New York City at night is a beautiful thing. I love walking the streets, breathing in cool, crisp air and not having to deal with the obstacle course of confused and starry-eyed tourists that clog the sidewalks during the day.

As dive bars go, few can match Rudy's on Ninth Avenue up in Hell's Kitchen. (I refuse to call it by its gentrified name, Clinton.) $8 pitchers, free hot dogs and one of the coolest jukeboxes in the city. Back-to-back Hall & Oates songs made my night! The Boomtown Rats' I Don't Like Mondays was a pleasant discovery, too.

Once inside, you can forget that the Disneyfied, tourist-ridden streets of Times Square and the Theater District are only a couple of blocks away. The clientele has changed a bit over the years, getting younger and pseudo-hip, and I don't remember the backyard being open - but with the Mets game on the TV over the bar, it's still a perfect spot for drinking and jawboning with a best friend about to hit the road. (Yeah, I said "jawboning.")

In between random talk of everything from life in the military to the beauty of Colorado to the awkwardness of dealing with "divorced" friends, we decided to scrap much of the formality for tomorrow night's show and send him west with a healthy dose of irrereverance and a nod of recognition lacking from other quarters.

Personally, I plan to have a lot of fun with the whole thing. Judging by RAC's promo - "the five of us are gonna make out until someone gets pregnant or stabbed. then i get to read some poems." - she is, too.

louder than words
Friday, May 21 @ 8pm SHARP!
BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 Bowery, NYC
Cover: $6

Special Guests:
RAC McKibbens & Keith Roach
w/Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Eric Thomas Guerrieri
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

If for no other reason, come on out and wish Eric well. Maybe even thank him for his contributions to the scene, because there's never enough of that.