The year is 1990. It is a hot August day in upstate, New York and James Bailey has two more days before taking a plane to film school in California. He and his friends are hanging out in a dilapidated plaza's Woolworths, smoking cigarettes and debating important issues such as metal bands, length of hair, and other daily doings of teenage life in Orange County. Stacey Polanski, an ex-metal chick, (now hardcore/punk rocker), arrives at the plaza. She has no cigarettes, but she has a plan: go to New York City and see her boyfriend's hardcore band at CBGB. James has no desire to go to the city, but he wants closure with Stacey after their one-night fling five months agoa night that continues to haunt him. And with nothing else to do in the Hudson Valley, James boards the metro train with Stacey and his friends and heads to New York City for a full day of art, culture and diversity, a journey that includes: the smell of mass transit, the anthropology of hardcore music, slam dancing, antiquing, Robert DeNiro, toboggan sleds, thoughts on the video console Magnavox Odyssey2, discussions with an angry English major, and the appeal of strawberry flavored Yoo-Hoo.