Brushes with the rich and famous

I attended a Snow Patrol concert on Tuesday night at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, which holds about 2000 fans. I had honestly never heard of the group until their single "Chasing Cars" came out last fall and was played all over Grey's Anatomy. That song is on their fourth full-length album, so you know they've been around a while. The concert was really fun and forced me to ask myself why it is that I don't go to more concerts? I don't have a good answer really, and now that Ticketmaster has my email address, I'm sure they'll con me into buying tickets for something in the future by giving me pre-sale codes and whatnot.

Ronit and I got the inside scoop on where the band would be after the concert, so we dutifully went to Snitch afterward. The group didn't show and didn't show, so we chatted up the bartender and he told us that they'd probably decided to skip Snitch and go to the West Side Tavern, which is owned by the same proprietor. We finished our beers and skipped off down 8th Avenue at 1:30 AM (literally skipped/ran while singing Snow Patrol songs loudly and obnoxiously), deterred from our mission only by pizza. We walked into the second bar and there they were, standing around by the bar, drinking Heinekens. We attempted to buy the lead singer a drink and he was having none of it, so we grabbed a table and chatted with some other patrons before attempting to chat with him again a few hours later. This time we were successful, thanks largely to J.J. (the blond guy on the left) and Dave (the guy on the far right), and got this picture, which is probably the 500th such photo the lead singer'd taken that night...
Ro and I were home at 4:30 AM (yes, on a Tuesday), and honestly, it was the best time I've had in a while.