LJ Idol Season 10, Week 2, Brushback Pitch

[my_name_is_jenn]

New York City. The Big Apple. The City that Never Sleeps. The City of Dreams

Comments

[majesticzaichik]

Wow you've had all sorts of crazy adventures in NYC! I don't get what's up with being told not to flush the toilet. That has nothing to do with electricity!

[alphaloria]

It's because pumps are required to get water up to higher floors. No power = no pump = really low water pressure.

[my_name_is_jenn]

alphaloria is right. No pumps, no water, no flushing toilets.

And let me tell you, four people in a hotel room for 24 hours without being able to flush the toilet was not fun.

[alphaloria]

I'm convinced NY is the worst city in the world when you need to pee.

[my_name_is_jenn]

I'm still scarred from that McDonalds experience.

[halfshellvenus]

Criminy, it's like there's a family curse or something tied to that city!

Thank goodness for the woman in the van. The city may thwart you, but individual people can still help.

[my_name_is_jenn]

My family has a vacation curse, I swear.

That woman was our savior that day. If not for her and her husband, we'd have slept out on the street somewhere that night.

[magazhchi]

Oh God! Seriously the city is a jinx for you. This was an amazing take on the prompt. I laughed while reading about the drunk Santa.

[my_name_is_jenn]

Our family seems to be cursed when it comes to vacations, but New York was by far the worst.

The drunk Santa was hilarious. Even at that age, I thought it was funny.

[sinnamongirl]

That's like a week, maybe 2 weeks, before I moved to NYC myself :) I remember people talking about the power outage, but I can't remember any details. Good entry!

[my_name_is_jenn]

The city was absolutely insane. We had to stay in the hotel an extra day because we couldn't get out of the city. The power was still out and they weren't letting anyone leave. It was NUTS.

My brother actually ended up in the ER the next day because he was so exhausted and dehydrated. So, being the 19-year-old genius that I was, I took my 11-year-old sister to walk around Times Square. Probably not the best idea, but it was interesting in a surreal sort of way to see all the flashing billboards dark. The only thing running was the stock ticker.

When we got out of the city, we made sure to notify all our friends and they all asked us what we were talking about. Apparently, it didn't really make the news.

[sinnamongirl]

It would be so surreal to see Times Square dark... Your poor brother, too. If I remember right, it was either that day or 9/11 (not sure) that one of my roommates walked across one of the bridges to get home from Manhattan to Brooklyn. She said it was very weird because so many people were walking over that the bridge just felt funny to her. She later saw on the news something about how that mass of people all at once was actually really bad for the bridge and putting it under too much stress. Cars weigh more, of course, but they go fast and don't usually stop, and the weight is more spread out. But it's not meant for a huge herd of pedestrians, so the stress on it was different. If that makes sense. I'm real tired, and not sure I know the right scientific words. Point being, she said that was the real scary part, walking across the bridge.

Which I'm 97% sure was the power outage, and not 9/11. Or it could've been both. It was all so long ago...

[my_name_is_jenn]

I had my video camera with me and panned around a few times. It was definitely weird. Plus, it was oddly empty considering the fact that nobody could leave the city and it was mid-afternoon. You'd figure with that many people, the streets would be crowded, but they weren't.

I think you're right about that being from the power outage. I know we couldn't drive over the bridge and were therefore stuck another night in the city.