New York City: Madness

Why madness?

Consider: I'd spent the last five and a half months traveling through Mexico and Central America spending $25-50/day, depending upon the country.  I was routinely dirty, sleep deprived and cramped on bus rides of various durations.  I was also often surrounded by poverty and a lack of development almost incomprehensible to Western sensibilities.  I don't mean to make it sound terrible; obviously I was having a great time.  But this sort of travel certainly isn't for everyone.

And after nearly 180 days of this lifestyle I would be back in New York City in only a few hours flying.  The speed and ease of the transition made my head spin.

The first class tickets helped a lot, though. Hey, hey! I used miles and besides: the way the dates worked out first class was actually fewer miles than coach. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My little cubicle here is 3 full windows long.  It was terrible.

So what took me to NYC in the first place?  The plan had been to just keep heading south from Tijuana, all the way to Tierra del Fuego.  It was a wedding.  But not just any wedding, no.  A special kind of wedding..

..on a fucking boat!

Seriously: when Alin (with whom I went to college) told me he was getting married and that I was invited, I was on the fence.  But then he said they were going to do it on a boat in NYC harbor, and I was like "I'm there, man."  And it turned out to be a helluva shindig.

The happy couple, Emer and Alin.

The setting couldn't be topped..

..nor could the background.

Where better to exchange vows than beneath the Statue of Liberty?

It's official!

Once that pesky ceremony was over, we were able to get down to business: partying.

I didn't really realize it before, but I'd been missing this sort of thing in my life.

You've gotta be careful: put me in a suit and give me enough champagne and I'll try to sell you the shoes you're wearing.  At a reasonable price, of course.

"I'm tellin' ya, Alin, this is an opportunity not to be missed."

Crap, I don't think he's buying it.

A word to the wise: if you want your wedding to be epic, do it here.

The reception was held at a pretty swanky bar/restaurant downtown.  It was more geared toward the younger guests.  There are blessedly few pictures of the night.

That's not my shirt and that's not her hat.  It was a good party.

So that accounts for one Saturday.. what did I do with myself for the rest of the two weeks I spent in NYC?  In a word: drink.  I didn't mean to, I swear!  But there were so many people that I hadn't seen in nearly a year and, oddly enough, they all wanted to get a quick drink or four.  And you know me: I'm too damned polite and self-sacrificing to say no.

All of my plans about visiting and photographing the important places in my life in NYC went right down the drain.  Instead, I slept late, wandered around the city for a few hours until everyone was off work and then parked myself at the bar.  Fun?  Sure.  But in all honesty, after a week or ten days, I started to remember why I left in the first place.  I used to have a job that routinely claimed 50 hours per week of my life (or more).  I had have a great group of friends, wonderful people, all of 'em.. but 9 times out of 10 we got together at the bar.  It just came to seem like a waste.

And maybe the problem is mostly mine: I could have sought out other ways to socialize.  But for whatever reason, it seemed easier to just leave it all behind.

In any case, here are a few pictures I managed to take between bar stools.

This is me, freshman year of college.

The N/Q/R subway stations in Manhattan are all decorated with mosaics relating to the neighborhood above.  The Prince Street station has a series of silhouettes of all sorts of different people: businessmen swinging briefcases, bums pushing shopping carts, fashionistas striding along in towering heels.. in short, the whole range of people you can find on the streets of SoHo.

I always loved that they thought to include a surfer carrying a board bag and, if you look closely, wearing flip flops, sunglasses and an unruly hair cut.  The first year I arrived in NYC I was this silhouette: I'd get up at completely unreasonable hours and take the subway from the East Village to Penn Station then the Long Island Railroad out to Long Beach to go surfing.

I musta been nuts.

20 Pine: The Armani Collection.

A former classmate (and wannabe mobster) got me my first job in the construction industry working on this building.  It was a disaster of a project and an absolutely terrible company in general.  They were Israeli developers (ie, money men) that thought they could save themselves a bundle of money by managing construction projects themselves.  As it turns out, high rise luxury renovations are tricky and it's tough to build a construction management company from scratch.

I worked my ass off and got laid off/fired after only six months.  They were looking to lay people off in any case, as the project was winding down, but I put my head on the chopping block by implying to the director of construction that he didn't know what he was doing.

In front of a bunch of people.

I musta been nuts.

I never did get tired of this view: looking up Wall Street at Trinity Church.

The combination of skyscrapers and an old fashioned church is just plain wonderful.

This is only a block or two away from 20 Pine and, coincidentally, my first job as well.  George Washington was inaugurated just a block to the right and then attended mass at Trinity Church.  Alexander Hamilton is buried in the graveyard at Trinity Church.  J.P Morgan built his bank only two stories high just to say "Screw you, I can afford to waste real estate this valuable."  Working down there, sometimes I just had to stop myself and ask "How fucking awesome is this?"  Answer: really fucking awesome.

I went to a baseball game at Citi Field Shea Stadium.

I love baseball games, even the boring ones.

Just as I was leaving Cooper Union they started building this..  thing.  Apparently, it came off pretty well.  The critics love it.  I think it looks like an alien spacecraft landed in Cooper Square.  In a good way, of course.  The NY Times has more and better pictures, if you're interested.

McSorely's has to be one of the best bars on the planet.  And it's about 50 yards away from Cooper Union.

It's over 150 years old and has been open the whole damn time (there was a speak easy upstairs during Prohibition).  They only serve beer.  McSorley's beer.  And only two varieties: light and dark.  If you know what you're doing, you order "one and one" or, maybe, just tell 'em to keep 'em coming.  The mustard is sublime and so spicy it'll clear your sinuses from 10 yards away.  They have an NY Times article on the wall about when they started admitting women: when they were forced by law in 1970.  And they didn't have a women's bathroom for another 20 years.  This is a place for men to be men, in all of our disgusting glory.  There's sawdust on the floor and you can smell spilled beer from half a block away.  I can't even tell you how hard it was walking by this place on the way to school.

My friends and I would "hold court" here: installing ourselves at noon and just watch and wait as our other acquaintances came and went.  They'd spend an hour or two apiece and be on their way, but those of us holding court would end up spending six hours and a horrendous amount of money before stumbling out to a still-daylit street, confused and dismayed that it should be so bright out.

I swear to god, I'm a little bit teary just thinking about it.

The second weekend I was in NYC I tried to escape the drunken madness by absconding to Boston to see my very good friend James and, as it turned out, his delightful girlfriend Niall (pronounce it "Neal." It's Irish).

In this picture, James and Niall do not approve.  And what is it that's earned their ire?

Now that's just plain silly.

Continuing the theme of silly buildings: Boston City Hall.  A classic example of brutalism.  Really, architects?  Really? You're going to call a style Brutalism and expect the rest of us to take you seriously?

James and Niall are members at the Boston Aquarium.  This is very handy for visiting friends because otherwise it's quite expensive to get in.

My little camera couldn't take very good pictures in the low light, but these jellyfish came out pretty well.

It was great fun recognizing lots of fish from my dive experience. These are lion fish, which are native to the South Pacific but have been introduced to the Caribbean as well. They are very poisonous. No touchee!

It was incredible going back and seeing all of my friends, but it was bittersweet as well.  NYC is like a crazy ex-girlfriend: great fun but just not worth the trouble in the long run.  If I went back I know I'd fall back into the same rut that had been slowly driving me nuts.  It was good to go and good to leave.

But I'll always love ya, New York.