This is the third from Venice Is Sinking’s Summer 2009 tour diary, by VIS member and Drive A Faster Car contributing writer, Lucas Jensen. Let us know what you think of these and if you’d like to see more tour diaries in the future! — Tessa, DaFC Editor-In-Chief

Whereas July 9th was pretty much stress and failure, July 10th was a day of relaxation, NYC exploration, and lots and lots of eating. I mean, lots of eating. I’ve spent the last two years working off 50 lbs. of excess weight, but apparently I decided weight loss is for suckers. Over the course of the 10th I ate:

• Home fries
• Chorizo omelette
• Two slices of Lombardi’s sausage pizza
• A hot dog
• A gyro
• Two giant knishes from Yonah Schimmel’s
• A polish sausage
• Chips
• Tums
• Prilosec

NYC is the kind of place where we run rampant with the eating. Daniel, Karolyn, and James ate Vietnamese sandwiches, Anna and Jeremy joined me for the pizza. I think we showed up to Pianos 10 pounds heavier than we started the “tour.”

Venice is Sinking is a food-loving bunch. More importantly, we like to talk about it in analytics, breaking each bite down into gory detail, like a football commentator with the light pen. We talk about it for hours in the van. On one particularly depressing occasion, Iooked at the clock in the van and realized we had been talking about Hardees for over an hour. Hardees.

Also, on a side note, we did as much sightseeing as we could in five hours. We saw the Public Library, Chinatown, Little Italy, and I took a side trip to Roosevelt Island, which was nice because I’ve been fascinated by islands since I was five or so. Roosevelt Island was strange. I saw some condos, a drug store, a fruit stand, and about 20-30 people in wheelchairs, rolling around separate of each other. I also marveled at the bottom of the Queensborough Bridge and rode the skybucket thing over the East River, thankfully avoiding the Green Goblin. It was a nifty ride for $2.25. Stuff like that in Gatlinburg et al. costs 20 bucks.

So we got to Pianos, and everything went smoothly, parking, loading, etc., except for the fact that I spilled my seven dollar bourbon and ginger on my snare drum. We played pretty well, and by all accounts the sound was great. And there were people there at the show to tell us the sound was great! I know, right? People actually came out to this show and paid and everything. And the bands we played with, particularly Bellflur from DC, were solid and meshed with us a lot better than the aforementioned Permanent Ability. The night ended on an uptick, to be sure, the exact opposite of the soul-crushing experience of the night before. I think we made 60 bucks or so at the door and sold a good amount of merch.

Of course, I still had to sleep in the van, so it wasn’t perfect.