Twas a cloudy, wet afternoon when Helen, Hema, George, Nick , Noel and myself walked into the NYPL for the Performing Arts. Hema, the brave and inquisitive one, took the initiative and made use of the evil yet useful "Umbrella Bag Thing". After walking around aimlessly for 10 minutes our group came up with the marvelous idea of using a library computer to look up what our blog assignment was. I quickly dispatched Noel and George to go look up the assignment while the rest of us stayed on the 2nd floor.It was a order that I now regret...
Noel and George returned to us in defeat. They did not have the proper...clearance...to make a library card. I made my way down to the dreaded librarian and tackled a gauntlet of documents, as a reward for completing the maze of documents I was presented with a holy library card.
But some greater power did not want us to have a happy visit...
After several unsuccessful attempts to log into the Library network with my new library card I became infuriated and led our group down the hall. We would continue without the assignment, tread into unfamiliar territory and hopefully come out victorious. Initially the group protested. "It's a waste of time if we don't have the assignment"cried someone, "Your leading us into hell, you mean to damn us all!" cried another. I reminded my group that they were college students and that they should start acting like it. That quelled the group...for awhile.
While Hema, Helen and Nick investigated the 2nd floor (those concert documents sure are interesting!) Noel, George and myself took a small detour into the mens bathroom. I was then ambushed by George with Noel as his unwilling accomplice. After beating down the traitor and accepting Noel back into the group I exited the bathroom and checked the directory.
"We must go to the 3rd floor, we will find the knowledge we seek there" I said. The group looked at me with uncertainties but I am proud to say that they accepted my idea and we took the elevator up.
Immediately while stepping out of the elevator I felt a certain....change. The 3rd floor looked nothing like the 1st and 2nd. The knowledge we wanted was behind a glass barrier, we made for a opening but were ordered by a imposing guard to go check in our coats. After facing sexism at its finest at the coat check (the males were told to check-in their jackets while the females were told that they could walk in as-is) we returned to the guard and allowed entrance.
The world behind the glass barrier felt more like a laboratory doing Ebola research then a library. The immense chamber had no natural light and was getting colder by the minute. "Damn that guard!" I thought, "he told us to check-in our coats only so that we could freeze in this cold!". Wasting no time I quickly walked to a few aisles of bookcases and started my resource. I found a authentic review of Fight Club from a 1999 newspaper clipping, checking the rest of the bookcase I found that the entire section held detailed review of all movies from the 1950s - 2006.
Helen then found the holy grail, a Italian book from the 90s. It held a review for all European pornography from the 90s, a amazing find indeed. After about 20 minutes of walking around and looking at movie, play and musical reviews we left, we feared that the cold would result into frostbite. After retrieving our prized jackets and bags we headed down to the 1st floor. On our way out we noticed a glassed off room of several televisions and a couple of people sitting down without worry watching the screens. The whole scene reminded me of the "Allegory of the Cave", I chuckled to myself as we turned to leave.
We made our way out into the cold, wet Friday afternoon and made our way towards the subway. Nick, George and Hema left us and those of us that stayed decided to go to Times Square for another adventure.
But that is a story for another blog....
