Barry [RustyBrick] Shwartz.

I always look forward to bumping into Barry Schwartz [AKA Rusty Brick] when I’m in NYC. But we never ever get a chance to do dinner and catch-up.

However, this time I made a point of inviting him and Yisha, his beautiful wife-to-be for an intimate dinner. It would be me and Rebecca and him and Yisha. Anyway, I arrived at the restaurant with 18 people in tow, as usual. And what a night it was.

Here’s Barry and Yisha [Awwwww, so romantic!

It turns out that it was Kim Krause’s husbands birthday [Eric] and also Christine Churchill’s and Matt Bailey’s too (he couldn’t make it though).

I asked the restaurant manager if he could throw together something that looked like a birthday cake for them.

Here’s Kim and Eric.

And here’s Eric and Christine after a little “happy birthday to you” from the waiters.

Looking up the table you can see Jill Whalen and Kim and Kevin Newcomb and… the backs of various people’s heads!

Jim Banks pointed out that as I’m always behind the camera I’m rarely seen in these types of shots. So, here I am sitting next to my editor at ClickZ, Erin Brenner, who I met for the very first time last night (she’s nowhere near as scary at dinner as when she’s hunting me down for copy!

Meanwhile, back at the hotel we did partake in a little extra “one for the road. A surprisingly sober Bill Slawski looked as though he was ready to do the New York marathon.

And Chris Sherman listened very attentively to my sparkling conversation.