The president of my sorority texted me the other day telling me that a few other Idahoans were in New York for the summer. I didn’t recognize a few of their names, but I definitely know some of them. On Saturday, I wrote the two guys I knew well about my summer presence here. They responded right away and asked me to come out with them that night. They told me to go on Facebook and “like” Intern Bar because apparently it’s a really cool deal. It absolutely was.
I arrived late to meet them at sushi, for dinner. There were much more people with our group than I expected, yet not all were from Idaho. There was a really random assortment of people that my fellow Vandals had met through their housing situation or through their internships. The sushi place offered unlimited free sake or white wine if you purchased more than $20 worth of sushi. It’s a given that you’ll spend over $20 on sushi because that’s like one or two rolls at some places. Of course we were going to take them up on their “complementary” beverages.
One of the Idaho girls with our group had interned in NYC last summer, so she found out about this thing called the Intern Bar. Basically, all you have to do is register and they post to you wherever they’ll be hosting the next weekend. The venue jumps around, so its not always in the same place. The great thing about the Intern Bar, is that from 10:00-11:30 they have an open bar for their bottom shelf liquor. Actually, I don’t know if that’s a blessing or a horrible thing because alcohol just seems to taste better when it’s free.
They offer this free segment because in NYC, the parties don’t start until after midnight on the weekends. They give out free booze during the earlier hours in order to get the bar packed before the usual 12:00-4:00am crowd shows up. The upstairs of clubs are usually for VIP and then they have a speak-easy type basement for the chiller crowd. Since we were some of the first people at the bar, why not explore the depths and check out the scene downstairs?
There were actually more people downstairs than on the floor above, but everyone was just standing around drinking and talking. We decided to be the weird white kids and start a dance party with our Intern group of about eight people. Pretty soon we had lots of people come join us. It turned into a real party. I met a really cool girl from named Dani, and we became partners in crime for the night. We decided that we’re actually the s-a-m-e person, as we bonded over pretty much everything we talked about. “Did we just become best friends? Yep. Do you wanna go play karate in the garage? Yep.”
We even had the same taste/obsession with boys so we were stoked on life and cheap alcohol when a group of TDH (tall, dark & handsome) men joined us in the bar. We kept making eye contact but finally realized that they were shy. They would never come up to us first. Being the bold person that I am, I decided I needed to chat with the finest of the male specimens. I went up to him and said, “Hey, I want to give you my number because I think you’re really hot” (great pickup). We talked a little until I had to go. In telling him to text me, he replied, “I already did” with a wink.
Always,
Alena Netia Horowitz