26 Mar 2010

R: One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor...

One of the great things about New York is that the most random, gimmicky places exist in every neighborhood. Still, you have to hand it to the owners of La Caverna. Whether or not they even thought of it, their idea to create a drinking cavern is pretty punny.

C: I was jolted out of one of my weird dreams by a very loud, annoying sound at 1:40AM. It was loud enough to sound like a very obnoxious alarm clock in an adjacent room at the neighbor's, but apparently not loud enough to wake up M or to make him think it was important. I was fairly sure this was the building's fire alarm, so I got out of bed to check. I sleepily opened the front door to the apartment for about two seconds before I had to shut it, the ear shattering noise shaking the last remnants of sleep out of my head.

Since I have a cold, I couldn't smell anything and therefore had no sense of urgency about getting outside. The last time a fire alarm went off, R and I were apartment sitting for M and JH; in our infinite wisdom, we crawled into the back of one of their deepest closets and hid until the firemen stopped knocking on the door. I made my way to the windows to see if others were up - it seemed that a majority of tenants had their lights on, which made me think it was time to start moving out of the building. M met my suggestion with some resistance, but we got up because there was no way I was falling asleep anytime soon anyway.

We gathered outside at the building's front, about 20 of us (in a building of at least 60 tenants). I guess none of learned anything from elementary school about being several feet from the building. Someone called 9-1-1, and the Brookline Police and Fire Department surprisingly took another 15 minutes from the call (they are literally just down the street, 2 blocks away) to get to us. I don't know what should worry me more - the fact that there are no alarms in our individual units, the fact that the building alarm obviously is not connected to the fire department directly, or the fact that after calling the firemen, it took them 15 minutes when they are only a 5 minute walk away. Good work, Brookline. Thank goodness I am taking today off from work.