So when my buddy said he was excited to show me around the small island of Manhattan this week, I was like, "Pssh, whatever... North Hills, baby... Represent..."
You've probably seen NYC to-do lists before, or programs that take you around the city to catch all the "hot spots" and tourist attractions that everyone sees in postcards. You've probably been told to book your trip well in advance so that you can catch as many of the sights as possible ... because only then will you know what it's like to experience New York. You've probably heard all the stereotypes about the subways, the people, and all the do's-and-don'ts that come along with a visit to the Big Apple.
I've actually gone on one of those trips where everything is planned out: tickets purchased, restaurants picked, reservations made. And believe it or not, it was a trip to New York City. My mother and I went for a few days over the summer before I started 8th grade. Sites seen: World Trade Center (circa 1998), Statue of Liberty, a trip up the Empire State Building, Yankee game, Wall Street, Central Park, the outside of Madison Square Garden, Times Square, and a few other places she'll remind me of after reading this article. With pictures to prove it.
This time around, I could have done the same thing: make the same trip, see the same sights, and insert an older version of myself in each of those pictures. I would have left completely satisfied, because that's what my theory on popular tourism is: finding the surface-level entertainment of any particular location and piece together a puzzle of what everyone tells you you should do. Simply take the same pictures that all of your friends have already taken, and include yourself this time around. Now that your face is in the same picture as your friends, you can jump into any conversation about a trip to that location. Places match up, and pictures prove it.
But what if you want something more?
A few months back, my mother and I took the necessary step that usually comes when a bird leaves the nest: re-live all moments spent as a little bird within that nest. We went through every photo album, discussed how old we were in each picture, shed many tears, shared many laughs, and solidified the bond of what "home" means to me. Looking back on our NYC trip, I noticed our pictures of the World Trade Center. (I say "pictures," because when we were standing at the base, the buildings were so tall that it took 2 pictures to capture the entire thing.) Then I got to thinking ... what makes a trip and memorable one? Is it what's in the background of each picture - the sights you see - or could it be the expression on the faces of those in the foreground? Is it the places you go to - the places that all of your friends have already seen - or is it the places that NONE of your friends have seen, the people you interact with that none of your friends will ever meet, and the memories you create with those who share that time with you that define a good trip? Personally, I loved my first trip to New York NOT because I saw the World Trade Center ... I loved my trip to New York because I saw something that we will tragically never see again, and saw it with someone I consider a personal hero.
If you collect baseball cards, you may know that there's a Honus Wagner card that's worth over $1 million. Was he the greatest player ever? Nope. Is the card made of gold or diamonds? No, just paper. What makes it so valuable? It's because there's only a limited amount of Honus Wagners out there, and a specific story that can be told by the owner of each card.
So what did I want to do during my trip to New York City in 2010? Simply put: I didn't want to re-live the old memories, because that would only water them down. Instead I wanted to create personal memories, ones that I will remember NOT because of a big building in the background, but because I shared that experience with a good friend, and can return with a story nobody else can tell. One that I can call my own.
Monday, January 4th.
Flying into La Guardia is scary as hell. During our descent, sounds of William Miller's article in Almost Famous start ringing in my head; "I'm flying high above Tupolo, Mississippi with America's hottest band; and we're all about to die." We keep getting lower and lower, and all I can see is a view of the Manhattan skyline. (I can make out all the buildings). And then a closer view of the Manhattan skyline. (I can make out all the windows). And then the East River. (I can see all the ripples in the water, and pray there isn't an ambitious flock of birds to get in our way). And then a closer view of the smaller buildings in Queens (not only can I make out all the windows, but the blur of people behind them. People are on the streets, hailing cabs. Can they give me a high-five?). And then, BAM! Flushing Meadows: home of the US Open. Center Court has approximately 20,000 seats, and from my seat in the plane, I feel like I'm on the top row looking down at an imaginary match between Federer and Nadal. Just passed Center Court is Citi Field, the new home of the Mets. A crash-landing in right field would be a hell of a way to go out, but somehow we avert it. And then there's more water. Crap, more water. We're getting really close to the water. I mean reeeeeally close to the water. How do people over the age of 65 survive a flight to NYC? Seriously. Finally we make it to the runway, and I regain consciousness as our pilot wishes us a pleasant stay.
The weather doesn't change throughout the trip: 25-35 degrees, sunny skies, and winds that pierce the soul. It's New York City. After 5 minutes of walking the streets, I have already stopped by a street vendor to get a toboggan. (No, it doesn't say "I <3> for tourists...) The wardrobe for the trip: 2 pairs of jeans, 3 plain t-shirts, boxers, 3 collared shirts, a gray pullover fleece, a red zipper-down fleece, black gloves, and my new gray toboggan. Oh, and at least 2 pairs of socks per day to keep the feet warm.
Sam and Krista's apartment should be envied by everyone who lives in Manhattan and doesn't make six figures. Near the intersection of 54th Street and 8th Avenue, it's about 1,200 square feet with 2 stories, 2 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, and a private back porch ... pretty much 2 loft apartments stacked on top of each other that share a living room and kitchen. Sam and Krista are actors who wait tables to balance their finances between shows. Their roommates Jeremy and Cameron can be found on Broadway almost permanently. Jeremy currently plays in Rock of Ages, an 80's-themed musical that can best be compared to Moulin Rouge. Cameron is enjoying her first time off from a long run of productions. But since she already has something lined up in three weeks, she feels like school has just let out for the summer. Sam has the following 3 days blocked off - both from acting and waiting. The next 80 hours will be dedicated to making sure Sully has a great time; a move of true friendship that he doesn't have to make, but is greatly appreciated. Krista has even called off a couple nights to hang out with us.
The first day is spent feeling our way around the city. We eat lunch at one of the thousands of fantastic diners that span the island. Sam and Krista get sandwiches; I get breakfast. It's 12:30pm, but why not? It's served all day, and there's always a good feeling I get when eating bacon and eggs in the afternoon. Then we hit up the DVD store, a place where Sam can get movies that come out weeks (and sometimes months) before their scheduled release. (They're not bootlegged, either; they're the real deal.) We walk in and sure enough, I see The Hurt Locker and Moon (each scheduled DVD release: January 12th). He buys The Hurt Locker and we proceed to go to Rockefeller Center and NBC studios. Inside NBC, they have memorabilia from all major TV shows; so I take a picture of a Dundie Award and send it to one of the girls at work who shares my love for The Office.
Up next, the Plaza. Sure, all newbies to the city take a picture of themselves standing outside the front door of the Plaza, and maybe another in the lobby where Macaulay Culkin got lost 17 years ago. (Can you believe it's been 17 years since Home Alone 2, and 20 years since Home Alone?) But have any tourists had a hot chocolate at Demel, a small Viennese coffee shop below the hotel that caters its residents and guests? It's literally served on a silver platter, and topped with whipped cream, cinnamon, and side glass of water. Easily the best hot chocolate I've ever had.
At night we catch The White Ribbon, a German film that swept Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay at last month's European Film Awards. (It even beat out Slumdog Millionaire, which wasn't released until 2009 in Europe.) As of this weekend, The White Ribbon is only showing in 3 theatres in the United States, and one of them is at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, only 8 blocks from Sam's apartment. You haven't heard of The White Ribbon yet, but you'll see it again. This year it's Germany's entry for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, as well as a Best Picture candidate at the Sullivan-Gooley Awards. Its writer/director Michael Haneke will also be in consideration at both award ceremonies.
After The White Ribbon we go to Barcelona, a small bar around the corner from the apartment. There they serve shots that are named after movies; and if you order a shot, they play the theme music of the movie and hand you a prop to wear while you take the shot. Now I'm not really a drinker, but wearing an Indiana Jones hat while listening to the theme of Raiders of the Lost Ark was a little too much to pass up. Joining us is Shelby, one of my best friends from college who has an internship at Columbia doing something in psychology. It's good to catch up, and even more of a blessing to introduce her to Sam and Krista. Once I mention that Shelby loves theatre, she becomes Sam and Krista's BFF. Before we go home, we make sure she's got a ticket to come with us tomorrow morning.
Tuesday, January 5th.
Bright and early, we meet Shelby at Columbus Circle and walk up to Broadway and 68th. Only 14 blocks from Sam's apartment, the AMC at Loews Lincoln Square boasts the biggest IMAX screen I've ever seen. It's time for Avatar, and what better place to see James Cameron's epic than a 4-story movie theatre that sports an IMAX screen the size of a skyscraper. I won't get into a full-blown Avatar review, but if you haven't seen it I highly recommend you do so, and at an IMAX theatre in 3D.
Avatar gets out and we're too exhausted to do anything else. Shelby heads home; Krista takes off for work; and Sam and I head back to the apartment to watch (500) Days of Summer and enter a 3-hour coma. Upon awakening, we hear that Sam's roommate Jeremy may be called up for a leading roll in Rock of Ages tonight. We head down to the theatre and enter a lottery for cheap last-minute tickets. Although there are 28 tickets available, they're all pretty good seats: lower level, partial view, orchestra level. 14 people are chosen for 2 tickets apiece. Unfortunately we were none of those 14 people; and standing on a NYC sidewalk for 45 minutes is not the most pleasant way to await rejection. Just as we turn around to leave, a girl walks up to the lady who drew the names and says she no longer needs her tickets. The lottery leader chooses another person, but that person already has tickets too. So she draws again ... "Mike Sullivan." Hell yea! Sam receives a text from Jeremy: "I'm Stacee Jaxx tonight." Hell yea!
Rock of Ages is epic. Copied from the play's website: "In 1987 on the Sunset Strip, a small town girl met a big city rocker and in LA's most famous rock club, they fell in love to the greatest songs of the 80s. It's Rock of Ages, an arena-rock love story told through mind-blowing, face-melting hits of Journey, Night Ranger, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison, Asia, Whitesnake and many more. Don't miss this awesomely good time about dreaming big, playing loud, and partying on!"
If you ever get a chance to see a Broadway play, do me a favor. Sit on the 9th row; watch your buddy's roommate on stage as the main supporting role; sing along to your favorite 80s rock ballads with 500+ people; have a glass of champagne backstage in the dressing room; hit on the main supporting actress; walk across stage on your way out of the theatre (and take a picture of the empty auditorium); meet up with the cast for a post-show drink (a cast including American Idol finalist Constantine Maroulis); let the cute supporting actress beat you at Wii Tennis at Sam's apartment (Lauren, if you're reading this, I demand a rematch); watch her give a personal shout-out while signing your Playbill Magazine; and... when it's all over, tell me that Broadway sucks. I dare you.
Wednesday, January 6th.
Movie day. Sam, Krista, Jeremy, and Cameron moved in last week; so while Jeremy and Cameron head over to Ikea (Krista's back at work), Sam and I await the cable guy to come hook everything up. Meanwhile, we watch The Hurt Locker and The Hangover, and book a double-feature in the West Village (that's south-west Manhattan to all you non-New Yorkers). The Hurt Locker is just as emotionally intense as the first time I saw it, and solidifies itself in my top 5 of 2009. As mentioned before, it comes out on DVD January 12th and is a sure-fire Best Picture nominee at the Oscars and Sullivan-Gooley Awards. The Hangover could rank in the Top 10 Comedies of the Decade (without much preparation, I have The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Wedding Crashers, Tropic Thunder, Anchorman, Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, Borat, Bad Santa, Elf, Shaun of the Dead, Zoolander, Napoleon Dynamite, High Fidelity, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Old School, Super Troopers, Superbad, Funny People, The Hangover, I Love You, Man, Meet the Parents, and the Disney short For the Birds. That's 22 right there... not in order). If you have The Hangover on DVD, make sure to catch the outtakes of the small Asian guy who plays a gay mobster; it's 8 minutes of pants-wetting laughs.
After a cheap-by-NYC-standards breakfast ($5 for a pancake, sausage biscuit, scrambled egg, and bacon strip ... $2.50 more for an orange juice), we head down to the Angelika to catch our double-feature: A Single Man (currently in 46 theatres nationwide) and Crazy Heart (12 theatres). The Angelika is a great, great movie theatre. Probably my favorite if you want the "New York" experience. After purchasing your $12.50 movie ticket at its street-corner box office, you enter the top-floor cafe. If you're not a fan of popcorn or Milk Duds, help yourself to a gourmet cup of coffee and jumbo peanut butter brownie and relax in a lobby filled with coffee tables and comfy couches. (I get the peanut butter brownie and a glass of whole milk to flush it down). Hidden in the back-left corner of the lobby is an escalator that takes you down to the theatre level. This floor contains 4 theatres and a traditional consession stand; and it rests directly on top of the subway. (Every ten minutes you're reminded that you're watching a film in NYC, as your feet start to shake from the trains wizzing below you).
A Single Man may be the surprise of the year. If I were to compare it to something, I would say it's kind of like a gay American Beauty set in the 1960s. Told by first-time director and fashion designer Tom Ford, A Single Man follows a day in the life of a 1960s college professor coming to grips with the death of his gay lover. While I wasn't exactly pumped to see this as Part 1 of a double-feature man-date with Sam, I couldn't think of a better place to live out the awkwardness of seeing A Single Man - directed by an openly-gay fashion designer with a homosexual protagonist - than the West Village of Soho.
Call it a testament to our love of cinema, but we both really enjoyed the film. The artistic touch of Tom Ford, as well as the painfully earnest performance of Colin Firth, carry the film into the upper echelon of 2009. Its saturated use of color, meticulous inclusion of motifs, and over-glossed appearance of each main character make A Single Man a very beautiful film to watch. I highly recommend it to those who don't get offended by watching guys kiss on screen.
As Sam states, "Crazy Heart is like a country song played out on the screen." Featuring a career-defining performance by Jeff Bridges and a surprising appearance by Colin Ferrell, Crazy Heart was a very satisfying character study of the affects of alcoholism and the consequences of not selling out. Think of it as a less-painful Wrestler. Or a less-painful Raging Bull. Or if you haven't seen The Wrestler or Raging Bull, a fictionalized version of Walk the Line if Johnny Cash had fallen deep into mediocrity. A Single Man was the better film, but Jeff Bridges gave the best performance. Either way, you can't see The Hurt Locker, A Single Man, and Crazy Heart without saying it was a good day.
That night we catch up with Kirtan Patel, an old fraternity brother who lives across the Hudson in Hoboken, NJ. He's in marketing for a food distributor and decided to come out with us for a bit despite the fact he had a major meeting with his boss and representatives from a subsidiary company in the morning. Major props for making the journey on a school night to catch up. We go through all the small-talk; I pick his brain about how the day-to-day routine of Corporate America differs from the good ol' days at UNC; and we meet a couple of Krista's friends-of-a-friend to discuss Psychology and argue that men are not as evil as snobby females claim us to be.
(Quick note to the guys reading this. If you happen to run into a cute Psychology major while sitting next to your buddy's girlfriend, this is your time to fight for men's rights. Ask the cute Psychology major to list 5 questions that help her separate good guys from the bad guys. If she is any good at applying her major, she has already thought of these and will give you a good answer. If she can't give you a good answer, she'll pull out the "all guys are full of crap and will say whatever they think a girl wants to hear" card. At this point, you have her. Either she begins asking you the 5 pre-prepared questions, fully-interested in gauging your response; or, you have the ultimate response to her feminist "guys are full of crap" response ... which is, "What if a good guy is sitting next to you at a bar, and his best friend's girlfriend is sitting right next to him, and she can vouch that he's a good guy; what would your questions be?" If she doesn't flash you a smile saying "I'm impressed," and if she doesn't start asking legit questions at this point, you'll know she's a retard, and no longer warrants further conversation. Also, you can leave with a feeling of accomplishment, for you have won an intellectual argument with a female, and should be proud.)
Thursday, January 7th.
Last day in the city. I wake up and start making my "Best-of-2009." In the three days I've spent in New York, I've seen six of my Top Ten and one film that falls between #11 and #20 of the year. On top of that, I walk upstairs to discover Cameron watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze. She's locked in, and within 30 seconds, so am I. TMNT2... epic.
After we all wake up and get motivated to start another day, Sam says there's a couple spots that I still need to see before I go.
The first is his favorite DVD shop. Whereas the first one is a good place to catch movies before they're released, this spot (called Kim's) has the best collection. It seems to have every film in the Criterion Collection, hundreds of Italian films, arguably thousands of French and Chinese films, and organizes its American collection by director - not title. This is very cool for someone who likes a very specific type of film. Being a huge Charlie Chaplin fan, it is amazing to see almost every Chaplin film chronicled in one location. (If you have seen High Fidelity, Rob Gordon's passion for records - and organization of these records - is closely rivaled by my love for film and the organization of DVDs. Needless to say, a Chaplin Collection is a lifelong goal of mine; and to see it 80 percent complete at 1 spot is truly a thing of beauty.)
The second is Kat's Delicatessan. Around the city, it's known for its $13 pastrami-on-rye sandwich. To movie lovers, it's where Sally Albright had a particularly memorable experience in When Harry Met Sally... Although we don't dive into the $13 delight, I do take a picture of a sign hanging over one of the tables saying, "This is where Harry met Sally."
The reason why we don't swim in Kat's Deli's pastrami sandwich is because of our next stop - Serendipity 3 - located on 60th Street in the Upper East Side. At 3pm there was a 30-minute wait. At 4:30 the wait was an hour. The reason for this wait? A $10 cup (the size of a bowl) of frozen hot chocolate. Mine is peanut-butter-flavored; and combined with a 1-pound slice of carrot cake, I can't finish it. Sam gets a hot slice of apple pie a-la mode, and by "a-la mode," I mean 3 scoops of ice cream with whipped cream and a cherry on top. Some people take pictures of buildings; I take pictures of dessert.
After Serendipity, it's back to the apartment to pack and leave for the airport. I say my goodbyes and thank everyone for the first-class hospitality and a truly great time. They're a great group and it's a real honor to know them.
The trip to back to La Guardia provided the last piece of drama. Before I get into it, let me tell you how I made it to Sam's place from the airport on Monday. First, I walked out of the airport and toward the front of an endless line of cabs. I took a cab up to Astoria where Sam used to live. There I met up with him; took a train to Manhattan; and walked three blocks with my suitcase to his apartment. On the way back to the airport, he walks me up to the station and tells me to get on the N/W train toward Astoria; then get off at the Broadway exit and take a gypsie cab to the airport. This sounds very simple, right up to the point where I get on the R train and head 9 stops in the wrong direction. I take a look at the subway map and realize that I'm not too far from the airport, geographically. Only one problem; not many yellow cabs make their way out to Queens Mall. Over there is a major bus line that people use to commute from their place of living to the subway. On top of that, it's dark outside and not every black car that passes in front of me is a gypsie cab. I find that out the hard way, and get cussed at in multiple oriental languages before getting back on the subway until I reach a more convenient part of town. After a couple strike-outs, I finally find a gypsie cab to take me to the airport with just enough time to make it through security and board.
The flight home is not nearly as scary as the one coming up. Maybe because it's dark and I can't see the ripples in the water; or maybe all the those NYC lights look so darn beautiful on a clear winter night. Either way, it sure beats a trip to North Hills Mall.
