Stuck in New York City traffic AGAIN. It seems unfair that we’ve had to contend with being simply motionless twice in three days and I don’t at all understand how anyone operates here. You’ve got to get into the city SOMEHOW, you can’t just teleport in – and if you’ve got gear of any sort you can’t just transport yourself on a plane or a train and a taxi would be stuck in this same God awful non-movingness.
We have about 39 minutes to get to our venue and it’s 13 miles away. We know from previous experience that it can take several hours to move 5 miles in the city, so I’m understandably worried. We’ve never been late to a gig before, much less missed one, but I’ve got some fear about this one. Add to the fact that I’ve gotten no response from fans or friends in the city and I’m pretty fearful that we’re going to get there (late), be unable to find free parking and then play to an empty room, only to have to then fight our way back out of the city.
Empty gig. Played to someone we knew from Maryland, a model who’d last seen us at the Takoma Park Folk Festival and her boy and a couple who’d liked what they’d heard on the website. They were expecting bluegrass but were still pleased. Didn’t sell much merch and left in the rain to run back home. (this is NOT to undervalue the people who DID come – the fact that you battled the rain and the city and Saturday in general is flattering beyond belief – thank you thank you thank you)
I don’t know – the idea that making it inconvenient / expensive for us to use our cars is given lie in New York City. Here is a land where gridlock is the rule rather than the exception, where walking is faster than driving by an order of magnitude, where buying gas to keep your car running is expensive as Hell but paying for parking is worse. There are tolls everywhere, random fines for random things, no honk zones and zones where honking seems to have replaced the turn signal… but people aren’t giving up their cars or the streets would be clear, hey?
In any case, now we’re driving home in the driving rain, convinced that New York City can collectively bite us until someone invites us to play with them at a legitimate gig.
Putnam, I Love you. We’ll find another way to get there. And Missouri? You’re where my heart lies.
