NYC Trip Part 4: Conquering the Subway

After intently studying the subway map in the lobby (and then just using the Google Maps app on my phone anyways), I set off for the nearest subway station, which was on Houston between 1^st and 2^nd Avenues. I had to look for the stairs for a little bit (that Maps app isn't always the most accurate thing in the world), but eventually I found them and made my way to the automated MetroCard machines. I had looked at the prices online before I went, and decided against a 7-day unlimited card, which was $20, because I didn't think I would use a full $20 of fares. So I bought a $10 card, swiped my way through the turnstile, and went to find the platform for the F train. 

A few minutes go by, with me wondering how I'll know it's the F train, and if I'm actually going to get on going the right way. Then there's a rumbling under my feet, accompanied by a roaring sound, and a light coming down the tunnel, and I look up just in time to see a bright red letter “F” on the front of the train. Oooh, I guess that's how you know. I make sure the sign on the side gives the same destination Google Maps told me to look for, and then I hop on. There aren't any seats, so I hold onto one of the poles in the center aisle and look around a bit. The train is newer than I expected, with a digital display of all of the upcoming stops that changes as they go by. The ride is a little rougher than movies and TV shows had led me to believe, but even the people who look like seasoned veterans stumble a little when the train comes to a stop, so I don't feel too bad. A couple of stops later, I get off to transfer to the A train that will be heading up into the Theatre District. I start following signs for the A, and end up traversing several stairways before I find the right platform. I realize I've been walking behind the same guy for awhile, since we got off the F at the same time, so I notice that he jumps the last few steps on our current set of stairs and slips right through the closing doors of the train on our left. The trains starts to roll, and about three cars go by before I realize that was the one I was supposed to take next. Oh well. So I find a seat on a bench and wait. 

This is where I realize that I would have a problem dressing for the weather in NYC if I was going to be there regularly. It's fairly cold outside at this point (probably about 50 degrees, and a little breezy), at least cold enough that I need a jacket. However, that jacket becomes impossibly warm down in the subway tunnels, which are downright balmy. I have to wonder what the temperature differential is like in the dead of winter. Another A train arrives, and I hop on. This train is much older (the interior screams “70s” to me), and doesn't have any handy dandy digital displays to tell me when my stop's coming up. So I stare intently out the windows at each platform we stop at, making sure they're not the one I'm looking for. But between platforms, I'm free to listen to the group of guys on bongo drums that are currently making everybody's commute a little more fun. I drop a couple bucks into the baseball hat at their feet before I get off at my stop (because it's more fun to listen to them than the roar of the subway). 

 

I follow the signs to the exit, and emerge onto the street. The location for the next day's audition was only a 2 minute walk away, which was made considerably longer by the fact that turned down the wrong street. But I found it fairly easily after I straightened myself out. With my mission accomplished, I decide to walk over towards Times Square and find something to do for the next several hours.

NYC Trip Part 3: Delicious Food and Bathrooms

The place was SWAMPED (after all, it was about 1:30 in the afternoon; I wasn't the only person looking for lunch). The door guy gives me a ticket on the way in, and I just have to stand there for a minute or two and observe before I manage figure out what's going on. There are probably a dozen guys behind the counter making sandwiches, and you can go right up to any of them and order. But there are signs hanging above the counter that say “Order Here” in a few specific places. Once I figured out that you just have to ignore the signs, I then had to tackle the menu.

I went in there intending to buy corned beef on rye (naturally), but I wavered a little bit when I saw that the sandwich alone (no drink or chips) was over 15 dollars. Then I started looking for the cheapest thing on the menu, so I could order that instead, and it turned out to be a grilled cheese for a little over 6 bucks. But then I had to give myself a little mental slap, and say “Oh, come on! How many more chances are you gonna have to get corned beef from Katz's?? Quit being a dork!” So I ordered the corned beef, and refused to mentally calculate exactly what percentage of my entire trip budget the 15 dollars was. At Katz's, when you order corned beef, they go grab a slab of it, and carve it by hand right in front of you. They also give you the first piece to snack on while you wait. So I munch on corned beef and watch this guy keep piling corned beef on my sandwich. Then he brushes on some mustard, and asks me if I want it for there or to go. I take a quick look around, and it seems like all the tables are full, so I stammer “Uhh...to go, I guess.” But before he's even done wrapping it up, I realize there's a whole other “wing” to the place. So I take my wrapped-up sandwich and go around the corner to sit down. The next few minutes are heavenly; I don't remember anything but that sandwich. Eventually, I start looking around at all the pictures on the walls. Katz's is a popular spot for celebrities, and many of them will get their pictures taken with the owner when they come in. I realized that the picture right next to my shoulder was of Joseph-Gordon Levitt (of whom Tim is a big fan), so I snapped a pic for him with my phone. I decide to save the other half of my sandwich for later, and get in line for the bathroom before I leave. 

The bathrooms at Katz's are interesting. From the outside, the doors look like they lead to a little one-person bathroom that's barely bigger than an outhouse. In reality, that little door is the entrance to a hallway that leads to the actual bathroom. Since the bathroom only has 2 stalls, and this was still the lunch rush, there was a line. I was behind a couple of women who looked to be in their late forties or early fifties, and then another couple chicks who looked to be about my age. I noticed the dress one of the older women was wearing, because it was colorful, and I thought it was cool. She was the next one in line, so she goes in as soon as a stall opens up, and then is out again by the time one of the younger girls is up. She says something to the girl, and they both laugh, and then she washes her hands and leaves. A few seconds later, the girl right in front of me says to her friend in the stall “Oh my gosh, you're peeing where Annie Lennox just peed!” So apparently the lady in the cool dress was Annie Lennox! I wouldn't have had any idea. 

I decide to head back to my hotel at this point, since it's almost 3, and get yelled at by a truck driver for crossing against the light. To be fair, I was one of 5 or 6 people who went, and I was the only one dumb enough to turn around when he started with “Hey!” I learned that particular lesson pretty quickly. But, I make it back to the hostel without any further incidents, and start checking in. She gives me my room key and sends me up to inspect the room before I officially check in, because they don't do refunds. I make my way upstairs and, after a few tries, unlock the door. It's even smaller than I had imagined, but the sheets and towel all look and smell clean, and the tiny bit of floor that's not covered by the bed looks good. So I go back to the desk and finish checking in, and then I drag my bags up to the shoebox I'll be calling home for the next couple days. I kick off my shoes and chill on the bed for awhile, texting Tim to keep him updated, and reading a bit. Tim and I discuss re-setting the overall time on the alarm clock to make it go off at 7 instead of 5, but then I realize that the pair of tweezers I brought are juuuust small enough to get into the tiny space where the knob used to be. Score! I reset the alarm for 7 (which is still kind of disturbing). Then I gather my courage and decide it's time to face the subway, which I'll be using to get to my audition the next morning. 

I figure I'll freshen up a little first (or at least get all of the dead cow out from between my teeth), so I grab my toothbrush and head for the communal bathroom area. Apparently, THIS was the area I should have looked over before I checked in. Let me tell you something: I was a biology major, which means I played with a lot of gross things in the lab (dead animals, mold and bacterial cultures, etc), and these facilities are some of the grossest things I've ever seen. There are three pedestal sinks, two of which are leaking water at a pretty fast rate. I thought someone left them on, but trying to turn them off did nothing. The third sink is completely coated with someone's long dark hair, which they apparently brushed (or possibly shaved off) right over the sink, and then didn't rinse down or clean up at ALL. Dude, seriously? I don't even do that in my OWN house, let alone a bathroom I have to share with complete strangers. How gross. And then I notice the squished cockroach on the floor right next to the middle sink. Hoooo boy. But after a few seconds, I decided that as long as there were no cockroaches near where I would be sleeping (and I later turned on my phone's flashlight and checked under the bed), it would be okay. If the sinks were that gross, what were the toilets and showers like? I walked over to the 4 bathroom stalls. One had an “Out of Order” sign on it, so I didn't bother with that one, but I pulled open the door beside it...and found a toilet that had been absolutely violated and then not flushed. EWWWW. I tried to flush it (with my foot, obviously; I wasn't touching that handle without gloves!), but it was apparently out of order just like the other one. So I left it alone, and glanced at the other two in hopes that there would be at least one toilet I could use. They were, to my relief, relatively clean. Deciding to cross that bridge when I came to it, I left the showers for later, and headed out to conquer the subway.

NYC Trip Part 2: Getting to the Hostel and Wandering Around

Still Monday, October 24th

We land, and it takes forever to get everyone off the damn plane. But eventually, we're in the terminal at LaGuardia. I head for ground transportation to find out how to get to the shuttle I had booked a few days before. The lady at the desk asks for my confirmation number, and then calls the shuttle herself. She also has a couple weird questions on her form, like if I've been to NYC before, and when. I realized later that I gave her the wrong year (I said it was 07, when it was really 08), but oh well. I'm one of the last people onto the shuttle, and then we take off. The driver is NUTS. I wonder idly if this is how other people feel when they're in my car. 

In the process of dropping the first couple of people off, we end up way down on the south end of Manhattan, in the financial district. We pass the new World Trade Center going up, and it's a pretty cool looking building. Didn't manage to get my phone out and the camera open fast enough, so I don't have a picture of it. In fact, most of my pictures from the shuttle ride are just a little late, both because it wasn't an actual camera and because this guy was driving so fast. But there's some cool stuff anyways. I doze off a bit, and wake up to the driver asking “Who's on Bowery?” That's me! I hop out and grab my bags from the back, and he points me down the street a couple doors, and then leaves. So I drag my bags the 20 or 30 feet down the street from the corner, and find the sign for Bowery's Whitehouse. The door's propped open, so I walk on in.

The room has a few scattered tables with some really cool aluminum chairs around them, and a desk at the other end. I go talk to the girl working the desk, and she tells me that check-in doesn't start until 3 (the website says they'll check you in early if your room's ready, and she didn't even check, but whatever). She says I can leave my bags there, if I want to go walk around or whatever. I transfer some stuff into my purse and then take her up on it. She locks them in a closet, and I go on my way. My first stop is at a drugstore to get a couple things – make-up brushes for the new make-up I bought just for the audition (I don't generally own that stuff) and some face lotion, since my bottle was too big to carry on the plane – so I pull out my phone and use the Maps app to find a drugstore near me. Looks like there's one half a mile away, so I march off to find it. The walk is interesting, mostly because it's a much different atmosphere than the one I experienced last time I was in NYC. 

See, last time, we had a hotel in the Theatre District, and saw shows every night. We did all the tourist-y stuff then: Central Park, the Empire State Building, Times Square, Madame Tussaud's, FAO Schwartz, etc. I never made it farther south than the aforementioned Empire State Building, which is around 34^th st. My room this time is on Bowery street between 2^nd and 3^rd streets, just outside of the area considered the Lower East Side. They are like different worlds. It's a hard thing to describe if you haven't simply experienced the difference for yourself, and the best I can do is to say this: Midtown, especially around the Times Square / Theatre District area, is all about bright lights and pretty colors. It's NYC putting on it's best possible face, which is probably why all the TV studios line it. It's tailor-made for tourists, with a lot of the national chains and fast-food restaurants people already know from home, and after experiencing other places in NYC, it feels almost sterilized. Sure, it's bustling, and it still has a definite “New York” feel to it, but it's a lot different than what you get towards the Lower East Side. If Midtown is the woman who won't leave the house without a face full of make-up and every hair in place, the Lower East Side is a college student who rolls out of bed and stumbles down the street to get breakfast, and doesn't give two shits what you think about it. This isn't to say that the Lower East Side is “meaner” or more dangerous or anything; it it just seems to care less about looks, and more about personality. There's a patina to the area that doesn't exist in Midtown, a sense that it's just more lived-in. Which makes it infinitely cooler, in my humble opinion.

 

But that's all rather off-topic. I wandered down to the Duane Reade and picked up the stuff I needed, plus a bottle of water, and then wandered my way back towards the hotel, but then realized when I was halfway there that it still wasn't going to be 3 o'clock when I arrived. So I pulled out my trusty phone and started looking for a place to eat (Side note: I kind of felt like it would be a crime to eat at some massive fast food chain while I was there, when there are literally thousands of little independent places to get food. So I tried really hard not to. And I only failed once!). I was super pumped to find out that I was about a 5 minute walk from Katz's Deli. For those not in the know, Katz's is the location of that famous scene in 'When Harry Met Sally.' You know; “I'll have what she's having”? It is also reputed to have some of the best pastrami and corned beef sandwiches in the city (if not the universe). I decided I just HAD to try this NYC staple, cholesterol be damned. So I set off, and a few minutes later I was pulling open the door to Katz's Deli.

 

NYC Trip Part 1: The Boring Stuff That Happens Before I Actually Get There

I sat down the other night and started writing out everything could remember about the trip, before I start forgetting random details, which means that all of these posts are probably going to be waaaay more detailed than is strictly necessary. However, I'll try to label them in such a way that you'll know what posts might actually interest you, and which ones you you can probably skim without missing much. I'm sure my mommy will want to read every word, but I don't expect that level of dedication from just anyone. :-P On to the goods.

Monday, October 24th

Up bright and early (but still later than I was supposed to be). I showered and did 98% of my packing the night before, so I just had to get dressed before I could leave. Dragged my carry-on and little bag down to the car, called Danny (who agreed to get up 4 hours before his first class - on a Monday morning - to drive me to the airport; the kid's a saint) to tell him I was on my way, and then took off. I made it to my mom's house in record time, mostly because I drove like a maniac. See, was leaving my place right around the time I was supposed to be arriving at her place. Which is not good.

I can neither confirm nor deny the needle on my speedometer hitting 70 at one point on Telegraph.

Anyway, I get to my mom's, and hop right into Danny's car. He gives me a quart-sized Ziploc bag for my liquids (Damn terrorists, keeping me from the good things in life. Like full-sized bottles of shampoo.) and a battery-operated alarm clock, since I already know that the little room in a hostel I've rented doesn't have any power outlets in it. This makes using my regular alarm clock a problem. Normally, I use my phone, because I can plug it in by my bed. But my phone's a battery hog, and I'm going to need all the juice I can get if I want to take advantage of its magical map-generating powers. But now this little alarm clock I'm borrowing is missing the knob for changing the alarm time, and it's currently set for 5. AM. Like, in the morning. Which is horrifying. (Well, technically, it's also set for 5 PM, but that doesn't really count.) I decide I'll work on it later. 

One rather uneventful car ride later, and we're at the curb outside the airport. Danny helps me hoist my bags out of the car, and sends me on my way. The line at the Spirit counter is pretty short, so before I know it, I'm standing at a self-check-in-kiosk. Now, what Travelocity forgot to mention when they told me that Spirit had the cheapest round-trip ticket price was that it was going to cost me $40 – EACH WAY – to have a carry-on bag. (You know, the convenient one. With the wheels. That just about EVERY. OTHER. AIRLINE. IN. THE. WORLD. lets you have for free.) Meaning that they were never actually the cheapest ticket in the results. But it's too late to fix that now. I check in, and the system assigns me a seat but asks me if I want to change it. I look and see that I'm in the middle seat of three. Oh hell no. So I quickly grab one of the last remaining aisle seats and print out my boarding pass before they can try to charge me for anything else. On to security.

 

First up is the guy who has to check my boarding pass and my passport and make sure the name matches. He stares at them for awhile (I swear, I thought he was going to complain about the font not matching or something), and then looks from me to the passport pic a few times before he draws a couple of triangles on my boarding pass and hands it back to me. What those are supposed to signify, I have no idea.Maybe they're TSA code for “This chick's passport photo really sucks.” Because it definitely does. 

Anyway, next up are the different lines through security. I pick one in the middle on a whim, and it naturally stops dead about 10 seconds later. What is so difficult about the whole “Take your laptop out of your bag,” I may never know, but EVERY TIME I've ever gone through airport security (which is about 10 now), some asshole in front of me has failed to get out his laptop, and they have to back up the conveyor belt and pull the thing out and piss off the rest of the line. Eventually, my stuff starts moving again, and I look up to see one of those “Surprise! You're naked!” scanners. But really, whoever's looking at that screen has seen it all before, so I couldn't really care less. Unfortunately, they've decided to bring three old people in wheelchairs into this line right in front of me, and of course it's a huge ordeal to get them up out of the chairs, and into the scanner, and then get them to hold their arms up juuuuust right and all. But eventually, I get scanned (which seriously takes a quarter of a second; I was impressed) and move on through so I can put my damn shoes back on. 

I head to my gate and, even though it's pretty crowded, I manage to find a seat. Unfortunately, this seat is being blockaded by a guy who decided to stretch his legs across the entire aisle before taking a nap. I said “Excuse me” 2 or 3 times, and eventually just kicked his feet out of the way. I didn't end up waiting very long. About 20 minutes after I sat down, they called boarding for Zone 1, which I was apparently upgraded to when I agreed to pay for a carry-on. Oh joy! 

[As a sidenote, I really wish all of the American airlines would get their shit together when it comes to boarding. I've seen videos online of some European airline's boarding process, and they do it the right way: They start from the back of the plane and load forward, alternating side-to-side. That way, you don't have to brush past EVERY SINGLE PERSON ALREADY SEATED to get to your seat, and then hold up the entire line behind you when you have to stop and hoist your carry-on into the overhead bin. I swear, they get this plane fully loaded and everybody's carry-ons in the bin in 10 minutes. Now that's what I'm talking about!] 

But, anyways, it takes awhile for everyone to get seated, and naturally I get there before either of my row-mates, which means I have to attempt to get back out into the crowded aisle to let them in. But, eventually, we're all seated and buckled up and ready for take-off. The flight is pretty uneventful. I do a little reading and a little sleeping. The food cart comes by, and I buy a bottle of water and the smallest can of Pringles you've ever seen, all for the low, low price of $5 dollars. *snort* Man, Spirit sucks. Remind me never to fly them again.

*Edit: Just think, it took me this much text to cover the first 4 hours of my trip! Mwahahahaha...

There's a First Time for Everything

So I've decided to finally join the 21st century and get myself a blog. Mostly because I finally feel that my life was interesting enough to warrant one (for a brief time, anyways).

If you're here and reading this, then you already know that last week, I made a 3-day trip to New York City for an audition. It was probably the coolest thing I've ever gotten to do, and I shared the coolness by making regular updates to my Facebook status while I was away. Lots of people got to visit NYC vicariously through me (just like I've vicariously visited so many other places with them), and now want all the details that didn't end up on my Facebook page. And trust me, there are a LOT. So, in an effort to ensure that everybody gets alllll the fun/juicy/gory details, I'm going to talk about my trip in a series of posts on here. Trust me, it's better to hear about it this way, and not in person. Because here, have the luxuries of putting things in some kind of reasonable order, and checking my grammar, and sometimes just hitting delete when I go off on a tangent. But, if you'd still prefer to hear about it in person, I'll happily oblige. Just don't expect it to be entirely coherent! :-D

And now, on with the show!