The States Avenue Ferry

States Avenue. You wouldn't think it's possible to get there with your first monopoly roll. That's because it's not: Jeff rolled a 4 and landed us on income tax right off the bat. He followed up that killer roll with a big winning decision, which was to pay $200 instead of 10% of our money, which would have been $150.

Unfortunately, there is no States Avenue in NYC, where I was at the time. Google was no help, since a search for "State Bar" will only get you a bunch of lawyers. In Houston, there is a State St but it houses only Sam's Motorcycle Sales and the Houston Police Officer's Union. Neither sounded like a good place to get a beer (or have an adventure, for that matter), so some creativity was obviously required. We contemplated drinking at the State University of New York or buying Allstate insurance, but ended up with something much better.

We were on a bit of a time crunch. It was sunday night and my flight back to Houston was monday at 6. We had tickets to the crown of the Statue of Liberty for monday at noon, so we were pretty much limited to monday morning. The very best time for adventures.

January 3rd dawned bright and clear. John and I were up at 7:00, ready to get our drink on. To get in the adventuring mood we started off with two shots of rum from ice shotglasses, and headed out to seek our fortune.... on the State 'n Island Ferry. Most of the people who take the

ferry to Staten Island live there.

This is especially true at 8:30 on monday morning.

The ferry was occupied by 10 people who had clearly just finished a graveyard shift, plus me and John. So as the ferry pulled away to take us to "pretty

much New York", we were certainly the only ones cracking beers. We started a sleeping asian woman half to death when we asked her to take this picture.

The way back was more crowded (just like lost, most people are trying to get off the island), but we probably stood out more. The line at the snack bar went something like this: "Gimme a coahfee and a donut"... "Gimme a lahge coahfee and a bagel"... then I order two tallboys of Beck's and a can of pringles. Before you ask, they were delish.

After that it was pretty standard. We did what most drunk people do in New York. Go to the top of the Statue of Liberty (STATEue of Liberty) and take pictures.