Livin Just Enough For The City

LEE from The Square Egg and yours truly
Last Saturday I had a plan to go into the city to see The Square Egg perform. Originally the show they were a part of was going to be in the Union Square Park area, but a week or so before the event I found out it had been moved to Harlem. That’s a jump from 14th street to 133rd street, but I hadn’t seen them perform in a while so I was determined to make it happen. Since I’m me, however, I was also determined to not just see a concert, but to also see as many of my friends as humanly possible in the short time span that would be my time in the city on this day. This is where things got interesting.

Step one was seeing my boy Ralph, who lives in the village. This required me to take three trains from Grand Central, normally not much of a hardship, except one of the lines I needed to jump on wasn’t running and they didn’t make an announcement until the train we all should have gotten on had left already. This left me chillin underground waiting for the next Q train. I needed to go all of one stop before catching my next connecting train so I wasn’t in the greatest of moods. Thankfully seven, yes SEVEN, Santas showed up all in full Santa regalia (though none of them were beatboxing). One of the Santas was actually a smokin hot leggy blonde Mrs. Clause who, had I been in a better mood, I would have gone up to and mentioned I knew her man would be gone on the 24th. (wink wink, nudge nudge).

The Santas got on the next train as I waited for mine. The really funny thing is the only thing I could think of when I first saw the group of them together was The Tick Loves Santa (yes, my life does, at times, revolve around old cartoons). My train finally arrived after the Santas had left and I eventually made it to Ralph’s place (took an hour instead of 30 minutes). He and I, along with another friend of his, headed to a sports bar to watch a combination of the Knicks game on a few screens and the Falcons – Cowboys game on the rest of them. Ever since Masters Sports Café closed in Westport I haven’t been to a really authentic sports bar, Nice Guy Eddie’s most certainly qualifies.

After much drinking and yelling at Eddie’s, including us starting up the Jose Reyes “Jose! Jose! Jose!” chant despite it not being anywhere near baseball season, my friends Kush and Naomi showed up to grab a bite and head to Harlem with me. No subway this time around, the taxi got us there much quicker. We showed up at the Harlem Grill at around 10pm, a few minutes before the show was going to start. I got the chance to catch up a bit with my friend LEE, who is the lead vocalist for The Square Egg, and then took my seat for the show.

We all dug the first act, a female vocalist by the name of Renee Sebastian, made it through the second act, who we didn’t enjoy very much, and then after a short delay (hey, it takes time to set up a ten piece band) The Square Egg hit the stage. Every time I see TSE perform I’m reminded of why I like them so much, they’re simply the best Hip-Hop band out there. Melodic flows, fantastic instrumentation, great songwriting, I could seriously listen to these cats all day long and be happy. Since they got started late a few people had to leave during their set (it was getting past midnight). When one table got up after a song had ended LEE went up to the mic and gave me a great shout out, saying “Oh man, Adam’s gonna miss his train.” Thankfully I didn’t miss my train, but the shout out was hilarious and I really dug it. That’s The Square Egg for ya, always down to create a good vibe.

When Lee and company had finished their set we said peace and made our way out. On the way through the bar, however, we bumped into our biggest, at least in overall size, celeb sighting of the night as WWE wrestler Mark Henry was chillin in the other room having a drink with some friends. It put a nice final stamp on the night that said “yeah Adam, you came into the city and boy was it worth it.” Not only did I get to hang out with friends I’ve known forever and see another friend perform (and yes LEE you are a celebrity!), over the course of my travels of over 130 blocks I also bumped into a team of Santas and saw Mark Henry! All that and I still caught the 1:22AM train home from Harlem. Now that’s a heck of a night!