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Allison (my most famous friend) clued me in to an article from a few months ago about “one of central Atlanta’s last true ghettos.”  The location?  Boulevard between Freedom Parkway and Ponce de Leon.

Please reference the picture below.  The green street is what we’re talking about.  The red dot is the Pizza Hut mentioned in the article.  The blue dot is 511 North Avenue, where I lived for about 15 months, and where Aaron and Steve lived for almost 3 years.

Yup.  You can read the article here.

A few weeks ago I spent a few hours in Philly as a detour on my trip to Gouda and Amy’s engagement party back in Atlanta.  I got to see most of the famous stuff (but no Rocky steps) take some pictures and eat some cheesesteak so I’ll consider that a successful journey.

This time around, I was going to Philly on purpose in order to go watch the USA/Panama Gold Cup quarterfinal game.

There was much less touristy sight-seeing for this trip, but a lot more action.  I left New York from Penn Station with a group of people I had met during various outings to soccer pubs around the city to watch matches.  Apparently I had made a mistake in my previous trip by taking the Amtrak train for $45, because these guys showed me the way to go (if you’re willing to spend an extra hour or so on the commute) is to take a New Jersey transit train to Trenton, and then a SEPTA train in to Philly for less than half the total cost.

The train filled up with more people as we went through New Jersey as many of the New York soccer crowd actually lives out there.  By the time we got on the SEPTA train in Trenton there were probably about 15-20 of us heading to the game.  A quick subway ride later (it really is amazing how well connected these northeastern cities are) and we were at Lincoln Financial Field for the game.

The tailgate atmosphere was pretty good; similar to the one in Nashville but with fewer US fans (lots of Hondurans for the early game) and a larger extremely passionate group thanks to the Sons of Ben supporters club.  Another bonus was that unlike the Nashville game, my tickets were in the supporters club section so I could be prepared for a more entertaining experience.  Here was my view of the game and a shot of the pretty well filled out 31,000 person crowd.

I won’t bother with much of a game report outside of the fact that we won 2-1 in added extra time and that some of the players who had looked good in previous matches have seen their chances at inclusion on the first team fall back down after a few lackluster performances.  I still really like Holden, Conrad and Beckerman though.

Nice view

Since David Bowie could have filmed his fabulous movie, Labyrinth, at my apartment building, I decided to send out a little map I made of how to get here.  You can always call me on my cell if you get lost, but I think it’s much easier to see it than to try to explain it in words.

See you tonight!

So, I’m not going to write up a big deal about what I did (other than get a job for the summer, boo yah!) but I’ll dish out some quick stories with some google map pictures of where I walked.

Day 1

I got in to my hotel at 35th and 6th around noon, met up with Alexis for lunch on 42nd and 2nd, walked through Times Square up to Central Park, explored the park for a little bit, headed south all the way down to Union Square, and then doubled back to my hotel.  Nice little exploration and 8.28 miles according to gmap-pedometer.

That night I met up with Alexis again and her boyfriend Dave and we went to a bar called McSorley‘s, which is the oldest Irish pub in NYC.  Any order you make must involve multiple glasses of beer, there are only two options (light and dark) and it’s surprisingly cheap.  Also, if you’re as lucky as we were, you walk in at the right time, sit with a guy who used to frequent the place 30 years ago and knows the bartenders, and drink for free while hearing stories about Barbara Walters throwing up all over an elevator at Trump Towers.  First random NYer interaction: overwhelmingly positive.

Dave and Alex had to pack it in early for work the next morning, so I texted my other Manhattan friend Reena and went to hang out with her down near NYU.  That also turned out to be pretty awesome.  I met her friend Rachel from school and Rachel’s friend Dave from Michigan, and then we went to a basement bar with tabletop shuffleboard (best bar game ever), ping pong tables, and only beer or Korean liquor to drink.  Needless to say we took shots of that liquor and all ended up regretting it.  I called it a night about 4am and headed back to the hotel.

Day 2

Much more walking today.  I checked out at 11am and left my bag there while I did some more exploring.  Down to 34th street and over to Herald Square, through Chelsea, into SoHo, meet up with Reena for lunch at Caliente Cab Co., over to the Hudson, up to Chelsea Piers, back down the river, through Battery Park, over to Wall Street, and then up a combination of Broadway, Park Avenue and 5th to get back to the hotel.  Total damage: 12.5 miles.

Everything below my waist hurts right now since I only packed one pair of shoes, and they aren’t necessarily the best for walking 20 miles in 2 days in.  But I had a lot of fun, and now since I have a job I’ll have to find some place to live.  Expect the blog updates this summer to be a lot more about me finding cool stuff to do in NYC, and hopefully I can make it back a few times this summer for things like Gouda and Amy’s engagement celebration.

I talked about this challenge earlier, well here’s the schedule as it currently stands with imdb links and Rotten Tomatoes rankings included where applicable.

Asterisks mean that we have no immediate access to the movie,and need Netflix to mail it here.

1 – Knowing (34%)
2 – Leaving Las Vegas* (89%)
3 – Amos and Andrew (23%)
4 – City of Angels (60%)
5 – World Trade Center* (70%)
6 – Adaptation* (91%)
7 – Next (30%)
8 – Windtalkers* (33%)
9 – It Could Happen to You (64%)
10 – Rumble Fish (68%)
11 – Valley Girl* (83%)
12 – Wild at Heart (65%)
13 – Peggy Sue Got Married (88%)
14 – Raising Arizona* (90%)
15 – Trapped in Paradise* (10%)
16 – Bringing Out the Dead* (72%)
17 – The Family Man* (53%)
18 – The Wicker Man* (15%)
19 – Matchstick Men (83%)
20 – The Weather Man* (57%)
21 – Snake Eyes* (41%)
22 – 8mm* (22%)
23 – Lord of War* (61%)
24 – National Treasure (43%)
25 – National Treasure: Book of Secrets (32%)
26 – Ghost Rider* (27%)
27 – Bangkok Dangerous* (9%)
28 – Gone in 60 Seconds (25%)
29 – Face/Off (93%)
30 – The Rock (66%)
31 – Con Air (55%)

Imagine seeing this man every day for a month straight.  Because that’s what my roommate is about to do.

Powered on by the awful reality of unemployment, Pete has taken upon himself a challenge that few man have dared tried, and almost certainly none have completed.  He is going to watch a different Nicolas Cage movie every day for the entire month of May.

I don’t have the exact schedule with me because it’s upstairs and I’m too tired/lazy to go get it, but I know that it only has 11-12 movies that we either own, can borrow, or can stream on the XBox, so the rest of the month is an operations planning fiasco of mailing out Netflix DVDs and hoping for the best.  I expect the schedule to change or Blockbuster to be hit up at least 4 times during this challenge.

I can say with certainty that the first movie will be Knowing, Cage’s latest movie set for release tomorrow.

God speed Pete.

The happy couple is now the happy and engaged couple.  It couldn’t happen to 2 nicer people.

The 12.5% Canadian in me salutes you both.

Extra congratulations to Gouda for being the first person in our group of friends to get engaged.  I have no idea how you beat Megan and Aaron, but as someone who was the front-runner 2 years ago, to someone who was almost certainly dead last then, let me congratulate you one more time.

And yes, as you may have heard, Gouda did propose during karaoke (which will be had at the reception) and it was awesome.  George has video on facebook, but seeing as that can’t be embedded we’ll have to wait and see if he puts it up on youtube.

Now we get to start planning Gouda’s bachelor party and getting ready for the wedding set for the weekend after New Year’s.

10 days of Europe and one of rest later, and I’m back.

I’m going to do a proper write up with pictures later (actually, probably a few write ups since it’s too much to make you read at once) so I’ll just hit on a few of the highlights here in more of a stream-of-consciousness format.

-Movie watched on the flight over: The Rocker.  No in-seat entertainment system = me not happy.
-Vienna was the nicest city out of the 3 we visited, but is filled with mediocre looking people.
-The Dean of the Czech university we were working with said it best, “Your male students must love it here, we have cheap beer and beautiful women.”  Amen Dean.
-What Vienna lacked in beautiful people, it more than made up for with beautiful architecture.  Some of the churches there were just amazing.  The most moving one for me was actually the smallest one we visited, and one we just kinda stumbled upon will trying to stay out of the rain.
-That said, the view from the top of Karlskirche is something you have to see if you go to Vienna.
-Big thanks to classmate Ben who lived in Vienna for a few years and hooked us up with a to-do list of lesser known sites that turned out to be an awesome resource.
-Apparently everything in Central Europe is named for a Karl/Charles of some sort.  I’m amazed none of the country names can be traced back to him.
-As touristy as they are, guided tours are a great resource to get to know about the history and significance of different structures in cities you are visiting.
-Brno is like a bigger, better, older, cooler Athens.  It has about 400,000 people, about 70,000 college students, over 800 years of history, and good $1 beers.
-While I know they enjoyed our time there, I think the Masaryk students were relieved to see us go so they could finally get some rest.
-Prague seems to be trying to become the next Amsterdam, which is a shame because it’s a beautiful city.
-I didn’t really want to go to the 5-story club, but I did and ended up with a few good stories out of it.  Besides, how often are you going to be in Prague?
-It was unfortunately cold for the entire trip; mid 40′s was the highest it ever got.  If we had just another 10 degrees it would have been absolutely breathtaking.  I have to go back at some point when there’s actual foliage.
-Movies watched on the flight home: Madagascar 2, Transporter 3, Four Christmases.  Yay for individual systems and my love for awful movies.

So that covers some of the highlights for now.  I have about 250 pictures of my own to sort through, and a couple thousand that other people took and which we are working on putting together right now.  I will write some more in depth reports later, decorate them with our awesome photography and then let you waste another couple minutes of work.

Also, MLS just started back up so you can expect a lot more posts on that in the coming weeks/months.  Don’t expect any ELO ratings for a few weeks, I’m going to try to give it some time to normalize before I go making people angry.

It’s been a pretty good weekend so far after a rough week of classes/work.  Pete and I played golf yesterday down at Whitewater Creek, which neither of us had ever played before.  I was a little less terrible than usual while Pete would’ve broken par if he didn’t go in the water a couple times.  It’s always nice to be trying to figure out how to make a shot from inside 75 yards while your playing partner is putting 50 yards of cut on a 3 wood from 205 out to keep it under a 20 foot high tree and then himself a 15 foot eagle putt.  Yeah, that’s fair.

Later on we went out with Andy, Dekalb, Dot, and Kevin (aka Macon Crew Lite (no Blascovich)) and sat outside at Neighbors in the Highlands for a few hours before going over to Buckhead to watch George and Elsberry just destroy the dance floor.  Oh yeah, in case you didn’t know, Elsberry’s new goal in life is to learn how to breakdance.  He’s practicing a good 10-15 hours a week at the house, thanks to the fine folks at bboy.org, and he started to pull some of it out last night.

Today we went to Piedmont Park for a few hours since it was 75 degrees and sunny, and Lucky Day was starting around the same time.  Now, we aren’t exactly “pay $30 to hang around and drink” kinda people, so we just hung around the park slowly tiring ourselves out through various sports.  It was really nice though, and we ended up with a group of about 30 friends by the time I left.

Now it’s time to go meet up for dinner at Taqueria del Sol with Ross (aka Cardo) who’s in town from LA, and see what’s been going on with him ever since moving out west.