night on the pier II

There's a barge anchored in the Hudson River just off 26th Street and 12th Avenue. Someone had the brilliant idea of turning it into a bar (known as The Frying Pan), and this is where a small group of us gathered last night to celebrate a birthday.

Anchored next to the barge is another boat, a smaller, perhaps older, definitely less well-kept boat -- the original Frying Pan, in fact -- and somehow the powers that be have not quite gotten around to boarding it up yet, though I can only imagine the whole place is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

There's a piano below decks, and a catwalk, and a couch upon which Dave and I sat and chatted for a bit. There's a lot of rust, some chairs, some rope, and not much else, really. There is the lull of the river, a certain quietness, and a comforting near-complete darkness that one rarely finds in this city, broken only by cell phone glow and camera flash.