My boyfriend and I have next to no private time. Much to our chagrin we both are currently back in our parent's houses and our date nights generally consist of holing up in his childhood bedroom trying to keep the TiVo at a reasonable volume. Then he got his driver's license. Although this freedom arrived for my suburban friends at around 16, as a native New Yorker being able to drive still seems novel. Clearly we wanted all of our dates thereafter to be road trips.
We thought for our first evening we'd venture out to Coney Island. I had never been, and it seemed there'd be an appropriate balance of kitsch and delicious hot dogs to make for a good time. Naturally our first stop was Nathans. After ordering what seemed like one of everything you can do with a hot dog we settled in at our counter. No sooner had we done this then a young boy who had been stabbed came running in to the open-air restaurant. Panting, he shouted that someone had "knifed" him and that he was being chased. I seemed to be the only one who wasn't aware that this was an everyday occurrence here in South Brooklyn.
The police quickly arrived, EMTs were attended to him and the Nathan's employees had disappeared underneath the cash registers. The gang of kids that had presumably hurt this guy came running by soon afterwards. Unbeknownst to them, they were running directly in to a swarm of police officers and cop cars. Although this is typically more drama then I'm used to witnessing over my fast food, this nightmare was captivating. My boyfriend did not share my rapture and he insisted we leave immediately.
With our evening cut short and no real interest in trying to do anything more exciting than what had already taken place we decided to drive back to the city. When we got to the FDR we were enjoying (I was enjoying) singing along to some of my awesome new playlists. My boyfriend drove me around the entire circumference of Manhattan singing and hanging out. Although our evening was unexpected (and at parts awful) – we learned two things who you're with really does matter more than what you are doing, and Nathan's really is that good.
