Pants Off Dance Off?

Last night I had dinner with some friends down in the Battery Park City area at the World Financial Center. This business and residential area sits right next to Ground Zero, the former World Trade Center site, and is in many ways slightly separated from the neighborhoods nearby. I arrived at sundown and the views overlooking the river were wonderful.

They have some nice restaurants with outdoor seating there. We went to Southwest NY a very nice restaurant where I enjoyed a delicious chorizo quesidilla and few cold beers. The evening was going swimmingly and I decided to visit the men's room. This is when things got weird.

I entered the room and found a man standing alone in the middle of the room facing me stark naked from the waist down with a pile of clothes next to him. I have entered hundreds of men's rooms in my life and I've never been faced with such a sight. (I've seen some ghastly things at the locker room at the university, but this was a nice restaurant!) Not feeling entirely comfortable making eye contact, I sort of grunted, steered around him and headed to the urinal. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the man putting his clothes back on. There was no indication that he had changed his clothes, only that he had gotten naked in front of a row of urinals. Again, lots of visits to bathrooms over the years, and never had the need to strip to take a leak.

I think there was a Seinfeld episode where George decides he enjoys sitting on the toilet with his shirt off -- maybe this was a similar thing. In any event, I'll never know what that dude's story was. (And no, he was not Sacha Baron Cohen.) And again, the quesidilla was delicious.