Gotham City In A Rear View Mirror

I go away for four days and you people let gas prices go nuts? Up 20 cents per gallon? WTF?

As you might imagine from my last two blog entries, I had a fantastic time in New York. Four days may be the perfect amount of time to spend there. I was tired of being a tourist, but still envious of the amount of things to do.

Missions Accomplished

• Ate a vendor hot dog, pretzel, and pastrami on rye
• Went to Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Went to Guggenheim Museum (a bit disappointing, actually)
• Saw “GlennGary Glen Ross” just off Broadway
• Drank a papaya drink from Papaya King (Seinfeld reference)
• Ate dinner with my brother and sister-in-law
• Used camera, but not as much as I wanted
• Strolled around Ground Zero and Battery Park
• Bought a “genuine leather” wallet from a street vendor for $5
• Stayed in the perfect hotel for me (Hotel Thirty Thirty)
• Found free WiFi (not really that hard in NYC)

Missions Failed

• Seeing Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
• Eating a knish, or finding White Rock soda
• Eating at a “famous chef” restaurant (I was even around the corner from Bourdain’s Les Halles!)
• Never made it to Whitestone, my real hometown. I was hoping to take a picture of the house in which I grew up.
• Riding the Staten Island Ferry
• See a Yankee’s game (Mets were not in NY) — I passed because it was 100 degrees on Saturday
• Spending real time in Central Park (again it was hot!)

Would I do it again? In a fucking New York second!

Under The Tall Buildings
I spent a lot of time looking for things in Manhattan. I never could seem to remember where anything was. Most of that time was either walking or riding the subway (loved the MetroCard, kinda sad that they no longer use tokens). Over on my Flickr account (InsideThePerimeter) I’ve uploaded some pictures, including the things that intrigued me the most — subway mosaics. Here is a picture of my favorite mosiac

Imagine the cost of trying to install mosaics throughout the entire subway line if you were to build it today.

I’ll Have What She’s Having
One of my last “touristy” things in New York was a ($12.50) pastrami sandwich at Katz’ Deli (opened in 1888!). Many people have seen Katz’ Deli and never known it; it was the deli in which Harry and Sally had lunch and Sally fakes the orgasm in the movie When Harry Met Sally. There is a sign above the table which was used in the movie, somehow I found myself sitting at that very table. TOURIST!!!

While I cannot say that the pastrami sandwich was orgasmic, it was incredibly good, especially when washed down with a Dr. Brown’s cream soda.

Pub Crawl — NYC Style
On Saturday night I went for a solo, early-evening pub crawl. The original intent was to drink my way uptown and meet my friend Kevin when he made it to Doc Watson’s (where I coincidentally had the Rheingold on Thursday). Having a 7:30am flight Sunday morning limited my crawl, but not my enthusiasm.

I managed four different bars, scattered about Manhattan.

• The Bleeker Street Pub (NoHo)
• The Crime Scene (NoHo — located across the street from CBGB)
• Some unknown bar which was empty (Upper East Side)
• Jack Russell’s (Upper East Side)

There were some others such as The Slaughtered Lamb, McSorley’s and The Black Sheep that I wanted to hit, but was never able to find or get to.

I’ll give myself an ‘A’ for effort, but a ‘C’ for execution.

And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Current Mood – returning to normal (well, as normal as I get)
Current Music – Sirius Satellite Radio, channel 26 playing Kaiser Chiefs — “Oh My God”
Website Of The Day – Back in the office, Working For The Man.
Monday Morning Weigh-In – C’mon, I just got back from a four-day eating/drinking binge!

Off to read some blogs….

Cheers!
Paulie [eatl/ga]