infant one, ninth avenue zero

I work for a small business in midtown that does party planning; they just bought a gaggle of new Macs and needed someone to support them. The current employees are more creative types, not well-suited to dealing with the ever-present challenges of using a computer effectively, so I'm a vital part of the organization. They also offer a good per hora rate and extreme flexibility of hours, so I'm hooked. I've been working there since the beginning of April, and hope to stay on even once I begin law school. Having a few extra dollars in my pocket is always good.

This Saturday, however, is the last event they're doing for a while, and it's a monster: there's a huge number of different groups signed up for the same time period. It's utter pandemonium in the office, as people rush hither and thither putting together gift bags, getting decorations ready, etc. Meanwhile, Club Babalu, where the event is to be held, is closing at around a quarter to six, so there's a severe time limit on how long things can wait. I'm happily working at my station, downloading clip art for the website, when my employer's car arrives. Normally they just wheel everything over in a cart, but there's simply too much crap this time around to take that normally eminently sensible route. Driving in New York, you see, is more trouble than it's worth for most of the day. But this time around, there's not much choice. This engenders a problem: nobody in the office has a driver's license.

I was astonished when I first came to New York that many natives never bother to learn how to drive, let alone get a license. No one has a car, so what's the point. I always saw turning sixteen and getting that license as a pivotal and essential moment in adolescence, when you move from essenially an extention of your parents to your own free agent. After all, in Los Angeles, without a car, you aren't really going to be able to get much of anywhere. But the gist of this all is that we need someone to drive the damn thing, and I'm called upon for my excellent Californian abilities behind the wheel. We need to get from the office on 49th Street to the club on 44th with a gaggle of crap, most of which is stuffed into the car. A few particularly unwieldly objects are carried down manually, since it's such a short distance.

Unfortunately, Ninth Avenue at rush hour on a Friday is roughly equivalent to a Persian bazaar circa AD 1200: completely impenetrable to vehicular traffic. This is occasioned by its outlet another half mile down into the Lincoln Tunnel, a fact which is only to my great irritation. My boss is in the passenger seat and busy transacting cellular business while I gesture obscenely and ho9nk impotently at the compeltely stationary SUVs areound me. The perambulatory crowd makes three trips and actually runs into the car on the street, still two blocks away from its destination. And infant, literally, could have crawled to the damn place before we got there.

The lesson: don't drive in New York during Friday rush hour. Everyone wants to get the fuck out like it's the last helicopter out of Saigon. And if you have to, don't take Ninth.