Our Dumb Blog

When I woke up Sunday, it was nearly 11. I went to take a shower and was relieved to see Sydney sleeping on the couch. Sydney and Berck had been dying to see the Transit Museum, so I found a place in Brooklyn to eat breakfast. Teresa’s is in a very nice, very trendy part of Brooklyn right by the County Court House. Everyone in there speaks with a Polish accent, as far as I can tell. We ordered all the different kinds of pirogi (excellent), some plain cheese blintzes (excellent), some home fries (very, very good), some challah French toast (quite tasty), and some normal pancakes for Sydney. Unfortunately, we nearly died of thirst because our waitress disappeared for about three quarters of an hour. Maybe she was hiding from the INS. They were really hopping, and we were pretty lucky to get a table when we did.

Berck had taken over the navigation duties, and he led us to the old subway station where the Transit Museum is flawlessly. We then spent the next three hours there as Sydney and Berck studied everything in great detail. Fortunately, they show a silent Harold Lloyd film in a theater, so I could sit and relax. Berck took dozens of pictures of the old subway cars, so I’m not going to go into detail about them.

We were finally done around 4 and walked to an actual working subway stop, then took the train to Chelsea to meet Sydney’s friend who works for Google’s New York headquarters. I can’t tell you how excited I was about this. We walked up to a nondescript building on 8th Avenue and called Mike, who appeared in the doorway shortly afterward.
He led us up to a nondescript front desk housing an imposing black man, who examined our drivers licenses and took our pictures with a little computer cam, then printed them out on sticky name tags that we adhered to our chests. Mike swiped his smartcard through the little glass gate that you could easily jump over, if you wanted to risk the wrath of the man behind the counter. We boarded an elevator and headed up to the 4th floor.

At the empty Google front desk (it was Sunday afternoon, after all), we had to electronically sign an agreement that we wouldn’t disclose anything deemed confidential… with a mouse. It printed out even more name tags for us, which we adhered to the other sides of our chests. Then Mike swiped his smartcard to unlock the front door, and we were in.

He led us to the game room first, basically a huge rec room with a big screen TV on which to play video games, a pinball machine, a couple of foosball tables, a pool table, an air hockey table, a dart board, a ping pong table, an exercise bike, and two massage chairs. There was only one massage chair there the last time Sydney visited, and she and Mike said there really should be another one right next to it so two people could sit in them and chat. The next day a second one appeared, so apparently, Google really is a magical place where just saying something makes it come true.

Actually, Google is a place that wants its employees to be really, really happy. Mike says he usually comes into work around 11, leaves at 7 if he’s got plans for the evening, or otherwise leaves around 11 to go home. He’s a lowly intern currently, so he’s trying to impress them (and is apparently doing a pretty good job of it) with his work on Notebook. He said that as long as you get stuff done, they don’t really care when you work, though that may just be for the engineers.

All the engineers get two huge flat screen monitors to work on or one ginourmous one, except Mike gets one huge one and one ginourmous one because he needs a Windows box to test his programming. Most of the folks there run Linux, though he says you can run whatever you want. And new employees are immediately fitted with a new Mac laptop. There are no cubicles; everyone works in a little area with three other folks who are all working on the same thing, all while connected to folks in California working on the same thing by a video conferencing computer that runs constantly.

If you need some privacy, there are dozens of little offices with just a desk, chair, pens, paper, telephone, and, most importantly, a door. If you run out of a particular office supply, there is a cabinet with whatever you need just outside in the hall. If you’re hungry, just head over to the nearest snack area. There you’ll find nearly every snack food or cereal you could think of in dispensers. Gourmet packets of chips are in baskets beneath them. The fridges are stocked with sodas, ice teas, flavored waters, lemonades, or whatever else you want. We each grabbed a drink while we were there. On the counters were baskets of every sort of tea bag and during the week fresh fruit. There was a coffee machine into which you insert a little canister, put your cup beneath it, and you have fresh brewed coffee in about 60 seconds. There’s also an espresso machine. And there’s a mini fridge just for any sort of white stuff you’d like to add to your coffee (or cereal): cream, whole milk, 2%, 1%, skim, soy milk, rice milk, or whatever else you want. There are tables and chairs nearby to sit and snack and play with Legos. Yes, there are tubs and tubs of different colored Legos and half completed projects scattered all around. There’s a Google logo on the wall made of Legos. There’s a wall of blocks that extends across three tables and off each end. There are portraits of Larry and Sergey made of Legos that Mike and his buddy made (I think he REALLY wants to work there when he graduates).

The campus takes up the entire 4th floor. They’ve nicknamed the different parts of the rectangle after the different parts of Manhattan. Printers are subway stops, and the part they use on the other floor is called Brooklyn. When we got to The Cloisters, Todd called to say he had finally arrived. “Quick!” said Mike, “Everyone grab a scooter!” There are scooters everywhere leaning up against the walls. We each hopped on one and were at the other end of the building in no time. (You gotta be prepared for when the tile meets the carpet, though.) We went down the elevator and waited on the other side of the glass gate for Mike to fetch Todd. “How will I recognize him?”

“He has blue hair,” the three of us said.

Todd went through the entire branding process, and then we hopped on our scooters once again to head back to the Bronx. Todd was getting up some good speed on his when he hit a rough patch in the floor and wiped out. It looked pretty painful, but he hopped back up and on we went. We got a drink for him in the snack bar and some more M&M’s for Berck. Scootering with a paper cup full of M&M’s is tricky.

Next we took another elevator down to Brooklyn (or maybe it was Staten Island) to the cafeteria. Of course, being a Sunday afternoon there was no one there and no food, but Mike showed us where everything would have been. Google brings in a famous guest chef from somewhere from time to time to whip up something gourmet. He said the burgers were amazing but it was hard to find French fries. There’s always something vegetarian, something vegan, and a fish. There is always desserts, but they’re in tiny portions so you’re not tempted to overeat them. Despite the fact that he eats as much as he wants for lunch and supper, Mike said he’d lost weight since he started working there because everything is so healthy. Oh, and organic.

We walked out on to the spacious balcony where you can eat your lunch and admired the view of Midtown and the Empire State Building. Around the edge of the balcony wall were planters full of fresh herbs, presumably for use in the kitchen. We were allowed to take pictures out on the balcony.

We passed on visiting another floor with more of the same, although it has showers and will be getting a full gym soon (thus the showers). We also declined on using the bathrooms, even though Mike kept offering them to us. It occurs to me now that we may have missed out! I’m hoping they’re just normal corporate toilets.

There is also a big room with chairs and five screens that come down for videoconferencing with California, whenever they have a big event going on. There are also screens all over the eating areas, so you always know what’s going on (or maybe so they can know what’s going on with you as you slip a taste of Victory Gin).

Mike also showed us the corner where the IT folks hang out. Whenever you have a computer problem, no matter how small, you go to them, and Google has found a way to always keep them in the same place so you know where to find them. They’re the only people who get a Wii to play with, along with some other game consoles and a rack of DVD’s to watch. Mike pointed to the metal cabinets all along the walls of their cubby and said inside was any possible computer part they might ever possibly need to fix what ails you.

Out in the halls were an assortment of oddities, kind of like a museum. One hall had a series of ancient computers on pedestals, from an Atari to an Apple Newton, all of them on and working. Along the wall of the snack area was a long printout of the evolution of operating systems, which fascinated Berck. There were also white boards everywhere with encouragements to scribble on them. One was divided into quadrants: Left=Bad, Right=Good, Up=Permanent, Down=Temporary. So “death” and “taxes” were in the upper left corner. “Politicians” were in the lower left corner. “Battlestar Gallactica” was in the lower right corner, as was “physical love.” “Free food” was in the upper right, but that’s only for Google employees. Sigh. The rest of the board was filled in with all sorts of stuff where they should be according to the cross spectrums.

We’d seen about all there was to see, so we retired to the game room and played until it was time for Todd to catch his Chinatown bus home to Boston. We bid him adieu and took Mike with us to find the actual location of the Cuban/Chinese restaurant a couple blocks away. Alas, it truly did not exist, so Mike took us to an Italian place across the street from his office. Berck finally got his gnocchi, and the rest of us had some delicious raw beef. Berck ordered me the veal, which was good, though Berck deemed it excellent, and I was left with the rest of his gnocchi. Berck and Mike argued about computers, since Berck knows a lot about Linux and Mike knows a lot about lots of other things. Berck enjoyed this immensely. Then Mike went back to work, and we reluctantly went back to the apartment.

After all, we had to get up at 4 to get to the airport.

8:30 in the morning came way too early. I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone to get our morning Cokes. We got on the train into town and got off to get some Ess-a-Bagel. Unfortunately, the cross streets I had written down for it were incorrect. My Google Maps mashup of Famous Fat Dave’s favorites had addresses in the titles (the only thing I had printed out, and Sydney doesn’t have a printer), when what you really need to navigate in New York is cross streets and a Street Wise map (highly recommended). So after walking six or so blocks to nowhere, Berck got a bialy and cream cheese at a random cafe, and we continued our trek to the Guggenheim to meet up with Todd, who was staying at his nephew’s house. Berck’s knee was hurting, so while we waited outside the museum, I ran over to the nearest Duane Reade and bought him some naproxen sodium. Gianna, who is living in New York now, joined us a little later and got us a couple of free tickets. Berck has an Embry Riddle student ID that got him massive discounts at all the museums. The Guggenheim was great, if not very extensive. We especially liked a hilarious weird video about a bunch of women making dough.

That out of the way, we all met up again at the Whitney, where Gianna got us free tickets for the four of us. The Whitney has a very good collection. One floor was devoted to this guy who does huge pieces. As you get off the elevator, you’re greeted by a room whose walls and ceiling are covered in foil with graffiti scratched into it and the security guard scraping something into a one of the corner walls (interactive art). Another piece was called White Carpet and was white carpet covering an entire wall. It looked like someone had walked across it with sooty shoes.

The Whitney unfortunately was devoting two whole floors to The Summer of Love, which meant a bunch of record art, band posters, and photos of hippies. There were also, mercifully, some rooms showing films of swirling dots with sitar music, which you’re supposed to watch while dropping acid, but were really good places to sit and rest one’s feet for a bit.

The ground floor had a very interesting piece called Profiling that was a room with a projector displaying on one of the walls. In the room were a couple of cameras capturing people who walked into the room. One side of the display showed who was currently in the room along with several loops of the last several minutes, so after a while, there were several girls wearing baseball caps. The other side had a camera attached to a computer running a program the artist had written to capture faces. It would show a mosaic of everyone who had been in the room in the last however many minutes (lots of shots of the security guard pacing back and forth). Then it would hone in on one individual and follow them around the room. It would tack up a title under the person labeling them. It labeled Todd “Lonely” and me “Uneasy.”

The plan was to do the MOMA next, but we were all too tired. So we headed up to Harlem to check out a soul food restaurant I wanted to try called Manna’s. It’s a buffet with all manner of things, from barbecued turkey wings to banana pudding to a tray full of chicken gizzards. Their collard greens have smoked turkey in them because they don’t serve pork. You fill up a styrofoam box and then pay by the pound. Dave raves about their deviled eggs, but they had too much sugar in them for me. All the meats were really good, though, along with the stuffing, and macaroni and cheese. Harlem has apparently come a long way. There was a gigantic glass covered Old Navy across the street from us in a huge mall. Everything looked healthy and prosperous, and we were the only white people I saw. Apparently, you don’t want to wander down dark streets in parts of Spanish Harlem, but the rest of it is really making a turnaround.

We headed back to Central Park to take a quick crosstown bus to the Met. I played Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic” (doo doo doodoodoo) in my head. Gianna got us more free tickets (even though the Met is by donation only). Berck headed straight for the modern corner, which they’ve made nearly impossible to get to for whatever reason. Todd and I got distracted by some Hieronymus Bosch, The Death of Socrates, and all the Rembrandt, including Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer. We finally found the Moderns and Berck and a Bird in Space. We were so tired that we started spending a lot of time on benches. The Met didn’t close till 9, but it’s huge and we were beat.

We called Sydney, much to the consternation of the security guards, and told her to meet us at a trendy restaurant on Union Square where Todd’s nephew was playing in a jazz combo. We were seriously under dressed, so we hung out in the shadows by the bar and drank some overpriced drinks while listening to the music. Nate took a break after a while and came over and talked to us. It turned out that he had met the drummer and guitarist when the three of them showed up to start playing that night. But the nature of jazz is that everyone knows all the standards, and it didn’t matter that they had never rehearsed or even played together before. They sounded really good. They had a six hour gig, playing from six to midnight. I guess New York is one of those places where somebody can actually make a living as a musician.

For supper Sydney led us to a Southern Indian place not too far away where we feasted on delicious vegetarian samosas and dosas (Indian crepes) for very reasonable prices. The rest of us were finished and waiting for Sydney to finish her Flying Horse, but she was too busy talking. So when she ran to the bathroom, Berck emptied her beer to a more manageable size.

We headed back to The Living Room to try to meet Anjeanette, a classmate of Berck and Todd’s, but apparently, she had already left. We got some $6 beers and listened to the last couple songs by a chicka from Spanish Harlem with a little guitar. At the end Anjeanette called and said they were turning their taxi around. She and her friend and boyfriend showed up a little later, and we tried to talk in the now packed bar area since all the music had ended at the pathetically early time of midnight. We decided we needed to go to a much a quieter place with tables, chairs, and beer. We walked down the block, ducking in very loud, full bars. Finally, I insisted we go back to Katz’s, “It’s quiet, there’s chairs, tables, and beer.” Berck asked, “There’s beer?” So that’s what we did. Berck got me an egg cream, and it was really good. It was like drinking Hershey’s syrup watered down slightly with soda water. I’d had an egg cream once before, but it tasted like soda water with a hint of chocolate and wasn’t very good. Berck said they poured a lot more than that in there. We had a fun time and finally left around 1.

Sydney and Todd made their way to a party with Sydney’s law school friends and a hookah. I was beat and my feet ached and had been for some time, so Berck took me home. We got down to the subway platform right as our train was pulling out. We waited 20 minutes for the next train. Sydney’s brownstone is a block away from the Franklin station, and she can take the C train from there, or walk up Fulton a couple blocks and take the A Express. This weekend they were doing construction on the C line, so the A was making local stops. Only that night it wasn’t, and when our train finally came, we had to get off at Nostrand and walk back in the dark to the apartment, though that was probably quicker. We collapsed into bed, and I didn’t bother to set an alarm.