| CHAPTER TWO: 11 January 1998At my high school, there was always a week-long transition period between Christmas break and second semester, dubbed "Winter Intensive." Since it was my senior year, a bunch of my friends and I decided to take the trip to New York city.
January 11th was our last night in the city, so I guess you could say we lucked out...
Several times, while hanging out in the east village, we'd seen the club Coney Island High, but never really knew what it was. It wasn't until a couple nights before the end of the trip that Richie told me it was owned by a couple of the guys in DGeneration. Keeping this in mind, I decided to pay a little bit more attention to the place, and if things worked out, maybe even try to catch a show there. It wasn't until our last full day in the city that anything happened.
Having left the group who was frequenting every designer shop in SoHo, a few of us relocated to the east village to hang out and do some record shopping. Elissa and I were walking out of a shop when I noticed Jesse Malin (the lead singer of DGen) standing outside of the club. I pointed this out to Elissa, and being much more assertive than I, she started to walk towards him. I had no choice but to follow.
He was a pretty talkative guy, actually. Elissa struck up a conversation with him, and we ended up chatting for a little bit about music and guitars and everything. Before he had to leave, we each got a picture taken with him. Jesse then invited us to that night's show at the club. Who were we to turn him down? After writing in our names on the guest list, we all parted ways. Elissa and I were still pretty excited from the encounter... |
Jesse and me outside of Coney Island High |
| There wasn't much left to do but convince our teacher to let us go to the club that night. Originally, she had tried to limit the night's activities due to our departing flight the next morning, but we convinced her that this was a special occasion. The only problem was that we had to be back to the hotel by something like midnight.
We hopped in a cab later that evening and were off to the club. There didn't seem to be much going on, so we wandered upstairs to look around, until we were informed that we weren't 21 and would have to leave. Back on the street, we wondered what to do next. Eventually, we wandered over to a side entrance, where we were told to come back at ten or eleven becuase at the time, a private party was going on.
After the door guy realized that our names were on the guest list, though, he let us right in. There wasn't much going on. A few people were at the bar, and music was playing. In fact, nothing happened at all that night. We felt out of place, but at the same time, pretty cool. By the time a crowd started to form for that night's performance, we had to catch a cab back to the hotel.
We came home that night sorof bummed out that we didn't get to see a show or anything... However, when we compared stories with everyone else (who had gone to see a lame movie, and paid way too much to see it, at that), we appreciated our night's activities a lot more. It was definately an experience... |
Jesse and Elissa |
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