When was the last time you had a solid, banner weekend? Somehow, by the graces of the Halloween gods, an 8 am text message turned into one of the best weekends of the year. If it were up to me (which thank god it isn’t) this holiday would be celebrated for at least half of the year because it is awesome seeing mass amounts of people dressed up in costume.
Celebrating Halloween while in college is easy – you don’t have a job to worry about being hungover at and the only issue you face is coming up with 4-5 sick costumes for the week long festivities. The celebrations are entirely different in the real world due to the fact that real priorities deter from a week-long party-fest. I had been agonizing for over 2 weeks over what the hell to do for the weekend (which is serious considering I put about 10 minutes into any going-out-for-the-night related planning), so Thursday night when an idea popped into my head to take a trip to Hamden later became confirmed Friday morning with a text from my CLA/bestie with similar sentiments, I knew that the weekend would be a win.
Fast forward 12 hours later and I’m picking up CLA at the train station and we’re heading on our magical mystery tour to Hamden… And 12 fuzzy hours after that we’re heading to CLA’s apartment with 2 more travelers… A journey which yielded this beauty on the highway. My Jewish mentor gave it the aptly named “Jerzazzy” or, the New Jersey Jazzy. There are minimal words in the dictionary to describe our aw-stricken state as we saw this pass us on the Garden State Parkway.
Spotting the Jerzazzy was comparable to spotting a unicorn while on a trip to Mars, however, it brought about some dubious luck… We accidentally ended up in Harlem (yes CLA, Harlem) later in the evening… And later at a bar for Columbia students which was filled with beer pong tables and 4 book shelves – aka heaven.
Either way, the weekend was given its full stamp of approval when we walked around beautiful, historic Weehawken, NJ, which A) does exist, and B) may possibly be my future home. Let me apologize to my friends for embarrassing them by shouting at complete strangers, “I LOVE FALL!!” and pulling a Dick Van Dyke/Bert a la “Mary Poppins” style move around a light pole and nearly took the thing down. In my defense, I was unaware at the time that the bottom of the pole was electrically taped to the pavement.
Here’s the view of NYC from Weeeeeehawken – a town with the best combination of things: right by the water, rich with history, fun to say, cheap rides to the city, and home to my CLA. I would be remiss to ignore the faboosh Mexican restaurant Charrito’s located on the water where we brunched. It instantly became my favorite place on earth due to it’s beautiful view, decorations, and fully costumed wait-staff. Their tapestry of the Hindu god Ganesha left me with a weird taste – talk about cultural mixups!!
P.S. since I know you’re concerned, CLA was a gypsy, my Jewish mentor was a cat, our as-yet-unnamed-pseudonymed guest #3 was a safari guide, and I was an existential meltdown (aka orange sweater and witch hat).
