nyc trip day 1
Today has been an adventure and I spent most of it traveling.
I got up early (for me), which meant that the light in my room was good. Morning light is often good and I'm sad that I miss it a lot.
Mom drove dad and I to the Amtrak train station around 10 this morning. I nearly fell asleep in the car.
Here is a picture from the parking lot.
We ran into someone dad knew who was going to the same conference while we were waiting. She talked a bit and I ran away to buy food because I'm awkward around strangers.
I bought pop tarts and 'tropical' pound cake. The pop tarts were apple and tasted exactly like the Quaker's Instant oatmeal I used to eat raw as a child. The pound cake. . .it was just bad. I still have half of it. I didn't finish it, that's how bad it was. And I pretty much always eat everything I buy.
Waiting for the train to arrive made me really antsy. Waiting for transportation usually does, especially when you know it's coming soon enough that you don't have time to get out a book or a sketch pad or something.
Once we got on the train, I was fine. A little nauseous (that always happens when I sleep badly), but otherwise fine. For some ungodly reason, I really like trains. Aboveground trains, anyways. Subways are grimy and feel dangerous and give me the creeps a lot of the time.
But aboveground trains are the shit. We took the Acela, which is like a roomy airplane that rolls across the ground.
Some of my best writing is done while traveling. Especially on trains.
I edited a good chunk of story. Even though I keep taking parts out, it's still getting longer. That's because some of the scenes are way too sparse or were so bad that they had to be rewritten completely, and the new versions have more words than the old.
I'm at an awkward bit now. I have been for a few days. One of the protagonists, Stark, who's a serial murderer, is fighting one of his victims. Writing hand-to-hand combat is hard and frightens/disturbs me much more than writing actual murder, for some reason.
It's awkward writing in front of other people. Especially when it's a murder. Especially more so when it's a murder with sexual overtones.
I had pizza for lunch. It was awful. Most train food is. The Sierra Mist was okay, though.
I saw lots of nice things out the window:
And then we arrived in New York City! The train station smelled like someone'd pissed in the corner. Someone probably had.
The escalators lit up rainbow.
I found myself very anxious as we ascended to surface-level city. I was thinking about everything that could go wrong while I was here. Raping and mugging and getting lost and god knows what else. Ugh.
We caught a taxi to the hotel. I was surprised how many taxis there are in New York. People really weren't kidding about that. It's like fall over here, all this yellow on the streets.
The hotel is a Doubletree. It has the weirdest lobby decor I've ever seen: glass droplets hanging from the ceiling, a backlit white-neon bar, and a circular lounge section. The lobby was on the third floor. They gave us walnut chocolate chip cookies. It was all a bit weird.
I don't know why you'd put walnuts in a cookie you were going to hand out to everyone who signed in at your front desk. A lot of people are allergic to nuts.
The room has paid internet. It's on the 38th floor. I don't know if I've ever been in a building that even had a 38th floor.
The view is great: the edge of Times Square, tiny taxis far below, a slice of central park in the distance, AC units on top of buildings, a roof garden. . .
Looking at the roofs of New York is very revealing. Everything has a nice shiny facade, metallic and seamless and super super nice, but behind it all is rust and tiredness and and a lot of old. New York is very old, even though it keeps up with the times, and it shows. I like it.
I like the parts of thing that show their tiredness, that smell like piss and are covered in graffiti and are not at all grand or stupendous. Those are the best parts.
One building had this xylophone texture on it that fucked with my eyes. It looked like it was moving whenever I looked next to it, but not at it.
After we'd settled into the hotel room, dad and I walked down to Central Park.
I gawked in a horrible and touristy manner the whole way there. I cannot get over how beautifully diverse New York is. All of the women are beautiful. I'm not even kidding.
There were black women with bizarre and fashionable clothes and lots of people of all genders with long wavy hair like I used to have and some of them were carrying rainbow flags from Pride and it was amazing, asdlkjfh. I was taller than a lot of people, which surprised me. I'm always taller than I expect to be when I'm in crowds.
The buildings in New York City are really tall. I guess I shouldn't be that surprised by that.
The ones with scaffolding have nets on them. Dad says they're for catching debris that falls while the buildings are being worked on. Maybe they catch the workers too sometimes.
There are street vendors everywhere, food vendors and tourist shit vendors, fake purse vendors with their wares on sheets so they can wrap them up in case of police, jewelery vendors, caricature artists. . .I could go on. There was even a smoothie stand. NYC has everything.
Everything seems to be a tourist trap. I feel suspicious of everyone.
Central Park smells like horse shit, because it is literally covered in horse shit. There are horse drawn carriages, and the horses just poop everywhere. Besides that, though, Central Park is nice. New York would die without it.
There are birds, a lot of birds, mostly ducks and sparrows but some geese and swans too.
We passed some balloon sculptors, the shittiest human sculpture ever, and a saxophonist playing the Pink Panther theme song.
Central Park has a carnival. The carnival has whac-a-mole, which dad says means it's a real carnival.
The pond had a huge orange koi in it. It was maybe two feet long. We made up this whole scenario in which the koi is like Jaws but little, and tiny people on a remote control have to fight it.
On our walk back I noticed that there is almost literally a Starbucks on every single block. My feet were sore already, which was not okay. I need those feet not sore for tomorrow. I think I'll ice them a bit tonight.
These dogs wouldn't make eye contact with me. Dogs either hate me or love me in a creepy, let-me-lick-your-face sort of way.
We stopped and bought dinner in a little store staffed by Asian people that had about a million kinds of drinks and colorful chewing gum.
This sign made me want to take out a red pen and mark it up.
Back at the hotel we ate. Dad and I drank a whole bottle of seltzer and I also drank an entire vitamin water. Then I felt really sick, because that was far too much liquid for one sitting.
I had mozzarella sticks. Fuck I love mozzarella sticks.
We sat around the hotel room for maybe half an hour and then went to see Chicago.
Holy crap Chicago. Wow. Wow wow wow. There were lots of attractive people wearing not very many clothes singing and dancing with great deals of talent. I chose Chicago solely because of this song, which is a terrible reason:
but it was worth it.
Everything was black lingerie and spotlights and glitter and it was amazing. The male lead looked very sixties, sort of Sean Connery-esque. . .and the women. I can't even. Dancing gives you serious legs, man.
The men's bathroom:
There were pedicabs lined up to take people places when they got out of the theater. The drivers were all ringing their bells at the same time, which sounded nice.
And then we walked back.
OH
OH MY GOD
SO THAT'S WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT
Times Square is breathtaking in the dark. You can still see because of the screens, the four-story tall screens lighting up everything, all this consumerism everywhere, chaos and movement, just
HOLY SHIT
WOW
Here are some things I saw.
And thus ends day one. Now I'm going to sleep.
I got up early (for me), which meant that the light in my room was good. Morning light is often good and I'm sad that I miss it a lot.
Mom drove dad and I to the Amtrak train station around 10 this morning. I nearly fell asleep in the car.
Here is a picture from the parking lot.
We ran into someone dad knew who was going to the same conference while we were waiting. She talked a bit and I ran away to buy food because I'm awkward around strangers.
I bought pop tarts and 'tropical' pound cake. The pop tarts were apple and tasted exactly like the Quaker's Instant oatmeal I used to eat raw as a child. The pound cake. . .it was just bad. I still have half of it. I didn't finish it, that's how bad it was. And I pretty much always eat everything I buy.
Waiting for the train to arrive made me really antsy. Waiting for transportation usually does, especially when you know it's coming soon enough that you don't have time to get out a book or a sketch pad or something.
Once we got on the train, I was fine. A little nauseous (that always happens when I sleep badly), but otherwise fine. For some ungodly reason, I really like trains. Aboveground trains, anyways. Subways are grimy and feel dangerous and give me the creeps a lot of the time.
But aboveground trains are the shit. We took the Acela, which is like a roomy airplane that rolls across the ground.
Some of my best writing is done while traveling. Especially on trains.
I edited a good chunk of story. Even though I keep taking parts out, it's still getting longer. That's because some of the scenes are way too sparse or were so bad that they had to be rewritten completely, and the new versions have more words than the old.
I'm at an awkward bit now. I have been for a few days. One of the protagonists, Stark, who's a serial murderer, is fighting one of his victims. Writing hand-to-hand combat is hard and frightens/disturbs me much more than writing actual murder, for some reason.
It's awkward writing in front of other people. Especially when it's a murder. Especially more so when it's a murder with sexual overtones.
I had pizza for lunch. It was awful. Most train food is. The Sierra Mist was okay, though.
I saw lots of nice things out the window:
- Grass and highway-colored scrub and trees
- The seashore in Connecticut, complete with docks and cute sailboats
- Layers upon layers of candy-colored graffiti while entering New York
And then we arrived in New York City! The train station smelled like someone'd pissed in the corner. Someone probably had.
The escalators lit up rainbow.
I found myself very anxious as we ascended to surface-level city. I was thinking about everything that could go wrong while I was here. Raping and mugging and getting lost and god knows what else. Ugh.
We caught a taxi to the hotel. I was surprised how many taxis there are in New York. People really weren't kidding about that. It's like fall over here, all this yellow on the streets.
The hotel is a Doubletree. It has the weirdest lobby decor I've ever seen: glass droplets hanging from the ceiling, a backlit white-neon bar, and a circular lounge section. The lobby was on the third floor. They gave us walnut chocolate chip cookies. It was all a bit weird.
I don't know why you'd put walnuts in a cookie you were going to hand out to everyone who signed in at your front desk. A lot of people are allergic to nuts.
The room has paid internet. It's on the 38th floor. I don't know if I've ever been in a building that even had a 38th floor.
The view is great: the edge of Times Square, tiny taxis far below, a slice of central park in the distance, AC units on top of buildings, a roof garden. . .
Looking at the roofs of New York is very revealing. Everything has a nice shiny facade, metallic and seamless and super super nice, but behind it all is rust and tiredness and and a lot of old. New York is very old, even though it keeps up with the times, and it shows. I like it.
I like the parts of thing that show their tiredness, that smell like piss and are covered in graffiti and are not at all grand or stupendous. Those are the best parts.
One building had this xylophone texture on it that fucked with my eyes. It looked like it was moving whenever I looked next to it, but not at it.
After we'd settled into the hotel room, dad and I walked down to Central Park.
I gawked in a horrible and touristy manner the whole way there. I cannot get over how beautifully diverse New York is. All of the women are beautiful. I'm not even kidding.
There were black women with bizarre and fashionable clothes and lots of people of all genders with long wavy hair like I used to have and some of them were carrying rainbow flags from Pride and it was amazing, asdlkjfh. I was taller than a lot of people, which surprised me. I'm always taller than I expect to be when I'm in crowds.
The buildings in New York City are really tall. I guess I shouldn't be that surprised by that.
The ones with scaffolding have nets on them. Dad says they're for catching debris that falls while the buildings are being worked on. Maybe they catch the workers too sometimes.
There are street vendors everywhere, food vendors and tourist shit vendors, fake purse vendors with their wares on sheets so they can wrap them up in case of police, jewelery vendors, caricature artists. . .I could go on. There was even a smoothie stand. NYC has everything.
Everything seems to be a tourist trap. I feel suspicious of everyone.
Central Park smells like horse shit, because it is literally covered in horse shit. There are horse drawn carriages, and the horses just poop everywhere. Besides that, though, Central Park is nice. New York would die without it.
There are birds, a lot of birds, mostly ducks and sparrows but some geese and swans too.
We passed some balloon sculptors, the shittiest human sculpture ever, and a saxophonist playing the Pink Panther theme song.
Central Park has a carnival. The carnival has whac-a-mole, which dad says means it's a real carnival.
The pond had a huge orange koi in it. It was maybe two feet long. We made up this whole scenario in which the koi is like Jaws but little, and tiny people on a remote control have to fight it.
On our walk back I noticed that there is almost literally a Starbucks on every single block. My feet were sore already, which was not okay. I need those feet not sore for tomorrow. I think I'll ice them a bit tonight.
These dogs wouldn't make eye contact with me. Dogs either hate me or love me in a creepy, let-me-lick-your-face sort of way.
We stopped and bought dinner in a little store staffed by Asian people that had about a million kinds of drinks and colorful chewing gum.
This sign made me want to take out a red pen and mark it up.
Back at the hotel we ate. Dad and I drank a whole bottle of seltzer and I also drank an entire vitamin water. Then I felt really sick, because that was far too much liquid for one sitting.
I had mozzarella sticks. Fuck I love mozzarella sticks.
We sat around the hotel room for maybe half an hour and then went to see Chicago.
Holy crap Chicago. Wow. Wow wow wow. There were lots of attractive people wearing not very many clothes singing and dancing with great deals of talent. I chose Chicago solely because of this song, which is a terrible reason:
Click to viewbut it was worth it.
Everything was black lingerie and spotlights and glitter and it was amazing. The male lead looked very sixties, sort of Sean Connery-esque. . .and the women. I can't even. Dancing gives you serious legs, man.
The men's bathroom:
There were pedicabs lined up to take people places when they got out of the theater. The drivers were all ringing their bells at the same time, which sounded nice.
And then we walked back.
OH
OH MY GOD
SO THAT'S WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT
Times Square is breathtaking in the dark. You can still see because of the screens, the four-story tall screens lighting up everything, all this consumerism everywhere, chaos and movement, just
HOLY SHIT
WOW
Here are some things I saw.
And thus ends day one. Now I'm going to sleep.