New York Weekend

The boyfriend and I are headed to New York City tomorrow as we make our annual flight from the Hampton Bay Days festival that forces the boyfriend to shut down the salon. We've got the house sitting/dog baby sitting worked out and tomorrow evening we will be in the Big Apple staying at a friend's place on Christopher Street in the West Village. We will return home on Monday night.

As always, I will be checking in with the office via e-mail and phone and will try to keep all of clients happy all of the time.

While we have a tight schedule in terms of meeting up with friends, I'd nonetheless love to hear from New York readers who could perhaps meet us for a drink - say at The Monster Bar (it's half a block from where we'll be staying) or some other nearby spot. I will have the lap top with me and will be posting as time permits.

New York City - "Promises, Promises" and the "Glitter Ball"

We head back to Virginia this evening and it’s been a truly great trip. Yesterday we saw “Promises, Promises” and Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenowitz were each great in their roles. After the show we stopped for cocktails at the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel - originally owned by John Jacob Astor – and it’s mural by Maxwell Parrish which depicts flatulence. The mural (at far bottom of post) is said the be the result of a bet where Astor challenged Parrish that he could not paint a picture of the indicated subject. The faces of the guards - which feature Parrish's own face - indicate that he won the bet.

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Later after a light dinner we went to the Monster Bar where there was a party called the "Glitter Ball" the proceeds of which were to benefit the American Foundation for Equal Rights – the organization funding the plaintiffs’ case in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Please consider going to AFER's webpage and making a donation. There were a number of show business people in the crowd and a number of them sang some of the disco themed songs of the evening. And there was definitely some major league eye candy (see photo below). Among the show business crowd was Randy Jones (pictured above), one of the original Village People who sang, as one might expect, "YMCA."

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It will most definitely be dull and depressing to be back in Tidewater Virginia with its all too prevailing backwardness, religious based ignorance and prejudice. We are lucky that the boyfriend’s client base and our friends and neighbors do not fit the norm for the area, but I nonetheless have to wonder how long we will want to stay in the area once we lose our elderly parents. Life is too short to live it surrounded by ignorance and bigotry.

Glitter Ball eye candy.

King Cole mural

New York City - 9/10/10

We arrived uneventfully last night and after dropping our things at the apartment went out to dinner and then had a nightcap at the Monster Bar which is 1/2 a block from the our friend's apartment. The only downside so far has been Internet access at the apartment - your's truly is at the Starbucks off of Sheridan Square at the moment. The plan for today is the go to the Frick Museum and mansion, and then amuse ourselves doing whatever strikes our fancy.

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Being in New York City underscores what a different world it is from the all too pervasive backwardness of Tidewater Virginia. For dinner, we went to a Mexican restaurant and ended up seated next to a very attractive Latino family: mom, dad, two daughters, a son and the son's boyfriend. Everyone acted - and rightly so - as if having a sons with a boyfriend was 100% normal and ordinary. I have yet to see anything comparable in Virginia. Leaving the restaurant, a lesbian couple walked by holding hands - again with no one batting an eye about it. It's HEAVEN compared to Virginia. It's the way things ought to be. And then, there are all of the great looking guys.

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At the Monster, I danced for a while and then we sat at the piano - the boyfriend seems to know the words to every show tune - and enjoyed listening to some wonderful singers. I don't know if any of them perform professionally, but the voices were amazing - and a couple were gorgeous.

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We hope to fix the Internet problem. If not, posting will be reduced.

New York Weekend

Tomorrow evening the boyfriend and I are flying to New York City for a long weekend (we have a house sitter watching after the house). It's becoming an annual event since the Bay Days celebrations in Hampton basically close down downtown Hampton (The Cousteau Society is one of the sponsors) and force the boyfriend to close his salon for the long weekend. As we have done in the past, we will take advantage of a friend's apartment on Christopher Street in the West Village since our friend - one of the Yah Yah Brotherhood get together in Somerset, Pennsylvania each August - is never in New York on the weekends.

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I'd love to meet readers and fellow LGBT bloggers while we are in the City. PLEASE drop me an e-mail so that we can get together for a drink, coffee or whatever. We are booked for lunch (with my niece) and dinner (with one of the boyfriend's clients) on Saturday and will be doing a Broadway show on Sunday afternoon, but otherwise we are flexible. Our friend's place is at Sheridan Square on Christopher Street just down from the Stonewall Inn and the Monster Bar. I hope I will hear from some of you!

New York City - First Full Day

Last night was fun and the boyfriend and I went dancing at the Monster just a short walk down Christopher Street from the place we are staying. After a lazy morning, we had lunch at a deli near Times Square and then spent the afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We spent the bulk of our time in the newly reopened Greek and Roman exhibition and then a lesser amount of time in the Egyptian exhibition and European painters area. As a history major, I have taken courses and read lots of books on the Greco-Roman and Hellenistic periods. The exhibition was amazing and thoroughly enjoyable.

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This evening, we stopped back by the Monster for a cocktail with another couple from Hampton Roads before going to Cowgirls - a lesbian bar/restaurant - for a light dinner. Once the boyfriend wakes up from his "disco nap" we will head out to a club and enjoy New York's lively gay night life. Tomorrow I expect we will do a Broadway show and more sightseeing. No doubt the ex-wife will be peeved that I am having a nice time - AND that the b/f is paying for everything so she cannot claim that I've spent a dime that should have gone to her. While I am here, I am also working on some legal documents so that she can't claim I should have worked all day today.

New York City

UPDATED January 3, 2009: We went to the Stonewall on Saturday for a drink and found it to be a very cozy place with great paneling and numerous framed photos from the Stonewall riots. It was definitely interesting to be in a place that has such an important place in the saga of the fight for gay rights and legal equality.

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We arrived safely in New York City and stopped by the Monster for a cocktail before dinner at a wonderful dinner at a Spanish restaurant named Seville. The condo that we are staying at is 1/2 block from the Stonewall Inn (pictured above) and hopefully we will visit it while we are in town. Amazingly, at the Monster we ran into a couple that the b/f knows from the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. I'm not sure what we will do later, but I suspect we will check out a few gay clubs and perhaps get some dancing in.

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I will try to do some posts while we are here. Hopefully, I will be able to catch up with some other participants of the LGBT blogger summit who live here in New York while we are in town. Overall, it's exciting to be here with the b/f and to experience a far different side of NYC than I have experienced in the past while married and in the closet