Thursday, 06 March 2003 | Interpol

Was it worth it? No, but I don’t think I regret going. On Tuesday night Mark, Scott, an extra ticket, and I met at a rental car place in midtown, picked up our new Honda and some sandwiches, and start-stopped through rush-hour Times Square, slipped onto the New Jersey Turnpike, and sped to Philadelphia. Riding in a car through New York, especially through Times Square, makes me feel like I’m looking at the city from the outside, a pane of smudgy glass between me and the people criss-crossing on the sidewalks, and I suddenly wonder more about the people than I do when I’m walking among them (why are they here? how long have they lived here? what do they do? do they look around at their surroundings anymore?). Riding in a car on the New Jersey turnpike reminds me that cars are fun sometimes, that road trips with friends and windows down and good music are liberating, and that there are clusters of trees in the world not choked by concrete.

I stood alone outside of the sold-out Interpol show for what must’ve been 40 minutes, each of my hands placed on an opposing bicep in an effort to get warm. Two couples asked me for tickets, but shrugged and walked away when I told them I only had one ticket to sell. Naturally, minutes after they’d rounded the corner, a man with either less patience or more money than me gave me his extra ticket, saying it’d probably be easier for me to get rid of two tickets than one. In the end, it was a lonely short-haired girl who made the exchange with me at cost, and I threw in the extra ticket for free.

I liked the set, and the venue had a certain charm, minus the potent hot dog smell coming from the stand in the back corner. I watched the bass player bounce around and rearrange the hair that hung in his eyes; the keyboardist slither over the keys as if he’d taken too many muscle relaxers; the side-burned lead guitarist stoically strumming the clean notes that divide their songs (like Moses) into chorus and verse. But the edge of the balcony hung directly over my head, distancing me from the show by an invisible wall. I wanted to creep closer, but there were too many people in the way.

A quick drive back to New York, and then it was (one) curling around the city on near-empty streets in: Chelsea, Midtown, Queens, east Brooklyn, and west Brooklyn. (two) Trying to find parking near my apartment at 3 in the morning. (three) Parking far enough away from a fire hydrant. (four) Getting a ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant, a ticket that says something about $105. (five) Spending two morning rush hours in traffic and rain. (six) Going twenty extra blocks out of my way to refill the gasoline that I’d turned to exhaust the night before. (seven) Being late for work (eight) and exhausted.