NYC: A Street-Level, On-the-Cheap Guide

[viridian5]

The Village Voice recently did a semi-serious article called "33 Reasons We Can't Help Loving Summer in the City (Even when it doesn't love us)." It's not totally on the money but it has some fun moments. I'm aware of some folks coming to New York City in the near future, so I present to you...

The Viridian5 Guide to Summer/Fall in New York City

Comments

[wirrrn]

This is really interesting. Hope to get there and use the advice some day. Love the bit about your people's "mental curtain". I often look cute guys right in the eye, but everyone else I just see through :)

My Mad Auntie is constantly stopping dead in the middle of sidewalks, but any NYers who dared challenge her would quickly discover they've made a serious and possibly life-threatening mistake :)

Left side escalator thing is common in Melbourne too. Not so much here.

Street food, yummo!

btw- you forgot to mention which subways have CHUDs in them :)

[viridian5]

btw- you forgot to mention which subways have CHUDs in them :)

Of course I didn't. We let the CHUDs take a tourist now and then to save ourselves. Duh.

[wirrrn]

Oh yeah- like we do here with the Estaurine Crocodiles :)

[unearthly_calm]

Thanks so much for this! This is really useful for me since I love discovering cities by walking around in them.
I just visited NY about a month ago and I'm already nostalgic.

[viridian5]

Aww! Ditto. One time when I went to New Orleans' French Quarter I hung out for a bit with two women I met on a tour and was able to direct them to restaurants and some fun shops. Their minds were blown when I told them I'd only been there for a day and learned all that by walking.

[7veilsphaedra]

The mention of Penn Station makes me think of the old site where people used to post their misinterpreted lyrics and stanzas from famous poems. One person, a former Catholic Sunday school teacher from New York, posted about how her students thought the stanza from a prayer which read "lead us not into temptation" was "lead us not into Penn Station," which - from your description - seems to have a weird logic about it.

What is it about cities (not just New York) and this allergy to public washrooms? What do they expect people to do? Squat on the street? Okay, I understand the reasoning: homeless people use these places to sleep in, drug addicts shoot up in them, tipping attendants would attract muggers, etc., but maybe it's time to charge a visitors' tax. Would it really kill them to hire security? Are they so allergic to giving people actual paid jobs? Especially really, really useful jobs which would benefit everyone? Unbelievable!

Thank you for the comprehensive insider's look.

[viridian5]

The current Penn Station is ugly and gloomy, and only becomes more so when you know what it replaced. People have been talking about making the current Penn Station pretty or moving it across the street into the historic Farley Post Office for years, but thus far it's just been talk.

That's pretty much how the argument over public toilets go. They don't want to hire security. They want to just make them tiny port-o-potties with an automated pay features, and when advocates for the disabled say this is discriminatory to people in wheelchairs they get told that if they're bigger they'll attract sleeping homeless people, addicts shooting up, and muggers and rapists with their victims. Lately my state is laying government workers off and closing some fire and police stations so there's no way they'd hire security for something like this.

[viridian5]

Though at least the destruction of Penn Station kickstarted the preservationist movement in New York City, stopping things like the attempt to sell Grand Central's air rights to put a giant ugly 70s-era skyscraper on top of it and Robert Moses trying to destroy a neighborhood downtown to ram a highway across Manhattan, just as he'd ripped out other NYC neighborhoods to put in highways. Prior to this, "progress" through demolition was almost a religion.

[alainia]

"* Don't eat pizza cut-up and with a fork unless you're a small child. People might look at you funny and Jon Stewart might mock you." LOL!!!!!!!! So true. *grins*

I miss NYC SO DAMN MUCH.

[viridian5]

Also, don't buy pizza made by Armenians. *g* Yeah, I got a kick out of that Stewart rant.

I miss you. It seems like so much free stuff I'd like to do came out after you left and could no longer do any of it with me.

[toscas_kiss]

Cool! Have memoried this and will read it again when I next hop over the pond.

[viridian5]

Thanks! I hope that can happen in the near future.

[toscas_kiss]

Hopefully! Should be later this year or Christmas.