Well, I posted about this last night, but as the thread seems to have disappeared (dude, what’s with the all technical problem lately?) I figured I’d try again.
Next Wenesday I’m heading down to New Your freakin City with a busload of the idiot 18 year olds I go to school with. My art school sponsors this trip annually for the freshman class, and, according to the lady organizing it, it usually dissolves into a drunken orgy. Yes, that was her phrase: drunken orgy, with a smirk.
Problem is A) I’m married, so no drunken 18 year olds for me (and, honestly, that’s for the best–what 18 year old knows what to do between the sheets anyway?), B) I don’t drink for fear of my wife, C) I won’t have enough money to drink myself stupid in any case, and D) I wouldn’t waste what may be my only trip to New York in drunken stupor anyway.
Problem is I know just about dick about New York. I’ve never really left Ohio except for a few dozen trips to Chicago, and the area of Northern Kentucky my hometown of Cincinnati sprawls into. So I’ve no idea what a broke art student might do in NYC (which is ridiculous since it’s one of the most exciting cities in the flippin world).
Any ideas? Though, since everyone I talk to here regularly (except Peach) is from the UK, I don’t expect much of an answer.
Love. Peace. Metallica.
Hi KH
I did a tour across the states and spent 9 days in New York – I also got some family there so I was *forced dammit* to take em out for a pizza.
Anyhow some of the things that you can do for free or cheap.
1. Mug tourists – hey it solves the money issue 😀
2. Central Park – Now this was what opened my eyes – that is one huge sprawl of a park worth checking out. (Free)
3. Ground Zero me and my wife specifically wanted to pay our respects it is worth a visit. (Free)
4. The Whitney Museum of American Art – it is pay what you want/free
5. Rockefeller Centre (Free)
6. Go take a look at the Wall Street Bull monument – pretty impressive actually.
7. The Gothic Cathedral, St. John the Divine, near Columbia University – now that is a building worth seeing art wise.
8. Broadway is worth a walk up and down and the M&M shop was just hysterical.
9. Statue of Liberty the tour itself was a right rip off – massive queues expensive and only got a walk round the base. But if you goto the bay you can get a good view with some binocs and nice walk.
Anyhow I was there pretty much on protest as my wife wanted to visit it and see the ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ – the shitty prices I have to pay for getting a tat 😉
Take Care
Matthew
1. Mug tourists – hey it solves the money issue 😀
2. Central Park – Now this was what opened my eyes – that is one huge sprawl of a park worth checking out. (Free)
If Law & Order reruns have taught me nothing else, both of these tasks can be completed at once.
I had something witty to say, but my wife was reading this over my shoulder and burst into hysterical laughter. There were tears man. Apparently, she thinks I’ll burst into flames -_-
I’m still going to go, but first I’m going to have to bathe in unholy water, and eat a torah backwards. There’s more, but I think I need to stop repeating what my wife’s saying before I start looking for a divorce lawyer.
And Phantom? Seriously? Of all the awesome musicals she could have chosen, she choose the only one more over rated than CATS.
Love. Peace. Metallica.
Stop your ranting Knighty –
You didn’t have to sit through that shit of a musical! 😀
I know what you mean about the cathedral – I wasn’t keen on the idea at first but as I say architecture/art wise it is impressive – to me though it is just a building.
Besides I always wondered if you woul implode or burn up crossing god’s territory. 😉
The park can be rough but I found going day time no issue – besides we don’t get much greenery where I am and you can always feed beggars to those ducks I hear they eat anything as long as it stays still long enough.
Take Care
Matthew
You didn’t have to sit through that shit of a musical! 😀
Oh yes I have. Repeatedly. My wife has it on DVD and CD. Good thing I got her Rent and REPO: The Genetic Opera right around the time her copy of CATS disappeared
>_>
<_<
-_-
Besides I always wondered if you woul implode or burn up crossing god’s territory. 😉
You and my wife both.
Love. Peace. Metallica.
So, KnightHawk in New York City.
It was one helluva ride. It took eighteen hours on a cramped, poorly ventilated bus to get there, and we barely checked in at the hotel before we blasted off to the Museum of Modern Art, the first leg of my, Jacob’s, and Mark’s WORLD’S LONGEST MUSEUM CRAWL tm. Oh, I could go on for hours about the art I saw, touring the Museum of Modern Art, the Armory Art Show, The Whitney, The Museum of Sex, the various churches I visited, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I could go on about how, standing at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, the physical embodiment of everything I believe in, the manifestation of American idealism, I wept openly at its beauty.
But, fuck it. From spending the last four days trying to tell people about this shit, how it inspired me, moved me, how it changed who I am in some ways, I’ve found all they want to hear are the funny stories. So, here goes.
The school had us staying at the Latham Hotel, a place built something like a hundred years ago, and god did it show. While it was impeccably clean, the place was falling apart, and run, apparently run by monkeys.
For one thing, our hotel had given away the rooms DAAP had reserved for us. So, instead of my group of three being given a room with bunk beds for four, we were given a room made for one person. Mark, being homophobic, refused to share a bed with a man, which put me in the position of sleeping in the same bed as Jacob.
We both sleep in our boxers or less…and I’m a cuddler.
For another, the toilet in our barthroom didn’t work the whole trip. When we had to shit, we had to walk to Starbucks. Good thing there appeared to be about six every city block
The kicker had to be the way we found out about that. We dumped our luggage, and were getting ready to blast off for the Museum of Modern Art when I decided I had to pee. So I drained my snake and tried to flush the toilet. Nothing. Hmm, that’s odd. Better tell the front desk about that. I wash my hands, grab the doorknob, yank it open…and the doorknob came off in my hand. I banged on the door, and the other side fell into the room.
Right about the time I started thinking about kicking the door down, though, Jacob popped out his multitool and popped the latch, letting me out.
On our second night in town, after the armory show, Jacob decided the three of us needed to go out on the town, and I decided since I had apparently missed so much fun on the first night by finishing C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and going to bed at a reasonable time, I ought to go out and be sociable.
This was a mistake.
This is where is started, Mcsorely’s Old Ale House, the oldest surviving bar in America at 155 years of age. To set the stage a little, that pic of me at the top was taken on the Sub Way that morning on the way to the armory show, and save for showering and getting my hair under control, that’s what I looked like. Jacob, on the other hand, was wearing ratty jeans and a blue plaid Billabong flannel shirt, and Mark…oh Mark. He wanted to look snazzy so badly, to be the big man in our group, so he put on a $200 white dress shirt, a $150 red power tie, snazzy black slacks, dress shoes, and a white cardigan sweatervest.
A freakin sweater vest.
Are you kidding me?
To top it off, he had what he claimed to be a fat cuban cigar he toted around NYC like a fashion accessory.
God, I like Mark, but he brought on every ounce of abuse me and Jacob poured on him.
First, as we were leaving the hotel, a french tourist stopped me and complimented me on my Misfits t-shirt. After that, we wandered down to Soho, looking for dinner and maybe a piercing shop to get my lip done. We found the first, but of the eight shops I walked into, none of them were up to my hygiene standards. Well, that, and all of them had shops in the front that sold NYC hats, or Bob Marley t-shirts, or bongs and pipes and the like. I’m sorry, when your main buisness is selling junk with tattoos and piercings as a sideline, I find it very, very hard to trust you.
I did however have three or four people in the shops throw up the horns and say awesome shirt.
Dinner was a steak at a SoHo steakhouse. I had a whiskey sour with it, which is still within my wife’s standards for how much ole KH is allowed to drink before he’s in trouble.
But then Mark had the bright idea to hit up McSorely’s old ale house. It’s the oldest bar in America! You have to see it man!
I didn’t intend to drink. I mean, I hate beer, and that’s all they sell there. Irish beer, light or dark. Whiskey, gin, that sort of thing I’m there, but hops and barely? No thank you.
The bar was crowded, more crowded than any drinking house I’ve ever seen. Cheek to jowl doesn’t even cover it. The bar tender and the guys going table to table serving beer (they all wore whatever, so calling them waiters seems kind grand) were all legitimately Irish, and complete, and utter assholes. The owner put me, Jacob, and Mark at one of the ancient rickety tables because, quite frankly, I’m huge and he couldn’t shove me out of his way, and I couldn’t move of my own accord on account of the crowd. He had to kick three hard drinking people out to do it, but he did it with a slurred “GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE”.
He got pissed when he found out I wasn’t drinking, and started screaming at me, telling me to go the fuck back to that pisshole Cincinnati (I assumed Jacob told him when they were talking).
Then something happened that hasn’t happened since I met my wife.
That old irrational anger came back. It just sprang back to life out of no where, and I could see myself jumping up, driving my fist into the guy’s gut, and kneeing him in the face. I was on the verge, even though I knew he didn’t mean it, he was just doing his job, part of which is abusing the customers. It’s traditional.
So I ordered a pint of the dark to get him out of my face, paid up, and turned to the six or seven hot girls he has set us with and struck up a conversation about how a motorcycle guy, a lumber jack, and a young republican got together.
One of them complimented my shirt.
He brought me two beers. Turns out that every time you order beer there, they bring you two.
It was good. So very, very good. I’ve only had American beer before, but this was a whole different ball game. So I ordered another round, then stole Mark’s when he said he didn’t want it. By the time we were ready to go, Jacob had had eleven, and I had had seven having stolen one of Jake’s final rounds.
When we walked out of the bar, we ran into a group of girls from our art school, and they decided to hang out with us. One of them, who I’ll call Britney since that’s not her name, complimented my Misfits shirt.
At that point Mark lost it. He started yelling about how he was wearing $600 worth of clothes, and all anyone could talk about was my $20 Misfits shirt. He swore up and down when he got back to the hotel he was fucking ordering six of them off the internet.
By then, we were walking down the street with Mark and the girls, but I grabbed Jacob and we hung back a bit. I told him I didn’t want to hang out with them. Mark wanted to quit drinking and go to the Apple store where his cousin would hook him up with a free Iphone, a trip that did nothing for me, and Britney was making cow eyes at me again. She’s in every one of my classes, just like Mark and Jake, and she’s had a crush on me since day one, and I was drunk enough that she was starting to look very, very, very hot.
I wanted to split before I did something I’d regret. Which if my wife heard, she’d call it a betrayal for even being attracted to another woman, but, hell, I was drunk and did the responsible thing:
I left with the intention of helping Jacob getting laid.
It was Jacob’s idea not mine. He’d been trying to track down this hot chick all evening, and the last text message she sent gave us a corner to go to. So, without telling them we were ditching, we stepped out into the street, snagged a taxi, and blew.
The girls later told us Mark cried a little after we left him behind.
In the taxi, me and Jacob talked about how it he felt it was okay to cheat because men are evolutionarily wired to want sex all the time with many different women, and I countered with the fact women like sex as much (or more) than we do, and that it was society telling women that they’re not supposed to like sex or they were sluts had more to do with it.
So, we got to the corner where we were told the bar the two girls we were looking for were at. Jacob’s plan was to cozy up to his intended girl, and for me to keep her married friend company, figured the old married people could quitley bicker and not have sex, or whatever it is that married people do.
Problem was, there was four bars there.
So, we ducked into the closest of them, another Irish Pub called Shades of Green. Unlike McSorely’s, this one was modern, with big screen TVs showing soccer and no sawdust on the floor–a proper American bar with proper American drinks. All right.
I horrified Jacob by coming back to the table with his beer, three shots of tequila (they asked the brand and I responded how I always do: cheapest you got dude man), and a whiskey sour. He said he didn’t want to get THAT drunk, and was shocked when I laughed and said they weren’t for him. I tossed all three back, and then set to work on my whiskey sour.
By then, I was feeling it. Nine beers, three shots of tequila, and two whiskey sours? I should be wasted, but for some reason, I was only buzzing.
No, I didn’t go over the edge until we got to the third bar.
Half way through my whiskey sour, we got a call from Jacob’s girl, and she told us she was in the bar across the street and that her married friend had disappeared. So, we wandered on over, and god did it suck. It was one of those trendy bars where all the staff is hot, wearing tight black clothing, the music’s too loud to have a decent conversation, and the lighting is too dark to see if the person you’re talking up is in anyway hot.
In other words, a great pick up bar.
Not long after we got there, the married friend showed back up and she was bouncing off the walls. I’d find out later she’d scored herself some cocaine and was dedicated to cock blocking Jacob, making out with random people in the curtained off areas, and dirty dancing with Jacob’s intended target.
But, before we found that out, Jake’s prospects were looking good for the night, and in celebration, he opened a tab and told me to get whatever the hell I wanted, and as much as I wanted.
That was the second mistake made that night.
Over the next hour and a half I had three more shots of tequila, two whiskey sours, and two red headed sluts. Then 2AM rolled around, and the bar tender, this hot little latin number, mixed us up Irish Car Bombs for free.
And that’s what did me in. After that, I’m not sure what followed. The only thing I could tell you is that I drunk texted my tattooed sister a few times (read: 26), and that Mark showed up at some point and started buying me gin and tonics. I think there may also have been vodka and another red head slut, but that isn’t entirely clear.
The next morning I woke up in the hotel bed after having only slept something like four hours. No hang over, that means I was smart enough to start guzzling water at some point. We had to be at the Whitney Museum in about three hours. Mark and Jacob didn’t get in until two hours after me (they told me later) and they refused to get up. So, I hitched my track pants up (I don’t remember putting them on), said fuck shoes, and walked down to a fruit stand a block and a half away for caffiene and an orange.
Thing is, the guys in the lobby looked at me funny. The little asian chick running the fruit stand gave me a weird look when I paid. And when I ran into Britney and the first set of girls from the night before, they gave me some weird looks too. Well, except for Brit–she refused to talk with me or even acknowledge my presence.
But I said fuck it, went to the bathroom to shower, and when I looked in the mirror, there was a pretty noticeable smudge of dried blood on my forehead, and after I showered, a bruise. I couldn’t find any cuts on my head, and Jacob and Mark were too comatose to say shit, so I just shrugged, shaved, put on my sunglasses to ward off that evil glowing orb of fire in the sky, and wandered down to the Whitney.
Later that night, the girl Jacob didn’t get to fuck filled me in on what happened at the bar after things started getting disjointed. Apparently, some guy took exception to Mark’s $600 outfit, Mark got pissed and stepped up, and when the guy grabbed him, I stumbled over, turned him around, and head butted him in the face. But, since I was drunk and he was taller than me, I smashed his nose instead of his forehead. I knocked him down, then promptly walked in a half circle, flashed the horns, and fell on my ass.
I still only sort of remember this, so I’m just going with what she said, and she had tied a serious one on herself, so take it with a grain of salt.
Either way, the bouncer dragged the guy I hit out, and they told Jacob and Mark if they got me out of there right now, they wouldn’t call the cops. So, they pretty much dragged me outside, tossed me into a cab, gave the cabby the address of our hotel, and wished me luck.
I do remember, very clearly, paying the man, stumbling to the hotel, and then finding myself unable to remember what room I was in. Britney’s group was coming in for the night at that time, and she decided to help me to my room.
I can honestly say what happened next I have no memory of and have a hard time believing, but nothing else explains how cold the girl’s been to me the following week. But according to the girl Jacob was after, who heard it from a mutual friend she had with Brit, the girl took her shirt off and climbed into bed with me, and I, being drunk off my ass, told her I was married and that this wasn’t going to happen, and then told her to get her slutty ass out of my hotel room.
I seriously doubt that last part–I wasn’t coherent enough to form the phrase “slutty ass”.
o, that was my big adventure.
Oh! I lied. One more thing.
Mark found a t-shirt/tattoo parlor selling Misfits shirt and bought every singe one they had in his size after he left the trendy bar. 😀
The last thing I have to post for Matthew’s Benefit:
That’s me with my head in the bronze bull’s ass.
Love. Peace. Metallica.
Dude!
That is my screen saver *cackle*
That has to be one of the best picks I have seen in ages.
Q. So what did you do in NYC?
A. I shoved my head up a bronze bulls arse for the amusement of a limey called Matthew – why?
lol
Well as to the half naked bint I have to say you did the right thing – tempting as it is wives don’t take that sort of shit lightly – and they always find out!
Cheers for that I it has really lit my day up.
Matthew
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