So back to my trip the other week...
We woke up around noonish on Saturday. We got all freshened up and hit the town. I wanted to see everything. Central Park, Empire State Building, The Statue of Liberty, The Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, The Rock Center (we have a branch there and 4 floors), Park Ave (another branch), I wanted to see it all. We jumped on the subway and hit up Times Square first. It was super packed. People all over. The weather was hot and muggy. I felt like I needed a shower about 10 minutes after leaving the hotel.
So we walked around Times Square as best we could. We hopped in to a souvenier shop because they had the AC blasting. I looked around to pick up cheesy trinkets and shirts to bring back for my friends and family. I picked up some post cards and one of those spoons that they have in every city with the city's name on it. I didn't get anything else because I thought we were going to check out all the sites and I didn't want to get bogged down. I figured I would pick something up towards the end of the day.
After leaving the shop we made our way back to the subway and then jumped on a train to 125th street. Everyone who knows nothing about New York should jump on a train and get off at 125th street...really. hahaha, no actually don't do that unless you feel comfortable being in Harlem.
The reason for my little trek into harlem was for food, of course. More specifically food at Sylvia's. Sylvia's has the best soul food on the planet. The place was packed, naturally. We had to wait about and hour or so before we were seated but it was cool cause they were celbrating their anniversary that day and they had a jazz band playing. It was cool.
When we finally sat down we were treated to the best tasting cornbread on the planet. Oh it was so great. It wasn't dry like most cornbreads. It really didn't even need any butter is was so good. It was the perfect balance of sweetness with that kind of mealy taste that is hard to describe. We immediately asked for glasses of lemonade with our cornbread though because of the heat outside. We must have polished off like 5 glasses of lemonade each.
Mokee had the friend chicken and double order of macaroni and cheese. I had the baked ham, mac n cheese, and potato salad. It was orgasmic! The baked ham had such a wonderful flavor and was so juicy and tender. I ate every last scrap and piece of fat. The mac n cheese was simply the best I have ever had. It wasn't greasy, it wasn't runny, it wasn't mucky. It was rich and had just the right creamy consistancy. The macaroni itself was cooked perfectly. It wasn't mushy or too hard. The potato salad was really good but I had attacked the ham and mac n cheese so there wasn't enough room in my belly for all of it. I so wish we had a Sylvia's in the bay area. Of course we would need Sylvia to make sure that it was done right and that just isn't going to happen. :(
After the meal we sat and listened to the jazz band for a bit. Then we went for a walk around Harlem. You know, it wasn't as scarey as people make it out to be. Of course things always seem worse when they are foreign to you. I live right near Oakland, California. The murder rate there has skyrocketed there the last few years. It's way worse than anything New York has. I am sure to New York, Oakland is a scary place that they would never think about going to. But you know what? I go to Oakland quite a bit, the bad parts too, and nothing ever happens to me. I feel fine when I go there.
We were way stuffed after that meal and even after a good walk we decided to go back to the hotel and take a nap. So that's what we did. I had a good rest and then I headed downstairs to use their little internet kiosk that they had in the lobby. That is where I made my update from and left notes with ezi and poocake. I won't have to worry about kiosks when I get my new iBook though! WooHoo! Internet anywhere baby!
So after I came back up to the room from web surfing and stuff we got ready to hit the town again. It was about 9pm or so. The original plan was to head over to Times Square again to have drinks at the rotating bar at the Marriot. It's exacly like Equinox here in San Francisco, only it is up like 48 floor high. Then we were going to go to another hand out spot at the W. That didn't happen though because Lisa called and asked if Mokee wanted to come over to check out her futon. Lisa is going to give Mokee her futon but she wanted Mokee to look at it first to make sure she really wanted it.
So we cut our cab ride short in the West Village area. Lisa was at some party and wouldn't be home for about an hour so we decided to have dinner in the area. We started walking around and checked out the eateries. We kept walking and walking all over. We must have walked around for well over an hour, zig zagging around Houston (pronounced How-stun in New York).
We finally stopped to eat at Trattore Dolce or something like that. It was an Italian place. The food there was nice, but not stunning like my previous New York meals. I had the buffalo cheese/tomato/and basil salad to start. For my main course I had chicken parmagiana and for desert I had a lemon sorbet. Mokee had like a strawberry ice cream thingy for dessert.
After dinner, which by that time was about 12:30am, we walked some more. We ended up waking around the NYU area and then caught a cab to Times Square. Lisa was still partying so we had time to go. We went to that bar on the 48th floor of the Marriot. The elevator ride up is quite a ride. You are in these bubble like glass elevators and you can see the whole inside of the hotel on the way up. It was last call by the time we got up there so we only had one drink then left.
Next we hit up the living room at the W. It's an ultra hipster type place with white leather couches everywhere. They had these little booths that looked cool. I just had a couple of waters there because I didn't want to drink too much the night before a cross country flight. I learned my lesson in DC!
From there we went to Lisa's pad. I believe it was near 7th and B ave. I'm not sure about North or South or East or West though. I know it was in the lower east side though. She lives in a building with no elevator but it's only 6 stories high. She lived on the 5th floor. heeheehee. Yeah we walked up some stairs. 5 flights isn't that bad though. It might be a little bad around 3:30am after a full day in New York though.
So Mokee checked out the futon and her pad. She has a funky little place with two other roommates. They each pay like a $1,000 a month! ack! So Lisa asked if I wanted to check out the view from her rooftop. I said sure. We went up the last flight and walked out to the edge to look at the street below. It was a beautiful view of not only the street below but also the Manhattan skyline. All the buildings in the area were no bigger than 6 stories high so we didn't have anything obstructing our view. I never would have imagined that my last minute trip to New York would end with me on a rooftop in the lower east side taking in the view of Manhattan with a hot nerd chick.
Lisa wanted us to go out with her to meet up with some of her friends that were still partying but Mokee and I were beat. And I had to catch a train out of New York back to philly at 8am (it was about 4:30am, just enough time to catch a nap). I regretfully said goodbye to Lisa and we hopped in a cab back to the hotel.
I packed my bags when we got to the room and set the alarm clock for 6:45am. I was going to jump straight out of bed in the morning and catch a cab to Penn Station.
Tomorrow will be the last episode of The Adventures of Monkeyboy.
4:18 p.m. - 2003-08-13
I was checking out the apple store online and stuff. You know, since the iCrap is acting Crappy. I decided to buy a new fandangled iBook. It's the one with the 14" screen. It has an airport card too. So when I get it I can be online while i'm pooping. I really shouldn't be spending this kind of money. Ack!
I don't know what i'm going to do with the iCrap. I think maybe i'll just replace the drive with a new one that I bought and never installed. Then I dunno. Maybe I'll keep the iCrap and use the iBook for when i'm on BART and traveling. Maybe i'll sell the iCrap on craig's list to try to pay for part of the iBook. I dunno...
11:27 a.m. - 2003-08-13
My little iMac may have kicked the bucket! When i turn it on the little animated circle thingy that shows it's booting up just keeps spinning round and round and nothing else happens. It just stays there. I left it on all night long and it was still just spinning round and round in the morning. It won't fully start up. I stuck the OS X disc in and tried to boot off of that but it just tries to wipe the disk clean and install OS X from scratch.
I'm going to have to research this today and see if there is anything I can do. I don't want to loose all the stuff I have on my drive. I have special photoshop projects that I would hate to lose. Blah!
The last New York update will be here later today.
8:32 a.m. - 2003-08-13
Recent entries:
Oklahoma - 2005-11-07
Obey! - 2005-11-03
Back From Boston - 2005-10-27
Lots of Updates - 2005-10-24
Back to Work - 2005-10-10
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