1.5 days of crazy

This is just a very quick, random post about my last 1.5 days in NYC. I arrived yesterday evening from Florida and was in my hotel for about three minutes before some buddies of mine called (two of my best friends live in Brooklyn) to setup the night’s activities. We ended up eating some great Indian food and went to a couple of bars in the East Village area of Manhattan where we met up with a bunch of people and saw a few shitty bands give it all they had.

Today we spent the entire day walking up and down Manhattan. Along the way we hit up the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I got some neat pics that I’ll put on Flickr when I can find the time (along with a lot more from the latest Florida trip).

The highlight of the day however was when we went to Union Square. There was an anti-Bush protest going on that covered everything from Bush and his daddy are child rapists to conspiracy theories attached to 9/11. The first guy to speak started foaming at the mouth (literally) as he belted through his megaphone, and just when we thought it couldn’t get any weirder better, a seemingly random guy ran up to the stage and began shouting over the frothing guy (even though his views seemed to parallel those of the interrupted speaker). For reasons I’ll never figure out, this guy began spouting the worst, most offensive obscenities I’d ever heard in public — everyone was like, wow (yes, even the New Yorkers).

This went on for over an hour; he’d just randomly taunt the audience (which usually involved grabbing his crotch and telling us that we didn’t have balls) and then every once in a while he would kind of act like a background rapper for the current speaker, yelling things like yah, they don’t understand, etc — basically echoing the speaker at times.

Finally, perhaps after tiring of getting no real response from the crowd, he threatened to take off his pants, and seriously, is there a better way to make known your opposition to the administration than showing the world that you aren’t very well endowed? Yah, I couldn’t come up with anything either.

So, he proceeded to take off his pants (I’d say it was a 2-3 minute process) and if you’d like to have a laugh, you can follow his progression here (photos might offend): one, two, three.

He wasn’t through. After publicly humiliating himself (see pictures), he put his clothes back on and sat on a plastic crate near the speaker(s). Then, and for no apparent reason, he stood up quickly and kicked the crate with his heel. The crate went flying and hit one of the speakers (the main organizer I think) who quickly shattered his glass bottle on the ground and took off after the soccer star. They ran all over Union Square punching and kicking each other until they were finally out of sight. The protest continued.

I love New York.