The World By Road

I consider myself to be a person with a great attitude.  I usually see the upside or tend to look at the potential of people and places rather than what is actually before my eyes.  Whenever I arrive in New York City, the situation is no different.  For some reason everything smells just peachy and wonderful.  The streets are filled with weirdos and businessmen, models and musicians, cops and degenrates, the list goes on.  While in New York you can find just about anything you want…fake replicas of over priced originals, the origninals, and you can find all kinds of other shit you did not even know existed.

I have quite a few friends in the Manhattan area, I even dated a girl there for a handful of months.  Over the last couple of years the amount of time I spent in NYC has allowed me to feel like I know what to expect.  I have certainly learned my way around the city and surrounding area.  With my knowledge, I always feel like I will be able to go there and have a jolly old time; esentially riding a rollercoaster with no low points. Maybe someday  I will learn…this is never the case.

I arrived in town late on a Thursday night.  With my firend Anne I made my way to my friends Amanda and Mike’s place via the subway.  It is a pretty easy ride and the trains are mostly new on this line, and since the subway is air conditioned, who can complain.  And a Frommers fun fact, the construction of the subway began in 1885.  Upon our arrival we were greeted with a quite warm welcome as I suprised my friend Amanda with Anne.  To my suprise, their air matress was not working so we were allowed the privilge of sleeping on the floor.  Not too bad with some pillows, but this was no Marriot.  Even more to my suprise, I find out that I would not be allowed to stay at their place for the entire week as they wanted some alone time, a fact that would have been nice to learn about before I arrived.  But that all faded away with a couple of Mike’s martinis.  And I am a seasoned traveller, I have slept on many a couches for many a days, this was certainly not going to ruin my spirit.

The next few days were lined with gold.  I met some new friends, including Lindsay Robertson, who is one of my new faves.  Her, Anne, and I walked around the city brownbagging some liquid courage.  After passing ground zero and the financial district, we made our way to Battery Park for some good old fashioned afternoon drinking.  We followed this up with some margaritas in the West Village where I was promised an encounter with a movie star, which never came to fruition.  All of this was surrounded by beautiful weather and perfect temperatures.  The rest of the weekend was grand as well.  I will not bore you with all of the details, but I had a chance to hang out with Duane, one of our newest recruits to the TWBR team.  We went to a club called APT, one of those clever New York pretentious joints with a cute theme, this time the theme is supposed to be modeled after an apartment.  Who was the rocket scientist who came up with this, and more importantly, why are all of the people there so willing to spend hundreds of dollars a night to hang out here?

Then came the heat.  Monday rolled around and I Sat in an internet cafe in Chelsea most of the day working and sweating.  I later called my friend Tara who offered me a place to stay. I moved my things to her place that evening only to have a not so warm welcome and a request that I find a new place to stay the next day.  The strange part is that she insisted that I stay with her; people are so strange.  This was the beginning of a realization.  Tara blew up an air matress for me that had a slow leak, so I spent the night tossing and turning in her apt that has no AC on a half inflated matress that sqweeks every time you move around.  I woke up the next morning and immediately started my search for hotels in the area.  The most appealing choice in my price range was the St.Mark’s hotel, which isn’t too bad of a place, but certainly not worth $110 per night.  I walked my not so happy ass over to the hotel with my heavy bags in the swealtering heat and was stopped at a corner in the east village.  At that point the air from the sewer wofted into my nostrils, I looked over to see a pile of trash that had not been collected yet, and said to myself, "It doesn’t smell so rosy anymore."  The thing is that it never smells rosy in New York.  For that matter, there is a lot of shit that simply isn’t rosy or nice in the City.  These are all things that I already know.  This was not my first time in New York.  In fact, I have been to NYC enough that I have lost count of the number of times I have been here.

I guess the important thing about this moment was the way I was able to just stand there and accept the fact that the air and everything surrounding my situation was far less than keen.  Instead of fighting it and trying to do something to turn my situation around, I just went to my shoebox sized room and let things be, and proceeded to stand in front of the air conditioner full blast for about a half hour.  In the past I have had real problems accepting this.  Especially on longer trips, it is hard to just let things be.  It is hard to just admit to yourself that things cannot always be a walk in the park.  The more you travel, the more you see that there is no escape from the sewage getting into your nostrils.  No matter how much you plan or know about a place, sometimes shit is just going to suck.

Thanks East Village street corner.  I am now a more enlightened person.