IRISH DAY... Long Beach 2011

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I had never seen anything like Hoboken St Patricks Day,  prior to moving there a few years back. A holiday to celebrate Irish culture, held on the first Saturday in March. Their own St. Patricks Day holiday. A drunk-fest celebrated solely by Hoboken, with the exception, of course, of the B&T making the once-a-year pilgrimage from Manhattan, passports in hand.

Not even a summer weekend I had previously spent at the Jersey Shore, (in a house stuffed full of 20-something's), could compare to the debauchery that takes place at the onset of March every year on this Hoboken holiday.

I wonder if Ireland ever pays tribute to our drunken ways by designating a holiday to wasted Americans. That would be worth the trip.   

During Hobo St. Pats, the streets fill with "green" people as every liquor store within 10 miles sells out of kegs and every rooftop, balcony, and patio is equipped with beer pong and flip cup tables. Drunken parties start as early as possible, and are sometimes merely a continuation from the night before. The next morning the streets are littered with beer bottles and pizza, obvious evidence of a good time.

Every year city officials threaten to close down this city-wide block party. It’s very possible that the bottles being launched at passersbys from balconies, the rapes, and the overwhelming alcohol-induced comas of 2011 will soon make this threat a reality.

I thought only Hobokennites, having an obvious void of pleasure in their daily routines, were the only ones to create such a holiday (as well as an excuse to day drink- my favorite) all on their own. But I was wrong.

Having only lived in Long Beach for a week, all we had heard was "have you been to Irish Day?", "Do you know what happens at Irish Day?", "Beware of Irish Day!"..

Wait, what's this Irish Day? St Patricks day is still 6 months away... Another community inspired holiday that pays tribute to beer and food?! Awesome!

Turns out Irish Day is Long Beach's version of St. Patricks Day and includes an Irish Heritage Day Parade and street festival. It has been running strong for 22 years and is held in the bar-studded West End of Long Beach the first Saturday of October. Put on by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, America’s oldest Catholic Irish-American fraternal organization, founded in NYC in 1836. The day begins with a morning Mass at the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Long Beach (how’s that for irony?!) and is followed by a proper Irish breakfast before kicking off the parade at noon. The parade travels down West Beech Street (just outside of our apartment) through the west end of Long Beach. Afterwards, the families take in the street fair just in time to be home before the bars are overtaken by patrons looking to continue the fun.

Even though we had been heavily warned, Trav and I were ready to throw caution to the wind and take Irish Day by the horns.

It was a beautiful day and after watching the parade festivities get set up from our balcony, we decided to start our day, the way all days should be started, at the beach- beer in hand.

As the sun warmed the beach, we came up with a game plan for the day. Plan A was more beer and Plan B was food. Perfect.

After the beach, I showered to got ready while Trav concocted shots out of anything and everything in our depleted liquor cabinet. I was told the last one contained strawberry jelly and some unrecognizable schnapps only after I was able to keep it down.

With a "bring it!" attitude, we walked across the street to where Irish Day was in full swing. Not before passing our neighbors who asked "First Irish day, huh?!" and added " good luck!" I don't think it was even lunch time yet. What were we getting ourselves into?

We passed an empty stage that had been set up at the end our street and wondered who'd be playing there later & what kind of crowd it might bring.

The bars already had people spilling out of them and tents were set up in parking lots making make-shift beer gardens. Parking lots and porta-potties are no longer my style (since the Padres were moved from Qualcomm, devastatingly ending tail-gate traditions!) so we marched on.

They had every type of "fair" food that you can imagine from food trucks shaped like pigs, fried Oreos and Twinkies, zeppoles, and of course sausage & peppers.

We stopped at a bar, Bahia Social Club, with the intent that this would be the first stop on our Irish Day bar crawl. We found a table outside to watch the crowd and drink cheap beer so it soon became our only stop on the Irish day bar crawl for the the next couple of hours.

The incessant smell of food provoked us to give up our spot and search for the best food. We first grabbed an awesome corned-beef Cuban sandwich which started my newest craving. Next we discovered Pickled Me Petes. The sweet chipotle chips were the best I'd ever had. We've already had them delivered to the apartment since.. My sausage and peppers craving was cured by a giant sandwich as we snacked on zeppoles for desert.

All in all- Irish Day had been a successful but VERY tame one by our standards.

By 6pm we were having a beer on our couch, happy to be home. We heeded our favorite bartender's advice and decided not to attempt the bars that were now full to the rafters of belligerent New Yorkers. One elbow to the boob or collision of someone's high heel & my flip flopped feet would be a bad combo- we considered ourselves lucky to have survived Irish Day. Looking forward to 2012

The dirty C-word...

Becoming a commuter has been an interesting experience.

There's a whole other world that I never knew existed when I used to wake up and walk two blocks to work, while living in Hoboken. Commuting takes skill and is a breed of it's own.

When I first moved to Manhattan, I learned quickly that other Manhattanites looked down upon those that flooded their bars, their sidewalks & their jobs and didn’t actually live in the city. They condescendingly referred to these intruders as "B&T.", short for "Bridge and Tunnel". Obviously, for our not-so-quick readers, this is a term used to describe those that take the bridge or the tunnel in to infringe on the island of Manhattan. I technically became “B&T” when I moved across the river to Hoboken. Call this an excuse if you must, but Hoboken is so closely integrated with Manhattan,  I definitely couldn't tell a difference between a Hobokenite and a Manahattanite. A night in Manhattan or Hoboken was all the same to me. Same prices, same people, same city feel. I felt like if I threw a rock from Hoboken's pier, it might land in the beer of someone sitting at our favorite summer happy hour spot on the west side, the Frying Pan. Or if I could stomach the stench and dared to swim across the Hudson, it might take me 20 minutes, max..So, it really didn’t count.

It didn't take long to discover that if you really wanted to see a true version of B&T, then you should definitely check out the ladies room at Penn Station after a recent arrival of the LIRR (Long Island Railroad) on a Saturday night. Whoa! In San Diegan terms- It's the difference between going to PB Bar & Grill (my "city" attire) & going to TJ (B&T "city" attire). Where are these girls going dressed like that? As if a night in the city only happens once a year, or once a decade, these chicks had bought out "shouldn't be wearing that in public-R-Us"! It was hilarious, as well as a bit disturbing. Is there a hidden spot in Manhattan that harbors the scantily clad? I hadn't seen these ladies anywhere that I  had frequented in the last four years, thankfully. They definitely would have stood out, hard to do in New York City. Bravo ladies- this is how stereo-types are born.

A commuter develops a routine that is dictated by train schedules that causes very unnecessary stress if anything in your day goes awry. Long Beach trains on the LIRR are few & far-in-between so most of the time, no matter how much time you’ve left yourself, you’re always rushing to catch your usual train home. Missing it can reduce a grown chick to tears or in my case, to eating Taco Bell Express at Penn Station. Don’t knock it- the cheesy Gordita box for 5 bucks rocks...Missing the train heading into work, just doesn’t seem so bad.. Or maybe that's just me.

Luckily, it's, for some odd reason, legal to drink on the LIRR. They sell beer at Penn Station outside of the tracks (Rose Pizza outside tracks 13-19 has the best deal!), a habit I had to nip in the bud (no pun intended) the first week.  I do think it's weird that even though it's technically "legal" to drink a brewski on the train, there's still a need to hide your bottle in a brown paper bag. Maybe it’s a “rule” but it’s not a very smart one.  I can only guess this is solely to the benefit of those budget beer drinkers. I would hide Natty Ice Light, or Lucky Lager as well. (C'mon, those riddles under the cap were fun when we were in college.. And too poor to have taste buds) But I often wonder, is the brown bag to beer, the equivalent of an invisibility cloak to Harry Potter? If you can't see the label, it must not be alcohol? Who drinks Orange Fanta out of a paper bag? If anything, it calls attention to exactly what you're doing right on the spot. I once got off the train in Long Beach at three in the afternoon, on a week day- where there are no beer vendors in sight - & saw a guy getting on the train headed to Penn Station with a beer in a brown paper sack. Did you really just bring that from home & take the time to disguise it in your kid's lunch bag? I know what you're doing.. And I don't get it. Drink beer & be proud. Even (actually, especially!) if it is in the middle of the day.

At first I didn't sit in the same seat on the train every day and learned the hard way. People will sit wherever you are, if given the chance. There is no personal space on this side of the world. I've been sat next to, across from, and more often then not, sat ON. The seats that face each other are always a "no-no". Soon your knees, ankles, and shoelaces will be intertwined with some stranger sitting directly across from you, awkwardly staring at you, as you try to find something else to gaze at. I've been crawled on by kids while their mom conveniently looked the other way and have become the filling of an ice cream sandwich while two large Jamaican (not Jamaica Queens) women sat on either side of me and continued to talk through me. It is in these moments that trains should adopt the airline rule of purchasing two seats...each.  I've been talked to, talked about & even asked to borrow my phone. Too shocked to say no, I just handed it over. It's been an interesting experience.

Eventually one stops fighting the gravitational pull to the same seat in the same car & starts to notice the same people everyday, though they all pretend not to notice you. Like the guy who rocks out so hard to his music while wearing his extra large headphones, you can't help but assume he thinks he's alone. Or the people who talk incredibly loud on their cellphone as if we all are dying to hear about what "Brenda" said or what "Bill" had the nerve to do last night! Be careful...

I don’t dare talk on my cell phone on the LIRR. It initially sounded like a good idea because on the subway you don’t have cell phone service as all subway cars are underground. However, an hour-long train ride above ground on the LIRR seems like the perfect opportunity to catch up on phone time. This is a big mistake. Never really being a phone person, I didn’t ever take advantage of the supposed opportunity just out of respect for the other passengers on a very quiet train and honestly, I don’t enjoy broadcasting my personal business. However, now I don’t use it simply out of fear. I watched a man next to me lose his mind on an unsuspecting airhead who was yapping loudly on her cell phone. He told her, in his very thick Long Island accent to “shut the f-up” and that she must be divorced for a reason and that he paid way too much for his train seats to listen to her bullshit- all in one breath. She must be used to such outbursts as she didn’t even bat an eye and continued to blabber on. I was terrified.  The guy who was also sitting next to him was as well as he pretended to use the bathroom and never came back.


I have been lucky enough to make friends with one of the ticket-takers on my train rides home. Only because he readied himself to call an ambulance when he thought I was under extreme duress during one of my first train rides. I guess I was, I had just run full speed from the Path train at Herald Square all the way to track 19 at Penn Station, in less than 5 minutes, with an extra large sub sandwich in my bag! Which I have to guess weighed more than my laptop with the homemade mozzarella. When I finally took a seat, I was heaving like a 90-year old man with emphysema, so I appreciated his concern. He hasn't forgotten almost saving my life so we chat when he sees me feverishly working on my lap top daily on the train. Sometimes I get lucky & he doesn't clip my ticket. Yes, a free ride! At $8.25 each way, this is a very nice perk! $16.50 a day adds up fast, especially for me who then takes another train to Hoboken- another $3.50 a day. Doesn't quite seem worth it to commute 3 hours a day for two hours of work but the drones we are, we do what we have to do..

Everything seems completely worth it when I see people looking at my feet on the Path train in the morning- my final train that takes me from Manhattan in to Hoboken. I follow their gaze to my feet & just smile, as I casually brush the rest of the beach sand off my sneakers.. “take that” ladies & gentlemen!

"All glory comes from daring to begin." Eugene F. Ware

Everything is magical when it’s new. That new car smell... until your kids have McDonalds in the backseat and scatter fries under the floor mats. Those new shoes you thought were so cute and comfortable... until they left you blistered after only one night out in Manhattan. That new jacket that you wear every day... until someone calls you out on it.  That new relationship that gave you butterflies... until you’re doing twice as much laundry and dishes. (So I’ve heard...)

Every new beginning has an “until” but that will have to come into play later as Long Beach still has that “new” magic.

The first thing we experienced in our first week on the island was the eery feeling that everyone is extremely nice. I remember being a kid in Arkansas, walking down the street and a stranger waved at me. It was shocking. This is the same experience. I say eerie because it’s a forgotten feeling having lived three years in Hoboken. Case-and-point was the small cop with the big attitude that wanted to write me a ticket on moving day.

We met the entire Maryland Ave block the second we stepped out of the moving truck. Everyone was gathered in the streets, as if it were a block-party, chatting with one another when we arrived and they continued chatting well into the night. We met Mike and Andrea, the school teachers who live below us who have two adorable small children. One of which, Blake, asked if he could ride Bob as if he were a rented pony.( Not a bad idea if we get strapped for cash). We met Rich and Caroline who live to the right of us, who also have young kids and two dogs, one of which is a bulldog with a large under-bite named Penelope. There were others whose names that I don’t remember as I’m terrible with such things, so I use nicknames whenever I get the opportunity, like Fire Marshal Bill who lives across the street and works for the NYFD.

We had rarely met any of our neighbors in Hoboken throughout the years so this was a first for us. We embraced it cautiously as every up has to have a down...

It seemed a common theme as we continued to meet people all throughout the island. I received free breakfast one morning as I was getting coffee and the cashier noticed I was new to the neighborhood. She introduced herself, gave me my coffee for free and threw in free danishes for me and “my husband”. On our first Sunday Funday, we didn’t yet have cable, so we headed down to The Inn- a sports bar on Tennessee Ave, two short blocks away. We met Anthony the bartender. By the end of the amazing first Jets game of the season, we were hugging people we’d never seen before, drinking with the owner (whom Anthony had introduced the newbies to) and heading home with a $22.00 beer tab. If anyone thinks we only drank $22 in beers, then we obviously haven’t met yet... We had  hit the jackpot.

Later in the week, I discovered The Cabana. Not really a fan of Mexican food while I lived in San Diego ( I know, an unspeakable crime! ); I had adopted a requirement of Mexican food in my weekly diet since moving to New York. The Cabana and it’s $1 Taco Tuesdays was like water in a desert oasis. I couldn’t ask for anything better. We’ve been to the Cabana more often then the local grocery store and by the second trip we were making friends, and once again drinking (surprise, surprise), with the owner, Bob.

We've been making friends left and right. I met the bartender for the local pub, Speakeasy, on a train trip home from the city and ran into him one night at the Cabana where he bought Trav and I a round of the Long Beach famous Pumpkin Ale draft beer rimmed with cinnamon- a fall must-have! This place is amazing.

We were thoroughly enjoying our first week in Long Beach. We have quickly adapted to our new routine which consists of being woken up every morning by a very excited Bob-O. We all pile into the car and drive Trav to his early morning train to Penn Station. Bob & I head across the street & park on the East End of town. Our early morning long walks are much more enjoyable on this side of town as homes are more spread out with lots of trees and grass then where we live on the West End. We love our peaceful walks before the island wakes up. I had forgotten what it was like to not have to continuously cross the street to avoid rude people and unassuming dogs. Ok, I'll try to stop ragging on Hoboken.

Every other day, before the weather turned, after driving back to the West End, Bob and I would take a quick trip to the beach, at the end of our block to play fetch and swim in the waves. Equipped with a towel & puppy shampoo, I'd give him a quick bath with the free hose at the base of the beach and be home before the sun rose. We'd then have coffee, or at least I would while Bob passed out, on the deck. A fantastic way to start the day.

Around 9, I drive to the train for a long but enjoyable commute back to hell, I mean Hoboken, for work & am back to my car by 4. Before the chill set in last week, I would hurry to walk Bob before hitting the beach one more time before I picked Trav up from the train. On our luckiest days, Trav & I would grab a cigar for him & a beer for me & we'd head to the beach yet again to let our bad days in the city sail out to sea.

It was on one of these fantastic days when it seemed the magic had come to an end and my "until" had finally come and interrupted my "new" magic.

It was a Thursday and I had gotten off the train on a particularly sunny day and was rushing to the side streets to retrieve my car, get home to quickly walk Bob, and get to the beach as soon as possible. I had just met James, the neighborhood bartender who advised he also parks on side streets before catching the train but hides his keys in his gas-tank, a surfer trick. I barely left the door unlocked while I was home, so this was a habit way too risky for me.

As we parted ways, I fumbled for my own car keys, praying I hadn't lost them as I pulled out my trusty smart-phone to see the marked location where I had previously, intelligently, marked my parking spot in google maps, by "dropping a pin" where I had parked before rushing to catch the train. I followed the directions across Park Ave and down Edwards. The pin showed it was right here on West Olive & yep, this black jeep looked perfectly familiar.. Only, that wasn't my car now parked in front of it. Panic set in as I briefly told my dad about the current events & hung up the phone. I stood in the middle of the street dumbfounded & looked all around me, hoping to recognize my car.  It was gone.

I knew it! Everyone loves their new place UNTIL their car gets towed, or worse.. Stolen! I walked up and down West Olive for a mile. No car. I even went back to where my trusty map showed me parked and decided to knock on the door of the house I had parked in front of.

"Ummm excuse me.." I started to say, when the gentleman opened the door. "First, I'm really sorry if I did this, but did I possibly park blocking your driveway & as a result, did you have me towed?" his immediate response was "no way! People don't do that here". That was the second time I had heard this today on this new quest. "So could it be stolen"? I asked with the wind seeping out of my I love this place! sails. He quickly replied "that doesn't happen here either. Maybe you lost it.."

Now, being a female, maybe some of you would take offense to this supposed stereo-type. But if you were one of my lucky friends who were called on once a semester during my college days at SDSU to drive me through the parking structure to find the car earlier parked by yours truly, then you really can't blame the guy & either did I. But looky here, this was the new & improved Sarah as I showed him my proactively & diligently placed google maps "pin". Hmmm-the confusion continued as he was the second person to point me in the direction of the police department. With my tail between my legs, I walked back towards the train station to file a missing car report.

When I arrived at LBPD, I was quickly helped by the dispatcher and advised her, deflated, that my new bubble had been popped & my car was either towed or stolen. She quickly said she doubted that, of course with a smile. She quickly checked her log, nope no cars had been towed that week (I'll avoid the obvious opening to again point out the cavernous difference from Hoboken) and asked me if I wanted to report it stolen but ended with "that doesn't happen here". Again I heard , "are you sure you know where you parked it" & I again held up my pin which at this point was doing a fantastic job of counter-acting the blonde hair in response to the repeated question.

I told her I'd look for it one more time before going that route & with hunched shoulders left the station. There were two cops shooting the breeze out front & I was surprised to hear "aww honey, what's wrong? Why do you look so sad?" as I headed down the block. I turned and told them the story, leading with, "I know what this looks like but..." and ending with holding up the now infamous pin on my phone. One of the cops jumped in his car & pulled up the computer screen. He asked me if the car was mine, umm no (it was Trav's), and if I had the registration on me, um no again (it was in the car) or if I had the license plate number.. Umm strike three.. No. But Trav knew it by heart so I acquired that info with a simple phone call. Well, telling someone you need the license plate number of their car because you either had it it towed or stolen wasn't that simple.. The cop entered it into the system and told me they had a plate-reader car that drove the streets logging plates into a system. They would run the plates & see where it was the last time the plates were read. Amazing! With a smile, he told me to wait in the air-conditioned office while he went to look for my car! Where was I? This was surreal.

When he came back minutes later, I jumped up when he said he'd found it for me. It hadn't been towed, it hadn't been stolen and hadn't been on West Olive either. It was parked where I left it a few blocks south on West Beech St. Oops. So much for my smart-phone! He smiled, listened to me profusely apologizing for wasting his time, then lied & said it happens all the time.

Awesome.. my "until" was still yet to be discovered.