Going out in New Haven

I miss going out in New Haven.

Besides standing two feet away from Bryan Adams when he is reaching out to give his friend a hug, there's something so quaint about hanging out in the hometown of Yale University.

While I was at Quinnipiac, my friends and I frequently went to Bar, The Playwright or Van Dome on a Friday or Saturday night. We debated who should pay the $6 for parking and at what hot spot we should end the night.

On Monday, I drove down early to shop at IKEA before the concert. Even though New Haven really isn't that far away, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone. I actually ended up killing three, or maybe four.

I had meatballs and French fries at IKEA as a late breakfast/early dinner. Then I walked around the furniture store for two hours deciding how to best spend the "summer money" my grandmother had surprised me with.

Besides a neck-friendly pillow and a new comforter (Albie melted the old ones in the dryer by mistake), I came a cross some cat-friendly plants that might brighten up our home.

I also bought a new "Portis" shoe rack (that will probably get moved to the opposite side of the hallway). I've been dragging around the cheap wooden "Babord" for six years now, and it's falling into pieces.

My friend and former roommate Bo, now a New Haven resident and the sole keeper of our three farm cats (Charlotte, Sprout and Zassemo), met up with me outside the Yale bookstore so we could grab a drink before the Bryan Adams concert. Her boyfriend showed up as well, and we ended up having an evening coffee ("bubble tea" for them - a weird and disgusting combination of a smoothie and tapioca bubbles).

Bo kept me company at Toad's until Bryan Adams started singing his first song. "Bryan who?" she said, finished her red wine and headed home to go to bed. You see, Bo gets up during the hours I like to call "bed time," and I get started with my day just when she is ready to go to bed. When we lived together, we never saw each other. Which had its ups and downs.

I already wrote about the concert in a previous post, so I'm just going to add this: It was amazing. It was personal, it was funny... it was brilliant.

To top the evening off, I had $7 left in my pocket after bailing my car out from the Broadway parking lot. It was just enough to get two falafels at Mahmoun's - a Middleastern restaurant on Howe Street. No eventful evening in New Haven is complete without a stop at Mahmoun's.

Driving home, I just wish I knew what 13-year-old Viktoria would have thought about the evening if she knew this would happen one day.