Journal rdewald's Journal: rdewald wines and dines with the beautiful people 24

I took a friend of mine out on the town last night. It was in celebration of her birthday, which is actually Monday, but we wanted to be free of the self-imposed restrictions of a work-day the next morning, so we scheduled the night out for a Saturday.

She had a place in mind, a fairly new restaurant called "Rib," on the western edge of Greenwich Village (literally, the Hudson river was across the street), which features North Carolina style BBQ. My friend is a native of North Carolina (she's a Tarheel) and one of the rock-solid foundations of our friendship is that we're both southerners, and therefore intutively understand southern manners, customs and most importantly, BBQ.

But, we do have a difference there. She's from North Carolina, where they smoke pig, and I'm from Texas, where they smoke cow. However, much of the rest of the experience is common, and we also share a sense of persistent dissatisfaction with the quality of the smoked meats referred to as BBQ here at the Center of the Universe.

So, it was with some anticipation that we visited Rib. She was looking for the pulled pork of her homeland, I was looking to find out what all the fuss about pulled pork is about. Alas, neither search was satisfied. The food was good, we weren't offended by the fact that they called this BBQ (which is sometimes the case with the so-called BBQ one orders here), but it wasn't evocative of that mecca of pig: Short Sugars of Reidsville, NC. The best dish was the shrimp and grits, which was first rate, a sort of a faux jumbalaya with chorizo sausage and a few bay scallops thrown in.

But, since it was a new place, the Sous Chef, once someone heard our accents, came out to chat for a while, which imbued the experience with a bit of the glamour that a birthday celebration should have. We will make another visit. Another real highlight of the meal was the "Southern Margarita," which was really just a top shelf Margarita with Tabasco and celery salt on the rim, making it sort of resonant with a good Bloody Mary experience. *That* was good.

The Red Velvet cake looked pretty good, but we were too stuffed for dessert. The place has a good dose of new restaurant-itis, which I am willing to excuse as long as it is handled with grace. Food wasn't coming out of the kitchen in the right order, and they didn't have their procedures down for serving the rear outdoor deck, so the rhythm of the evening was choppy. But, I spent a long time in the food service business before I got my nursing degree, I feel their pain. Plus, I was sitting across from my best friend, whom I hadn't seen for a while, so there was no problem with the longer than usual meal service time as far as either of us was concerned.

Then, I had an idea. In Friday's paper I read this review for a place called "Kitchen and Cocktails" on the ever-so-hip Lower East Side. I wanted to try the Strawberry Caiprina they mentioned in the review. We were in my friend's car, and the Lower East Side is really just on the other side of this long skinny island from Rib, so we hopped in the car and drove over there. Driving through SoHo, I began to wonder if maybe killing a bottle of wine on her terrace might end up being the better plan as the streets were thick with Saturday night revelers in their full sequin-accesorized expanse-of-tanned-flesh standard SoHo regalia.

It might have been faster to walk.

SoHo on a Saturday is one long line of small cafes and bars spilling out on to the sidewalks. It's not unusual to find people almost sitting on the curbs with their fou-fou drinks in hand, basically flaunting NY liquor laws, but somewhat understandable because they can't get any closer to the bar than the parking meters owing to the mass of 20-somethings crowding into to order another round.

But, I finally got through, and found my way to the target establishment, and to my jaw-dropping shock, there was a parking space available out front. The only parking space I had seen for blocks was right in front of where we wanted to go, and it was FREE! WooHoo. The Gods smile, the Angels dance on the head of that pin, the Buddhas chant "Om" with a ever-so-slight upturn of the corners of their mouths. We have a place to park!

Now, there is normally a penalty for visiting a new place too soon after even a tepid review in the NYTimes. The "Sex in the City" set usually descends upon the place and this was no exception. Of course, old fart that I am, I had to return to the car to get my reading glasses to see the drink menu, but I did have a parking space right out front, so that was no problem.

This was fortunate, because my newly acute vision revealed that in the dark shadows thrown by the throng of bodies there were in fact two empty bar stolls at the end of the bar. A round of "excuse me" subway-style shoving through the crowd got my companion and I over there, and we sqeezed our tired old asses on the stools and up to the bar--quite a feat considering we were there at 9pm, dinnertime for the jet-set. We had a place to sit! This was quite remarkable because there were literally throngs of beautiful people who arrived long ahead of us spilled out over the sidewalk clutching their cosmos and prada bags while waiting for a table.

Because of this crowd, it wasn't long before the crowd pushed in a bit more and I was practically getting a lap dance from the tipsy PYT (pretty young thing) sitting with her back to me. She kept issuing "I'm sorrys" over her shoulder until I made it clear to her by whispering back over her shoulder (which was practically under my chin) that the contact was absolutely no problem. She looked around at me and said "What does your girlfriend think?"

"That's not my girlfriend" I said, gently jabbing a thumb in my companion's direction. I declared this loudly enough for my companion to hear and therefore assent with a quiet smile. I explained that "she's my friend, we're celebrating her birthday."

"Oh" she said with a drunken smile, "no problem then!" she laughed as she playfully ground her butt into my thigh. Yes, the 13:1 single women to men ratio in NYC is indeed a beautiful thing on a warm summer night.

The drinks were actually pretty good, I thought. My friend is not fond of sweet drinks, I'm a sucker for them, so she was less pleased with the special concoctions on the drink menu than with her Tanq and Tonic subsequent rounds.

A Carrie Bradshaw wannabe who was with my lap-dancer didn't like her Caiprina and offered to sell it to me for $4 when she saw I was drinking one. I was pulling out money to pay for a round anyway, so I pretended to take her up on the offer, my lapdancer lept to my rescue and whispered "She's kidding" into my ear and pecked me on the neck.

I mouthed "I know" back to her and laid the bills for my round on the bar. The bartender came over, discovered Carrie's dissatisfaction with her drink and offered it to me, gratis. So, I bought Carrie the mojito she ordered. Gee, I hadn't had this much fun with a bunch of buzzed and sequined 20/30-somethings since I was their age....

However, the true top-off for the evening came a little later, after the bar cleared a bit. Carrie was talking to us about BBQ. She had spent some time in living in Houston and even though she was a native Manhattanite she felt she had some cred on the topic. She found out that we were celebrating my friend's birthday and made some comment about dreading her 40th, even though it was several years away, and she asked my friend what she was planning to do when she turned 40.

Well, my friend saw that landmark a number of years ago, and the sincerity with which Carrie asked the question made my friend's night. The angels indeed smiled upon a couple of old farts in the Lower East Side last night. This is still a City full of magic and promise.

And $11 mojitos.