As I mentioned, Kristy and I went to New York City for my 24th birthday. I never did write a blog post about it, however. because I’m lazy and it was a hell of a lot to write. Well, now it’s been almost a month, and I feel compelled to try before the details fade completely from memory.

So…

We flew out of Detroit on the evening of 10/22/04—we had a direct flight to NYC LaGuardia on Spirit airlines. It was a bit of a struggle to find parking, but eventually we got a decent spot and made it to the concourse. My dad & sister called to wish me a happy birthday, which was very nice. We bolted down some sandwiches while waiting to board, and as we sat there, a big commotion started up. Apparently we were in the presence of LL Cool J, who was on our flight! He sat in first class and Kristy even got to speak to him.

Kristy: Excuse me…

LL Cool J: Certainly.

/Kristy and Tom walk past LL Cool J to their seats.

See, he and his bodyguard were seated on opposite sides of the aisle, and were having a conversation. We didn’t want to be rude and just walk past them, after all…

The flight into LGA was without incident, thankfully. We saw the Brooklyn Bridge coming in, and got a great view of the skyline, since we flew straight up the Hudson (LGA is on the NW corner of Queens, across the river from the Bronx). There was a minor scuffle trying to find where to get our luggage before flagging a taxi.

We were staying with our friend Brandon, who lives in Brooklyn, more specifically in Ft. Greene, which is a nice neighborhood. Not too ritzy, just regular folk, and a nice cultural mix. Interesting zoning, too—there are a couple of just awesome restaurants in the area.

Anyways, we had to take a taxi because LGA doesn’t have a subway stop (boo) and we didn’t want to mess with the crosstown buses at that hour. Not that taking the subway from Queens to Brooklyn is that great anyways (G is for gangsta, right Brandon?) It ended up costing about $25 but it was money well spent, and a New York cab ride is an experience everyone should have. The cabbie was a West African guy–I think–who was listening to a French-language radio station and who (like all NYC cabbies) flew around like a maniac on the road. We got to Brandon’s at about 11pm EST.

We got the brief apartment tour, met his roommate Ayca, and decided to go out for a late-night bite to eat. Where to go? Ah, Brandon and Kristy already had somewhere in mind. There was a great South African Restaurant, I’Shebeen Mediba, just around the corner, where they’d gone when Kristy was in town to help Brandon move in. What a cool place. African-meets-cargo-cult decor (my favorite thing was the coke-bottle chandelier), awesome kente-cloth wall hangings, and food & drinks to die for. We just got appetizers and drinks to save cash, in what would soon become a theme for the trip Brandon ordered samoosas (just like Indian samosas) and Kristy and I split an order of mussels with a sort of bean and curry sauce. Their “lichiritas” were highly recommended—standard margaritas with a lichi added for flavor. Those were good, but didn’t impress Kristy, so she ordered something called the I’Shebeen Queen, which was described as “a sort of vodka tonic.” Whatever it was, it knocked us both on our asses. We staggered back to Brandon’s place to sleep it off.

We woke up the next morning at about 10:30. Kristy was unfortunately not feeling well on account of being too brazen with the mussels—they were so good that we both took chances with them that we shouldn’t have (”does this one look open to you?”) We showered and got out of Brandon’s way as he had a potential new roommate coming over at about noon.

My mom was in town for a KSU art trip, so we were going to meet her after she got done at the Whitney and hang out. So we trooped down to the (big) subway station at Nevins St., through the neighborhood and past a nice park (um, Ft. Greene park). As an aside, NYC was surprisingly green, with many small parks, planted trees, and the like. We bought our metro passes ($21 per for a week of unlimited travel) and got on the 4·5·6 toward Manhattan and (eventually) the Bronx (not that we went there). We were running a little early, and we’d already learned that Mom’s cell phone was down, but we figured when she called us to let us know she was done, she wouldn’t feel like hanging around the Whitney for 45 minutes waiting for us to take the subway. Unfortunately, once in the subway, we learned a hard lesson: no cell service. By the time we got out of the subway, my mom had been vainly trying to reach us for about a half an hour. Not only that, but we couldn’t call her back to tell her we were en route, and she couldn’t stay there because the Whitney was full of screaming kids (we were there. it was). We waited around until like 2pm for another call, walking around Lexingon and Park on the Upper East side. We finally stopped and rested in Central Park, cuddling on a bench near the pond where they rent remote-controlled sailboats. We people-watched and dog-watched for a while, and then returned one final time to the Whitney. No sign of my mom. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go back on the subway for fear of missing a call. We walked downtown on Lexington, looking for somewhere to eat that we could afford. Finally, tired and indecisive, we passed a greasy spoon called “Eat Here Now.” Which we promptly did, stopping in for some excellent burgers and matzoh ball soup (Corner Grill, eat your heart out). While we were there, my mom called and we made plans to meet in Chinatown, near the Canal St. station.

We finally met up with my mom (hooray!) and exchanged hugs and fond greetings. She’d been having a rocking time seeing art and so on. Kristy and I were going to do a Kill Bill-themed Halloween, so we wanted katanas. For that, we headed, with my Mom, to the Mall of the Great Wall near Broadway (although we accidentally went the wrong way all the way to the Bowery). My mom found a nice leather bag on the way. The katanas were overpriced and undermanufactured, so we decided to take a pass. My mom wanted to buy us some birthday presents, though, so she got a very nice set of jade chopsticks for me and a red-stained wooden Buddha for Kristy.

Footsore and tired of carrying our purchases, we decided to head to my Mom’s hostel in Chelsea. Their tour guide really didn’t know what she was doing, and it showed… the only way they told my mom to get to the hostel involved taking the 4·5·6 to 23rd St. and hoofing it all the way from Park Avenue past the Avenue of the Americas almost to 8th Avenue. From the hostel room, where we rested, we called home and I said hi to Dad.

We regrouped there for a while, and Mom agreed to hang onto our stuff so we didn’t have to carry it around (thanks Mom!) Our plan for the evening was to head over to a place called BINY, a karaoke bar where Brandon had succeeded in booking us a private room (!) and where his Japanese friends Akiko and Kanako were going to meet us. We arrived, met Brandon (introductions all around) and moved into our room. We ordered sushi (tasty) and drinks (intoxicating) and began the karaoke goodness. All four of us (Brandon, Kristy, Mom, and I) were hitting it pretty hard. I don’t remember all the songs that were done, although I tried to remember most of mine.

• Credence Clearwater Revival – Fortunate Son
• Credence Clearwater Revival – Bad Moon Rising
• REM – It’s the End of the World as We Know It
• The White Stripes – Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
• Johnny Rivers – Secret Agent Man
• Roger Miller – King of the Road
• Kenny Rogers and the First Edition – Just Dropped In
• Elvis Presley – Suspicious Minds

As the night wore on, Brandon’s friends arrived and did a few songs as well. The highlights of the evening included Kristy steaming it up with “Sway,” “Fever,” (Akiko & Kanako exclaimed “Oh, so sexy!”) and “Big Spenda” (during which she sat on my lap—yow!) We even did a duet on “I Got You Babe,” for which I don’t know the melody or words of the verse. My mom did, among the songs I remember, “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” and “It’s In His Kiss” and was very brave for a first-timer. Eventually they kicked us out of our room and we went back into the main room. Kanako and Akiko switched into high gear, doing mostly Japanese-language stuff. Our favorite was “Cat’s Eye,” which I believe Kanako performed. It had an excellent Engrish chorus (”Mysterious Girrrr!”) and a hilarious video. (Editor’s note: on our Ann Arbor visit, we found a DDR machine that had Cat’s Eye! It was very hard but I finished it on Heavy mode with a B) I did an encore performance of “End of the World” although I got tired of the repeating chorus at the end (”It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine / It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine / It’s the end of… uhhhhhhh… this song.”) It was pretty late when we left the joint, so we decided to call it a night. Due to the difficulties of coordinating activities in New York with only one-way communications, that would be the last we hung out with my Mom while we were there, but we had a BLAST. We bundled her onto the N·Q so that she wouldn’t have to walk 20 blocks across Manhattan at night and said our goodbyes.

We went back to Brandon’s and began to develop a case of the munchies. We headed down to a corner store on DeKalb and got some awesome and cheap deli sandwiches, which we put in our faces, and some Brooklyn Ale, which we drank some of but most of which was stolen by Brandon’s roommate. We turned in after watching some Space Ghost. I should add that the corner store was very interesting by virtue of its extreme crampedness–in NYC they don’t have the space to waste like they do here on aisles, etc. etc.

We woke up the next morning, and after a phone consultation with Mom, agreed that we would just do our own things that day, mostly because of the difficulty of meeting up. After snagging an excellent (and cheap) lunch at Little Louie’s pizza (again, just around the corner really), we decided to go in search of Toy Tokyo, which was just what it sounds like. Unfortunately, we’d written it down on our maps as being on 7th near Houston (”How-stun”) rather than on 2nd near Houston. We popped out of the Houston St. station on the red line and wandered around looking for it without success. After we realized our mistake, we decided to walk on over to 2nd; because the subways in NYC go mostly north-south, our other option was a crosstown bus, and we were all still feeling pretty good about walking. We walked through Greenwich Village, which was quite nice and really did seem like a piece of another town just dropped into the city, and eventually found our way there. It was very cool, but unfortunately very cramped. After all the fuss finding it, we only really stayed for about a half hour. By now it we were starting to get hungry again, between all the walking and the early lunch we ate. Fortunately, Brandon had an idea: Beard Papa’s, a Japanese specialty creampuff store. We got 3 vanilla and 3 chocolate cream puffs. Since this is one of Kristy’s favorite moments from the trip, I’ll reproduce it here:

Kristy: 3 vanilla and 3 chocolate, please.

Cashier (shouting): 3 banira and 3 chocorate prease!

Puff-filling girls: Arigato Gozaimas!

Cashier: Hai, hai!

The place was completely packed (not that it had much seating to begin with) so we took our cream puffs on the road, or, more specifically, down into the subway (they were sublime). We were starting to get footsore and we wanted to find somewhere to stop, so we took the subway (for one stop—ha!) to Union Square Station. We sat on a bench in Union Square resting our feet while Brandon took a phone call. Parks in Manhattan are cool because they’re just these little squares, by and large, dropped in among all of these really tall buildings. It feels like being in a clearing, or something.

Although most of our travels had been in Manhattan, Kristy and I were both really loving Brooklyn. We were hoping to get some kind of Brooklyn gear (Kristy wanted a hoodie) so Brandon took us over to Williamsburg, another Brooklyn neighborhood which is more densely populated with shops than Ft. Greene. We didn’t find any t-shirts, but we did stop in for a drink at the Tainted Lady Lounge, a pinup-themed bar. The decor was awesome and the velvet benches were very soft. It wasn’t the last we’d see of Williamsburg, but dinnertime was approaching.

Dinner was at Haveli, an excellent Indian restaurant which Kristy and Brandon had found during Kristy’s previous visit. We had a delicious dinner indeed there, for which Brandon generously paid.

Brandon really wanted us to see Times Square at night, and since we were nearby we decided that wouldn’t be a bad idea, especially since there’s a Sanrio store around there. We came out of the Times Square station and it was just astonishing—I hate to go on like a tourist, but being there in person was completely different from seeing it on TV. It’s hard to grasp the sheer size of everything, or the brightness, or the crowd. Very cool. The Sanrio store was very nice, lots of cute Hello Kitty stuff that Kristy was very excited about. Sadly, it didn’t have a restroom, and we all needed one pretty badly by now. We finally got desperate enough to pick a restaurant (Bubba Gump’s) and descend upon the bar there in order to obtain restroom access.

No rest for the weary, however. We had planned to check out a bar called the Remote Lounge. Sadly, we couldn’t get in—they claimed it was closed for a private party, but we suspect we were bounced. Oh well. We were mostly angry because it’s a HUGE pain to get into and out of the Lower East Side because there aren’t many subway stops. We walked down the Bowery past CBGBs and ended up crashing at an Irish tavern. Getting some Guinness stiffened our spines a little for the long walk back to Brooklyn, but Brandon thought better of it and sprung for a cab ride home. Once there, we did make a snack run to the corner store, but this time their deli guy was gone and we had to content ourselves with Pringles and stuff. We brought them home, only to discover that all our Brooklyn Pale Ale was gone… hmmm… Brandon had to work the next day, so we all turned in.

Kristy and I were going to be on our own for the day’s entertainment. We got lunch at Little Louie’s again (mmm!) and then decided to hit the Whitney, since I’d originally been mostly interested in the museums and we hadn’t actually seen any. Unfortunately, when we got there, we discovered that, like the Met, the Whitney was closed on Mondays. Grr!

I think Kristy felt sorry for me, because she indulged me in my obsession with the Chrysler Building. I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to reach out and touch the thing, or look up and see it looming into the sky. I’ve often been known to say that mankind should have just given up on skyscrapers after this one was finished—if anything, I’m more sure of that now than ever. The lobby was just amazing as well, and we went underneath to where there was a tiny mall to see if they had any postcards. They didn’t, and I never did end up sending any (doh!)

We were a little footsore by this time in the trip, so while we were in the vicinity we decided to spend some time admiring Bryant Park, after which we walked around the side to the main entrance of the New York City Library. I posed for a picture with the stone lions (whee!) and we were underway again.

To this point we hadn’t seen Little Italy, although we’d been near it several times. We took the subway to the Spring St station and set out in search of some pizza. Surprisingly, the Italian area didn’t seem that big. We stopped in at one place to get a slice, but the waiter gave Kristy some patented NYC attitude and we got irritated and left. Somewhat lost for what to do next, we wandered around until inspiration struck—clearly what we needed were more cream puffs! We made a beeline for Beard Papa’s (in the process discovering that the 14th St. stop on the orange line was better for puff-purchasing purposes than the Astor Place stop on the green). It was less crowded in there this time, so we actually sat and ate for a while.

Honestly, we were a little strapped for activites at this point with the museums closed and our budget low. After some debate, we settled on a trip to Herald Square, so that we could, you know, remember various people to it, as the song says. It was a bit chillier today than it had been over the weekend, so we warmed up with some coffee and sat in Herald Square park watching the people stream by.

Well, there’s only so much people-watching you can stay interested in, and we did want to do a few touristy things while we were there. We thought it might be neat to try and take in the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island if we could do it on the cheap… and fortunately Brandon had made an excellent suggestion on just that point—we hopped the Staten Island Ferry, which on its way from Lower Manhattan to Staten Island passes both and also provides a nice view of what I think was the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Taking the red or yellow line to the south tip of Manhattan takes you under the Ground Zero site, and the subway tunnels were, IMHO, very dodgy in through there still. A little bit of the old roller-coaster feeling through that section of the line. I noticed on the map that they have politely marked the Cortland St. station as “temporarily closed” rather than “completely obliterated.”

We got out at Whitehall, the Manhattan terminal for the ferry, and boarded after a relatively short wait. What I need to try and impress on you is that the ferry is REALLY BIG. Like, just hundreds of rows of benches. I was expecting something a little smaller and more sea-sickness-inducing, so that was a pleasant surprise. It also (amusingly enough) had a White Castle on it, although we didn’t snack there. We also had our second celebrity encounter of the trip there—there was a camera crew filming some sort of soap opera or soap-opera-related-program activity, and I recognized the guy they were following around as a regular on General Hospital, the soap of choice for my mom and sister. Kinda funny, to me anyways. It became kinda obvious to Kristy and I that the best views to be had were out on the exposed bow and stern of the ship, where they had benches out in the open air. It was genuinely chilly out on the water, so we snuggled together and enjoyed the view. It was a very sweet moment.

When we got to Staten Island, we realized that, as Brandon had mentioned, we had no idea what to do there. The ferry we came over on was going out of service, so we had to transfer to another one to get back to Manhattan. By now it was getting on towards quittin’ time for Brandon, and since we had dinner plans we contacted him to find a meeting place. Amusingly enough, he was coming over from Brooklyn on the 7, so we agreed to meet him in Herald Square. While there, we couldn’t resist the impulse to stop in at Macy’s (yes, THE Macy’s). Well, more accurately, I couldn’t resist the impulse to locate their restroom (!). After much difficulty a restroom was located, thankfully.

Brandon met us at dusk in Herald Square Park, and we hopped back on the L to Brooklyn. We wanted some Thai, and Brandon knew a great place in Williamsburg to get it—convenient, because we’d agreed to meet his friend Kesha there for drinks later. I’m not gonna try and link the place, because I don’t remember its name, but damned if that wasn’t some of the best Thai I’ve ever had…and cheap, too! The bar we were meeting Kesha at was a sort of “trendy Belgian beer” bar, that had like 50 different kinds of Belgian beer. It was called the Spuyten Duyvil.

On our way there, we decided to window-shop, because we were running early. The only shop that was open was this awesome place, Love Shines, where I found like the perfect belated birthday gift for my sister. The proprietor was this very effusive I think Spaniard. He chatted us up as we admired his merchandise, which was all kinds of religious iconography, bizarre custom handbags, and novelty items like the air-powerd, rubber dancing skeleton Brandon bought. I was very pleased to be able to make a purchase there. As we were getting ready to leave, he overheard us talking about the fact that it had been my birthday, and presented me with one of the birthday cards they sold gratis, a very nice gesture I thought. I still have the card and I’m trying to think of some place to display it.

While we were idling in Love Shines, Kesha caught up to us and we all went to the bar. Much drinking and talking about politics, the city, and life ensued, as well as a lot of good wine and imported beer. Brandon was feeling generous and picked up the tab for the night, a good thing as Kristy and I were basically tapped out at this point. Kesha and Brandon are a long, complicated story, but the 4 of us definitely had a great time that night. Kesha even made a great point when Kristy and I started kicking around the idea of moving to the Big Apple. She said, “If you’re not going to do it now, when are you? After you’ve started to get promoted at work? After you’re married? After you have a house, or new cars, or kids?” The election debacle hadn’t even happened yet and we were starting to give serious thought to the idea. Now… well, let’s just say that I’m going to dust off my resume a little bit and see what happens.

We stayed at the bar until just about closing time, then staggered back into the subway, picking up the G (”G is for gangsta”) at Lorimer St. To finally explain this joke, the G line is the only subway line in NYC that doesn’t pass through Manhattan—it connects Queens and Brooklyn. As a result, it doesn’t get the volume of tourists and is not as well maintained, sadly. We didn’t have any trouble with it, though. Kesha went on her way, and we went back to Brandon’s to ready ourselves for the long day of travel ahead of us on Tuesday.

We felt kinda bad waking up on Tuesday, because we thought it was going to be sorta like, say bye to Brandon on his way to work, and that would be it. But he decided to “work from home” and we got a nice chance to chat with him while we packed up our stuff and the like. Around lunchtime he took us to this INCREDIBLE Mexican restaurant which was—you guessed it—right around the corner. More awesome food than you can shake a stick at. Brandon once again covered our sorry asses, since I’d spent literally all our money that wasn’t earmarked for the DWC parking garage and the parking garage shuttle. Eventually, our time with Brandon had to come to an end, and as we walked towards the same Nevins St. station from which we’d set out on Saturday morning, we parted ways so that he could pick up the Yellow line into work (he works on Broadway near Canal). Sigh. Thanks for everything, Brandon!

Our adventures weren’t over yet, however. We needed to get to LaGuardia, and we couldn’t afford to cheat and take a taxi this time. As I mentioned, getting into/out of LGA sucks because it doesn’t have a subway stop (mental note: next time, we pay the extra $$ to fly into JFK). Our plan of action involved taking the Green line to the 125th St. stop in Harlem and then hopping the M60 crosstown bus to Queens. This, of course, was all free thanks to our MetroPasses, which I still feel a little sad about (there were still like 3 days of time on them that never got used). Harlem wasn’t bad at all, although it’s not like we were near Washington Heights or anything. Smelled really good, like some kinda food cooking. After some controversy over the bus stop location, we finally got on. It was crowded, so I had to stand most of the way, but I did get a nice view while we crossed (I think) the Hudson and East Rivers. There was quite a to-do finding the right stop once we got to the airport, but we managed to find our terminal after a little bit of confusion and squabbling.

Basically the flight home went off without a hitch. There was a little panic trying to find our gate because of the stupid numbering, but really only I panicked so we were OK. It seemed like there would have been no way we could have made it back through another security check, but we didn’t have to. Plus, our plane’s takeoff was delayed for OVER AN HOUR because someone had wandered off with the maintenance log. Grrr… We flew out over the Bronx, which looked highly depressing from the air. Brandon had indicated that it was mostly a residential area, a lot of projects, and that tourists generally avoided the area. We kinda wanted to see all 5 boroughs, but flying over it we quickly decided to scratch it from our list for future exploration. Yech.

We landed back in Detroit, claimed our bags, and got on the road with little incident (although we did have a hard time finding an airport shuttle—WTF Detroit? We drove back towards home, already suffering what we now think of as NW Ohio Post-NYC Depression. A quick dinner at the Magic Wok on Central did little to assuage the feeling; as we shoveled crappy faux-Chinese into our mouths, we couldn’t help but think about what wonders that money would have bought us in NYC, were we dining there.

Anyways, there you have about as concise a synopsis as I can produce of our trip. It was a blast, and really changed my perceptions about the city and its inhabitants. So much so, as I said, that Kristy and I are giving serious thought to relocation opportunities. Thank you, Kristy, for an AWESOME birthday present.

Please comment, or ask questions, or something if you are so inclined. This post is also to help aid my memory, but I’ve been typing it for about a total of 8 hours, and I’ve spent at least 4 on mapquest. Let me know that SOMEone is reading it