The Adventures of an Illegal Alien Part4

How I miss the lower east side. One of our coolest friends was Pete. He played bass in a well known band at the time and had an apartment on 14^th near 3^rd Ave.

Pete had a roommate, his name was Greg. Greg was hilarious, one of those typical, cynical New Yorkers with extremely dry humor. The sky was always fallen, doomed to be a slave to the grind struggling to make it with his music, hating his day job and life in general yet always displaying a little smirk while complaining. His music was pretty cool and I wish I could remember the name of the band. It was very NYC lower east side rock’n roll.

Well back to Pete. His apartment was very typical of Manhattan; small; the bathtub and sink were in the kitchen, a tiny shitter, yes, just a toilet in a room big enough to fit one in it; two small rooms. Pete was super cool. He used to wear a lot of kilts or tight jeans and was a total punk. He had bleached blond short hair, always leather clad with a ton of belts and buckles and dock martins.

We had such a Blast with those guys. Pete called his flat the “Freak out Pad”. How appropriate. He looked like a bad ass, actually a little like Billy Idol, but deep down he was the sweetest most generous guy you could ever meet.

One of many nights we went over to the “Freak out Pad” for some “home made” (fresh out of the can) deep fried beans, rice and chicken fajitas. Apparently that was Pete’s specialty and he loved to cook it. We brought some beers and the party began. The food was delicious, something I’ve never tasted before. I loved it, I remember it being pretty spicy; we told Pete it was delicious and something we could get used to. He had this big grin on his face and was extremely proud of his cooking.

Since Pete was signed to a major label, he’d pretty much get CD’s thrown at him all the time, so while we listened to music, we’d go through the CD’s and start sorting them out by “This Sucks”…”Got to Go” and “Pretty Good, we’ll keep it”.

I love NYC apartments, they might be small but they have a ton of character, you look out the window and always see a fire escape. He was on the top floor and his window overlooked a huge roof. So every CD that didn’t make it went out the window onto the roof.

We were laughing our asses off. This must have gone on for an hour or so, after a while we even tossed the once we kinda liked because it was way too much fun. The roof looked messy to begin with, apparently; we weren’t the first to think of the roof as a way to get rid of unwanted things around the pad, lol.

Many beers and a ton of laughter’s later, it started to escalate so much so that Pete decided the CD Player has to go too, hahahaha. And out it went. I don’t know what else we through out there but my stomach was hurting from laughing so hard.

Pete had this really cool skull that I loved and at one point he was about to toss that out too. Noooooooooooo I yelled, I want that; and mine it was.

It must have been around 4 am when we decided it was time to go back to our lovely hostel on 20^th. So, we headed out walking drunk on 14^th, laughing, me with my skull under my arm.

The area can be a little spooky at times but I swear no one dared to mess with us.

Cheers to the good times at the “Freak out Pad”

xoxoxo
JVB