So, Monday was New Year's Eve.  Seemed most everyone was out of town and not much was going down.  Ryan suggested we meet for dinner at Curry in a Hurry on Lexington.  Sounded plenty good to me.  I'd never been but I knew the place.

Ryan invited two fellow Brooklyners, here he's calling them, trying to find out where in the world they were.  Lost?  On their way?  Or not coming at all?

Earlier that day I had been cleaning and found a bag full of dollar coins.  I didn't remember where they came from, but I knew they'd be buying me dinner. 

And if you want your dollar coins to go far, you should eat where the taxi drivers eat.  Look at all this food they gave me!  What a gigantic piece of naan!  And there was a chutney and salad bar.  What a meal to end the year with.  This is how I like to eat: heartily.

Andrea and Jeanie, Ryan's Brooklyn friends, showed up and we headed to the one party we knew of, a gathering on 138th Street.  On the way to the Subway we passed the Empire State Building.  It was all lit up in a way I had never seen before, flashing and strobing and changing colors.  I loved it.  It felt like a beacon, a symbol, a symbol to let us know it was okay to be celebrating.  That we should be having fun.  So many people on the streets and on the trains were dressed up nice, more than I'm used to seeing.  Was NYE 2012/2013 an unusually big deal?  Who knows.  But the Empire State Building sent me a message, the message was: "Have fun."

I was trying to mostly get the festive Germans from the subway in this picture but I mostly got the festive Brooklyners.

We arrived at the party.  The theme was "New Year's Jockin' Eve."  Athletic apparel was the suggested dress code, Jock Jams the proposed soundtrack.  At first, frankly, it wasn't terribly different from too many church dances I've been to in my earlier years.  And I suppose in my later years.

But a spirit of festiveness crept in and overtook us.  Maybe it only took the poppin of one bottle of Martinellis?  But the Empire State Building's Permission of Fun reached this basement apartment, and a good time happened.

A screen descended to display the dropping of the ball just five miles south of us.  Some in the crowd, with watches carefully synched, would say the ball dropped fifteen seconds late.

And then there was partying, good lively partying.

Sometimes you just decide to calm down and enjoy yourself.  And enjoy that your camera's flash seems to be broken.

Well-partied at one'ish AM, I returned to Little Italy, far more satisfied with my night than I ever would be.

Epilogue:

This Epilogue is a Prologue.

Earlier in the day I craved tamales fiercely.  So I went and found some in the East Village.  While eating them, I remembered I had taken the family to Mom's Tamales on New Year's Eve last year.  So I guess this is a tradition now: every New Year's Eve I get tamales. (even if Mom's was fresh out when we went last year)