Quicktime | Flash | iPod The day started off great! Birthday party, face-painting, pizza and good friends. Then it took an ugly turn. The party was on Long Island and we were driving home upstate from there. We knew we had the Belmont Stakes, a Yankees game and just plain Saturday to contend with traffic-wise, and because of that and the fact that we had my entire record collection and a whole mess of baby tomato plants in the bed of the truck on a 90F day, we knew we had to hit the road early. But something went wrong. We zigged when we should have zagged and after a spell I looked out the window and saw water. We were deep South instead of Way North. We got off the highway but couldn t get back on and ended up driving through the whole of Brooklyn all of it, no really ALL OF IT from Canarsie through Kings Plaza, Midwood, Prospect Park, Park slope, Fort Green and Williamsburg via Flatbush Ave. On a Saturday afternoon. You may have to be a New Yorker to appreciate how awful that really is. If you re not, here s a visual: The drivers were complete maniacs, we got cut off from the right at literally every block. The traffic getting past the GWB and Yankee Stadium was insane. We left the party at 2:30 and didn t get out of the damn city till about 5:30. We didn t get home till 8:30. We were broken. So we broke out the champagne we d been saving for a rainy day. (it was also raining)
