I don't like being in a state so big that it would take you 10 hours of driving to leave it. States like that tend to be inland.
Large, unbroken stretches of land make me panic. I need to be within reasonable driving distance, if not walking distance, of a good-sized body of water.
Everclear's song Santa Monica came out the first year I lived in Sacramento. I took it as my theme song that year because I too was "lonely and dreaming of the West Coast". You know, from an entire hour inland.
Well, I'm all in favor of preparing for emergencies that'll never happen (e.g., for a while I was carrying my passport in case I needed to flee the country despite my not being involved in any illegal activites. Now I carry it because my license fell out of my wallet and I haven't gotten a new one yet.) but I don't have this particular paranoia.
No, I have no idea what sort of emergency would require making it to the water.
What if you suddenly turned into a big fish? Boy, you'd feel stupid in Kansas!
You are accustomed to the land on which you were raised. I get vaguely uncomfortable in places like the desert southwest where I'm not in a forest and don't hear crickets and frogs at night. I've talked to people who grew up out there who found the South completely claustrophobic and disorienting because they couldn't orient themselves by the horizon, thanks to all the trees.
I like living near a coast (~2.5 hours to the east) and go fairly often, but I feel more attached to the Eno River that runs through Durham, because I have spent so much time in and around it through my life. Also, the Blue Ridge part of the Appalachian mountains (~2.5 hours to the west) has a particular pull on my heartstrings.
I feel the opposite way, a little bit. One of the things that drove me wild about living in Queens was having to cross a minimum of one and more generally two bridges anytime I wanted to take a trip upstate or to New England, two places I spent a good deal of time at then. When we were buying a house part of the attraction of New Jersey was its being on the mainland.
I grew up in Modesto, where there are large unbroken stretches of flat land on every side. I prefer where I am living now for being hilly -- we are not too far from the ocean but I would not really care either way about being farther away from it.
I know the claustrophobic feeling, sure. I grew up 20 minutes from the Pacific in Northern California. I was creeped out by the thought of moving so far away from the ocean when I moved to Illinois for college, but it helped that Lake Michigan was right across the street from my dorm.
Now that I live in Minneapolis, at least I see the Mississippi River and some nice lakes on a daily basis, even if the lakes aren't the awesome kind that you can't even see all the way across. I guess since I've had some time to get weaned off of living near the ocean, I could probably now even move to some far more land-locked place without totally freaking.
Also, maybe it's just me, but the claustrophobia isn't nearly so palpable when you're in a fun, busy, and beautiful city. It would presumably be worse, like, out on the plains someplace.
I don't get claustrophobic, but when I saw what people in Indiana called lakes, it made me sad.
Okay, SJ is clearly one of my people. 6 applies to the rest of you.
11 -- no love for Chris B.?
uniquely weird
The jury appears to be out on the unique part, but otherwise, yes.
Ack, I missed him. Chris B. too.
Claustrophobic is not quite the right word for it, but I start feeling something akin to that if I spend an extended period of time (more than a few months) in a big city. I start getting antsy if I don't have easy access to somwhere where I can look around and not see any people or houses in any direction.
I get slightly disoriented when I'm on the West Coast and I see the sun low over the ocean. That means it is morning to me. (Do people raised near the West Coast get disoccidented when they see the sun rising over the East coast?)
I got very disoriented when I moved to Washington. I grew up in Boston where the houses are mainly wood-built. I moved to DC and evrything seemed to be built from brick. It felt very, very wrong. It took some time for that to fade away.
What if you suddenly turned into a big fish? Boy, you'd feel stupid in Kansas!
Especially since the fish in Kansas aren't allowed to evolve back into humans.
Chris B! Another Twin Citian! Yay!
I have the reverse--I dislike being near large bodies of water and or high hills, as they limit one's ability to see, navigate and move in any direction at any time. Living on a coast removes half the damn compass from your movement possibilities. Living on a peninsula? Insanity.
Living on a coast removes half the damn compass from your movement possibilities.
My people have developed the boat.
But have they developed the boatcar? Some times you just need to drive?
That question mark should be an exclamation point.
Also, when you get in a boat, where do you go? All there is is damn water. (And not a drop to drink!)
All in all I truly feel like the best place for me to live would be somewhere I have never been, even to visit.
Actually Kentucky and Tennessee are among my favorite inland states. But being surrounded by flat agrarian land is awfully claustrophobic. Mountains or mesas will substitute fine for water, because they give a sense of there being an "other side" over there, rather than stretching on for fucking ever. Scrubby rust-belty deciduous rolling hills yuck, ala the landscape in upstate New York and Ohio, is just ugly as sin. And water that doesn't move or smell right is deeply unnerving, the aquatic equivalent of a Real Doll.
Being able to go sit by the ocean, or in the desert, or in a redwood forest for an afternoon is the best cure for an anxious disposition that ever was invented in the world.
God, you all are making me so, so, so happy that I'll be moving soon.
("You can't go home again." -- What? Again? But I've never been there in the first place!)
Scrubby rust-belty deciduous rolling hills yuck, ala the landscape in upstate New York and Ohio, is just ugly as sin.
Or, of course, is restful and beautiful. Silly Left-Coast people.
21. Where? America! Thank goodness too. 400 years of oppression and all that jazz.
18: Yeah, I'm a transplant, albeit of the temporary, just-here-for-grad-school variety. But after an adjustment period lasting some time, I've decided I like it really a lot. In particular, I think that a nicer place than Minneapolis to spend a summer could hardly be imagined.
I got a little weirded out driving through Indiana this weekend, on my way to Chicago--land isn't allowed to be that flat. Being away from a coastline just feels really strange to me. Not only have I never lived inland, I've only travelled to non-coastal states (or ones that are close, like Pennsylvania) maybe 3 or 4 times.
Another reason Indiana is freaky: their highway rest stops are all exactly the same, down to the very floor plan and the number of parking spaces. Every 25 miles or so, the same building goes by again. It felt like I was in one of those old cartoons with the repeating background.
Car? Where do you go in a boat?
Jesus, Chopper. You go to Japan! Or Australia! Or Hawaii!
As opposed to, you know, the mall.
I agree with Chris B. on this:
Also, maybe it's just me, but the claustrophobia isn't nearly so palpable when you're in a fun, busy, and beautiful city. It would presumably be worse, like, out on the plains someplace.
You might think, growing up in hilly Pittsburgh, that I would be disconcerted by Lubbock's extreme flatness. That is not what I am disconcerted by about Lubbock.
20, ewww. I don't like it when you can't walk places.
Actually Kentucky and Tennessee are among my favorite inland states.
I'll second that.
For me mountains and forests and more important than the ocean. Western states just kick ass in this regard. Part of the appeal is the hostility of the terrain. I'm probably just mean that way. Growing up in L.A. I was amused by watching out of towners discover that swimming in the ocean was nothing like the lake back home.
Have you noticed that there are lake people and ocean people, and that people who grew up with one don't like the other?
I'm totally wigged out by swimming in lakes, but love the beach. My wife loves her lake, but complains about sand getting everywhere at the beach. Of course sand gets everywhere. That's what it's supposed to do.
For the first 17 years of my life, I lived in completely landlocked plains states (Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas), but my mother is from the Gulf and raised us to think there was something perversely wrong with landlockedness. (This is actually a nice metaphor for a lot of problems with my upbringing.) So I always wanted to go to the ocean, and I read a lot of books and stories about the ocean, and I took every opportunity to go to the ocean, but once I'm there, I'm filled with the deep dread and horror that only a Great Plains resident can feel at the yawning horrible expanse of sublime terror that is the sea.
So, to recap: I like the idea of the beach, and I love the idea that I live on an island. However, face-to-face with it, I feel my liver flip over.
25 gets it exactly right, but then, so does 28.
I've often gotten the heebie jeebies when too far from the coast (and lakes, even Great ones, are no substitute.) Of course, I have a hard time conceiving of living west of the Connecticut River--the Hudson, at farthest. And never in Connecticut. Though I'd be open to being persuaded by the Twin Cities or certain parts of Wisconsin. My brother lives in St. Paul, and it's really great in a lot of ways. I'd love to be at the St. Paul's farmer's market right now. Presuming they were open, of course. And I do love their museums.
Why? It won't hurt you. (Unless you fuck up.)
Hell, I am currently living pretty much on a river and I still get this feeling sometimes, having been raised in a coastal area of maine.
Minneapolis is indeed a nice city. And cities in general go a long way towards distracting one from the absence of natural beauty. Which does not, by the way, include scrubby rust belt hideousness, an uglier landscape than which has surely never existed. Even tundra or desert has a stark beauty to it, whereas the farmland of the upper northeast quadrant of the US is basically the terrestrial equivalent of Kid Rock: stubbly, sweaty, skanky.
God, this thread is depressing me.
deep dread and horror that only a Great Plains resident can feel at the yawning horrible expanse of sublime terror that is the sea.
Is it the large expanse of water, or the depth?
My wife just can't handle deep water where she can't see the bottom. Even in a lake. If she tries to swim in such water she panics and starts hyperventilating. Being the loving husband that I am, I naturally laugh and call her a wuss.
35 -- I'm guessing you do not spend a lot of time at Coney Island and Far Rockaway?
Coming from a far smaller land mass than most of you, I think living somewhere that would involve days of travel to the coast would be very very weird. I can't imagine it, and I don't think I'd like it.
Lakes might do; I haven't known enough to be sure. Rivers are nice - hmm, just realised that apart from 2 years when I was little, I have always lived in places that were on the Thames. I'm supposed to be going ocean-kayaking soon, can't wait.
have no idea what sort of emergency would require making it to the water
Unexpected drawback in your mercenary contract with a pretender to the Persian throne, ie his death, is one obvious example.
I grew up less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean, and realized how necessary it was to me when I was on a train in Nebraska. I thought, "Holy shit, there's no water anywhere," and had several moments of blinding anxiety. For me, the ocean for some reason symbolizes escape.
41 -- I have gone, and I like Coney Island a lot for sentimental reasons, but swimming in the ocean is only fun until you get heatstroke and forget where your towel was and start to lose yourself in the vastness surrounding you to the point that you can't discern the coast anymore, etc.
40 -- It's mostly the globalness of it that freaks me out.
The hostility of landscape/sand gets everywhere thing is exactly right. As AWB says, it's about the sublime: the western landscape is a constant reminder that the problems of we little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this world, which is the most soothing and peaceful thought ever.
23: But being surrounded by flat agrarian land is awfully claustrophobic.
Is "claustrophobic" really the right word here?
I like thinking about being on land, because all land reaches an end. Thinking about the ocean fills me with despair because it just goes on and on, all around the whole world.
Indeed, I seem to remember a word... agoraphobic...
35- I feel that way about drinking some kinds of beer.
But agoraphobia does not describe the emotion LB et al. are describing that they associate with flat coastless places.
But that's just it -- endless expanses of land make some feel agoraphobic. They make me feel cozily at home, especially if there are no trees in any direction. Endless expanses of sea make me wish I was dead.
I get quite nervous and neurotic any time I'm in a place where there are fewer than two dozen art galleries and only one opera house. It's just scary.
My favorite thing about Kansas was the night sky, which was breathtakingly beautiful. (I was only in Kansas for 1 week ever though, and in McPherson rather than any potentially interesting place like Kansas City or Topeka, so.)
(But I could imagine the night sky being pretty great at sea, too.)
A friend here from Morocco has had some occasion to work at universities in Kansas and he's fallen irretrievably in love with it. He's threatening to move his entire, very citified family there. He may be going alone.
(I was only in Kansas for 1 week ever though, and in McPherson rather than any potentially interesting place like Kansas City or Topeka, so.)
Don't think I've heard the words "interesting" and "Kansas" in the same sentence before. And if you're in Kansas City, you ain't in Kansas anymore.
57 -- Topeka would mainly be potentially interesting because one of my internet friends whom I have always wanted to meet IRL lives there.
(Also, just, Topeka! A name to conjure with.)
As a Kansas City native, I'm accustomed to the idea of farmland fifteen miles in one direction and city fifteen miles in the opposite direction. Inescapably large stretches of one or the other bother me.
I got very disoriented when I moved to Washington. I grew up in Boston where the houses are mainly wood-built. I moved to DC and evrything seemed to be built from brick. It felt very, very wrong.
This is akin to how I feel (having lived in earthquake country for a decade) when I go someplace and see lots of brick buildings. All that unreinforced masonry... (Same thing the first time I went to Seattle and drove on the double-decker portion of I-5 past downtown.)
In view of my later comment on that thread, I have since driven from Lubbock to Wichita Falls (and beyond), and I wronged the stretch of land between Lubbock and Amarillo. Also, 1 is wrong, though in many parts of the Texas the state's coastline won't do you any good.
Do any of you philosopher types have an opinion of Julian Baggini and or his book, Do You Think What You Think You Think?
Also, Thalassa!
inescapably long stretches of one or the other
When first I came to the northeast, it just knocked me out to think about there being no countryside between the cities. Why don't they just call it all one city? I thought at the time.
57: To be fair, there is a Kansas City, KS, but tain't much to speak of.
64: I'm enjoying his Atheism: A Very Short Introduction.
Why don't they just call it all one city?
Ah. Yeah, that's what I meant.
I had that feeling on the northern fringe of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, later on the trip mentioned in 63. I hit Denton (about 40 miles north of Dallas), which seemed like a pleasantish place after the ghost towns I'd been driving through, and then there was about 50 miles of continuous suburby stuff with traffic lights until I got to the interstate. Disconcerting. (I was pretty tired that day, so I may be overestimating the development density on the way to the interstate.)
I doubt the ChiPitts megalopolis. There's a lot of empty space in Ohio.
Is "claustrophobic" really the right word here?
Yes. Claustrophobic means trapped, whereas agoraphobic means afraid to go outside.
I doubt the ChiPitts megalopolis
Yeah, I just drove that 2 days ago, and there is nothing remotely urban about most of that stretch.
As one who has never lived in sight of a coast but has lived relatively close to the Mississippi River, the difference is, well, the River. I always know how to get there, regardless of what side of it I'm on. Even in Iowa City, where I live now, it's not the Iowa River (you're right, piddly), but the Mississippi that grounds my geographical awareness. But now, I've lived long enough on the plains that I get the telltale claustrophobia when I go near mountains.
The Mississippi is a mighty fine thing, I admit.
76 was before I read the comments. In addition to the Mississippi thing, what all the MN/KS people said.
I get freaked out about large flat lands, too. It's a 'help help the sky is a great big bowl and I'm TRAPPED and there are no mountains or trees to protect me from the oppression of the sky!'
I quite like water nearby, but even rivers are better than nothing. But if there are rivers and not an ocean there must be mountains. And it must snow in the winter.
7 is wrong. I was raised in the Pacific Northwest and have lived in Hawaii for most of the last 15 years. I'm at home in both places. California and the Northeast also feel very normal, even though they're different from each other and from the places I've spent most of my life. I haven't spent enough time way inland to be sure how my reaction would be over time, but initially it feels very weird.
Also, lakes and ocean are both cool, but the recreational lake scene (jetskis and bass boats) is horrible.
I was born within view of a dramatic stretch of the Ottawa River, and have lived for thirty years close to Lake Michigan, and they do cheer me with their grandeur. Most of the rest of my life has been lived in flat, featureless, midwestern places: away from the water I mentioned, my whole life.
I see a great deal of beautiful and subtle nature in my prairie world, and plenty of drama in the skies. But I've seen and heard tell of the disorientation coastal or other people feel in my landscape, and while saddened by the disconnect, hope that they can go where they are happy.
I think DaveL is not particular about his landscape.
82: Depends what you mean by particular. I like beautiful better than ugly, but I can find a lot of different things beautiful.
I meant particular in the ways that you feel comfortable as a part of the landscape. 'Cept for motors, you seem in 81 to be largely amenable to the places you find yourself. I was struck by what you said because I used to think I was adaptable like that, but after going to Pittsburgh recently, I'm not so sure anymore.
I find other places different, but not scary. The only thing that is weird about driving in flat places is that I lose my ability to judge distances.
From Chicago to Pittsburgh is not a megalopolis. It is a localized black hole. You get on the PA turnpike, going west. You enter Ohio. You spin around inside the black hole for 8 hours. Then you are in Chicago.
How nice it must be to get out of the black hole as soon as Chicago! For us, it was holeish from Pitt to Davenport. (Yes, yes, I realize it's a matter of degree to say Davenport is actually being somewhere but everybody's got her own lines, right?)
I guess I'll have to pipe up for the beauty of upstate New York. Though, admittedly, that beauty has only become clear to me having lived elsewhere for a decade. After all, the first duty of an northeasterner is to get the hell out.
I do like a general proximity to the coast. I don't even really need to go there, but I like to have the option of a few hours' drive to it. Across rolling hills. And towns that haven't been the same ever since detachable celluloid collars went out of style. (And not just figuratively either. They had to close the factory then.)
84: But all the places I mentioned are coastal and have some sort of terrain features. I'm OK at various points on the wet-dry and warm-cold spectra, but I think I'd have a very hard time with plains for any significant length of time. I would like to investigate further, though. Unfortunately, I find myself at 40 finally understanding the urge to explore that most people seem to get in their late teens/early 20s, and my firm does not, alas, have a walkabout policy.
65 gets it exactly right. I also sympathize with AWB's take on the ocean; that shit just doesn't end. Freaky as hell. And how do you tell which direction is which if there's no mountains? Answer me that.
I miss the big-sky-bowl thing about the Midwest and the way you can see summer storms seemingly forever before they arrive. I mean, apo's right: the Blue Ridge Mountains are a thing of great beauty. But when a grey cloud jumps over the mountain outta nowhere and ruins my bike ride, I pine for the cornfields.
And how do you tell which direction is which if there's no mountains?
There's where your religion fails you, teofilo. Christians always know where they're going.
Terrence Malik, it seems to me, gets it. And there were sky bowl beauties this past year in Capote, particularly the shots way back from the house.
I have seen beauty of just this kind in Ohio and Indiana and Illinois more times than I can count.
To Hell, unless they repent their sinful ways?
86: It's not so much escaping from the black hole as being pulled apart by it and landing in pieces in the circle of hell that is 1-94.
And how do you tell which direction is which if there's no mountains? Answer me that.
Sun/moon location (though admittedly I'm usually ignorant on the meaning of the latter) and perhaps Polaris or the Southern Cross.
Or, if you live in the right sort of flat place, by the orientation of the north-south streets.
I guess I've never really felt that weirded out by any sort of landscape, except maybe suburbs. In rural places or various wilderness areas that I've been, you've got the hum of nature. In cities, you have bustling people and the constant buzz of activity. Suburbs seem scarily quiet and devoid of life to me now, especially at night. It doesn't even matter that I lived in a quiet suburb until age 16, they're just creepy now and I have trouble sleeping without some noise and light.
88: See how landlocked I am? I see "Hawaii," "Pacific Northwest," "California," and "Northeast," and I think, "Those places are all so different!"
94: Wait: I-80/90, or I-74/77? I've done both, and they each have their special brands of torture--the Taco Hut we ate at in southern Ohio weighs particularly heavy in my memory.
any potentially interesting place like Kansas City or Topeka
As a lifelong Kansas resident, I assure you there is nothing remotely interesting about Topeka. The Kansas City metro area, however, is pretty interesting and full of succulent smoked meats. Well worth your time.
I can't tell why so many of you decided to troll the same thread. The only thing that makes everything else--a city, a cornfield, other people, etc.--tolerable is having an impressive body of water nearby, and preferably that body of water is the one true and Pacific ocean. Note, you landlubbers, that "nearby" means "less than a thirty minute drive." Every place else is landlocked.
80's mistaken: it is true that one feels attached to land that represents "home." (Though I don't know about people who moved around a lot as kids.) It's also true that, say, Hawaii and Seattle are different, but they also have obvious similarities: lush greenness, the Pacific, mountains. I like Seattle and Tucson, which are obviously different, but both have a certain kind of western attitude (the people, I mean) and Tucson's only a day's drive from the Pacific, which is about my limit. (Also the desert fills many of the same functions as the ocean.) I think most of us have a certain latitude, landscape-wise (some more than others: Ogged is obviously fairly intolerant, but that's okay because he is also mostly right), but that it only stretches so far.
I also think that there's something to be said for tolerating different kinds of landscape better in foreign countries. It's somehow easier if you're filled with constant reminders that this place is Not Home than it is if the place seems *almost* like home, but has a constant low undercurrent of strangeness.
Ogged is obviously fairly intolerant
Some of my best friends are land mammals....
On re-reading, 80 was an overstatement, but I took 7 to be arguing that one has an affinity for the coastal area in which one was raised rather than an affinity for coastal areas generally. That doesn't describe me. And while I feel a strong attachment to the valley in Washington where I lived as a young child and where my roots (one set of roots?) are, I feel lesser but still strong attachments to other places that are also "home." I sort of feel like different pieces of my identity are rooted in different places.
101: Yeah, me too. By Ogged's standards I'm a landlubber, but of course I'm not; I just have a slightly longer leash than he has. And obviously people can fall in love with places other than where they grew up. But still.
Not just love, but strong connection, as in "this place is a part of me."
I-80/90. The terrain does not change across the tops of Ohio and Indiana.
I'm bummed I'm so late to this thread. Landscape is really important to me. I moved to central Illinois for a job a couple years ago, and it really freaked me out. I couldn't believe the people who lived in the developments on the edge of town (never mind that they were depressing tracts with tiny trees) because they had to face the expanse every day. I liked being right in town with trees and streets and lots of houses close together. It freaked me out to drive the highway to Chicago and feel the earth curving away from me on both sides.
I got out. But I'm fond of it in retrospect. There is an incredible, stark beauty to those open spaces. Not quite Montana, but it has it's own beauty. The greatest limitation is the lack of natural spaces because the farmland is so valuable. It'd be a lot cooler if there were big stretches of prairie left, but it's all corn/soy now.
I moved a lot growing up, but I've lived in different parts of the southeast at different times, and I do find the landscape of the appalachians incredibly cool and comforting. I'm new to Raleigh/Durham, but I'm getting pretty fond of apo's eno river myself. Actually the rivers of North Carolina are all great when there's enough water to paddle them.
I think I'd rather have rivers and mountains close by more than the ocean. But we were up on Lake Superior in July, which is gorgeous country that reminded me of the coast of maine, which I also adore. Without the smell of the ocean - decay, marshes, salt - I must say, it seemed a bit antiseptic.
Also, speaking of malls in minnesota.
That is a hellish drive. Especially since Gary, IN is part of it; Gary should be a part of no drive, yet somehow it manages always to be between us and the in-laws. And if that's not enough, with tolls Ohio laughs when you drive across it...
Haven't yet read the comments, but YES, I have that exact sensation of nervousness away from the coasts. Living next to the Rhine was almost good enough--except of course that the area was fatally boring. Also, a lack of topography trips me out.
A few years ago I entertained the notion of moving to Los Angeles. I realized that if I was going to do that I would have to live in Santa Monica or Venice, within a short drive from the ocean. If I lived in the middle of such a huge sprawling city, I think I would go crazy, I would need the psychological reassurance of seeing the ocean and knowing that the city ends *here*.
I chose to remain here in Portland, which by the way has two substantial rivers, hills, ridges, little dead volcanoes scattered about the city, and big dead volcanoes off on the horizon. Still, it would be nice if the ocean was a little closer.
64--Josh, you're not the only one. I grew up in a faultline (Hayward, bay-bee, any day now!), and when I visited Boston for the first time, at 17, I had a really hard time walking on the sidewalks, so little I trusted that unreinforced brick to hold up.
Also, I spent the day on the Robert Moses beach, and I've just realized that I forgot to put sunscreen on my ass. Everywhere else is fine. Hélas.
110: Could be worse. A friend tells of hiking into Kalalau on Kauai, stretching out in the sun in accordance with custom there, and then discovering that her boyfriend had sunburned his dick. Apparently put a bit of a crimp on the rest of the trip.
Burnt nipples are pretty bad too.
I like pretty much any landscape that's not like where I grew up (southern Ontario). I love deserts, seas and mountains. Especially deserts and seas.
I also hate sprawling, characterless suburbs.
Three quarts of aloe vera later, the color seems to be reverting to only slightly pinkish. It should be fine.
(I think my genitals and nipples have only seen the sun once or twice, and then only for less than ten minutes. This whole going-out-in-the-sun thing is rather new to me, in general; I used to trend gothish. Only ish, mind you.)
It should be fine.
We can't really help you confirm this without pictures, JM.
Your solicitous regard is truly touching, apo.
A really nice, but long-ish, walk from Robert Moses will get you to the town of Kismet, on Fire Island, where you can hang out at the two or three local bars.
Touching would be better than pictures, indeed.
I was already pretty happy to be in Babylon. (Babylon!)
Is there any attraction to Kismet besides the name and the walk? I'm not walking anywhere until this heat wave breaks, mind you.
You could take a ferry back to mainland Long Island, if for some reason you wanted to do that. In general though, it's just a cute small vacation town.
There are also bars in Babylon. I mean, it would be pretty sad if a New England Babylon wasn't at least kind of sinful.
I'm not going to encourage you any further, apo, since I know you're not coming up to New York for tomorrow night. Tease.
I, on the other hand, am coming up to New York for tomorrow night.
Woohoo! Hey, did anyone call the Gingerman to reserve a table? It's Friday evening in midtown -- the place might be packed.
I just called and they do not make reservations for parties under 25 people, which I think ours is going to be. But if we can get an impromptu head count and it is over that, I will call back and do it. So: Here is my head, the number associated with it is 1. Teofilo I feel safe counting as 2, and JM as 3 since they both piped up just now, and LizardBreath as 4. Ennybuddy else?
Oh of course! They get cards marked "5" and "6".
In short I think we are not going to be capable of making a reservation. But not to worry -- 6 is pretty early in the day still. I will try and show up there with my comrades around 5:30 and grab a table.
Thanks. I might also show up early, depending on what I'm doing beforehand.