It’s Just Poison…

I woke up to a knock at my hotel door. It’s Jenni and Craig. They inform me that it’s time to go. I ask if they’re referring to the noon meeting for sushi. Nope. It’s time for the 6pm BodyMod.org meetup.

“Holy Shit!” I’ve been asleep for almost 20 hours. I guess my body needed some catch up sleep after being awake for 3 days =).

I needed to shower and change, so I told them that I would just meet them at the bar. They left me a map from the tube station and they left.

Well crap. I was planing on going to the Dali exhibit and running around town this afternoon, so I guess that’s not going to happen. Oh well.

I jumped in the shower, threw on some clothes and briskly walked to the tube station. By this time, I was pretty familiar with the underground, and knew of the station I was supposed to go to, Kings Cross. It was the same one I met Jenni and Shelli at yesterday.

To my delight, the line that ran to that station was closed for the weekend due to construction. I had to get on two different trains, and backtrack a couple stops to get there, but I eventually made it.

When I got above ground, I pulled out my trusty map and tried to make my way to the bar. The only problem was that the map wasn’t lining up with the streets that were in front of me. Maybe I got out on the wrong side. Back through the station and out the other end, I pull out my map and check it. Nope, nuthin. Well, this isn’t good.

There were a couple coppers (that’s what they call ‘em over there) hanging out front, so I showed them the map and asked them for directions. Apparently, I was waaaaay off. Wrong tube station. I was supposed to go to Charring Cross, not Kings Cross. Dammit.

Back onto the tube. Now I had to go back the way I came and then get to another train to get to the Charring Cross station. By the time I got there, I’d spent a good hour underground playing around in the subway.

When I exited, my map fit with what was in front of me. Booyah! I made a couple turns and arrived at Jewel, the bar everyone from the site was meeting up at. I was about an hour and a half late. It’s all good. I had to be fashionably late anyway. I’m the guest of honor, lol =).

The door guy didn’t want to let me in right away. He was was a “list man”. You know the type, “woah woah woah… are you on the list man?”. Simple answer, “fuck if I know”. This produces a frown from the “list man”. Apparently, I needed to be on the list to get in. So I tell him that I’m there to meet up with a party of about 60+ people, and that I’m the guy they’re all there to meet. It was a load of BS, but it’s always fun to mess with them. He waved me in, but didn’t turn that frown upside down.

Inside, I met up with everyone and grabbed a drink from the bar. I met a few new people that I didn’t meet yesterday from the site and talked a little about this and that. Most of the girls were pretty shy, so I didn’t get to talk to them much. They looked pretty in their dresses and gowns, but not too talkative. No worries though, I still had a blast =).

After my second cocktail, I was told that we were leaving to go out to dinner. Works for me, I hadn’t eaten anything since the noodles from last night. We left the bar and headed around the corner to a pizza / italian place called “Zizzi”.

Obviously, they didn’t have seating readily available for 12 people on a saturday night, so we plopped our names on a list and were told to be back in 30 minutes. Nice.

We exited the restaurant and decided to find a small bar near by and get a drink while we wait. I ran into a somewhat fast food place next door to ask where the closet bar was. The chick behind the counter told me that there is a really nice gay bar just down the road. Ummm… not really what I was looking for. I asked her if it was the leather pants that triggered her response and she just laughed. She then told me that we should head around the corner to this place called “Jewel”, but you may need to be on the list to get in. Awesome. I got nowhere real quick.

We collectively decided to head down the road and see what we could find. A little ways down, we found a small english pub and entered. Most people ordered their pints, but Mac and I voiced our love of Mr. Jack Daniels and his best friend Coke. That’s when I saw the atrocity. The most evil of things you can ever see in a bar. I saw it a couple times last night, but didn’t think much of it. Now I was sober, and very aware. The measured pour. Nooooooooo! “You want a Jack and Coke? Well, first I have to pour the Jack into a measured shot glass to make sure that you’re not getting a drop over 250ml. Then I’ll fill the glass with coke to make sure that you don’t taste the Jack and get nothing from the alcohol what-so-ever because you’re going to nurse this drink for too long as you’re not too eager to drop another 4-5 pounds (8-10 dollars) for your next one.”

When I saw this I freaked out, and Mac told me that a lot of the time, bars pad the bottom of the metal measuring cylinders with a rounded bottom to actually short you on the pour! Heresy!

Apparently, hand-pouring a drink is really rare, and not to be expected. Talk about bad news. I thought we were just hitting a bad string of bars. About mid-way through our drinks, Jenni ran in and told us that our table was ready and we needed to head back to Zizzi. Not eager to stay, I sucked down my drink and headed out.

We showed up and there was a table ready for us. Well, 8 of us. There were 2 chicks at the end of the adjoining table just gabbing away after they paid their tab and weren’t leaving. W…T…F? Why do girls do this? Apparently it’s an international thing. So annoying.

I headed upstairs to the little stand / bodega thing next door to grab a bag of chips, sorry… crisps. I was hungry and needed something to keep the stomach gods appeased for just a little longer.

When I returned, the girls were gone, and Mac and I sat down. A short time later, our waitress arrived and took our drink order. Again, Jack and Coke. She got it half right. I received the Jack, but no Coke. When we ordered dinner, I reminded her that I would like a coke as well.

While we waited for our food, we chatted away, and took some photos. Generally being annoying to everyone else around us that was trying to have a quite dinner. Oops.

When dinner arrived, we all just shoveled it into our faces with minimal talking. Most of it was, “Mmmm thish ish goodmmm…”. Though, looking back, it was pretty bland. I emptied about half of the pepper shaker into my food to give it some flavor. That seemed to be the commonality with british food. Everything tasted the same. Odd. I didn’t care though, I was hungry. 30 minutes in and our mission was accomplished. We paid our tab and then headed out to our next bar.

On the way to the bar, I saw something that was pure genius: street urinals. The city brings out these portable urinals that can be occupied by 4 men at a time (with dividers), and then hauls them away in the early morning. So smart. Keep people from peeing all over the streets, and it’s perfectly legal. This is something we need in NYC, bad.

One of the guys I was hanging out with told me that another city in England has urinals that come out of the ground every night. The raise up out of the side walks like a james bond device. Freaking sweet!

We made it to the bar, but just in time for one last round as they rung the last call bell right when we walked in (it was about 11pm). Yeah, that’s another thing that bothers me about London. Bars close anywhere from 10 to midnight, even on the weekends. The only places that stay open later are the big mega-clubs. No thanks.

When we finished up our drinks, we headed outside and started to give our goodbyes. Some of us decided to head back to the hotel and just drink it up in our rooms and hang out there. Others had a long train ride home and decided to call it a night.

Those of us that were heading back to the hotel, jumped on the tube and were pleasantly surprised to be entertained by this crazy Elvis impersonator. I was so impressed with his performance, that not only did I video tape it and give him a tip, but I also got my picture taken with him =). This also shows how I really don’t fit in the train cars at all.

Here’s the video:

When we arrived outside the hotel, we contemplated as to where we were going to get alcohol. All the stores were closed, and most of the bars were also closed. Craig and I then got the bright idea of going to some dive bar that was open and trying to buy a bottle off them. Figured it was worth a shot. So we left and headed for a small metal bar that was just down the road.

A good 10 or 15 minutes into our walk, I found a wallet on the sidewalk. I picked it up and looked around to see if there were any guys around that could have dropped it, nothing. So I pocketed it and asked Craig if I put it in a mailbox that it would get back to the guy. He said they don’t do that there, and we could just mail it to him. Sounded good to me. Then “Crazy guy” came outta no where…

“Touch me I’m hot!” he shouted at craig as he stuck his fist out for the well renowned fist-hit handshake thing. He was with some girl, and everyone was smiling, so it seemed like a harmless, drunken gesture. That was just the beginning. This guy wouldn’t leave. Originally he and the girl were walking in the opposite direction, and now he was walking with us. The girl then looks at us and tells us, “Thank god. I don’t know this guy. He just starting talking to me, and he was funny so I tagged along. Have fun with him, bye!” And she bolted. Crazy Man continued to talk about all kinds of non-sense. He even asked us if this was the UK. We were pretty sure it was, so we said yes.

Every time we walked by someone, he would do the gesture and shout, “Touch me, I’m hot” to everyone. If he really liked you, he would show off his new porn DVD that he just bought. He was pretty proud of it. Eventually he lost interest in us and found a new group of people to latch onto that were passing by and we never saw him again… in person.

Right after we lost our new friend, we ran into the chick that we originally saw him with. She hung up her phone and tagged along with us as we were all laughing our asses off about this crazy man we all encountered. She was on her way to a bar in the same direction, so she decided to tag along with us and go to the bar we were off to. I believe her name was Mia. Craig gave her his full name at the bar and proclaimed that he’s the only one of them on Facebook, so I’m sure their bff now ;o)

As we waited outside the bar, I pulled out the wallet to see if there was any cash to pay for our drinks. No cash. No anything really. Just a library card, drivers license, and some misc other cards. Looks like someone found it before me. As craig was reading the guys name out loud, Mia burst out laughing. Confused, we asked, “Ummm… what?” Apparently Crazy Man told her his name during all his ramblings, and that was the guys wallet. We looked closer at the photo on the license, and sure enough, it was! We decided to return all his stuff, but I kept the wallet and license as a souvenir. Let other people buy little snow globes of Big Ben. I got Crazy Man’s drivers license =).

After a few shots of Jager at the metal bar, we asked the bartender if we could buy a bottle off him. He said that the only way we could do it is if we bought the bottle by the shot. I did the quick math and it came out to around $140 for a bottle of Jager. We passed.

We then left the bar and parted ways with Mia. We were on task to bring back liquor and we were going to do so! Craig then suggested that we ask the bodega guys to sell us a bottle on the down low. Didn’t seem too unreasonable. In nyc, you can get a 6 pack after hours if you go to the shady places. Unfortunately we kept getting denied. One guy was genuinely insulted when I openly offered to bribe him. Dude’s gotta loosen up.

We walked all around London, and tried every little store that had a liquor license and got nuthin’. We even walked through a place that was the equivalent of NYC’s times square. Not too impressive really.

After a long time of walking around London, we realized that we had walked all the way back to where we had dinner at! Talk about a weekend of stumbling in circles. It was pretty late now, and we were both hungry and tired. Figured it was best to call it quits and head back to the hotel. There was one more place to check, and Craig wanted to hit it up before turning around. Shazam! He was willing to sell! Hallelujah! We grabbed a bottle of Jack, a 2 litre of coke, and a few beers. We did it. We’re so awesome.

Now to get back to the hotel and share with everyone else how awesome we are that we found alcohol in this wonderfully dry-by-night city. We decided to grab some food on the way back because the stomach monster was at it again. Food of choice? Subway, again. There’re everywhere and some are open 24 hours. Also, it was better than “Wok in a Box”. As interesting as it may sound, I decided it was best for me to pass. I have to be on a flight to Moscow in a few hours, and I don’t want to take any chances.

When we entered the hotel, the concierge approached me and said that I had a message from a guy, “He’s in room 533″. Assuming it was Mac, who was also staying here (and I didn’t know his room number), I asked if the guy had bright red hair. “No, but he had tattoos on his arms.” Ok, now I’m confused, because the only person here that I knew with tattoos on their arms without bright red hair was me. I figured he was mistaken, and later I found out I was right. Apparently tattoos stick out more than red hair. Weird.

We took the lift to the 5th floor and knocked on Mac’s door. No answer. Ok… maybe he’s down at the girls room with everyone else. So, down to the 4th floor. We knock on their door. Nothing. Ok, I guess they all went to bed. Oh well. More Jack for me and Craig! As we were walking down the hall their door opened and Shelly shouted at us. They were asleep. Wusses. Shelly wanted to hang out though, so she came back up to my room for some drinks and chat. While we were there, she got ahold of Mac, and he came down too. This is when we found out what time it was, 3am. Oops. Guess we were gone a little bit longer than expected.

We drank and talked until the sun came up. I had to be at the airport at 10am, which meant I had to leave the hotel at 8am. It was not 7am. Guess I’m not going to sleep again. Definitely worth it. I made a few new friends, had a night to remember, and was about to start my next adventure to China. Awesome!

Tags: Travels //