Sunday, October 28, 2007

Village, Street, Same Difference.

My cow orkers and I went out for dinner tonight, with no particular destination in mind. One of them had always wanted to go to Greenwich Village, so we decided we would go, wander around a little and then find a restaurant. After a cab ride that she declared later to be the worst she'd ever taken (It was nothing. I've taken taxis in Mexico City... save your cabbie horror stories, amateur.) we eventually came to our destination where he stopped and waved us down a street and said there were restaurants to be found in that direction.

The neighborhood was not exactly what we expected, but there were restaurants and we found a decent little Italian place with the standard restaurant Sade mix. (The singer, not de whip enthusiast. I should really learn how to do accents in blogger.) Throughout dinner, we joked that the cab driver had finally become bored with driving the rubes around and had dumped us on a convenient street corner.

As we divvied up the check, she decided that one of us should ask where "Tavern Upon The Green" was. (I stepped fearlessly into the breach: "I am not asking them where Tavern on the Green is.")

After a brief discussion about where we were in the city, she found that we were, in fact, not in Greenwich Village, but in the meat packing district (this is an actual part of New York, yes?), somewhere near Tribeca.

It wason the way back to grab a cab that we spotted a sign on a semi-paved cowpath: "Greenwich Street".

Close enough, I guess.

5 comments:

Dale said...

I love it when they drop you off and say there you go until you tell them again where you were supposed to end up. I had the same thing happen last time.

BeckEye said...

The worst part is that there is a Greenwich Street and a Greenwich Avenue, only separated by a few avenues. The former is way west, near 10th ave and runs from Downtown up to around Chelsea. The latter is near 6th ave and is a smaller back street (yet, IT's the one called "Avenue") in the Village. Both of these intersect Christopher St. I had a job interview once and the guy gave me the address as Greenwich, near the corner of Christopher. I was wandering around Greenwich St. looking for an address that didn't seem to exist, and I finally had to call him to find out that he meant Greenwich Ave. I was 20 minutes late for the interview and didn't get the job. Jackhole.

But New York is really to blame. Why put two streets with the same name so close to each other?

BeckEye said...

Oh, and nice finally meeting you! :)
I hope you get to have some more bangin' rice before you leave.

Foofa said...

What a bummer. The village is an awesome part of town. I hope you made it there eventually. Tavern on the Green is in central park, where it is green.

deadspot said...

It sounds like the kind of thing I would do if I were a cabbie. Put up with the passenger's inane chatter until I couldn't stand it anymore and then just drop them off wherever my patience ran out. ...not that you would engage in inane chatter, of course, but I'm pretty sure we were.

The street that I live on in Urbana has a counterpart with the same name in Champaign. They both change names when you cross the city line, so they don't connect at all. Every once in a while, we get a pizza delivery guy who's at the right address, but in the wrong city.

I did get some more bangin' rice. All the hipster kids were doing it. And then I went to see Nightmare Before Christmas at the Ziegfeld.

Unfortunately, I didn't get much time for sightseeing, Natalie, so I didn't make it to the village. On the other hand, lots of people leave New York with stories about going to the village, but I have a story about getting dumped in the meat packing district, and the pappardelle with wild boar sauce was really quite good. I think I won.