Take me to the promised lands of ambient jazz and… weed clouds?

Sweet, sweet NSOP. It all feels like a distant dream now that I’m a week into my first year at Barnard—a dream with highs, lows, and a whole lot of time spent figuring out how to pronounce b’scursion. 

If you’re unfamiliar with what that is, it’s basically a city exploration outing led by NSOP Orientation Leaders that involves a registration process with a waitlist. So there I was, refreshing the Guidebook app at 12 pm sharp to sign up for a trip to the Union Square Evening Market, which we were told would also include a jazz concert and a trip to the Strand Bookstore. 

Quick disclaimer: the orientation leaders chaperoning us were amazing, not even exaggerating. Their job was to get us to Union Square in one piece, and they achieved that successfully. Big shout out to them, and in no way do I hold them accountable for the way the rest of the evening unfolded. 

Things were already off to a bit of a rocky start for me, because my friend temporarily lost her ID (which she later found on Futter Field), which led to her missing the first half of the B’scursion. That’s okay! We move on! I was perfectly capable of socialising with other people (debatable). 

We made it to Union Square, and right off the bat, I happened to notice that something was missing. The Evening Market, to be exact. I shrugged the mysterious disappearance off, surmising that we had probably missed it. There was a jazz concert to be enjoyed, and we couldn’t dwell on things like the market! 

Our carefully trained ears followed the faint sounds of guitar chords being played as we traipsed through Union Square, going where the musical trail led us. 

And then we reached the source of the sound. 

A busker with his electric guitar. 

While this was evidently not the jazz concert it was advertised as, we had no time to dwell on that fact. The night was still young, and we decided to split up and do a bit of exploring. One half of the group decided to hang out around the area, while I joined the other half that was going to walk to the, erm, quasi-campus of another New York City institution. But inconvenience was quick to follow, of course. 

As we ambled down the sidewalk, I spotted a group of students from the aforementioned fellow institution standing a few meters away from us. They were holding their phones out as if they were recording a video, knees bent, looking like they were about to lunge forward. And before I could even blink, they began charging towards us, screaming at the top of their lungs while their friends made sure to record them from the back– yup, they really had to cover every angle! 

I was terrified, and we all leapt out of the way. I proceeded to promptly send my friend– who was now waiting for us at the Strand Bookstore—a voice message detailing the night’s events. This interruption didn’t deter us, though, and our next priority was to find food before heading to the bookstore. 

(You know what did deter us, though? When a member of our party pointed vaguely in the direction we were walking in and said there was a corner somewhere there that was infamous for being a popular mugging spot). 

Jazz and dinner dreams abandoned, I concluded that right about then was when I should call it a night. The busker was brilliant, by the way. I didn’t give him enough credit for that performance. Certainly a B’scursion to remember!

Jazz via Bwarchives