I woke up half-naked in the van around 9 AM. We were parked in Astoria several blocks away from Lauren's apartment. We left the windows up and apparently the van had gotten so hot that I had taken off my clothes at some point in the night.
My feet were propped up against the window and from where I was laying I could see 10 to 15 small children and what I assumed to be their mothers crowding up around our van. It seemed strange until a large green sign indicated to me that we had parked right outside of Adventureland Day Care.
My mind immediately went to all the Verona Red promo condoms and Jenna Jameson playing cards that typically sit strewn atop the dashboard throughout our journeys. I looked to the front of the van and sure enough there was a group of disappointed mothers glaring right through the condoms onto my half naked 27 year old frame laying in the back seat of 15 person passenger van parked in front of their children's' preschool, thinking "this is why I made sure my child gets a head start on education"
I slunk back into my clothes and waited for the parents to leave. Once the coast was clear I woke up Mike and we exited the van, laughing all the way back to Lauren's apartment, where Chad had already gotten started on the morning's breakfast. Pancakes and bacon. Awesome.
We killed the day with some Walker Texas Ranger, watching Chuck Norris burst through several glass window, round-housing pedophiles like only he can.
By 4 PM we remembered that we were in NYC and that it would be really lame if we didn't go out and do something touristy before the show. So we packed up our bags and stepped outside. Unfortunately, the second we opened the door, sheets of rain came falling from the sky. Mike was brave enough to make the long walk to the van. Once he came back, we jumped in and headed over the river to Manhattan.
We arrived at Arlene's Grocery with enough time to load in our stuff and grab some cheap Mexican food.
Everything in the Lower East Side seems to be confused about what it is. For example, one might assume Arlene's Grocery sold foodstuffs.... but they would be wrong...
Or one might assume that El Sombero was a hat store...but wrong again...it's a hat restaurant.
We navigated around town for a bit, but the rain was too much. We headed back to the venue drenched. Luckily we had our clothes with us, so we all got changed and grabbed a seat at the bar.
We didn't have to wait long. The show got started promptly at 7 PM. The K's played a great opening set, and then we took the stage around 8 PM. It was the earliest set we played all tour, so it was nice to have plenty of time to relax and shoot the shit with the crowd after the show. We took some shots and got our gear loaded back into the van to make room for the subsequent groups.
Kassini, the band that followed us, absolutely killed it. Think the Eastern side of George Harrison meets Radiohead and the Black Keys...it was awesome. They've been working on a record for some time, and had originally planned to release it at the show that night. Though it wasn't finished they promised to send a free download of the new record to anyone who singed up for their mailing list. This was a really cool gesture, however, it seemed that someone had forgotten to set up the band's mailing list on the venue's merch station.
Needless to say Verona Red got quite a few emails that night. Looks like we'll have a lot of downloads to send out on the behalf of Kassini when that record is finished :)
By the time the show got done, the rain had let up and we were ready to hit the town. We went from bar to bar taking it in and meeting a lot of fun people/eating pizza.
When the night came to an end we realized we didn't get quite the bitch slap from NYC like we did the first time around. We figured this was a good thing, especially since it wouldn't be the last show of the tour and we had a long drive to Buffalo ahead of us.
Thank you again to all the NYC fans who came out to support us. We love you!
