Brian Fields

December 6th, 2007

My friend and fellow E-Man Jason has been living in New York, teaching in the Bronx. Before he finished college he knew didn’t know exactly where he wanted to wind up but definitely knew that he had outgrown Ohio. (Understandable, since he’s very liberal and Ohio… well, isn’t. I promised him that I’d come visit him because he’s my friend for one, and two, because who wouldn’t mind visiting New York without paying for a hotel? I made the arrangements to visit him in December of 2007. The other E-men just couldn’t fit it in the schedule to make the trip, but to be honest I was kinda happy to make it alone. It was only a weekend trip and it just made it easier to ensure that I did the things that I wanted to do rather than trying to agree on plans.

Skipping straight to it, after my departing flight and connecting flight in Detroit being delayed, I arrived in New York about an hour and a half later than I expected on Thursday Dec. 6th (technically, by the time I got there it was already the 7th). Coming in at night was a great choice because seeing the city lit up at night was beautiful. It was worth being squished into the window seat to get that view. I really had no idea how to get to Jason’s place from the airport, but he did an excellent job of guiding me in over the phone. I was one of the last few to get off the M60 bus line. It took me all the way from La Guardia Airport to Columbia University. Jason met up with me there (by this time it was about 1:30am) and we took the subway to the station nearest his apartment in Washington Heights. He had to work in only a few hours time and I had been up all day, so we more or less just just kept things short and hit the hay. I would be spending the morning and afternoon by myself and he made sure I was as well prepared as I could be.

December 7th, 2007

I woke up the next day and all of his roommates had already left, so I thumbed through a travel guide quickly and figured out what I might want to do. He gave me a map which ended up being the perfect and only utility I really needed and if I knew what brand it was I would certainly give credit to them. Once I was done planning, I set out and decided to walk a little bit before hitting the subway. There was a station only a couple blocks from him, but I decided to walk for about a dozen blocks first. I managed to do just fine with myself. The subway, while confusing for a couple minutes, is actually quite simple to figure out. Every station has the name of the intersection on the tiled walls so that when the train stops, you can see it through the windows and know where you are and when to get off. The subway maps are plentiful and color coding things makes them easy to understand. Most stations are set up so the stairs to the trains heading to the direction you want to go coincides with the traffic on the streets above. The first places I wanted to go to were Times Square & Rockefeller Plaza. It was December, the Christmas Tree was up, and there would surely be much spirit in the area. I got off of the subway at Columbus Circle and checked the map. Times Square was pretty much just around the corner!

Times Square was incredible. It’s just like you see in the movies… lights everywhere, ads stuffed into every corner of every building you can see. As pretty as it was it also made me feel a little dirty for enjoying that level of advertisement. It was noon and I was feeling a bit hungry, so I ducked into a Sbarro and grabbed a slice a pizza, called mom so she could stop freaking out and moved on to Rockefeller. I passed Radio City Music Hall on the way, found a couple of other good photo ops, but Rockefeller was fantastic. As you can expect it was quite crowded (which made it hard to get some eye-level pictures) but I managed. After wondering around there for a little bit, I had a few hours before I was supposed to meet up with Jason so I chose to spend them at the Empire State Building. I took the subway because it was getting a bit colder and it was about 15-20 blocks away (If I remember correctly). It took about an hour of waiting in line to make it to the top but that’s mostly because it’s not a simple feat to get hundreds of people up 80 floors any faster than they did. The view had gotten to be a bit cloudy which kinda soured some of the pictures, but didn’t have much choice as I figured Jason wouldn’t really want to spend $15 to see something that he had probably done enough for a lifetime since he’d been there. I spent about 20 minutes up top, then left and waited outside for a little while to meet Jason.

When we met up he asked me if there was anything I wanted to do or see to which my response was: “I dunno. Just show me some cool stuff.” which seemed to please him. We stopped off at a little hole-in-the-wall seafood restaurant, which, had it been anywhere but New York, I don’t think I would trust eating fish from them. We made our way to the South-East end of the island, past the Flat-Iron Building, and took the subway to the Staten Island Ferry. The cool thing about the Ferry is that it’s free to ride and passes in good picture range from the Statue of Liberty. The Ferry was wonderful. We stayed out on the deck for a little bit, but it was really cold by that point so once we passed the statue, we went inside. The Ferry is gigantic (at least in Cincinnati terms) It was a peaceful ride. Jason says he hops on the ferry from time to time to relax or to clear his mind. When we got back from the return trip, we went to “Heartland Brewery” and each got a beer sampler. We shot the bull for a bit about what’s been going on, caught up with each other’s lives and enjoyed some fine beer. Even the bad ones on the sampler were still pretty good. We walked just outside the Wall Street area and headed for a train back to Jason’s place. It was closing in on 11 o’clock at this point and I was wanting to drop my laptop off (I had been carrying it all day in case I got lost and needed help or just felt like chilling out.) Once we got back we decided against going back out and hitting up the bars, seeing as there weren’t any decent ones without having to get back on the subway. We spent some time hanging out with his roommates Travis and Mandy while they decorated Christmas Cookies and went to bed only a little bit earlier than we did the night before.

December 8th, 2007

The next day was similar in that I let Jason decide where we went to. We started off with breakfast at a small diner near Columbia University off his roommate Ben’s recommendation. The diner was roughly the size of my parent’s Family room with about 50 people crammed in. After this, we walked to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. There was lots of construction going on both inside and out, but I still wanted to see the inside. We walked in and were promptly informed that there was funeral going on, so we settled for spending some time admiring a sculpture outside of the Archangel Michael slaying Satan. We moved on to Central Park and entered opposite The Dakota where John Lennon was shot by Strawberry Fields. I quickly remembered, when I saw how big of a crowd there was, that it was December 8th, the date of John Lennon’s death. There were people singing John’s songs, leaving flowers and letters and some people just passing through.

We made our way through Central Park, passing through the Central Park Zoo. We passed the outside of the fifth avenue Apple Store and FAO Schwarz and saw a line of people around the block that seemed to blend together at the back side of the building and decided against stopping in either of them. We made the decision to stop off for a beer and contemplate out next venture, so we found a small Irish pub and stepped inside. We decided to go to the American Museum of Natural History, which we had passed on our way to Central Park, so it felt kinda dumb to back track but we took the subway. My knee was absolutely killing me from walking so much. Note to self: Wear shoes that are more comfortable next time. We made it to the museum shortly before 5 O’Clock. They had a closing time of 5:45, but that’s really just when they start moving people out for a 6 O’Clock close, I think.

We heard an announcement as we walked in that admission was free if you waited until 5pm, so we waited a few minutes and just walked right in. It was so-so. It probably would have been better if I wasn’t spending the precious time I had in NYC there. Neither of us were ready for dinner so we stopped off for a couple more drinks and went across the street to this fantastic but shabby Chinese restaurant. From the time we walked in the door we were given a glass of cheap wine and through the whole hour and a half we were there it never got lower than halfway. Granted, it was cheap boxed wine, but it was free and they kept it coming. The food was so-so, I couldn’t see much difference between Jason’s orange chicken and my General Tso’s chicken, but I got pretty drunk for about $12.

The plan from here was to waste a little bit of time and meet Travis and Mandy in another part of town to go bar hopping. We went to Barnes and Noble to browse for a little while, then we stopped in the movie theater to see if anything was getting ready to start. The next movie wasn’t for about an hour, so we passed stopped at Gray’s Papaya. To put it simply, I want a Gray’s Papaya to open across the street from me. They have a “2 Hot dogs, any toppings and a papaya juice” special for about $4. Jason paid for it, gave me 1 of the hot dogs and papaya juice, and… it was amazing. I’ve been searching for papaya juice since I tried it. I’m completely hooked. After this, we were pretty stumped for ideas so we just decided rather than trying to kill 2 or 3 hours with no ideas and already past tipsy that we’d just go back to Jason’s apartment, since we were going out with his roommates anyway.

Skipping forward, we were soon on the train out to South Houston (pronounced South House-Ton, SoHo for short.) meeting some friends of Mandy’s. We stopped long enough for a drink at a restaurant/bar that was anxious for us to leave and close down and went looking for an obscure bar in SoHo called “Sweet and Vicious”. The place seemed kinda scrubby on the inside, with rickety wooden benches lining the walls, dimly lit Gothic looking candelabras/chandelier sort of thing and some poorly strung Christmas lights being the majority of the lighting. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad, not typically the type of place I’d hang out in, but it definitely fit the bill of showing me what NYC has to offer. The place was packed from wall to wall and was really too loud to even talk. We ended up being there for an hour… maybe two and left shortly after some girl labeled me “Super Chill”. I don’t know if this is good or bad.

We stopped in another bar and left faster than it took to check our IDs. I don’t know exactly why, but I’d venture a guess of it being because the place was a piece of crap. We were rounding the corner in search of another bar… or some pizza… and walking by a few residential buildings we see a couple of candles leading to an open basement door by one of the buildings. Now, had this been anywhere but New York, my assumption would be that stepping in there would ultimately lead to me being stuffed in a trash bag in a back alley dumpster. Against our better (sober) judgment, we went right in and were somewhat surprised to see what we found. In a room no bigger than a small moving truck, it seems as if a few guys had set up a wine cellar. I get the impression that this was an unlicensed wine cellar, or that there intention was to remain very underground, because two candles on some stairs isn’t exactly the best signage. Regardless, our group, who had lost a few people and gained a few people, took one of the three shabby wooden banquet tables and Jason went to order a bottle of wine. Wearing a large fake mustache. “Excuse me barkeep, I will have a bottle of your finest Chianti, and by finest, I mean worst.” and moments later he returned with a bottle, glasses for all of us, and the bartenders compliments for helping get rid of that bottle. Now, when a person says “worst Chianti”, you can normally expect a bad wine, but even in my drunken stupor I could tell this stuff was not done justice with the word “worst”. What I mean by that is that after half a glass for the 3 people with us, Jason and I ended up finishing the bottle. This would later be considered a bad idea. Almost immediately after finishing, Jason managed to break a wine glass and in the panic of not wanting to pay for it or the horrible wine, we bolted. I stole the menu, too.

In our rush to get far away and fast, we ended up in Little Italy. The place was deserted, and rightfully so, since it was about 2:30AM (coincidentally it was roughly the same time I remembered that I had a 10AM flight home to catch.) We found one place that was closing down, we used the restroom and bought what pizza they had left as they shooed us out the door and somehow decided that we’d head home and get some drinks on the way to continue. I’m quite certain that our efforts to find beverages stopped at the first closed store we saw, as nobody mentioned anything but going home after that. We hit the subway, and after waiting for a train, switching trains, laughing at homeless people, watching rats playing on the tracks, and walking to the apartment, we made it in the door around 4AM. I went to bed immediately after realizing that in order to wake up, take the train and bus to the airport, get through security and such I’d have to be awake in 3 hours.

December 9th, 2007

As one could figure, I woke up still quite befuddled in the way that happens when you drink for about 8 hours straight and have 3 hours of sleep. I had managed to keep my luggage organized and at 7:10 I was out the door with my luggage over my shoulders and on my way to the subway. The ride to the airport was uneventful. The train came almost immediately but I had to wait about 20 minutes for the M60 bus in the middle of Harlem with a Dunken Donuts right across the street. No sooner would I take a step towards it when I talked myself out of doing it so I didn’t miss the bus. I didn’t expect a good breakfast at the airport. I made it to the airport by 8:30 and was at my gate with the worst scrambled eggs, bacon and croissant platter I’ve had in my life. My flight somehow already had a delay. Yippee. I had to kill two hours and I couldn’t focus long enough to read. I managed to nap and woke up at every announcement every five minutes. Finally, the “delayed” plane that had been sitting there longer than I was opened up the gate and let us on. In a short time we were in the air on our way to our connection in Detroit. There I had to book it to my gate which was leaving 20 minutes after I arrived, and after boarding a propeller plane that could hold about 24 people and an hour long de-icing, we sped back home.

So, there you have it. The trip to New York was definitely welcomed. It was the first time I had been out of Ohio since I went to Ireland. (which can be attributed to starting a new job and being busy with a wedding, but hey.) Much thanks to Jason and his roommates for letting me stay.