I need to live here.
More for me than anyone else:
Saturday
1. Ruth and I arrive in Penn Station at 9; Check bags at Macy’s.
2. Breakfast at Pax in Herald Square, read the Times and New Yorker - talk about galleries and shit that’s going on we might want to do.
3. Shopping in Herald Square / Steve & Barry’s out of cool blue messenger bags.
4. Head up to Harlem to check in at 129 E 112th St, Virginia Guest House - really nice and friendly hispanic dude shows us our room. Ok for the price, but really really old looking worn-out stuff, like you would find in Grandma's attic (after Hurricane Katrina).
5. Downtown to Battery Park for MacBeth performed live starting from Castle Clinton and moving all around the park. I’m too tired and my feet are too blistery to participate.
Sunday
1. Sleep in a bit, up and out by 9.
2. Breakfast at Dunkin Donuts in Harlem. Yummy Croissant breakfast sandwhich with surprisingly tasty sausage.
3. Time for the Met! I can’t check my backpack because it has a laptop in it, which sucks. We stay in the Met from 10am-5:15pm when it closes. This is because Ruth likes art as much as I do! Yay! I spend most of the time miserably bitching about the weight of my pack, but get to see “The Death of Socrates,” some great Picassos, a cool Dali, a few Miros, some classical shit and a bunch of Rodin sculptures. Lots and lots of great art. We skip over the Egyptian stuff for the most part (sorry Jess, I’m saving it for when you can go!). Saw three Stradivaris. Ruth liked (as did I) a painting called Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin by Repin (I’ve never heard of it/him either, btw.) But the guy’s eyes seemed to be so haunting, conveying the exact emotion that you would expect him to be feeling from reading the description. Amazing view of Central Park and the west side from the sculpture garden on the roof.
4. Subway down to 50th and 7th Ave, walk a few blocks for the well-reviewed Pam Real Thai restaurant. I order the Green Curry, a Thai beer called Sappora, and Creme Brulee. None of this compares to the neat contemporary decor of the restaurant itself and the super-cute Asian waiters.
5. Walk down 9th from Hell’s Kitchen into Chelsea, I stop in a nice bar called Circus for a $9 pitcher of Yuengling while Ruth shops for a dress nearby. She joins me for my second (and third pitcher, it starts to get fuzzy here.) I love this bar the best. Prices, bartender, patrons: all cool.
6. We try to find the Trailer Park Lounge. We find it, but they’ve had their last call (WTF?) so we hail a cab to the Belgian Beer Bar after much tribulation, which is closed. For the second AND LAST time in my life, I get majorly ripped off by taking an NYC taxi.
7. We wander around (Chelsea/Flatiron District, no idea where we are now) until we find another bar with one other patron in it, a friend of the bartender’s, with whom the bartender is playing - get this - Rummy! (they play for money.) I get really drunk. Impaired judgement leads me to chain-smoking (inside with everyone else there, in NYC, illegally) and deciding to go home with stranger who says he’s a lawyer and is looking for a paralegal so I might have a job. (But I know, even while drunk, that he is not interested in me quite so much as my tall, attractive friend.)
8. After our umpteenth pitcher and a free shot, we cab it back to Harlem to grab our stuff, courtesy of this overweight, middle-aged lawyer who is really pretty nice, but whose creepiness is softened by the alcohol. I am not too drunk to leave a voicemail/text trail with Addie so that justice will be served in case we are murdered.
9. Arrive at a high-rise in Grammercy Park that looks like a hotel. Some CNN and a few cigarettes, a beer later, I’m asleep on this guy’s couch. Much more comfortable than the twin bed in our Harlem hostel, I must say.
Monday
1. Awake by 10? Both of us are REALLY hungover. Oops. No more drinking this week. Hangovers do not prevent a little pleasant poking around, to which we discover a closet full of corpses--haha! jk, just suits!, pictures of his son, and a ton of religious/Catholic stuff.
2. Leave strange lawyer’s apartment, go to Spring Street.
3. Eat breakfast at Deli on Spring near Subway - yay for Diet Ginger Ale!
4. Awesome Deli but Paninis mediocre/almost stale. Lots of choices at Deli - whole Buffet with crazy selection of foods, free internet upstairs. Black guy in suit sleeping in corner with his lunch.
5. Ruth found cool shoes in SoHo shoe store after salesman showed her eleventy million pairs.
6. Back to hostel for 4-hour nap / showers.
7. Walk across Central Park North, then take Subway down to 86th - walk across to Zabar’s.
8. Dinner at Hale and Hearty Soups. Yummy Chilled Aparagus, Leek and Potato.
9. Check out Upper West Side shops and Ruth gets touristy stuff for her sisters.
10. Stumble onto where The Dark Knight is premiering at at theatre on the Upper West Side; see the Batmobile go by on the back of a semi.
11. Subway to Times Square for more touristy shopping for Ruth’s sisters.
12. Worst street hot dog I’ve ever eaten.
13. Exhausted, and aware of the lameness of it, we decide to watch Hancock in Times Square for $12 a ticket. Movie mediocre. Screen really big, though.
14. Back to Harlem for sleepytime.
Tuesday
1. Slept in until 9 after Ruth left at 6 am for Penn Station; packed up and checked out.
2. Checked bags at Macy’s and shopped in Herald Square. Paid $4 for a water in Macy’s. Dumb. Still no blue bags and Steve & Barry’s. $1 everything bagel w/ cream cheese from street cart is the best ever.
3. Walked up Fifth, looking at architecture, shops, etc. to Apple Store.
4. Subway back to Macy’s, Got bags from check lady who threatened to keep them if I hadn’t actually shopped at Macy’s. I told her about the $4 water and offered to show receipt. Still lamenting $4 water purchase, especially since restaurants fill my bottle for free each time, and NYC tap water is the best I’ve ever tasted.
5. Laboriously lug bags up to 96th via two Subway transfers, walk to 94th and Lex to a cute little brownstone hostel with neat floor-specific indoor neon color scheme. And by little I mean LITTLE. Miniature. Tiny. Fucking SMALL. Leave some bags, re-pack light, and decided to head back downtown.
6. Stop at Barking Dog for late lunch. Chilled pureed pea soup with cilantro in it very good, best turkey sandwhich of my life. Decide I’m coming back for breakfast.
7. Subway to Bryant Park, read and people watch for a few hours.
8. Walk through Little Italy, calzone at Lombardi’s on Spring and Mulberry.
9. Keep walking east, across Bowery, down Delancy, end up at the Williamsburg Bridge.
10. Decide to walk across, hoping for a good view of waterfalls. Takes for-fucking-ever to walk across the bridge. Some cool pictures, but no good views of the waterfalls. My feet are dead. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.
11. End up in Brooklyn/Queens. Area only slightly creepy, pretty nice - but off my map. I stumble to the first Subway (now above ground) which will get me back to Manhattan. Back to my mini-room with three foreigners by 10pm. Horray for tiny, air-conditioned rooms! The whole place smells like bleach. I assume this is a good thing. Start reading Wittgenstein’s Poker. Asleep by 11 or Midnight. Not sure when.
Wednesday
1. Sleep in until 10, then Breakfast at Barking Dog on the Upper East Side.
2. Subway to Bryant Park / NYPL
3. Quick tour of the library, a little reading in the Rose Reading Room.
4. Saw Michael Ian Black reading in Bryant Park, snapped some pics to show Hillary. Used free Wi-Fi.
5. Subway to 53rd and 7th Ave for lunch at Stage Deli - surly bartender gets undeserved $5 tip, but the mini blueberry cheesecake is pretty good. First pickle was amazing, but $12 for a grilled cheese a bit much. I’m stuffed.
6. Subway to 23rd and 8th Ave to check out some free galleries in Chelsea - lots of cool stuff, saw some $50,000 photographs of Allen Ginsberg, creepy Chinese girl bathtub photos, neat painting called “Green?” Awesome sculpture/painting that reminded me of the last MoMA exhibit I saw on “What is a Painting” last year. Have a sad moment when I think about what a waste some art really is, how it all goes to rich people, and how people are starving in parts of the world while others are buying $100,000 paintings of red rectangles.
7. Then I buy a Diet Peach Tea Snapple from a street cart for $1.50. The guy is really nice and offers me a free cup of ice so I let him keep the change from $2. I start to feel better about the world.
8. Down to Canal to get Melisa’s purses. Score. Check out filthy dirty Chinatown.
9. Back up to 8th - walk to 9th Ave for Starbucks/Hell’s Kitchen. Meet some locals at Starbucks and eavesdrop while they talk about their world travels.
10. Read for a couple hours in Starbucks while charging phone and laptop and writing most of this. Since Starbucks is a greedy whore that makes you pay for wi-fi now, I decide to trek back uptown and hang out on the Apple Plaza on 5th with my charged laptop for some internetting.
11. Get a little turned around on the way out of the Subway and end up on 2nd Ave. Oops. No problem, I get to see the Queensboro Bridge at night. Back down 59th to Apple Plaza. After two hours of job searching with only a pinch of Facebook, I see I have an hour of battery left, it's 1:12 am, and my lunch from Stage Deli starting to wear off.
12. Grab a Snapple from street cart, walk back to Lex to take the Subway back uptown. At 2 a.m., this is a little creepy.
Thursday
1. Day kind of wasted: Slept in until 11, brunch at Barking Dog b/c I didn't want to find somewhere else and I was hungry. Cobb salad amazing.
2. Decided to go check out Dali at MoMA. Wouldn't let me check laptop, but wouldn't let me take backpack. ERGO, I would have to carry laptop around the museum. Saying "fuck that" I decide to wander around the city aimlessly.
3. End up reading in Central Park for a few hours after taking some pics from inside the Time Warner Center
4. Super-yucky hot grossness sends me back to hostel for a long nap. Wake up, decide on Hell's Kitchen for dinner. Leave laptop and cell phone to charge.
5. Find great Thai place in Hell's Kitchen. $15 for green curry, thai tea, good people watching.
6. Back to hostel for laptop and phone. More exploring.
7. Apple plaza to look up flight information, called US Air to see about standing-by.
8. Decide to head to LaGuardia now-ish. Hang out at Apple and read awhile, then back to hostel to gather things. It's almost 3 a.m. Everyone's asleep, so I gather all my stuff and take it outside. Pack on the steps, and study my maps.
Friday
1. Technically, it's Friday and I decided not to sleep. Take the Subway to Roosevelt Ave. in Queens. (a bit creepy).
2. Use my Spanish to find a bus stop! ¡Olé!
3. I'm in the ghetto, feeling like I'm gonna get mugged when the bus finally arrives.
4. Get to the airport, but miss the 6 a.m. flight to Pittsburgh, so I sleep in terminal for a few hours on my luggage. Have to throw away my toothpaste and body wash to get through security.
5. 9:20 a.m. flight to Pittsburgh. AMAZING VIEW OF MANHATTAN from airplane.
6. 10:50-ish a.m. land in Pittsburgh, pick up my 2008 Sebring Convertible and am off to Morgantown...
My NYC trip is over. *sigh*
.
Saturday
1. Ruth and I arrive in Penn Station at 9; Check bags at Macy’s.
2. Breakfast at Pax in Herald Square, read the Times and New Yorker - talk about galleries and shit that’s going on we might want to do.
3. Shopping in Herald Square / Steve & Barry’s out of cool blue messenger bags.
4. Head up to Harlem to check in at 129 E 112th St, Virginia Guest House - really nice and friendly hispanic dude shows us our room. Ok for the price, but really really old looking worn-out stuff, like you would find in Grandma's attic (after Hurricane Katrina).
5. Downtown to Battery Park for MacBeth performed live starting from Castle Clinton and moving all around the park. I’m too tired and my feet are too blistery to participate.
Sunday
1. Sleep in a bit, up and out by 9.
2. Breakfast at Dunkin Donuts in Harlem. Yummy Croissant breakfast sandwhich with surprisingly tasty sausage.
3. Time for the Met! I can’t check my backpack because it has a laptop in it, which sucks. We stay in the Met from 10am-5:15pm when it closes. This is because Ruth likes art as much as I do! Yay! I spend most of the time miserably bitching about the weight of my pack, but get to see “The Death of Socrates,” some great Picassos, a cool Dali, a few Miros, some classical shit and a bunch of Rodin sculptures. Lots and lots of great art. We skip over the Egyptian stuff for the most part (sorry Jess, I’m saving it for when you can go!). Saw three Stradivaris. Ruth liked (as did I) a painting called Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin by Repin (I’ve never heard of it/him either, btw.) But the guy’s eyes seemed to be so haunting, conveying the exact emotion that you would expect him to be feeling from reading the description. Amazing view of Central Park and the west side from the sculpture garden on the roof.
4. Subway down to 50th and 7th Ave, walk a few blocks for the well-reviewed Pam Real Thai restaurant. I order the Green Curry, a Thai beer called Sappora, and Creme Brulee. None of this compares to the neat contemporary decor of the restaurant itself and the super-cute Asian waiters.
5. Walk down 9th from Hell’s Kitchen into Chelsea, I stop in a nice bar called Circus for a $9 pitcher of Yuengling while Ruth shops for a dress nearby. She joins me for my second (and third pitcher, it starts to get fuzzy here.) I love this bar the best. Prices, bartender, patrons: all cool.
6. We try to find the Trailer Park Lounge. We find it, but they’ve had their last call (WTF?) so we hail a cab to the Belgian Beer Bar after much tribulation, which is closed. For the second AND LAST time in my life, I get majorly ripped off by taking an NYC taxi.
7. We wander around (Chelsea/Flatiron District, no idea where we are now) until we find another bar with one other patron in it, a friend of the bartender’s, with whom the bartender is playing - get this - Rummy! (they play for money.) I get really drunk. Impaired judgement leads me to chain-smoking (inside with everyone else there, in NYC, illegally) and deciding to go home with stranger who says he’s a lawyer and is looking for a paralegal so I might have a job. (But I know, even while drunk, that he is not interested in me quite so much as my tall, attractive friend.)
8. After our umpteenth pitcher and a free shot, we cab it back to Harlem to grab our stuff, courtesy of this overweight, middle-aged lawyer who is really pretty nice, but whose creepiness is softened by the alcohol. I am not too drunk to leave a voicemail/text trail with Addie so that justice will be served in case we are murdered.
9. Arrive at a high-rise in Grammercy Park that looks like a hotel. Some CNN and a few cigarettes, a beer later, I’m asleep on this guy’s couch. Much more comfortable than the twin bed in our Harlem hostel, I must say.
Monday
1. Awake by 10? Both of us are REALLY hungover. Oops. No more drinking this week. Hangovers do not prevent a little pleasant poking around, to which we discover a closet full of corpses--haha! jk, just suits!, pictures of his son, and a ton of religious/Catholic stuff.
2. Leave strange lawyer’s apartment, go to Spring Street.
3. Eat breakfast at Deli on Spring near Subway - yay for Diet Ginger Ale!
4. Awesome Deli but Paninis mediocre/almost stale. Lots of choices at Deli - whole Buffet with crazy selection of foods, free internet upstairs. Black guy in suit sleeping in corner with his lunch.
5. Ruth found cool shoes in SoHo shoe store after salesman showed her eleventy million pairs.
6. Back to hostel for 4-hour nap / showers.
7. Walk across Central Park North, then take Subway down to 86th - walk across to Zabar’s.
8. Dinner at Hale and Hearty Soups. Yummy Chilled Aparagus, Leek and Potato.
9. Check out Upper West Side shops and Ruth gets touristy stuff for her sisters.
10. Stumble onto where The Dark Knight is premiering at at theatre on the Upper West Side; see the Batmobile go by on the back of a semi.
11. Subway to Times Square for more touristy shopping for Ruth’s sisters.
12. Worst street hot dog I’ve ever eaten.
13. Exhausted, and aware of the lameness of it, we decide to watch Hancock in Times Square for $12 a ticket. Movie mediocre. Screen really big, though.
14. Back to Harlem for sleepytime.
Tuesday
1. Slept in until 9 after Ruth left at 6 am for Penn Station; packed up and checked out.
2. Checked bags at Macy’s and shopped in Herald Square. Paid $4 for a water in Macy’s. Dumb. Still no blue bags and Steve & Barry’s. $1 everything bagel w/ cream cheese from street cart is the best ever.
3. Walked up Fifth, looking at architecture, shops, etc. to Apple Store.
4. Subway back to Macy’s, Got bags from check lady who threatened to keep them if I hadn’t actually shopped at Macy’s. I told her about the $4 water and offered to show receipt. Still lamenting $4 water purchase, especially since restaurants fill my bottle for free each time, and NYC tap water is the best I’ve ever tasted.
5. Laboriously lug bags up to 96th via two Subway transfers, walk to 94th and Lex to a cute little brownstone hostel with neat floor-specific indoor neon color scheme. And by little I mean LITTLE. Miniature. Tiny. Fucking SMALL. Leave some bags, re-pack light, and decided to head back downtown.
6. Stop at Barking Dog for late lunch. Chilled pureed pea soup with cilantro in it very good, best turkey sandwhich of my life. Decide I’m coming back for breakfast.
7. Subway to Bryant Park, read and people watch for a few hours.
8. Walk through Little Italy, calzone at Lombardi’s on Spring and Mulberry.
9. Keep walking east, across Bowery, down Delancy, end up at the Williamsburg Bridge.
10. Decide to walk across, hoping for a good view of waterfalls. Takes for-fucking-ever to walk across the bridge. Some cool pictures, but no good views of the waterfalls. My feet are dead. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.
11. End up in Brooklyn/Queens. Area only slightly creepy, pretty nice - but off my map. I stumble to the first Subway (now above ground) which will get me back to Manhattan. Back to my mini-room with three foreigners by 10pm. Horray for tiny, air-conditioned rooms! The whole place smells like bleach. I assume this is a good thing. Start reading Wittgenstein’s Poker. Asleep by 11 or Midnight. Not sure when.
Wednesday
1. Sleep in until 10, then Breakfast at Barking Dog on the Upper East Side.
2. Subway to Bryant Park / NYPL
3. Quick tour of the library, a little reading in the Rose Reading Room.
4. Saw Michael Ian Black reading in Bryant Park, snapped some pics to show Hillary. Used free Wi-Fi.
5. Subway to 53rd and 7th Ave for lunch at Stage Deli - surly bartender gets undeserved $5 tip, but the mini blueberry cheesecake is pretty good. First pickle was amazing, but $12 for a grilled cheese a bit much. I’m stuffed.
6. Subway to 23rd and 8th Ave to check out some free galleries in Chelsea - lots of cool stuff, saw some $50,000 photographs of Allen Ginsberg, creepy Chinese girl bathtub photos, neat painting called “Green?” Awesome sculpture/painting that reminded me of the last MoMA exhibit I saw on “What is a Painting” last year. Have a sad moment when I think about what a waste some art really is, how it all goes to rich people, and how people are starving in parts of the world while others are buying $100,000 paintings of red rectangles.
7. Then I buy a Diet Peach Tea Snapple from a street cart for $1.50. The guy is really nice and offers me a free cup of ice so I let him keep the change from $2. I start to feel better about the world.
8. Down to Canal to get Melisa’s purses. Score. Check out filthy dirty Chinatown.
9. Back up to 8th - walk to 9th Ave for Starbucks/Hell’s Kitchen. Meet some locals at Starbucks and eavesdrop while they talk about their world travels.
10. Read for a couple hours in Starbucks while charging phone and laptop and writing most of this. Since Starbucks is a greedy whore that makes you pay for wi-fi now, I decide to trek back uptown and hang out on the Apple Plaza on 5th with my charged laptop for some internetting.
11. Get a little turned around on the way out of the Subway and end up on 2nd Ave. Oops. No problem, I get to see the Queensboro Bridge at night. Back down 59th to Apple Plaza. After two hours of job searching with only a pinch of Facebook, I see I have an hour of battery left, it's 1:12 am, and my lunch from Stage Deli starting to wear off.
12. Grab a Snapple from street cart, walk back to Lex to take the Subway back uptown. At 2 a.m., this is a little creepy.
Thursday
1. Day kind of wasted: Slept in until 11, brunch at Barking Dog b/c I didn't want to find somewhere else and I was hungry. Cobb salad amazing.
2. Decided to go check out Dali at MoMA. Wouldn't let me check laptop, but wouldn't let me take backpack. ERGO, I would have to carry laptop around the museum. Saying "fuck that" I decide to wander around the city aimlessly.
3. End up reading in Central Park for a few hours after taking some pics from inside the Time Warner Center
4. Super-yucky hot grossness sends me back to hostel for a long nap. Wake up, decide on Hell's Kitchen for dinner. Leave laptop and cell phone to charge.
5. Find great Thai place in Hell's Kitchen. $15 for green curry, thai tea, good people watching.
6. Back to hostel for laptop and phone. More exploring.
7. Apple plaza to look up flight information, called US Air to see about standing-by.
8. Decide to head to LaGuardia now-ish. Hang out at Apple and read awhile, then back to hostel to gather things. It's almost 3 a.m. Everyone's asleep, so I gather all my stuff and take it outside. Pack on the steps, and study my maps.
Friday
1. Technically, it's Friday and I decided not to sleep. Take the Subway to Roosevelt Ave. in Queens. (a bit creepy).
2. Use my Spanish to find a bus stop! ¡Olé!
3. I'm in the ghetto, feeling like I'm gonna get mugged when the bus finally arrives.
4. Get to the airport, but miss the 6 a.m. flight to Pittsburgh, so I sleep in terminal for a few hours on my luggage. Have to throw away my toothpaste and body wash to get through security.
5. 9:20 a.m. flight to Pittsburgh. AMAZING VIEW OF MANHATTAN from airplane.
6. 10:50-ish a.m. land in Pittsburgh, pick up my 2008 Sebring Convertible and am off to Morgantown...
My NYC trip is over. *sigh*
.