One of the all-time best nights in New York City

At night, I drive north to west 149th and St. Nicholas in Harlem, where I meet up with Scott and Sam for what evolves into one of my top ten New York City Nights: It is African night at St. Nick’s pub, which is renowned for its live jazz performances and community feel. Tonight, Kaissa, a beauituful, tall, black woman with a voice that sages my bloodstream and awakens the passions, and her band are performing. Kaissa’s songs, inspired by her Cameroon roots, fill the bar with a sweet and potent air, and I become mesmerized. As the night morphs into early morning, different men approach the stage and add their music to the cacophony of sound—a harmonica player from Louisiana, a slam poet with wavy hair and harsh words, a rock n roll bassist, and a slow, melodic trumpet player whose body overfills his seat, where he remains for his soulful performance. The entire bar seems to be swaying and jamming with Kaissa and her band.

After the music winds down, Scott and I leave, and several highways and cross-streets later, we find ourselves parked at the Fulton Fish Market, the early morning market that serves the seafood needs of the five borough’s restaurants. In a gigantic parking lot there are open warehouses where boxes of fish are rolling out, stacked up like miniature skyscrapers, splayed open to reveal neon yellow stripped snapper and twenty pound salmon.

What fascinates me is that the entire time we are at the fish market, perusing the different vendor’s sea offerings and drifting between the rows of boxes, I only see men. We meet one female photography student who seems very excited to see us, as in our plain street clothes we stand out as something of a spectacle. Indeed, I feel like a spectacle. Each man eyes me with desire in his eyes, sizing up my frame, glancing at Scott, approaching me with fish offers. My pink CodePINK Women for Peace button is affixed to my black jacket and seems to stand out like a giant “LOOK AT ME” sign. Several men approach me to talk about the organization, my work, the movement, and the current political situation. I am intrigued by these conversations. With some of the men, I know that my mere presence as a female at four in the morning at the fish market is what has prompted the conversation. Yet with others, the exchange is meaningful and friendly, and leads me to believe that this is where we need to be building our national coalition—at the fish markets, in the streets, on the subways, etc. The whole experience is enchanting, as if we are drifting through an alternate reality, the world of fish sales, the Manhattan lair of nocturnal men shoveling containers of dead, scaley creatures around on forklifts. At the end of the market, we huddle around a fire that is blazing out of an oil drum, fed by broken bits of wooden crates. And then we depart, and once again we are driving through the haunted, vacant downtown streets, passing by that gaping hole in the ground where the Towers of Babel once stood, before the invisible hand revealed itself in a violent act of unjustifiable retribution.

Scott and I go to the radio station at Columbia U, where Scott’s brother DJs his first jazz show. The night ends in a delirium to the soundtrack of Sinatra’s Cheek to Cheek and I drive back to Chelsea, for the morning’s driving and parking fiasco. The day bleeds into Friday, during which I dine at Pistichi with the Pauls for an excellent pot of mussels and the best company one can find. Sitting at the small wooden table with Scott, Jordan, and Amy, surrounded by the familiar restaurant and waiters, and eating the best salad ever, Claremont Ave. feels like home again. Friday night I go up to White Plains and have dinner with my uncle and company at a hibachi restaurant that serves fireballs and volcanoes made out of onion rings and more fire.