A Bhangra party, A Bronx Tale, San Fransisco and Home

Have you ever listened to a DJ mix Migos’ Bad and Boujee with Indian music? Have you? No seriously, think about it. Have you? Maybe not. Turn it down a notch to any Drake song instead. You still haven’t, unless you have been to a Bhangra party on 204 Varick Street of Houston Street. It is unlike anything you have experienced before.

You cannot be Dabbin’ on ’em like the usual or start from the bottom if your hands are in the air 95% of the time you are dancing to Indian pop music. It is freaking awesome.

You do not need a gym membership if you jam to Bhangra. It will test your limits and wear you out. I pity you if your hand-leg coordination is not any good. It’s obviously easier and much more fun if you are inebriated.

At some point I expected everyone would fall into formation and dance through streets and rollings hills with flowers (we’ve all watched 3 idiots, I assume) and I’d be the odd one out who did not show up for practice. In my stupor, this was the least of my concern.

So SOBs, the venue, does live music and you have got to go if you are visiting. It gets better when they bring in two of the best Indian drum players I have ever met. To be fair, I have only met the two chaps. But they are really good.

The drums beat louder than any Beats by Dre’s (whatever happened to those) or Sony’s you ever tried out. The vibration from the drums demands unfiltered raw attention, a little more than I’d care to give. The persistent rhythm gets you tapping your feet or moving your head or whatever body part you move like you don’t care, haha. I bet those tum tum drums we wrote about did not come any close to this. If I was to start a revolution, and I will, I’d have these drums as a call to arms.

A Bronx Tale, the musical

If you know me well enough, you know that I am a straight-up nice guy. I do not lick my yoghurt spoon when I am done eating. If you have spent enough time around me, then you know the good stuff. Like my undying love for 90’s movies, in particular, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Spike Lee movies.

I love the narrations in Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale and Wolf of Wall Street. The way the pawns in the movies are set up for greatness, you see, and then destroyed for menial mistakes, fascinates me. So you can imagine how excited I was to watch A bronx Tale musical.

Now if you have not watched the movie, please do. There are some interesting life lessons in love and relationships. Yes, love and relationships in a movie with the organized crime lords and lowlifes from Sicily. If you have the chance to watch the musical, even better!

There is a lot to learn from Sonny’s car test on how to find out if your next date is one of the greatest. You only get at most three of those in your lifetime, and they come every ten years. That or they all come into your life by the time you are sixteen. There is a lot less to learn from the Mario test on whether she is the one.

The most amazing thing about the play is when your host has family within the cast in the play and you get to go backstage and onstage after the show. Like you would imagine, there is a lot that goes into making such an eight-times-a-week play successful. The live music and the mobile sets. The actors and the directors. It’s a tough role being a character in a play, you have to change outfits and emotion as fast as the scenes come and go.

San Fransisco!

It has been a long time coming for that San Fransisco trip. Schedules changed and I, well, did not travel earlier on as expected. I am glad I could squeeze in a visit before heading back home.

There is a lot that I did not expect going to San Fran(they hate it when you call it that). Like the rain. The Uber/Lyft drivers are extra friendly, or I just requested the special 4/20 option on the app. There is a sizable amount of unhoused homeless people on every other corner as compared to New York.

I got to visit a couple of interesting companies, including Github!, and the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s all fun and games taking pictures and you finally realize you have been staring at a bridge for 45 minutes. There is some rich history behind how the the historic landmark was built in the onset of the Great Depression. There is a small group of gentlemen that refer to themselves as Highway to Hell club who survived a fall during its construction by landing on safety net. I mean I am okay with that but if you survived a fall to damnation, you might want to rethink your life choices and find your calling in life.

So I realized I had a couple of days left before I left of the Big Apple. It’s both exciting and sad because I feel like there is still so much more to take in from the city. That means I get to do all the touristy shit like visit Time Square and take pictures holding the baby-sized testicles of the charging bull in the Financial district. I might get an I heart NY tee shirt for good measure. That also means I may write less on here.

It has been a good run, no need to get emotional over it. Let’s shake hands and part ways. See you in Nairobi?