The Trip, Part 1: Everyone's your friend in New York City
Damn, looking through the pics to upload them's been making me want to go back to New York City.
The thing I noticed the most about New York City, besides it being awesome, is something I'm not sure I can explain well. I hadn't been to New York City in, I think, like fifteen years. The last time we'd gone, I was early teens at the oldest, and all I remember was we went to the American Museum of Natural History. And all I remember of that really was the giant blue whale hanging overhead, and being really thirsty and not feeling well. I was just starting to get sick and spend the next day half-delirious in bed. But even then, we hadn't spent much time in New York City. But it felt familiar, like after part of the first day, yeah I was going "OOH! Look at the awesome buildings!" But I wasn't worried about getting lost, even when I forgot my map, I felt like I knew the city, and I belonged. Part of that was probably because almost all the time there were around a dozen people there I was hanging out with. And part of it might be because New York City's familiar from books and TV shows and movies and games and everything else. And part of it was probably just because I like cities. I'm a city ferret, for all I haven't really lived in any very long. And I never felt in danger in New York, partly because we were usually in a group, and on Manhattan, but everybody I met in New York was friendly and helpful. And I was happy the whole time. If I had the money, I'd live in NY. At least for a while.
I'm putting the details, and the pictures, behind an LJ cut.
I took a LOT of pictures. A lot are just of random buildings, so they're not here, but they'll probably be uploaded to the flcikr gallery I've been using. Flickr has really nice tools for uploading and organizing photos. But that's not what you're here for, so to the story.
I took the train to New York. Because I like the train, and because it was faster than the plane, without the whole bullshit waiting for security parts and so on. I caught a train into DC, then had an hour or so to kill before my train to NY, so I wandered around Union Station. It's a pretty nice place, but a lot of it feels like a mall. They've got a bunch of high-end stores and stuff, including furniture and jewelry, which I don't think are aimed at train travelers. They also had a kid's show of some kind going on. And they have a lot of roman decorations, including a bunch of statues of legionnaires. With the note beside this on one of the stands. Heh.
Most of the scenery from the train was abandoned industrial property. It was really pretty depressing. But at least when we were going by the Philadelphia Zoo, I got to see an awesome balloon.
The Philadelphia Zoo is pretty cool too, but there wasn't really much of it that could be seen from the train. Man, I didn't go to any zoos while I was on my trip, it's been years since I've been to one. I should rectify it. But other than the balloon, it was a mostly unremarkable couple of hours to New York City.
Penn Station was not quite how I remembered it, but that was years ago. It felt less like a glorified mall, but maybe I just avoided that area. It was pretty crowded, and I didn't bother taking any pictures in there, because there wasn't much to see. I called Steve Carey, one of the awesome people from Truth and Beauty Bombs to find out what was up, which turned out to be not much, so I wandered around a little while and ended up going up by the New York City Public Library and its little park for a bit, but I couldn't go in since I still had my luggage with me. Whatever happened to having lockers at train stations? Another casualty of the stupid OMGTERRORISM reactions, I'm guessing. I got to see the famous lions, at least.
I also walked by the Empire State Building, and even went inside to the lobby, but I didn't bother going up it then. I was waiting for a call, and had my crap with me. And they charged. Which set a trend for the rest of the trip, I didn't go up any of the famous tall buildings you're supposed to go up in any of the cities I went to. I'm not really fond of heights. And I was more interested at the time by the fact there was a comic book shop right across from the Empire State Building. I never got the call from Steve, I just ended up heading over to Hoboken to meet up with MvCRage, whose place I was crashing at. Then we ended up going back into Manhattan to go to Crif's Dogs, where a bunch of webcartoonists and other people were meeting up before MoCCA. That's where I first got to meet Ryan North, his girlfriend Allene, Jeph Jacques, and several of the other webcomic people, plus most of the rest of the TaBB crew. By the time we were done there, it was about 1 AM, so everybody went home to sleep.
The next day was MoCCA itself. The first day of it. MoCCA was awesome, but its constantly overshadowed by all the other awesome things we did. I got to meet awesome people like Andy Runton, and the webcomics section was always crowded. Man, I totally could have spent five times the money I had on all the awesome things at the con. But I ended up spending much of the time hanging around the people I'd already met, which isn't really a bad thing, since they were all awesome. I say awesome a lot, but a lot of things really did fill me with awe. Not just the sense of hanging with the cool kids. I spent longer than I'd actually planned at the con the first day, because most of the non-table-manning crew left to the natural history museum while I was in the bathroom. They totally ditched me. I should have taken pics of all my swag, but I didn't. The swag's not really the point, anyway. So I just sort of hung around and talked with comics people, and looked at all the strange and wonderful and interesting things available and wished I were rich.
Later on though, I met up with the others in Union Square, while the con was still going on. They'd seen all of the Museum they wanted, so we went off to get dinner. We went to this Cuban place which was right off Union Square, it was really nice. And the food was really good. We got a bunch of different stuff and all tried some of each. They had sweet potato fries, and they also had yucca bites, those things were delicious. It all was.
Then we wandered around the streets of Manhattan a bit, since it was only 8, and decided to go hunt down the other half of our informal group, the actual comic people. We ran into each other on the street as it happened, and got invited back to the after-con party. I think this was either supposed to be creators only, or cheaper for creators, or something, but they let us all in. Which was good, because our dozen people almost doubled the number of people there, it wasn't a really packed party. It felt a lot like a high school dance, honestly, but I credit a lot of that to the christmas lights wrapped around the pillars. It was a little weird. But still awesome. Here's a couple pics from the party. I think I have more, I'll need to upload them. Flickr makes it easy though, and then they'll be on that page too. This is a pic of all of us at the party. This was half the group in the elevator leaving. I really don't photograph well.
Anyway, after the party, the party continued for a bunch of the comics folks, who went off to karaoke. Those of us who were broke or not old enough to drink (which included me) ended up going over to AndyClark's apartment and getting on the internet as a group. And Ventrilo chat. It was cool and very nerdy.
The next day we all went back to the con and spent more money. Then after a couple of hours, we left the table folks to their stuff, and went exploring. Luckily, we had a native guide. We went to Union Square, then by the Apple Store which is a big glass cube on top of something that feels like a school library, then we went to Central Park. Central Park, like many things I've been talking about, was awesome. We didn't even see a quarter of it.
This was the most inexplicable of all the statues we saw in the park. It's a little hard to make out. it's two eagles attacking a small mountain goat. I guess it's supposed to be symbolic, but I have no idea what of.
That evening, we went to Times Square as dusk was falling. Times Square is... It's not really something I can describe in words. Like most everything on the trip, it's a combination of so many sights and sounds and smells and feelings and things descriptions don't get that close. It was very shiny and bright. And a bit of a let-down in most of the places. Like the Hershey Store off Times Square, with five stories of neon candy outside, promising something like Willy Wonka's factory, but the inside was just one floor of bags and boxes of candy on sale. The best part was a gravity-fed "candy maker" which really just dumped candies onto slides that came down and filled a bucket. We were all pretty much let down by the whole store.
But as nerds, we did something I thought was cool, even though it was a lot of work. One of the camera stores on Times Square has a webcam pointed at the Square. And Sneaky's dad was the one who found it, and made her promise to go there in New York. So we stood around for fifteen minutes by the Friday's and some phone booths, while Sneaky was on the phone with her dad trying to narrow down where it was looking and get him to spot us. We finally did, and the half-dozen of us waved at him. Yes, I'm a nerd, but I thought that was pretty cool.
Man. These take a lot longer to write than I figured. And I'm only halfway through New York. But I'll leave it there for now, to finally get something up. If anybody has suggestions on how I should write them more concisely, feel free. These keep feeling like I'm just babbling and not really getting anywhere on describing the things that happened.
The thing I noticed the most about New York City, besides it being awesome, is something I'm not sure I can explain well. I hadn't been to New York City in, I think, like fifteen years. The last time we'd gone, I was early teens at the oldest, and all I remember was we went to the American Museum of Natural History. And all I remember of that really was the giant blue whale hanging overhead, and being really thirsty and not feeling well. I was just starting to get sick and spend the next day half-delirious in bed. But even then, we hadn't spent much time in New York City. But it felt familiar, like after part of the first day, yeah I was going "OOH! Look at the awesome buildings!" But I wasn't worried about getting lost, even when I forgot my map, I felt like I knew the city, and I belonged. Part of that was probably because almost all the time there were around a dozen people there I was hanging out with. And part of it might be because New York City's familiar from books and TV shows and movies and games and everything else. And part of it was probably just because I like cities. I'm a city ferret, for all I haven't really lived in any very long. And I never felt in danger in New York, partly because we were usually in a group, and on Manhattan, but everybody I met in New York was friendly and helpful. And I was happy the whole time. If I had the money, I'd live in NY. At least for a while.
I'm putting the details, and the pictures, behind an LJ cut.
I took a LOT of pictures. A lot are just of random buildings, so they're not here, but they'll probably be uploaded to the flcikr gallery I've been using. Flickr has really nice tools for uploading and organizing photos. But that's not what you're here for, so to the story.
I took the train to New York. Because I like the train, and because it was faster than the plane, without the whole bullshit waiting for security parts and so on. I caught a train into DC, then had an hour or so to kill before my train to NY, so I wandered around Union Station. It's a pretty nice place, but a lot of it feels like a mall. They've got a bunch of high-end stores and stuff, including furniture and jewelry, which I don't think are aimed at train travelers. They also had a kid's show of some kind going on. And they have a lot of roman decorations, including a bunch of statues of legionnaires. With the note beside this on one of the stands. Heh.
Most of the scenery from the train was abandoned industrial property. It was really pretty depressing. But at least when we were going by the Philadelphia Zoo, I got to see an awesome balloon.
The Philadelphia Zoo is pretty cool too, but there wasn't really much of it that could be seen from the train. Man, I didn't go to any zoos while I was on my trip, it's been years since I've been to one. I should rectify it. But other than the balloon, it was a mostly unremarkable couple of hours to New York City.
Penn Station was not quite how I remembered it, but that was years ago. It felt less like a glorified mall, but maybe I just avoided that area. It was pretty crowded, and I didn't bother taking any pictures in there, because there wasn't much to see. I called Steve Carey, one of the awesome people from Truth and Beauty Bombs to find out what was up, which turned out to be not much, so I wandered around a little while and ended up going up by the New York City Public Library and its little park for a bit, but I couldn't go in since I still had my luggage with me. Whatever happened to having lockers at train stations? Another casualty of the stupid OMGTERRORISM reactions, I'm guessing. I got to see the famous lions, at least.
I also walked by the Empire State Building, and even went inside to the lobby, but I didn't bother going up it then. I was waiting for a call, and had my crap with me. And they charged. Which set a trend for the rest of the trip, I didn't go up any of the famous tall buildings you're supposed to go up in any of the cities I went to. I'm not really fond of heights. And I was more interested at the time by the fact there was a comic book shop right across from the Empire State Building. I never got the call from Steve, I just ended up heading over to Hoboken to meet up with MvCRage, whose place I was crashing at. Then we ended up going back into Manhattan to go to Crif's Dogs, where a bunch of webcartoonists and other people were meeting up before MoCCA. That's where I first got to meet Ryan North, his girlfriend Allene, Jeph Jacques, and several of the other webcomic people, plus most of the rest of the TaBB crew. By the time we were done there, it was about 1 AM, so everybody went home to sleep.
The next day was MoCCA itself. The first day of it. MoCCA was awesome, but its constantly overshadowed by all the other awesome things we did. I got to meet awesome people like Andy Runton, and the webcomics section was always crowded. Man, I totally could have spent five times the money I had on all the awesome things at the con. But I ended up spending much of the time hanging around the people I'd already met, which isn't really a bad thing, since they were all awesome. I say awesome a lot, but a lot of things really did fill me with awe. Not just the sense of hanging with the cool kids. I spent longer than I'd actually planned at the con the first day, because most of the non-table-manning crew left to the natural history museum while I was in the bathroom. They totally ditched me. I should have taken pics of all my swag, but I didn't. The swag's not really the point, anyway. So I just sort of hung around and talked with comics people, and looked at all the strange and wonderful and interesting things available and wished I were rich.
Later on though, I met up with the others in Union Square, while the con was still going on. They'd seen all of the Museum they wanted, so we went off to get dinner. We went to this Cuban place which was right off Union Square, it was really nice. And the food was really good. We got a bunch of different stuff and all tried some of each. They had sweet potato fries, and they also had yucca bites, those things were delicious. It all was.
Then we wandered around the streets of Manhattan a bit, since it was only 8, and decided to go hunt down the other half of our informal group, the actual comic people. We ran into each other on the street as it happened, and got invited back to the after-con party. I think this was either supposed to be creators only, or cheaper for creators, or something, but they let us all in. Which was good, because our dozen people almost doubled the number of people there, it wasn't a really packed party. It felt a lot like a high school dance, honestly, but I credit a lot of that to the christmas lights wrapped around the pillars. It was a little weird. But still awesome. Here's a couple pics from the party. I think I have more, I'll need to upload them. Flickr makes it easy though, and then they'll be on that page too. This is a pic of all of us at the party. This was half the group in the elevator leaving. I really don't photograph well.
Anyway, after the party, the party continued for a bunch of the comics folks, who went off to karaoke. Those of us who were broke or not old enough to drink (which included me) ended up going over to AndyClark's apartment and getting on the internet as a group. And Ventrilo chat. It was cool and very nerdy.
The next day we all went back to the con and spent more money. Then after a couple of hours, we left the table folks to their stuff, and went exploring. Luckily, we had a native guide. We went to Union Square, then by the Apple Store which is a big glass cube on top of something that feels like a school library, then we went to Central Park. Central Park, like many things I've been talking about, was awesome. We didn't even see a quarter of it.
This was the most inexplicable of all the statues we saw in the park. It's a little hard to make out. it's two eagles attacking a small mountain goat. I guess it's supposed to be symbolic, but I have no idea what of.
That evening, we went to Times Square as dusk was falling. Times Square is... It's not really something I can describe in words. Like most everything on the trip, it's a combination of so many sights and sounds and smells and feelings and things descriptions don't get that close. It was very shiny and bright. And a bit of a let-down in most of the places. Like the Hershey Store off Times Square, with five stories of neon candy outside, promising something like Willy Wonka's factory, but the inside was just one floor of bags and boxes of candy on sale. The best part was a gravity-fed "candy maker" which really just dumped candies onto slides that came down and filled a bucket. We were all pretty much let down by the whole store.
But as nerds, we did something I thought was cool, even though it was a lot of work. One of the camera stores on Times Square has a webcam pointed at the Square. And Sneaky's dad was the one who found it, and made her promise to go there in New York. So we stood around for fifteen minutes by the Friday's and some phone booths, while Sneaky was on the phone with her dad trying to narrow down where it was looking and get him to spot us. We finally did, and the half-dozen of us waved at him. Yes, I'm a nerd, but I thought that was pretty cool.
Man. These take a lot longer to write than I figured. And I'm only halfway through New York. But I'll leave it there for now, to finally get something up. If anybody has suggestions on how I should write them more concisely, feel free. These keep feeling like I'm just babbling and not really getting anywhere on describing the things that happened.