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The Truth |
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Official Organ of the Greater Gotham Full Moon
Hash House Harriers
G2FMH3 Hash #189 – Friday, February 2nd, 2007
Start: Canal & Church
Hares: Mary and Fire-In-The-Piehole
On-in: Emerald Inn (Spring St)
Punk Ass Bitch (Scribe): Smashmouth
It was a dark and stormy night. Or so I dimly recall, as the events I am about to recount took place nearly four months ago. I am, to my eternal demerit, a procrastinator. I discovered that I was a procrastinator and not a prevaricator when I mistakenly used the latter to describe myself and was accused, correctly as I subsequently confirmed, of calling myself a liar. So, I am not a liar, unless you count promising imminent delivery of this write-up on multiple occasions to the increasingly frustrated On-Sec. and then failing to come through, lying. In fact, by the time you read this, it may well be five months since the actual evening, as, having promised to deliver in time for May’s Full Moon trail, I started to write with no real intention of finishing. Which does possibly make me a prevaricator; but that’s a bit harsh; I think I’ll stick with procrastinator. Ideally, of course, I would be a prognosticator rather than a procrastinator, which would enable me to write up trails before they actually occurred, which, of course, with the exception of a Devo trail, is actually impossible. But I digress.
One more matter does need clearing up, however. I promised Alice that I would write up her New Year’s Day trail of, I believe, 2005, while having no real intention of so doing. I do remember that the On-In took place at Rudy’s on 9th Avenue and that there were some interesting visitors with whom I chatted. There, I feel better now. Thinking of Rudy’s reminds me that I was there last year with Gleason and Christine for a meeting of an organization calling Drinking Liberally, at which we (I mean Gleason and I) were the only people over 30 present and were touched by the naïve enthusiasm of our fellow drinkers. But I promised myself that I would not digress into politics. Some of you may remember that I used to write up trails regularly for NYCH3 and always enjoyed the opportunity to spew forth on any subject of my choosing, a tradition followed by the great Steve “who’s Kurtzer” Kurtzer. However, despite the fact that I now have seven years of pent-up anger at the ruining of the Western world by the evil Bush-Cheney junta, I promise to stick to the matter in hand. (What a strange expression that is, by the way.)
So, a dark and stormy night it was. I arrived at the corner of Canal and Church at my usual time of twenty minutes late to find Mary giving an excellent impersonation of a drowned rat (or, to be strictly accurate, a drowning rat, since she was not actually dead), pouring the last couple of bags into a taxicab. Fortunately it was too dark to see whether there was an extra dark cloud directly over her, but she did not appear to be too happy a camper. In any case, I and a couple of other latecomers were sent on our way in a northerly direction. As I recall, we managed to make it round the corner before finding no more marks and promptly called the Hotline. My kind of trail.
The On-In location merits discussion. Given that almost every street in New York City is alternatively named after a minor politician or policeman and every building in London is marked with a blue plaque commemorating its association with one forgotten literary figure or another, I propose that bars in Manhattan (and occasionally Queens and Brooklyn, as well) should be similarly flagged with Great Moments in Local Hashing History. Examples that leap to mind are “Here was Kanaga’s Last Ever On-In,” “Here Laird Found a Visitor from Texas Blowing Somebody in the John,” “Here Roark Poured an Entire Pitcher of Beer over Charlie’s Head” etc etc etc. The Emerald Inn, for those who haven’t heard this already, would bear the plaque “Here Was Byron-Brown’s First On-In” Back in August 1992, a trail set by Steve Brett (who is training, by the way, for another Marathon at his advanced age) and Erin Chen (who left town many years ago) and run by yours truly with the aid of a few cigarettes, ended up here. From memory, it was a lot less crowded and a lot less noisy than on the night we are now discussing, but, of course, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. All negatives were quickly obliterated as the Hares did an excellent job of dispensing the beer and, once things quieted down a bit, provided stimulating conversation, along with Christine and Jean. Well, they didn’t “provide” Christine and Jean, who came under their own steam, but rather the aforementioned distinguished ladies provided some of the stimulating conversation. There were other people there, but I have no idea who, except for Sarah, whom I muscled out of the way to be allowed to do this write-up, and Lisa, who is to be blamed for the lateness of this screed for letting me do it in the first place. Oh, and some jerk who did the Down Downs.
So, as ever, a pleasant evening which can now fade permanently into the confusion of history. But was it a dark and stormy night?