From time to time, The Awl likes to explain to Internet denizens what the world beyond the great inside is like. Here is one such explanation, describing a recent trip to locations on the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

We had missed the parade. Or maybe it was somewhere else. The sidewalk was packed with bad faces. A guy had his pants down and was trying to walk. The cops were wearing long leather jackets. I grew up in Jersey, and I remembered bad faces, but I couldn't remember cops ever wearing jackets like that, leather and big gold buttons. Every bar had a line out the door. The gay bar had taken down their rainbow flag and they had a line out the door too. A group of girls staggered past us. They shouted that they were "pizza whores" and went into a crowded pizza joint. One of those girls had beer sunglasses, my friend said. I thought he probably meant beer goggles, but with the novelty junk they were selling on every corner, I don't know.

We had taken a crowded PATH train in, and this girl gave me the hairy eyeball the whole ride. Everyone was wearing green, but no two shades could agree. Some drunk guys we couldn't see tried to start up a song. It might have been "You've Lost That Loving Feeling." Now we were walking up 1st. First of what, I can't say. Our other friend had given us bad directions. He said his place was diagonal from "the fish place." When we found the fish place, we looked at the place diagonal. Our friend was waving from his window. In the lobby, the doorman asked us what apartment. We didn't know. He let us in.

We had beer and a cool space away from people. We had windows to watch these people from. Our friend opened his windows in case we wanted to shout at these people. Down there in the sun, a sweating guy was carrying a keg on his back. He was with another guy who wasn't helping. We laughed and toasted to that. It was cheap beer we were drinking, but you could drink a lot of it. The guy carrying the keg got too much forward momentum and walked headfirst into a telephone pole and dropped the keg. One of us said something about the guy, mean but also pitying. I drank some beer and my friend said it was his beer. Down on the street, the unhelpful guy was standing in the middle of the street. He was trying to hail a cab. A cab did stop, and the sweaty guy picked up the keg again. When the cab driver saw the keg, he drove away. The sweaty guy put the keg down on its side and it started to roll away.

There was a party around the block. It had been broken up once before. We went in and a girl sitting in the kitchen said, "Hi." She wanted us to leave. I was getting it bad from women today. There were tarps on the floor, which was smart. Outside were tables for what some people call beer pong, and a couple more tarps on a dirt yard. Now and then a guy shouted at someone who had taken one of his beers. You could see into other buildings' rear windows. An old lady was framed in one, staring at the party. She was mad or wished she was younger. It wasn't even St. Patrick's Day. Which was well enough, because St. Patrick's Day is my birthday. We went inside to look for more beer. An alarm was going off. People were running out of the house. A guy came down the stairs and said "I pulled the fire alarm" and left. We went out front and waited for the alarm to stop.

Now Miles Klee has been outside! Photo by flickr4jazz, under this license, from this set.