Trip to NYC to visit Tuukka and watch Anjunadeep Open Air

My friend Tuukka was going to be nearby - in NYC* - so he invited me down to hang out while he filmed Yotto (deep house DJ) perform at Anjunadeep Open Air at the Brooklyn Mirage.  It was an amazing experience ...

* he's from Helsinki, so that is relatively nearby)

My day started early Friday morning leaving for work and noticing some wild flowers:

After work I took a train to NY Penn station.  I had to wait an hour to catch the NJ Transit train to South Orange, and I couldn't help going out to walk around; I'm always stunned at how active Manhattan is even at midnight.

Looking at the active bill boards made me feel like I was in a science fiction movie - something like Blade Runner:

After my walk I caught the train and despite my protests and the late hour my mother-in-law Marie picked me up at the train station.  The next day I did some mild yard work, and in the early evening I headed in to Manhattan.  I took the subway downtown, I always remember some advice from when I was younger that people in NYC are always happy help you navigate the subway, and that proved true again, someone directed me to the right line.  I love seeing the mosaics in the stations:

I caught up with Tuukka and Yotto at their hotel, we got dinner with some more friends (Leo & Saana) and then headed to the Brookyn Mirage.  It was an open-air venue but they cleverly used shipping containers to provide "infrastructure" which I thought looked cool.  For example the back-stage area we hung out was a shipping container that had air conditioning and some nice furniture and rugs:

This reminded me of the sci-fi classic Snow Crash, when Hiro Protagonist is organizing / attending a concert by his roommate Vitaly Chernobyl.  Of course it also had a well stocked fridge:

There was a lot of very seriously talented DJ's stopping by to say hi to Yotto; after the fact I've been able to deduce that I saw Eli & Fur and Luttrell.  

Pretty soon we headed out to the stage for Yotto to do his set; here's a video I took of Luttrell finishing his set right before Yotto went on:

When Yotto went on I was just sort of following people and ended up standing on stage for about a minute before someone (politely) asked me to step backstage.  Here are some initial pictures I took from my vantage stage left:

view of the stage background from its base

When this intense blue light came on behind me I decided that was a good time for selfies:

The next major thing to happen (from my perspective) was a torrential downpour.  I got completely soaked, didn't bother trying to get out of it.  I had my waterproof backpack that I normally use for bicycle commuting, all my stuff was fine.  The crew did a heroic and successful job of keeping the show going uninterrupted, hastily putting up an awning and tarps over the equipment:

As Yotto's set was ending, a woman came up to stand beside me, she very forthrightly said she was just standing next to me so she wouldn't get booted off the stage.  The rest of our hilarious conversation went something like this:

She:  "What do you do?"

Me:  "Software engineering"

"Oh, video / audio?"

"No, cancer research"

"... ?????"

Turns out she is a bartender but her real passion is woodworking / furniture restoration, which she manages to do out of her apartment.  She gave me a pair of yellow tinted plastic glasses, which we joked I could use to hold back my hair.

After Yotto finished his set, we went back stage again and hung out for a bit, and eventually called it a night.  Here's a video taken around 3 AM as we're leaving, I'm still amazed at all the people that are out and about:

After catching a ride with Tuukka, Yotto, Leo and Saana back to their hotel in downtown, I  took the subway back up to Penn Station - albeit after walking the wrong way for about 20 minutes to get the subway stop, and then backtracking.  Got to Penn station around 4:52 AM; there was no way to get back to SO NJ at that hour, so I hung out until ~7 AM and caught a train to Boston.  Just to be clear, I was soaking wet throughout.  Even though the air temperature was quite warm, there were still times when I got chills.  I woke up on the train around 9 AM, and I was a good bit dryer at that point, and I got to meet a very interesting gentlemen sitting next to me, heading to a conference in Boston.  He was originally from Bari, Italy:

We ended up getting in a fairly long discussion about the Roman Empire, but also how his grandkids made fun of him for being much paler than they are.

Back in Boston, I was struck by the mosaic tile in the subway - a nice way to close the loop:

and how shockingly close together the subway stops are.  I ended up taking the red line to Harvard and then getting on the 71 bus, and just to make the adventure complete, somehow at the Star Market stop the bus was displaying the number 73, so when the bus took Mt. Auburn St. instead of Belmont St. at the fork in the road, there was much uproar on the bus.  So the bus took a quick right onto a side street, another right onto Belmont St. and then deposited all the passengers who wanted to be on the 73 at one of its stops.  Another right onto a side street, another right back on to Mt. Auburn, and we were on our way.

Here's an actual professional video of the first part of the set:

(A fuller video will be available soon, I'll add that when it's ready).  At the very end of the above you can see it start to rain ...