So this year’s big ol’ summer trip was NYC. I feel funny sitting down to write about it because so many people have written so many things about the tiny island of Manhattan (which is where I visited, by the way) that I can’t imagine I’ll have much to say that’s original. Regardless, I shall still attempt to share my experiences with my small audience, because I’ve been waiting for a fairly long time for some sort of inspiration or reason to try writing again. Who can pass up the topic of NYC? Be forewarned: this will be terribly plot-heavy in the sense that it covers a lot of what I did (which is boring unless you did it too). I might manage to throw in some analysis, though, so be on the lookout for that. It’s like a mental safari!

So in planning a trip to someplace as large and terribly intimidating as NYC, one needs resources that can simplify the experience and give advice. Where else to turn but ‘New York City for Dummies’? However, one large downside to this book is that it is very good at keeping you within the bounds of ‘tourist.’ I don’t like that label, and surprisingly enough, it’s a very avoidable label, even in NYC. Almost everything in the book is very mainstream, which is not fun in New York, because that means there will be a lot of people. For example, NYCfD was careful to lead its readers toward LaGuardia and JFK airports, stating that these airports were closer and more convenient. It also said that other, smaller airports, like MacArthur on Long Island, were not worth looking at because, “the inconvenience and high cost of getting into the city from these out-of-the-way-airports far outweigh the money you save by using them.”
Here’s the reality: Had my dad and I gone through JFK, for example, not only would we have had to deal with a crowded airport and some more expensive airline that charges extra for window seats and consistently cancels flights because they aren’t full enough, we would have also been faced with the difficult task of navigating the NYC subway system with all our luggage, or had to pay for a cab. Through MacArthur, we flew Southwest (which is cheaper and less annoying and flaky in general), took a $5 shuttle to the Ronkonkoma train station, paid $10 for a ticket into Manhattan, and ended up smack in the middle of the city (Penn Station) blocks from our hotel. It seemed much too easy, and much too cheap.
The moral of this story, I find, is that it’s better to see if the lesser-known options work first. This came in handy for much of the rest of the trip as well.

I mentioned the subway system earlier. Subways are fantastic. Once you walk around for a while and get oriented with some streets, it’s amazingly easy to figure out how to use them. The best part about them is that you often get free on-ride entertainment (not usually the egregious type that is readily apparent; you generally have to spend some time observing) because people are fun to watch.
If you want to be reminded about what it’s like to be human, ride the subway. And don’t sneak down at 3:00 am and ride a couple stops, that’s no fun. Go smack in the middle of evening rush hour, in the middle of July, when the underground stations are humid and probably around 98 degrees. Find a car whose air conditioning has failed, and pack yourself in among all the bored and tired people who are just thinking about getting home. That is a freaking subway ride.
Or, if you’d prefer sanity, ride around in the middle of the day, where you get to see an assortment of people who did not choose desk jobs for their occupation. There is a surprising shortage (surprising for me, at least) of crazies and beggars, though when you see one, the experience is enough to last for a while. The commoner in Manhattan is… normal. At least, as normal as one can be while packed into such a dense city. And you miss a great deal of that if you spend lots of extra money to take cabs.

Walking in Manhattan is another great experience, and one that differs depending on what area you’re in. Greenwich village is a wonderful place to walk. It’s quiet and classy, and most people you see are either reading a book as they make their way down the street, walking their dog, or both. Occasionally, late at night, you can hear some snazzy jazz making its way out into the night air, and there are many viewing gardens or sitting squares where people just gather near greenery. I think Greenwich village was my favorite neighborhood, from what we visited.
Our hotel was somewhat near Korea Town, although for the most part, it seemed a fairly regular New York-y sort of area. Walking along these streets often had sidewalk detours due to construction, and in the afternoon, you had to face off with some impatient Manhattan residents, which required you to walk in a single-file sort of manner while groups of two or three New Yorkers would brush past you indifferently. It was often ridiculously hot and sunny and industrialized, unless you chose the route through the Flowershop District (not officially named, by the way. Just a cluster of shops with colorful plants spilling out all over the sidewalk).
The Bronx was picturesque in an odd sort of way (we only ventured out of Manhattan when we got bored with buildings and decided to see the Bronx Zoo). I was reminded of Maniac Magee (haven’t read the book? Too bad) because it was the typical black neighborhood in the summer, with fire hydrants gushing and small children with popsicles that melted faster than they could be consumed. It felt very much like a community, albeit a community that I would never be a part of.
The best place to walk (sarcasm included) was Times Square. It felt like Vegas (many of you already know my qualms with Vegas) in that it just had lights… everywhere. There were chain restaurants mixed with long lines mixed with huge flashy signs mixed with constant noise and it was not fun. The sidewalks, which were already wider than most sidewalks in NY, felt like high school hallways again, where you had to jump and dart and dodge and bump into people constantly. It was especially bad because most people had their gazes pointed upward, at the huge, pretty colorful moving advertisements for Broadway shows or the M&Ms store instead of looking at the people they were walking into. And it’s no surprise that the stores themselves were purely tourist traps. One night, my dad and I had about an hour to kill before the performance started at Birdland (which is just off the main hubbub of Times Square) so we went into the M&M store to see what all the fuss was about. If you enjoy paying companies to advertise for them, this is your heaven. Name something, anything: you could buy it here, with a picture of a personified M&M on it! Isn’t that exciting? Oh, and that legendary wall of different colored candies, don’t let me forget that. People swarmed below the colors to fill their little bags with specifically color-coordinated M&Ms. After filling their bags, they proceeded to walk around the store, eating right out of them, apparently under the impression that this chocolate was free. Wondering just how much it costs per pound of M&Ms at the infamous store? Nobody knows, until you buy them, because the price isn’t displayed anywhere. What was fun was examining the price tags of pre-filled bags, in the colors of the NY Yankees. At $14.00 a bag, with an estimated 200 M&Ms, that puts you at 7 cents per candy. But it had the Yankees logo printed on them, so it was worth it, right? The ‘chocolate scent’ that wafted through the air was produced by small black scented fans hidden in various corners of the store. And there were guards positioned at every exit to make sure you didn’t walk out with a valuable plastic mug, although nobody cared if you ate all the chocolate you could. It was fascinating, and it made me grateful that our hotel was not anywhere near Times Square.

You see, as I’ve previously mentioned, you can visit NYC without becoming a ‘tourist.’ It really depends on what types of experiences you’re looking for. If you come to NY to experience NY, you’re set to go. You find local restaurants that New Yorkers eat in, you find entertainment that a New Yorker would not be ashamed to be at, and, if you feel the need to bring something home with you, you shop at stores that aren’t overtaken with logos and company advertisements. If, however, you come to NY to experience being a tourist in NY, you really can’t expect much. See, being a tourist in NY is like being a tourist in LA, or London, or hell, even Kansas. This includes standing in long lines to see objects of no intrinsic value (Statue of Liberty, the Hollywood sign, Big Ben, or the original Dorothy House, although I suppose there are no lines at Dorothy’s House, for obvious reasons). You spend a great deal of your day searching out food (which is always overpriced and always tastes the same) or searching out a bathroom (which is always crowded and always below par cleanliness). Tourist attractions are a study in social engineering, and seeing all those people either waiting for the Ellis Island Ferry, or milling around on benches eating hot dogs, or walking aimlessly with souvenirs in their hands made me want to go play Roller Coaster Tycoon.

And if New Yorkers are fun to watch on the subway, tourists are fun to watch at important buildings or historical sites. For one, the attire. I’ve always laughed at women when they feel the need to dress up for a plane ride (in the 21st century; I know this used to be common practice), with their hair done nicely and their feet stuffed in 3-inch heels, but why would somebody do that to themselves to go see Ground Zero? Men know that sneakers, a t-shirt, and shorts will do just fine, but what is up with the other half of the population? Perhaps women think somebody will see them, will notice them, and they can’t look plain, heaven forbid. Interesting fact about New York: nobody’s gonna notice you. Or maybe they think they’ll look less like tourists if they’re wearing something fashionable. Interesting fact about New Yorkers: they aren’t ever found at tourist traps.
But I have to pick on men, too. They are very determined, or terrible at noticing little nuances like large signs that say ‘closed.’ Apparently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is closed on Mondays. Nobody told my dad or I this, so we went through Central Park, and eventually found our way to the front steps. There, we were met by a sign, in the middle of the steps, that said something to the effect of the Met is closed on Mondays, they apologize for the inconvenience. I saw this sign and decided that the Met was closed. My dad decided he’d go right up to the door and see for himself. What he found was shocking: the Met was indeed closed. As we sat outside to contemplate our next course of action, we noticed many more groups of people arrive at the bottom of the steps of the Met. The women stayed at the bottom, because they believed the sign. The men would bravely hike their way to the top of the steps, be met with a locked door, and come back to meet the women, throwing their arms into the air with despair and exasperation. The women would complain that their feet hurt, and the group would wander off to someplace else.

Once we got into the Met, it was wonderful. I avoided the Greek/Roman sculptures and European paintings, because while they are amazing, you can still see picture of those all over the place. We instead visited areas like Oceania/Early Americas, Africa, and China/Japan (when comparing the two practically side by side, there are way more differences than one may expect). I’ve been a Knight for the past four years of my life, but actually seeing the real armor was fascinating, and medieval art portrayed much of religion in a dark, hopeless sort of way. The only semi-modern art I saw was in drawing and photography, and I was actually saddened by how small the drawing section was. I learn much more through drawings than paintings, because you can actually see all the layers at one, whereas paint covers them up. And while most paintings aimed to be realistic, many of the drawings (depending on what area they came from) were more rough, and much more interesting.
That brings me to another point of wonder… we had to pass briefly through some classic Greek/Roman sculpture to get to Oceania and Africa, and you can see the absolute precision in that sculpting. Once you get to Oceania and Africa, figures of people become more distorted and exaggerated, but within each culture the style is the same. So why is it that Romans and Greeks created near-perfect human replicas, while other cultures portrayed humans with more juvenile, basic, and almost cartoonish features? The people the art was being modeled after were nearly identical in build, I’m sure.

Many of our other day trips included trips to Washington Square Park to people-watch (that’s where Bobby Fischer played chess, I believe), a walk around Columbia University’s campus (I got to see what wanna-be Ivy League families acted like), and trips to random spots in Central Park. Ooh, here’s a nice little tidbit about Central Park that I found amusing. Near the Great Lawn there are signs that inform the visitor about some of the activities that happen on this vast expanse of grass. Sports and such things were covered, but the sign continued on to say that “more passive activities, such as reading, sunbathing, or daydreaming are also encouraged.” Maybe I was slightly delusional because of the heat or something, but does anybody else find it the smallest bit funny that a sign would actually be printed to encourage Central Park patrons to daydream? I mean, that’s the kind of activity that’s hard to start or stop spontaneously. At least the act of daydreaming was not forbidden or something more absurd.

Now to cover night life. I will never claim to be an expert on night life of any kind, because, as you should know by now, I usually have little desire to go seek something social to do at night when I could just as easily be reading or something equally as fulfilling. However, being in NY was the kind of opportunity one should not pass up, and so we saw two Broadway plays (Rent and The 39 Steps), listened to some jazz at Birdland, visited Gotham Comedy Club (excellent, excellent choice, I must say), and went to the Top of the Rock shortly before sunset, so we could view the city in all it’s day-lit glory, and then see all the lights pop up as the sun disappeared. I should stress that all of these events happened on different nights.
I did learn something about Manhattan night life, though. Most New Yorkers go through two sets of clothes a day. Growing up in Albuquerque, I never learned that day clothes are generally different from evening clothes. This particular social norm was completely lost on me, and I therefore often found myself in the awkward predicament of walking into restaurants for dinner with a print t-shirt on, which is apparently not normal. In addition, some of these eateries were quite fancy, and, at 18, I may have well been the youngest in the entire restaurant. I felt like a child again, because everybody else was complimenting their fantastic meal with expensive glasses of wine. I can’t wait until I’m old enough to be classy.

This may seem like an abrupt end, but I’ve suddenly run out of things to say. It was a nice experience, and I’ve returned a more worldly person (ha!) but I now have to set my sights on NAU, which I will be arriving at in exactly one month.

…Oh my word.

But hopefully with all the new experiences that college brings, I’ll be more inclined to update my own blog. Perhaps not. After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.