August
11th, 2001 – New York City
This weekend, Heather and I took a trip down to New Jersey to see Tim and then to go into NYC on Saturday. It was just a spur of the moment kind of thing since I only planned it like a week or two before. It was very nice though. Jeremy came up from Washington D.C. and stayed for the weekend too. We stayed at Tim’s house so it was free which was nice. We got there around 7:00 Friday night. I had to drive about 6 hours on the interstate. It was my first time driving that far, and I was amazed that I had no problems. Well, this is about some of the weird or annoying things that happened in NYC.
I got up at 8 to leave, and we finally left Tim’s house around 9. We rode to the Path, which is a train into New York. The first thing that annoyed me was the train. Almost nobody on the train was speaking English. They were all speaking Spanish. They were also wearing Nike shoes and Yankees stuff, but all they were talking was Spanish. I wish I had a big stick so I could just hit them and tell them to speak English. It really annoys me. If you live in the country, you should speak the language. I guess I get upset about this because off all the callers I get that don’t speak English or are really bad at it. This theme was re-occurring throughout the trip.
We got into NYC and headed for the Staten Island
ferry so that we could buzz by the Statue of Liberty for some good picture
opportunities. We first went
through this construction zone and then took a peek at the building where
Tim’s brother works. The best
thing about this was that the building next to it was the Portuguese National
Bank. I wanted to go in there and
get some Portuguese money but I didn’t. On
the way to the ferry building, we had to go through this park.
We saw some homeless people sleeping on the benches.
One of them looked pretty uncomfortable.
I was amazed they were still sleeping since it was 11:00 and daylight.
In the park, we first encountered the street vendors. They had briefcases and would open them to show you a bunch of sunglasses and then tell you they were real Oakleys and only 5 dollars. All the vendors must go to the same store because they all have the same items. We encountered many more of these vendors in the park, as well as around Time Square. The ones in Time Square were more versatile though. They also sold umbrellas, purses, and watches. Not just sunglasses. They were also worse because they blocked both sides of the sidewalk and it was hard to get through.
Well, we got to the ferry, but it didn’t leave until 11:30 so we went across the street to Starbucks. I don’t like coffee so I didn’t get anything. Tim gave me a taste of his caramel frappacino. I tasted like frozen coffee and was really disgusting. I had to use a napkin on my tongue and then get some mint gum from Heather to get the taste out. So we went back to the ferry and got in line. While we waited, two black guys came up and started doing all this gymnastic stuff. They were fairly entertaining, but of course I’m not paying them anything. We eventually got on the ferry and went back and forth. It was a really cool ride and a nice view.
After the ferry, we had to head over to Broadway to catch out play. It of course started raining at this time as we ran down the street looking for a bus. Luckily for us, the street was blocked due to a street fair, so we ended up riding the subway. It was fun, but it scared me sometimes because I thought it was going to fall apart. We made it to Broadway and Tim went to get the tickets while Heather and I went to eat. We ate at a pizza shop and then rushed back to the theatre to see Les Miserables. The play was very good but it also was kind of uncomfortable. I was really wet from the rain, and the place was really cold from air conditioning. I eventually dried out but it was bad for a while. They also had these really loud gunshots go off during a fight and they really hurt my ears. They also had this really huge line for the bathrooms which blocked the lobby off at intermission. Stever and I tried to get candy but we couldn’t get through. That was kind of annoying also.
After the show, we walked around Time Square for a bit. Nothing much happened then except for more foreign people and the vendors. I also forgot the mention that we saw some guy singing in his underwear outside the shows. He was the naked cowboy. He had on underwear and a hat. He had naked cowboy written on the back of his underwear and had www.nakedcowboy.com written also. I guess that was his webpage. So we eventually walked over to Rockefeller center where Heather and I got a picture with this big spider that was there. We also earlier got a picture with a giant bull. We saw some people take a picture of the bull’s butt for some reason. I should mention that the bull was anatomically correct.
We finally went to eat at a 6 story shopping mall.
The mall had the food court way at the top which was pretty dumb and only
had 6 stores. I think it was
because it was all the way at the top and people didn’t want to go all the way
up there for food. After this we
went home. All and all it was a
good trip. Now let me see what I
forgot. There was an old, black guy
singing about Jesus on the way to the ferry. He was annoying and Heather said “They should have a law
against being annoying.” Now
normally I would agree, but then I would be in trouble quite a bit. There were also quite a few people preaching about Jesus and
this and that. The bathroom at the
Virgin MegaStore only had two working toilets out of like 6 and was super
disgusting. We also saw some guy
yelling at a ticket lady at the ferry. He
was calling her a racist and she was yelling back at him through the ticket
thing. It was great.
Also, on the way down we saw this anti-abortion guy.
He had the whole back of his van plastered with anti-abortion bumper
stickers as well as some on both sides. We
first saw him at a rest stop and ended up passing him twice more on the highway.
It was quite funny. Overall
though, I must say I had a good time. It
was fun seeing the guys from college again. I didn’t think Heather liked NYC much but I can’t blame
her. It’s too much for me too.