The place be in Monsey on Saturday night

Ever since I started blogging I kind of feel like a Jewish scene reporter, everything gets much better- to the point that even if I wouldn’t normally go somewhere or do something- I do it any way because, hey if it sucks I can always write about it. So naturally when I heard about this “hangout” in Monsey, I had to check it out. In my former experience during the yeshiva rebel days, that I partook in, I came to realize that community members always made a bigger deal of hangouts then they actually were, in fact most of the time a hangout was merely a place, usually a pizza store, sometimes a 7-11 that guys and girls could look at each other without the annoyance of a mechitza.

So last night at approximately 12am I dragged my buddies to Shellys-2, the official Monsey hangout for yeshiva rebels, hockers and potential wife swappers. I also happen to be familiar with the pricing and food quality since it’s my usual midweek lunch location. I actually really like their cheese pretzels, although I feel that the amount of dough to cheese is a way higher ratio then should be for the steep price of $4.75 while I can buy two plain slices for a quarter less and get the sauce as well, and don’t get me started on sushi, which I love, but hate to pay for- its best when others order sushi and you get a few free pieces.

So we mosied on down to Shellys- 2 which is supposed to be this big hangout- and since one of the bigger hangout pizza stores caved in to the Rabbis requests to only allow takeout on Saturday nights so people shouldn’t hang out there, and instead go home and snort pharmaceuticals and hang out in unsupervised places, because hanging out in a pizza store is the worst thing for your neshama. So Chai looses out and Shellys gains, personally I think its some sort of conspiracy because it didn’t solve anything and the Rabbis who love these power-trip- chumra patrol raids know that as well.

The first thing I noticed upon entering the pizza store was the amount of hot women there, tons of them in fact, but every one of them had a sheitle on, damn! So we got our food, sat at the window facing the room and analyzed the crowd, well only I did, I cannot find many people who enjoy watching people as much as I do. In fact most people I know want to get as far away from Jews as possible, while I like to enter their realms and just watch.

So back to these hot wives, there were multitudes of them, with their blackberry- blue tooth in the ear husbands, that’s right folks, hockers get all the chicks- the younger generation of yeshiva-rebel hocker wannabes who are going for their nursing administrators licenses know this as well. There were some scattered yeshiva-rebels hanging around smoking outside. In fact this little boy of about 16 gave me this look while he fussed with his pack of cigarettes and asked what school I go to, as in high school. I laughed, I was proud; I look like I am 16 that’s great, it may be due to my immaturity that’s the truth.

I like lukewarm semi fresh pizza because it holds its cheese better, on Saturday night its ll fresh, I think some people are scared by this because they are used to kosher pizza stores leaving the pizza out all day under those greasy glass display cases that have flies crawling on them. Jews are used to crappy unfresh pizza and I myself dislike fresh pizza, the kind that looses all of its cheese when you pick it up and you have to dump it back on with a flimsy plastic spoon.

I mentioned the wife swappers before, I only say this because everyone likes to tell me how now that I am in Monsey I should watch out for women who are married and trying to pick me up. I can just see these fancy women flocking to me for my cool styles and impressive looks, “hey chaims at yeshiva still, we have 2 hours till he comes home for dinner”, so every time a married women looks my way I have bad thoughts and want to get out of wherever it is I am right away. I fear these strange creatures and don’t want nothing to do with them. Married women were put on this earth to redd shidduchim, keep the sheitle business alive and be stared at by me, but everything else is over the line.

So you have all these couples, hot wives, hot blue tooth in the ear husbands and they just look to close. Something looks awry, like they are in fact wife swapping, or maybe its my sick imagination who knows- but if you want to see these types you can look no further then these hangouts.

There really wasn’t anything too oppressive about the hangout except for the lack of single legal women, which I found out do exist in Monsey, they are just all tucked away in scattered basement apartments across the land. I also found out that all the yeshiva rebels in Monsey like to wear suede yarmulkes instead of velvet, way different from my days of long bangs tucked under the little black velvet disks perched precariously above the bochurs forehead- while he head banged to Mettalica and Black Hattitude.

Then there are the modern kids, modern kids in Monsey are way cooler then anyone else, because they are allowed to talk to girls and watch movies, it places them on this unreachable pedestal. They are like what yeshiva rebels aspire to be, roaming the mean streets of Wesley Hills without any spies from yeshiva. Even Rochester had spies, I remember when guys used to go to movies, a dorm councilor would follow them and sit behind them in the movie theater, somewhere in the middle of the movie he would tap them on the shoulder- talk about spies huh.

So in order to take adavantage of the situation at hand, which was “finished with my pizza but there are no girls here- so lets wait and see if any show up- although we probably wouldn’t talk to them” I started drawing hand made business cards for the blog, this is my new plan. Its called the plan of spreading the word, I made real business cards, 250 of them, online, but they are not here yet.

So I played Jewish Geography with little yeshiva boys who had just hit puberty and handed them my cards. They are too cool for me though because they fill their lungs with steam, so I left.

I think I just have to stick to riding my bike, because once you have hit up the real hangouts you just cant go back. Nothing will ever beat Avenue J and Woodbourne of the late 90s.