Monday 9/19
So, instead of the Amtrak, which only goes to NYC from Pittsburgh once every fortnight (I'm guessing), I snagged a ticket on the Megabus, a service available out east of which I was informed by my wonderful mother (a couple of other friends told me later that they totally knew about it, but “forgot”. Because they clearly secretly hate me) which is cheaper than the Amtrak and, technically speaking, a million cajillion times better than Greyhound. And the busses are double decker! Just like that one that Dr. Who was totally once on!
The downside to the Megabus is that they don’t have stations, per se. What they do have is signposts, with teamsters in snazzy vests who advise you to wait in the Greyhound lobby but “don’t mention the word Megabus”. Which is totally what I did, because I love the greyhound atmosphere so, and because I didn’t want to carry around the giant backpack I have been living out of since March any more. As a result, I didn’t get a great feel for Pittsburgh, but I did see this
Anywho, after making a few friends in the Greyhound lobby (now I know what an eye socket looks like without an eyeball! Yay learning!) I dragged my castle back to the Megabus curb and embarked for the city that the muppets made famous.
Tuesday 9/20
I arrive in NYC a little after midnight, which I would normally call Monday in this context, but that would be doing an injustice to how much quality time I spent getting to know New York in the first hours of Tuesday. I disembarked in Manhattan, near Penn Station but, in true Mega fashion, on the curb where the bus pulled up.
Sidenote- if you ever get bored with life, ride the top story of a double-decker through New York traffic at night when the driver’s on a schedule.
My friends, being poor people, live waaaaay out in Bushwick, a part of Brooklyn which can charitably be said to have a lot of character, most of an hour’s ride on the subway. On the bright side, the subway operates all day and all night. On the dark side, I would be riding the subway all night.
Exactly as weird as you think it is
And I do mean all, or at least much of, the night, since, surprising no one, I immediately got lost. Turns out that there are often two different entrances on either side of the road to the subway, each of which, much like the sides of the street above it, go in opposite directions, a fact that I did not immediately grasp. So, after successfully riding the train for several stops in the wrong direction, I left the subway to ask Elliott, a young man with the patience of a saint and the hairstyle of a prophet to please tell me how to escape from Manhattan (see what I did there?), since cells don’t work in the Subway (turns out it’s underground). After having the idea that different things go to different places explained to me in small words, I descended to try again.
Which is how I found out that my bank cards don’t work with the NYC transit system. Coincidentally, if anyone needs to find an ATM near 60th and Broadway, I am now your go-to guy (it can be a little tricky). After arriving in the hood at a little past four am (feel free to do the math there), I was met by Elliott and Dan, two upstanding young men who would selflessly devote the next week of their lives to my entertainment and edification
At a local twenty-four hour chicken shack, which is something of a landmark where they live
Since the bars were closed, we had no other option than to find a local store with a somewhat looser than average grasp of liquor laws for a sixer of Tecate and, as Dan termed it, “stoop it”.
And that was my first night in New York.
Tuesday Proper
After a leisurely morning/early afternoon, I ventured out into the Bushwick neighborhood, which was…new.
The place itself sits on what my friends explained is the frontline of gentrification. They are the first caucasian/asian (caucasianian? ascasian? ascockian? You decide!) people to move there as far as they could tell, but Broadway street marked a geographical turning point, where north of that was more and more occupied by layabout 20-somethings on their parents’ dime (hi!) and south of that was still like that one scene in Brother From Another Planet (you know the one, it has dancing). After walking around for a bit to acclimate, Elliott took me to a bar/café called Goodbye Blue Monday, which is basically an ex-pat club for northwesterners; they have PBR by the can and the pint, a bunch of worn out couches, a vinyl collection, and an extensive vegetarian menu. After soaking up a little familiarity there, I ventured back on the subway to meet the main attraction for my NYC trip, Ms. Ana Lady Bro
After she got off work at the Bill Cunningham Show (it’s awful, I’m told), she showed me around Manhattan a little bit, guiding me to such sights as the Empire State Building Lobby
the main staircase of the New York Public Library
and Time Square
After which she promptly had to go to bed, since she’s the only one of us who had a for real job at the time.
Wednesday, 9/21
Today I helped Elliott buy pants!
No, really, that was the main event. Elliott needs a job, and so he needs pants you can’t see his junk through, so we went here
A huge Williamsburg thrift shop. Williamsburg, it turns out, is the Place To Be for the young’uns. This entire burrough is like Alberta up in Portland- it’s unreal. I don’t know why hipsters are moving west, when they have their very own bio dome out here. Anyway, blah blah pants whatever pizza! Elliott bought me lunch at this little Italian café place a couple blocks off, presumably as a thank you for looking at the hole in his crotch so much, and I had real New York pizza for the first time, satisfying a fantasy I have had since the first time I saw the first scene in the first TMNT movie
Take a knee.
Holy jesus fuckstick crapwaffle, what the shitreef have I been stuffing my face hole with all these years? That was a religious experience in my mouth. It was like, for a moment, the silken shades of the world parted and I could see the angels dance. It was really good. Don’t listen to any of the “New York” style crap you see all around you, it’s a petty lie to make themselves feel better. It really is that different from the source, and now I can never eat pizza again without it just being a cruel mockery of what I once so briefly touched.
AAAaaaaanyway, we met back up with Ana for a mo, who had to be an adult and go to bed, so we headed back to Bushwick where the malt liquor is cheaper than soda for a relaxing evening at home. Later that night I was treated to a moment that I feel can only happen in Brooklyn; a young latina woman argued in Spanish with the middle eastern owner of a deli about how much my six pack should cost. It was the American dream.
Thursday 9/22
This was actually a really laid-back day, the majority of which I spent at GBM drinking coffee and internetting. I had originally planned to leave on this day, but since Chris’ car troubles had taken a day off what would already have been a short day, this would have left me with less than two full days, which I felt was unacceptable. So, because Amtrak is awesome (sometimes, in this specific context) and Ana and Elliott have no real sense of personal space (more on that later) I moved my ticket to Monday for no extra money.
IT IS NOW LATER
Here, check this out
That is a one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. It’s actually pretty nice- not huge, but comfortable, with a lot of natural light, dishwasher, full range, in a secured building. Overall, quite a nice place for a person.
There are three people living there currently, plus me. These are friends who are already thrice the recommended occupancy, and thought “why wouldn’t we want Alex there also for four more days?” My friends often live on that razor’s edge between awesome and certifiable.
Friday, 9/23
Ana invited me out to meet her aunt, in town from San Fran, which I’m sure was only coincidentally connected to the fact that she had left her ID at home. So I got my first exposure to the New York nightlife and it is…almost exactly like it is everywhere else, except louder. While NYC certainly will never suffer from the Albuquerque doldrums, nightlife within my socio-economic bracket is not distinguishably better or worse than elsewhere, except that bars are open til four there. That’s better.
Ana’s aunt is really cool, and not just because she bought our drinks. She stands as a reassurance that it is still possible to be dry, sarcastic and overall delightful past forty, and I’m glad Ana was willing to introduce me to family (something my friends often seem understandably hesitant to do). Unfortunately, she *was* still over forty, so she left pretty early, leaving Ana and I unsupervised for the rest of the evening.
Saturday, 9/24
After a solitary early afternoon re-examining my life choices in a little French style café (the owner has an outrageous accent and is rude to customers) called the Athom, Ana took me out to lunch, because I am a mooch.
Our evening entertainment consisted of a birthday party at a bar under the Williamsburg bridge where they have bbq grills out back open for use, which I was way more impressed with than I probably should have been. After watching a bunch of lesbians shake their groove things (always entertaining), we strolled down to the East River, which looks like this at night
Then, home.
Sunday 9/25
Since we hadn’t yet, we decided to do some actual New York touristy crap today. First, Ground Zero! (Yes, I also hate that that’s a tourist thing, but I still wanted to go). We didn’t actually go to GZ, because it turns out you have to register on line to go look at the rubble, but we did go *past* ground zero! Here’s a picture of the partially built replacement tower
It's the short one in the background
Next up, Wall Street, to see the protests and take a deep whiff of the Will of the People!
Turns out the bulls had barricaded Wall Street proper off expressly to avoid the People’s aromatic Will.
Last but not least, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty
The ride was 13$, or approximately three times how much money I had, so that didn’t happen either.
We did manage to stumble across the protestors on the way back, living (ironically) in a privately owned park where the cops couldn’t arrest them for being, but could literally encircle them completely so the tax-paying public wouldn’t come in contact with them
Also, we ate at the café across from the building that was the cover for that one Led Zeppelin album!
Monday 9/26
Dan and Elliott were both occupied with recovering, Ana was at work, nothing for it but to shoulder the pack and hump it to the subway system (got lost again), and then into Penn station for the long trip to Mississippi to see the last, but certainly not least (in esteem or physical size) of my friends, Bitty.
NYC as viewed by commuter train; an excellent visual metaphor for being poor in New York
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