This web site is dedicated to our friend Gary Brickman, who passed away on June 26, 2000. Hangin' out with Gary / page 3 Matt Jalbert, 14 July 2000 « previous The blue smoke of Empire One particularly fond memory I have of Gary is of a trip we had in New York City. We had been flown out there for work and found ourselves in Midtown having dinner with a bunch of folks we worked with. After dinner, the Brick and I wanted to hit the town. We were on Fifth Avenue in the 30s, not a particularly notable part of town except that the Empire State Building is right there. Gary said “Let’s go up to the top, but first…” and he devilishly produced a little pipe. Oh man, this was going to be cool, smoking dope on Fifth Avenue with Gary Brickman. We shuffled over to a deep doorway and covered for each other, one man keeping watch on the street while the other toked. We had some DaDa-ist catchphrase like “The winged nut flies purple in the limelight” to shout out if either of us spotted The Man coming down the way. Fortunately, all went down without a hitch and we ambled over to the big tall building. Looking up, the entire top third was enshrouded in clouds and we couldn’t imagine seeing anything from the top. It was around 11:15pm. At the ticket booth, which was empty of paying customers, the cashier told us that there was no visibility because of clouds, but we decided to get high anyway and I produced the money for two tickets. Then, in a common display of stranger’s affection, she said, “Here, it’s free,” and handed us two tickets. I was agog, and as we rolled toward the elevator, Gary just shrugged, smiled, and said, “See? See? You gotta hang out with me for the special treatment.” “Clearly!” When, after about 14 elevator trips later, we arrived at the 86th floor observation platform on the Empire state building, we found a most incredible sight: an utterly endless view across the brilliant spectacle that is New York City at night, topped by furiously blowing clouds moving west to east. As the wind pushed the clouds against this spire of a skyscraper, there formed wild vortexes of clouds, swirling off into the night sky, all illuminated in a luminescent blue from the colored spotlights that shine from the upper floors of the edifice. Gary and I were breathless at the beauty of it all. We slowly circled the platform once, gorging ourselves on a view which defied what we had been told by the mere mortals on the ground floor. Only a few other hearty tourists remained up there and it was like we had the whole city—this infinitely mind-expanding perspective—to ourselves. We finally settled into a nook on the north wall and proceeded to talk about some great complexity of life, the exact details of which I hope you can forgive me for not remembering. We stayed until we were asked to leave, at which point we began our adventures in Times Square. CONTINUED: Don’t take any wooden nickles, or, how two kids from the country got famous in the big city »home