I recently had the misfortune of visiting Newburgh, New York. What a shit hole! There is only one thing worse than a day in Newburgh - and that is a night. Newburgh’s main claim to fame is that it lies across the river from a train station serving the Hudson river line. This train station was the reason I was in town. Beiltan and I were on the way to New York to kill a few hookers (and watch a Mets game) and decided to park the car in Newburgh and take the train into NYC. Big mistake.
We arrived in the hotel district only to realize it was nothing but a bunch of sleazy motels located up a hill, out of the view of the road, law enforcement, and God’s watchful eye. All these motels had names designed to fool unsuspecting googlers into thinking they were chains. There was the Best Westerner, Ramadan, Supurb 8, and the Hamper Inn, where we stayed. After convincing the fine proprietor we actually wanted to stay more than an hour or two we headed into town to check out the nightlife.
The main drag in Newburgh looks like fucking Beiruit, except I’d be willing to bet there are fewer drug dealers in all of Lebanon than were standing outside the Kennedy Fried Chicken. That’s right Kennedy Fried Chicken - Colonel Sanders decided Newburgh was a tad bit too hardcore for one of his quality establishments. We promptly got our lily white asses the fuck out of dodge and headed for the highly acclaimed “waterfront” entertainment district.
This turned out to be a rather large 80’s throwback nightclub/bar populated with throwback 80’s white trash. To be honest we didn’t actually go inside. We did the math in the parking lot. There were at least a dozen Corvettes and an equal number of Camaros, not to mention a bunch of balding, middle-aged, coke heads, rokken like Dokken in their shitty American “sports” cars. Again we got the fuck out of dodge and headed across the river to the bustling metropolis of Beacon.
Guess what - calling a town as dull as Beacon a name like Beacon should be against the law. For the record - Beacon is not a small town. According to Wikipedia, 16.000 listless souls live there. Get this - there are officially two - that’s right - two bars in a town of 16,000. And trust me - you do not want to go into either of them. The first bar was about as friendly as a truckfull of KKKers at the Million Man march. The second bar was worse - so, for the third time that night, we got the fuck out of Dodge.
Fortunately, the third time was the charm and we stumbled across a wonderful place called New Paltz, where there is a State College. And where there is smoke there is fire. No self respecting college town lacks the requisite bar district where there are sloppy drunk co-eds and cheap assed drinks. Needless to say we had a good time. The only drawback was that we had to go back to the gangsta paradise of Newburgh.
Although the motel parking lot was a veritable strip outlet mall of pot, pills, and puntang, we managed to get a few hours of sleep, get on the train, and for the fourth and final time - get the fuck out of Dodge - never to return.