This City Sleeps

Gary Hamilton

Last week Greg asked me to join him for margaritas so I told him the last time I did margaritas was in New York when I fetched up in a trendy bar with wifey and some friends of the sister in law. One of the girls was a little beauty and I was making her laugh with her telling me how funny I was and were all Scotsmen like me? Anyway, there was this city trader with us who was shooting me daggers because it seemed he was madly in love with her but shouldn't have bothered as she sloped off to Central Park for a quicky with some guy she met in the bar. So city trader dude who has the kitty, joined me at the bar and it turns out we get on like a house on fire once the question of the gorgeous dame was gone and we got rat arsed on margaritas. I remember standing outside on my own having a cigar and looking down this street in uptown Manhattan and thinking that I was in Leith and how the hell much is a taxi going to be back to Glasgow, I was nearly getting in a yellow cab and shouting Broomhill!

Later that night, we managed to extricate ourselves from the margarita gang but were accosted by a Japanese guy in some Irish bar in Gramercy Park. He was shouting at us, Style Council! Style Council! This after he'd watched me put Paul Weller on the juke box. We couldn't get rid of him so took him with us on our pub crawl so that there we were in the next bar, me sitting with Sejo, him saying, better be mods, always be mods, while Julie had a smoke outside. She was taking her time getting back and the Japanese guy was flicking salted peanuts at me so I went out to have a look for her and found her being chatted up by this huge well spoken guy who was the spit of Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation. When I showed up he and his buddy made a big play of being my friend and the next thing you know, me, Julie, the Japanese guy, Will Smith and his dumb ass pal are loafing off into the night on the look out for a karaoke bar.

We didn't find one and by about four in the morning, having been unable to find anywhere still open we decided to part company vowing to meet the next day in a bar in SoHo. We didn't.