Mayday New York
Amir wanted to meet up in the City. So I rode the dog to New York for the weekend.
Let me just say it outright:
I hate New York. The City of Brotherly Love might have been the only town to pride itself on booing Santa Claus, but New Yorkers have a certain attitude--a unique combination of indifference and outright hostility, with just a little paranoid neurosis thrown in for good measure--about them that really irks me. The city is packed with people living cheek-by-jowl in a society that wants to live at arms' length. Whenever we'd go to visit family there, I'd always have the sense that the city was slowly digesting me--and that one day, when it had finished with me, it would shit whatever was left out, and let that be flushed down the East River.
My bus was late getting in, and I finally met Amir under the clock at Grand Central. We dumped our stuff where he was staying (turns out, Secaucus. Rooms are expensive in the city, unless you don't mind bedspacing--something I'll look into for next time) and tried to figure out what we were going to do. It was a cool day, with drizzle occasionally stopping for showers which, from time to time, let real rain fall. Logically, we decided it was a good time to take a nice, long walk around town.
Downtown, anyway. We moved vaguely southward for thirty-odd blocks, mostly on Seventh Avenue. As we watched the people strolling by, it rapidly became clear that we weren't going to be nearly fashionable enough to survive a night out on the town.
But you all knew this already.
We kept meandering southward towards the Village, and we found ourselves following two suspicious-looking individuals:
Luggage, or suitcase nuke? We live in dangerous times.
Of course, that didn't mean that there weren't other people out engaged in more peaceful pursuits, like this girl
Walking the dog. This was somewhere near Bleeker Street
I wasn't taking too many pictures. I was too busy walking and talking with Amir. But eventually I did badger him into standing still long enough for one set-piece portrait:
Amir.
Anyway, as we finally blundered into Washington Square, I felt stupidly sentimental and literary; I muttered some Ginsberg to myself as we sat down in a coffeeshop on the south side of the square to take stock of the situation and watch the students pretend not to worry about Finals. Amir calls Tara, a friend of his from IBM. Turns out she's up in Poughkeepsie, but yeah, she'd be up for a night out on the town. With (unexpected) company enroute, we decided to take a cab uptown, have a few drinks, and wait for Tara.
Headed uptown
I get a text from Tara--traffic's holding her up, so she'll be a bit late. "Start drinking," is the order. Given such clear instructions, we had no choice but to comply.We settle down for a few beers at the Mercury Bar. The Mets are on TV--they're away at RFK, playing the Nats. I am the lone Nats fan in the bar, and I wear my Nats hat defiantly. As the Nats clobber the luckless Mets 5-0, Tara arrives.
The Nats win. I get the next round.
After a few beers, we decide to strike out and see where fortune takes us. Fortune, as it happens, takes us uptown--with a quick detour so that Tara can change out of her pointy shoes into something better-suited to random walking. The rain starts to fall very hard, and we stumble into a quiet bar/restaurant that would be full of bankers, had it been a weekday. Since it was Saturday, it's nearly empty. Any port in a storm, I guess. Another round, and we talk sports; Tara and I try to teach Amir baseball--well, more baseball, anyway than he knew already. Amir and I try to teach Tara cricket.
The bartender tells us that things should be interesting around Second Avenue, but that the night doesn't really get started until later. We wander up to Second Avenue and look for a likely place to settle in. Another tip leads us to Turtle Bay: a mistake. Quiet as Good Friday inside, except for the small knot of drunken friends in one corner. One of the men in that motley assortment--someone who's evidently had more than enough--gets up and starts dancing. No big deal. He takes off his shirt. We head to the exit.
Cross the street to a more favorable place, which will remain nameless because by this point my grasp of geography was becoming increasingly approximate--also, because I don't remember seeing a name anywhere. The bouncer reminds me to take my hat off. I try to manage a look of withering disdain as I take off my Nats hat and fold it up.
Having finally found somewhere to settle in, we decided to take some pictures:
The usual suspects
Tara and me
Tara and Amir
Film noir?
That time of the morning rolled around. We stumbled back along 42nd Street and found the McDonalds' in Times Square. Had a few burgers, laughed a bit. Marched off, and said goodnight to Tara at her car. (Tara, if you read this, leave a comment so that I know you made it back upstate in one piece).
We flagged down a taxi and haggled our way back...and promptly crashed. The time was 0 dark 30.
Not too long after, we woke up, cleaned up, and made our way back into the city. We ate brunch at a sandwich shop near central park--Amir had eaten there last time he was in town. It was one of those mornings of short declarative sentences. We thought about having dessert. We had dessert. And coffee. Amir decided to do a bit of wlan sniffing.
Amir warwalking. He's more 1337 than he looks
Later, we made our way up Columbus Circle and sat down in the sun at the monument to the dead of the Battleship Maine, collecting ourselves.
Having a ball. Central Park
This kid is cooler now than I will ever be. When I realized this, I was greatly depressed.
Even while he was playing "All of Me," (one of my favorite tunes), he could hear my shutter go off, and was on his feet immediately. I was going to give him the dollar anyway, becuase the sun was shining and he was playing the right tune.
The sunshine seemed to put a smile on everyone's face...everyone except the statue-guy, that is
We got the subway back to the Port Authority bus terminal, and said goodbye. Amir needed to leave pretty early, since his flight back to England was leaving from JFK, and he intended to allow plenty of time for the security harassment....er, inspections. I was able to grab an earlier bus to back to DC.
Would I do it again? Certainly. With bus fares between DC and NYC as low as they are, it's almost too easy to get up there. The bus puts me right in town without having to drive, and leaves just enough in my pocket to make the trip feasible.
Do I still hate New York?
That's a tougher question.
I liked New York a little more this time--enough to consider going back without having friends or family as a pretext. But I will tell you this: I'm never going to root for the Yankees or the Mets. Ever.
Let me just say it outright:
I hate New York. The City of Brotherly Love might have been the only town to pride itself on booing Santa Claus, but New Yorkers have a certain attitude--a unique combination of indifference and outright hostility, with just a little paranoid neurosis thrown in for good measure--about them that really irks me. The city is packed with people living cheek-by-jowl in a society that wants to live at arms' length. Whenever we'd go to visit family there, I'd always have the sense that the city was slowly digesting me--and that one day, when it had finished with me, it would shit whatever was left out, and let that be flushed down the East River.
My bus was late getting in, and I finally met Amir under the clock at Grand Central. We dumped our stuff where he was staying (turns out, Secaucus. Rooms are expensive in the city, unless you don't mind bedspacing--something I'll look into for next time) and tried to figure out what we were going to do. It was a cool day, with drizzle occasionally stopping for showers which, from time to time, let real rain fall. Logically, we decided it was a good time to take a nice, long walk around town.
Downtown, anyway. We moved vaguely southward for thirty-odd blocks, mostly on Seventh Avenue. As we watched the people strolling by, it rapidly became clear that we weren't going to be nearly fashionable enough to survive a night out on the town.
But you all knew this already.
We kept meandering southward towards the Village, and we found ourselves following two suspicious-looking individuals:
Luggage, or suitcase nuke? We live in dangerous times.
Of course, that didn't mean that there weren't other people out engaged in more peaceful pursuits, like this girl
Walking the dog. This was somewhere near Bleeker Street
I wasn't taking too many pictures. I was too busy walking and talking with Amir. But eventually I did badger him into standing still long enough for one set-piece portrait:
Amir.
Anyway, as we finally blundered into Washington Square, I felt stupidly sentimental and literary; I muttered some Ginsberg to myself as we sat down in a coffeeshop on the south side of the square to take stock of the situation and watch the students pretend not to worry about Finals. Amir calls Tara, a friend of his from IBM. Turns out she's up in Poughkeepsie, but yeah, she'd be up for a night out on the town. With (unexpected) company enroute, we decided to take a cab uptown, have a few drinks, and wait for Tara.
Headed uptown
I get a text from Tara--traffic's holding her up, so she'll be a bit late. "Start drinking," is the order. Given such clear instructions, we had no choice but to comply.We settle down for a few beers at the Mercury Bar. The Mets are on TV--they're away at RFK, playing the Nats. I am the lone Nats fan in the bar, and I wear my Nats hat defiantly. As the Nats clobber the luckless Mets 5-0, Tara arrives.
The Nats win. I get the next round.
After a few beers, we decide to strike out and see where fortune takes us. Fortune, as it happens, takes us uptown--with a quick detour so that Tara can change out of her pointy shoes into something better-suited to random walking. The rain starts to fall very hard, and we stumble into a quiet bar/restaurant that would be full of bankers, had it been a weekday. Since it was Saturday, it's nearly empty. Any port in a storm, I guess. Another round, and we talk sports; Tara and I try to teach Amir baseball--well, more baseball, anyway than he knew already. Amir and I try to teach Tara cricket.
The bartender tells us that things should be interesting around Second Avenue, but that the night doesn't really get started until later. We wander up to Second Avenue and look for a likely place to settle in. Another tip leads us to Turtle Bay: a mistake. Quiet as Good Friday inside, except for the small knot of drunken friends in one corner. One of the men in that motley assortment--someone who's evidently had more than enough--gets up and starts dancing. No big deal. He takes off his shirt. We head to the exit.
Cross the street to a more favorable place, which will remain nameless because by this point my grasp of geography was becoming increasingly approximate--also, because I don't remember seeing a name anywhere. The bouncer reminds me to take my hat off. I try to manage a look of withering disdain as I take off my Nats hat and fold it up.
Having finally found somewhere to settle in, we decided to take some pictures:
The usual suspects
Tara and me
Tara and Amir
Film noir?
That time of the morning rolled around. We stumbled back along 42nd Street and found the McDonalds' in Times Square. Had a few burgers, laughed a bit. Marched off, and said goodnight to Tara at her car. (Tara, if you read this, leave a comment so that I know you made it back upstate in one piece).
We flagged down a taxi and haggled our way back...and promptly crashed. The time was 0 dark 30.
Not too long after, we woke up, cleaned up, and made our way back into the city. We ate brunch at a sandwich shop near central park--Amir had eaten there last time he was in town. It was one of those mornings of short declarative sentences. We thought about having dessert. We had dessert. And coffee. Amir decided to do a bit of wlan sniffing.
Amir warwalking. He's more 1337 than he looks
Later, we made our way up Columbus Circle and sat down in the sun at the monument to the dead of the Battleship Maine, collecting ourselves.
Having a ball. Central Park
This kid is cooler now than I will ever be. When I realized this, I was greatly depressed.
Even while he was playing "All of Me," (one of my favorite tunes), he could hear my shutter go off, and was on his feet immediately. I was going to give him the dollar anyway, becuase the sun was shining and he was playing the right tune.
The sunshine seemed to put a smile on everyone's face...everyone except the statue-guy, that is
We got the subway back to the Port Authority bus terminal, and said goodbye. Amir needed to leave pretty early, since his flight back to England was leaving from JFK, and he intended to allow plenty of time for the security harassment....er, inspections. I was able to grab an earlier bus to back to DC.
Would I do it again? Certainly. With bus fares between DC and NYC as low as they are, it's almost too easy to get up there. The bus puts me right in town without having to drive, and leaves just enough in my pocket to make the trip feasible.
Do I still hate New York?
That's a tougher question.
I liked New York a little more this time--enough to consider going back without having friends or family as a pretext. But I will tell you this: I'm never going to root for the Yankees or the Mets. Ever.