My friend Ken Buck, from the other side of the tracks in the Camden, NJ area, took the train into Manhattan to meet me for dinner on Monday night. I've known Ken for about 10 years through our mutual love of youth ministry. We connected after a 4am multi-golf cart chase through a college campus that involved two cases of whipper-snapper fireworks. Great story.
We wandered mid-town for a while trying to figure out where to eat, heading towards the area that we wanted to hang, over by 52nd and 8th ave. We wandered by this Italian hole-in-the-wall place called the Pepe Rosso Osteria. It was cheap and had a cool look, so we went there for dinner and had a great meal.
We had an odd conversation about the governance structure of the prebytary, Calvinism and spiritual formation. Ken is getting his masters in divinity, or something like that. He has a passion for urban church planting and having odd roomates, like Chris Sloan, a beatnik bass player. As our worlds have met, Ken has gotten to know friends and co-workers of mine (Bill Belanger, Will Brown, etc), and developed a series of odd mutual friends over the years who are some of the funniest people you'll ever meet (Jason Shinn, Mike Dicurci, etc). As a crazy socialist liberal, Ken has gotten to know my family via e-mail and Facebook and is trying to find a way to get to one of our family events this summer to meet them.
We wandered around for a while and wandered by the Ed Sullivan theatre (my brother Jon's comment on this picture "Wow are the hookers in NY getting ugly." Apparently the hookers that Jon is familiar with are much better looking than Ken.)
When I asked on Facebook for reccomendations of great places in mid-town to eat, my Dan reccomended his favorite place Sbarros. We got this picture for his "Sbarro's around the world" picture collection. The store-fronts in times square are full of some pretty odd things, including these giant action figures.
After wandering, we went over to The Russian Samovar over by 52nd between Broadway and 8th. I'd been there once before, but Ken hadn't. It's full of first generation Russians/Ukranians and serves these crazy infused vodkas that are awesome. Ken and I sat at the bar and hung there for 4 or 5 hours. We got to know the bouncer and the bartender, but from the Ukraine. The bartender had just gotten an iPhone and I was showing her how to use it to get some of the Russian apps when we started playing with Google Earth. The bouncer jumped in and started showing Ken and I where he lived via Google Earth, including his house, apartment and boat. He explained that he lives in the US 6 months and works like a dog. He returns to Odessa and lives like a king. Via Google Earth he was not only able to show us the view from above of his place, but also his place from pictures that had been geotag'd. He invited Ken and I over to visit and was very sincere and hospitable. Ken and I figured that the worst thing that could go wrong was that we'd be sold into the white-slavery sex trade.
The vodka was awesome, but the people really great. We met another gal there, Lalita, who was also Russian. She had some crazy stories about Bella Carolli and meeting the Yankees. She knew sports better than any first generation russian woman that I know and was more opinionated about them than any man I know.
That's one of the things I love about hanging with Ken.
I'm pretty sure Ken and I could be the new Norm and Cliff at this place if we lived closer. By the time we left, we had people buying us drinks and the bartender was comping us for helping her with her iPhone.
We hung around Times Square and after taking this very questionable picture of the two fo us, we struck up a conversation with some odd people and then got some midnight food from a street vendor. Note to self: Don't buy chicken from a street vendor... I'm not sure it was completely cooked. Anyways, it's always a good time with Mr. Buck Wild.
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