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No more New York Pizza. An email correspondent today advised me that it burned down on Monday night…

For those of you not in the know (which would be about 98% of you), New York Pizza was probably my favorite drinking establishment in Greensboro. It was a great place: a pizza joint with bar on a corner of Tate Street, UNCG‘s pathetic excuse for a college strip. It was dark and dumpy, it had a great jukebox, the pitchers were cheap, and there was always plenty of greasy stomach padding to be found…

But the best thing about the place was the crowd. It was one of those rare places which small cities seem to generate more readliy than big ones: an all-purpose joint where college kids, trailer trash, musicians, homosexuals, and burnouts sat and drank and talked and smoked. Usually with no problems, and often with a great deal of interaction among the different groups…

It was not a trendy place; in fact, it was little more than a dump, but it was usually a far more pleasant place to be than Greensboro’s dismal, tight-assed, disco queer bars or its assorted fratboy and redneck hangouts. In recent years, it had become the only bar left on Tate Street, not so much through gentrification, but more through the sanitizing influences of the nearby university, the fascist College Hill neighborhood organization, and a higher drinking age…

I’m told they’ll rebuild, but I have my doubts. Even if they do, it won’t be the same…

I think it would be just about impossible to overstate how much I enjoyed this weekend and didn’t want it to end. Thanks. I’m really worn out, so I’ll just throw up some random observations for now:

• Firsts for me. Lots of firsts. And several realizations as well. More about that later. It’s been kind of a season for realizations. And firsts.
• Los Creepers and Fastback 69. Yay.
• Is there ever NOT a wreck on I-580 in Livermore?
• I have become a designated driver.
• A really nice Mies van der Rohe book for 90 cents is a wonderful thing.
• I’m 37 1/2 years old (as of today, which I forgot until now) and I feel about 13, except when I’m taking my pills.
• Why yes, the left lane IS designed for passing and not for cruising along at your own pace. Thanks for noticing.
• Should I be concerned that I’ve spent more time in a bar 180 miles from my house than in any of the ones in my neighborhood lately?
• Dimanche Gras, anyone?
• I think I could probably live in Baltimore if I had to.
• If I were a mystery shopper, the Burger King in Modesto would have failed miserably tonight.
• Fabuloso comes in FOUR colors now?

OK, that probably made no sense at all. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow. Right now, I’m teetering between happy, goofy, and comatose, so I’m going to bed…

Many, many things on my mind tonight, but they’ll have to wait until tomorrow, because I spent the whole evening rewiring and making my big new TV fit into a space which was way to small for it. But I did it. And my collection of dirty videos played a very important part…

Yeah, that whole paragraph was suitably vague, and maybe I’ll rewrite it some day. Or not. I’m going to bed now, since I have to be awake again in under seven hours…

Damn, I miss you. And I owe you one (and Jamie too)…

One night about five or six months ago, I was in this used bookstore near 9th and Irving and I saw the most amazing, rare used book on the LA freeway system. It was a tad pricey, and right at that moment, when I was at my most freaked out about the whole hospital thing and my finances and everything else, I couldn’t make myself buy it. I really wanted it and I regretted not buying it for months…

Tonight after dinner with Dan and Jamie, we happened to wander by the very same bookstore. It was going out of business this go-round and everything was a third off. And the damned book was still there. This time, I had money, I felt much better about life, and the book is now in my living room…

It’s a small thing, really, but it feels a little symbolic somehow of my much-improved state of mind since last summer…

Pretty damned good weekend: a visit from my favorite boy, I nearly tripled my DVD collection, and I have a new mouse. Yes, everything’s listed in order of priority, and the mouse is definitely at the bottom, as I haven’t decided if I like it yet or not. Dreamweaver doesn’t seem to care for it much at all…

Y’know, as a confirmed hermit, it’s really unusual for me to spend so much time with any one person. It’s even more unusual for me to find myself wishing I could spend even more time with him. I’m not sure what this means…

OK. I have a pretty good idea what it means…

Random thoughts for a Monday afternoon:

• I need to avoid spending significant parts of two consecutive days in Berkeley; I’m stifling a significant desire to beat up some hippies right now. Yes, I turn into a reactionary right-winger every time I’m in Berkeley. Any sane person would.
• The lack of communication skills and systems may be the single largest cause of inefficiency in corporate America today; I realized this today as five different people showed up for a training class at five different (incorrect) combinations of time and address. I had the correct time but the wrong address. My co-worker (with the same supervisor as me) had the wrong time AND address.
• Leave it to the Examiner to present a decade-old issue as hot breaking news. Wow. Fags are doing too much speed and it’s causing problems. Who knew?
• A new almanac is a wonderful thing.
• Zippy is back in the Chronicle. Yay.
• Why do so many commercially-released DVDs have such low audio levels? I’m talking REALLY low here.