Okay, so I didn't have a feature on the second night but I did perform at the legendary Poetry Cafe. My escort/friend/tour guide/all around baby sitter, Josh, had to work that night so I was left in the care of the lovely Belinda and the amazing Ray(I think I remembered the name right).
We were there pretty early so I had a cappuccino (courtesy of the lovely Elly of France, pictured left; I think he felt sorry for me and my horrible french lol) and a tomato feta garden salad. The salad was AMAZING!!!! I mean dance worthy good lol. The coffee was lovely too but I really really enjoyed the salad (this could be a biased opinion given that I skipped breakfast LOL).
If I had to compare the poetry cafe to something in NYC I would say it's like The Bowery (as far as the design and books for sale etc). However, the performers and the way they run the open mic is NOTHING like ANYTHING in the states LOL....(this is a good thing mostly LOL).
First of all the open mic list is about 30/35 people deep and secondly each performer has 5 minutes. And when Nail (I hope I spelled that right) says you have 5 minutes, he means 5 freakin' minutes. He puts a HUGE timer behind you with 5 minutes on it and when that thing hits 0 he doesn't care if you're mid sentence he will stop you without a second thought LOL....While my poems are short, I still found myself feeling uncomfortable/nervous/worried about the time while I was up there. Insane. If that bothered me as a professional I can't imagine what first timers feel like. Some people used every last drop of their 5 minutes (and I don't blame them because I did lol) and others talked as fast as they could to get as much as they could said within the 5 minutes. It was mania.
Nail was an awesome host, he's super funny, the poetry was a mix of amazing mind blowing work, short stories and such and some very candid, I just want to get something off my chest type of work. Which made for a very lovely night!!!
After the poetry we walked some of London and went to an area that is basically the British Time Square only it's WAY Smaller and MUCH EMPTIER LOL...it was weird. Ray says it's because it was a week night (Tuesday) but if you've ever been to NYC you know that Time Square is NEVER Empty no matter what day of the week or what time of day....then we bought McDonald's and had to sit inside a burger king to eat it because the McDonald's dining area was closed...I never felt more nervous in my life LOL...for some reason I felt like the burger king police were going to come down and ask us to leave because we weren't eating their food....I believe we inhaled the food and started walking again.
We met with Josh after his shift ended and sat in a like a chicken king fast food place until like 3am when they kicked us out. We took the bus home and life was good. BTW, if you're ever out in London the tube apparently closes late nights.....just fyi. This came as a shock to me since as a New Yorker you know you can catch the subway at any time of day....we're so much alike but not really LOL.....
Last day in London coming up :(.....
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