The Ani DiFranco concert on Wednesday night was fun. Deciding to cut through the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and Prospect Park, we navigated according to my compass along paths that kept winding the wrong way. Little directional signs at intersections weren’t a whole lot of help; one pointed the direction we were going, while the next pointed the opposite. We finally realized that if we just followed the short-haired girls with lots of piercings, they’d take us directly to the band shell. Then we relaxed out on the grass while the two opening acts played (both of them Ani wannabes), drank beer out of plastic cups, and watched the group of lesbians in front of us pass a joint around. Berck was one of the few males in attendance. On the way home, Sydney got us lost because she hadn’t thought to bring her glasses or her map, much to Berck’s dismay because he urgently had to visit a bathroom.

We found out about the steam pipe blast in Manhattan when we got home and checked e-mail and the news online, just like we would have if we were home. So much for being in New York when a big story hits.

In the morning, I was awoken by Sydney’s cat Killer, who was playing with his jingle-ball hanging from the wall. I got up and push-pinned it to the bulletin board above it, but this only seemed to tick him off. He started leaping up against the wall trying to reach it, so instead of a gentle jingling, there was a loud thump of a roundish Manx hitting drywall, followed by a little jingle. Berck sat up and laughed at him. “Killer?” he said, getting the cat’s attention. Killer turned his head and uttered the most ticked off meow I’ve ever heard.

Sydney’s alarm kept going off in the living room where she was sleeping on the couch. I went in and asked her what time she had to be at work. “Nine-thirty, why?” she said putting her alarm on snooze again. When it went off 9 minutes later, I gave up on sleeping any longer and got up and walked around the corner to get a couple of Cokes.

Sydney’s neighborhood is made up of West Indians and Arabic speakers, primarily, almost all of them black. I only saw three other white people the whole time we were there: her roommate, a guy who lives upstairs who let us in last night after the landlords inexplicably changed the front lock, and one of her other cotenents. The landlords are apparently very racist, which is why Syd got such a great apartment for “cheap.” She greets all her neighbors whenever she leaves the house, and they all smile and greet her back, including the older lady next door, who always says, “Hey, baby!” Sydney said she heard her yelling on her cell phone outside recently, “No! I ain’t no f***ing crack addict! I’m an alcoholic!”

Sydney eventually got up that morning, complaining that she couldn’t hear her alarm and that she was going to be late for work. Berck got dressed, and we started our adventure for the day by fortifying ourselves at Yonah Schimmel Knishery. I had a sweet cheese, and Berck had a potato. Both were amazing.

Berck’s college roommate Todd was arriving on the Boston Chinatown bus around noon, and we didn’t have enough time to hit any of the museums properly before we met up with him. So we visited the Institute of Photography’s exhibit. There was an exhibit of Stephen Shore who is well known for traveling around North America in the ’70’s, taking pictures of landscapes, towns, motel rooms, or whatever. A lot of them looked like photos Berck has taken, and it amazed me that so much of the country still looks exactly the same. He would make postcards of shots and deposit them in card racks in stores in every town he went.

We walked the short distance to Times Square, looked around, and then jumped on the subway to Chinatown. Todd had dyed his hair blue, which clashed with his grey-green eyes. I told him purple would probably go better, but he likes blue. It was always easy to find him, though. We made our way to the cross streets where a Chinese/Cuban place was supposed to be, but instead of a restaurant there was a poultry shop. Berck went in and asked, but they had never heard of the name of our restaurant. Todd still had his bags with him, so he started up his MacBook, found an open wireless network, and checked Google. Google said we were right where we should be, but there was another address for the same name in Chelsea.

We gave up and continued down to the federal building where Sydney is working for the summer. We had to be searched to get in, but the view from her little corner office was incredible. She works near the top of the northernmost, tall building in Lower Manhattan, so she has an unparalleled view of Midtown. Then she took us to a yuppie Cuban place near her office that was quite tasty.

Berck had spotted the Intrepid Sea & Air museum on my map, so I looked it up in my guidebook and realized it was the aircraft carrier. We only had a couple of hours before it closed, so we thought we’d go directly to the ship without dropping Todd’s bags off. It seemed like an eternal walk as we took turns carrying his luggage, but we finally made it to the water. We passed by the Carnival cruise ships that came before the ship and then spotted a disturbing sign that said, “INTREPID,” U-turn arrow, “RETURNING FALL 2008” next to an empty spot on the wharf.

“Oh, yeah!” said Todd. “I read about them moving it to be refurbished. It got stuck on a sandbar.”

“Oh, yeah!” I said, “I remember reading about that too.”

“Well, why didn’t anybody say anything!” demanded Berck in exasperation.

Tired of carrying the bags so long, we hailed a $12 cab to take us to the Frick Collection, which I’d heard was free, or used to be. Berck paid the exorbitant price of $15 while I was checking my backpack; otherwise, I would have suggested we skip it. It’s a good small collection, just way too expensive, especially with Berck complaining about it the whole time. At least we could check Todd’s bags.

Back at the apartment, we added Todd’s laptop to the collection of four already there and relaxed a bit while waiting for Sydney to get home from work. I had the evening all planned out when Sydney arrived and informed us it would take an hour to get down to the southern end of Brooklyn. The subway map isn’t exactly to scale. We decided to do as much of it as we could and took a train down to Avenue U to Famous Fat Dave’s favorite place for Sicilian pizza, L&B Spumoni Gardens. The restaurant wasn’t exactly at the end of the F Line, so I had to call to get directions from there. But we found it and ate a Sicilian rice ball and discovered that it was indeed an amazing pizza, and we couldn’t possibly eat it all. I finally asked for the check after we’d been sitting there for hours; Sydney informed us later that you have to ask for it in New York (like any other European country). We had just enough room for spumoni, yummy stuff with chunks of pistachios in it that we ate on our way back to the subway station.

We got to a little place in Park Slope to see Todd’s nephew Nate (who is a couple months younger than he is) play bass, but his band had just finished their set. But we got a couple beers while Todd and Nate caught up, finally walking back to the subway and getting home very late.

Pictures are up in the gallery. I’ll label them soon.