Na zdorovia

It's taken me 3 days to blog about Friday night because its taken me that long to recover. Graham "Like the cracker" Jonas came through like a trouper and asked if I wanted to tag along to a friend's birthday bash at the National, a Russian cabaret and supper club in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn (aka Little Odessa.) Well, I was keen to catch up with Graham and his girlfriend, Janine, and after years of wondering what those Russian function centres in Glen Eira Rd and Carlise St were like, I now know.

We took a 45 min subway ride on the B train to the end of the line (just down the road from Coney Island) and came down the stairs from the elevated railway to a world of Russian signage, Russian newspapers, and people who really did look Russian. Boris, it was amazing. Graham greeted the doormen at the club with something that translated to 'Good evening, comrade' and it was completely surreal from there. The vodka was the only familiar thing. All too familiar. I have to remember to pace myself when I'm on the other side of the world in a room full of strangers, far far from where I live.

Russian lends itself to salsa music, who knew? It was helped along by tight dresses and blue eyeshadow and karaoke-esque, we-couldn't afford-the-original-video background footage on the stage. It also lends itself to Aguillera and Beyonce and Elton John. Hmmm. There was also audience interaction ("You dance-a nice" from the male singer (look for him in American Idol didn't make it outtakes)) and about 12 courses of delicious food.

Best parts of the night: I convinced Janine to come to dance class with me (i found a walk-in hip hop class round the corner at the Alvin Ailey dance studios) and met Diana who is a movie a week kind of gal (who got kicked out of the Peace Corps, cool!) to go and see non-summer blockbusters (like the Hip Hop Film Festival) with. Diana works for a non-profit organisation with the longest non-word acronym I have ever come across: it is a LGBTSTGNC POC centre. If you can guess what that stands for you're a very switched on cat. I'll reveal its meaning in a future instalment.

The train ride home seemed to be only about 10 mins, not sure what happened there. Do they run express at 2.30am? The next day I looked at 8 apartments and I only liked the last two. Perhaps this was when the fog lifted.