Hello America. Recently, myself and the entire "Hoop Thoughts Blog" team made our first ever visit to New York City, the City that Never Sleeps, the Empire City, Gotham, The Big Apple, etc, etc, etc. What took me so damn long to make the short visit to the City from my friendly confines of SMC you may ask? Well, the answer is simple: I’ve never had a reason to go, quite frankly. Well that all changed this past weekend, as parts of my "March 2008 Vacation Tour" included Washington, DC (crazy ass homeless people there), the Jersey Shore (crazy ass Italian people there), and alas, NYC (where everyone is crazy). Naturally, I decided to blog about my experiences in the City. Here we go……
I first want to say that NYC is crazy, loud, crowded, dirty, grimy, and confusing. At first that is. We were staying at the Comfort Inn Times Square on 39th and 8th Avenues, a damn nice location in Manhattan that was three blocks south of Times Square and three blocks north of the Empire State building. And trust me, I paid ($$$) for this location as well.
(As for a quick Hotel Review per tradition, the Comfort Inn Times Square is a nice hotel right in the middle of everything. The hotel is basically brand new, so while the room was small, it was all newly furnished with a flat screen and wireless. I would give it a higher rating than what I am about to give it, but there was this late night club one door before our hotel that we had to walk past every night. I have nothing against loud clubs or anything, but this club always had a long line of straight up HOODS with a huge bouncer at the door who looked like 8Ball. The first night we walked past, he shouted out to me, "What’s up Big Dog? You going to go handle your bizness?? Go get on that son! Do your thang!!! HOLLER!!!!" I just gave him a "Holler!" back. I had no clue how else to respond in this situation.
The bizarre thing was, when we walked past this club in the mornings, there were no signs with the name of the club. No sign of any life. Just two huge metal doors chained together. I’m not sure if this place was even legitimate. It was almost as if two dudes just found a vacant shop and decided, "Hey, let’s start a club!" In a related story, I’m pretty sure that there are at least 4 shootings a month at this place. Anyways, the hotel gets a 7.)
Once I finally got my bearings in the City, I ended up having a really good time and appreciating it for what it is. Although the first day, I’ll have to say that I was a little shook in the City. Since we were in Jersey already, we decided to take the train from Princeton into Penn Station, which drops you off right on 34th street and right in the middle of the craziness. And it’s not like the crowds or anything like that was bothering me, it was just that I knew that there was tons of shit to do, but it was like I had no idea what I wanted to do or how to get there even if I wanted to do something. That was the worst feeling. So the first day for us consisted of walking around aimlessly looking like "tourists", checking out a few sites, and inevitably getting drunk. But by the second day, I had finally gotten the lay of the land (super easy to navigate actually), even had hit up the subway to Staten Island (where I had to endure the longest freestyle ever by some random dude and sit next to some guy who smelled like SHIT to the point that I had to just stand), and got to see a lot more of the sights.
All in all, I ended up doing the "tourist" thing without looking like too much of a tourist, seeing the Empire State Building (the view at night of the City is gorgeous…right up until the 40 MPH winds gust and my fear of heights kick in), Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, a Broadway play, and even got to see a crazy animal protest outside of Saks 5th Avenue. Fun times!!!
Here are some of my thoughts on the City:
Fashion:
I don’t get it. It’s NEW YORK for Christ’s sake. Why does everyone dress like hoboes??? I’m being honest; I don’t get the fashion sense up there. It’s like everyone is walking around like they don’t give a fuck. And the single worst fashion item in NYC??? The shoes. I swear, I saw about 25 tight shoe shops just walking around, yet everyone is walking around wearing dirty, grungy shoes. And that goes for the ladies too. I only saw a handful of chicks wearing hot boots…and they were all Asian imports from what I could tell. Go figure. So here’s a new nickname for NYC: The Poop Shoe Capital of the World.
Chicks:
The chicks in NYC are gorgeous. Other than my little rant above about their shoe collections, there is any kind of chick you could ever want. Very diverse as you would imagine. I love chicks of every style, as long as they have some kind of style. Although the chicks walking around like they’re a star of "Sex and the City" all sound like they smoke a pack of Camel Unfiltered a day. It’s gross.
Dudes:
I’m not sure I’m getting the style here. Every dude is either a gritty ass gangster, a grungy dude looking like they just left a Nirvana concert, or look like they iron their jeans and rock sports coats. Not feeling it. Oh yeah, there’s tons of homos too.
(Note: I have nothing against homos.)
Music:
I love the whole music vibe of the city. Everything you hear playing is music for NOW if you know what I mean. I even bought one of those hip-hop cd’s off one of the dudes on the street for $3 with an autograph and everything! In a related story, it sucks.
Party Girls:
There are tons of party girls in NYC. My favorite was when I walking in Times Square Saturday night and this super drunk girl was running around on the pavement with no shoes OR socks on. As a group of dudes outside started making fun of her and yelling, "Go put some shoes on BITCH!!!" she shouted back, "F*** YOU!!!! It’s my 21st birthday!!!! I can do whatever I want!!!!!" while her boyfriend struggled to pull her back into the club with a look on his face that said, "I can’t wait to dump this bitch in the morning…." I enjoyed that.
Times Square:
Times Square is a lot of fun with tons of shops, restaurants, etc. But it’s too damn crowded and everything is super expensive…it’s almost like you’re paying 50% more for anything you buy. And by the way, on every jumbo TV screen they were hyping the WWE Wrestlemania fight between the Big Show and Floyd Mayweather. This has to be the most ridiculous fight of all time. Even if it is fake.
Comedy Dicks:
This is kind of funny. In Times Square and pretty much anywhere else you go in the City, there’s these dudes that look like extras from a Pearl Jam video that are constantly trying to hustle comedy show tickets. Before I go into my story, I want to say that on Saturday morning one guy approached me with an actually good line, saying, "What are you doing tonight? You should come to this club, its fun." Basically he showed me the pamphlet for the club, called the Comic Strip Live, and all of the famous comedians that had performed there in the past like Dave Chapelle, Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, and (The Worst Comedian Alive) Dane Cook. It’s actually the club where Seinfeld filmed his opening stand up acts for his TV show. I ended up buying tickets for the show because I needed something to do after my Broadway show and because they served drinks and everything. A long story short, we ended up not going because after Broadway I didn’t feel like sitting through another "show." (But the tickets are still good through the end of May, so if anyone’s visiting the City anytime soon, holler at me.)
The point of that above story was to tell that there was at least one cool comedy show hustler in Times Square. For the rest, I hated them. When you walk by, they will say "Hey do you like comedy???" or "Hey do you want to see a comedy show tonight???" Naturally, you will just walk by and not say anything back to these dudes. Well these little bastards will reply to your silence by saying something smart like, "Oh, good answer. You’re real cool." Or "What, you can’t speak???" Or "So, you don’t like to laugh? You’re a cool dude. Real cool." But seriously though, how are you supposed to reply to these things? Should I just say, "No, I hate comedy and I hate laughing!" I hate these pricks.
So on Saturday night, we were walking in Times Square behind another couple and this little weasel, grungy, gross comedy guy pops out of nowhere and starts walking beside the couple. He starts into them by mocking how they are walking and saying, "SOOOO. You guys enjoying your little romantic stroll through Times Square? Do you like comedy? Come to our show!" When he got no response from them, he became even more dickish, saying, "Oh, I see. You hate comedy, huh? You just want to walk romantically? Is that what you want to do???" Lucky for him, the guy in front of me had slightly less swag than myself, so he just kept walking and paid no attention to the comedy dick.
At this point, I know that after getting no response from the first couple, we are prime real estate for him to turn around to us and try the same tactic, so I start thinking of some kind of reply in my head. Eventually I had it worked out to where if he were to start walking next to us and start saying the same stuff, I was going to say, "Nobody wants to see your struggling comedy act." That was my line. That was it. It was going to be perfect. He would have been shook if I were to say that. He would have no reply!!!!
Soon enough, he grew bored with the non-responsive couple in front of us, so he turned around, started walking next to us and tried to hassle us. Our conversation went like this:
Comedy Dick: "So, you guys enjoying your little romantic…."
Me: (Cutting him off) "Fuck off little dick."
Comedy Dick: (Stops walking) "Ohhhhh!"
And yes, he did indeed fuck off…haha. I have no idea where that response came from though. It was way off from my original planned response. But it worked nonetheless. (And it helped that I was heavily intoxicated.)
Arabs:
Now I have nothing against Arabs. I am not racists at all. But I did find it interesting the amount of Arabs that were visiting the Ground Zero memorial site. The site itself isn’t completed yet; there is a large sign commemorating the site and all of that good stuff, you can see the massive crater left from the buildings and you can even still use the Subway there. But that’s about it.
The funny part was when everyone was solemnly looking at the building site, there was this group of three Arab guys standing next to me; all taking pictures of the site and laughing and joking in whatever language they were speaking. For some reason, this really angered me at the moment, and in my head I tried to translate what they were exactly saying. It came out like this:
Guy 1: "You know my cousin did that shit, right?"
Guy 2: "Who??? Abdul?"
Guy 3: "No, no, no. It was Tariq. He was dating Macula, right?"
Guy 1: "Yeah, it was Tariq."
Guy 2: "That bastard."
Guy 1: "Why? He is a hero. Jihad!"
Guy 2: "Jihad this. (Grabbing crotch) That bastard owed me twenty bucks!"
Guy 1, 2, 3: (Laughing)
(Note: That was highly insensitive and racists. But funny.)
Broadway:
My experience at the Broadway production of "Chicago" was mixed to say the least. Our seats were sick, right in the middle of the stage, four rows back. The play itself wasn’t all that bad; I’m the type of dude that can handle all of the singing and dancing and not want to slit my wrists. But for some reason I just found the play to be boring. I’m not sure why because "Chicago" by all accounts is a very popular show, but by the second half I was having difficulties staying awake.
Intermission was the greatest part of the show, as it seemed like half of the theatre came outside to smoke cigs. I swear, this was the probably the greatest cig of all time. Even people who don’t smoke were lighting up cigs. It was a cig smoker’s paradise.
Regarding the show, it was slightly boring like I said above…but there were some funny aspects to be recorded. First, the guy who played the lawyer for the showgirls was played by this dude who looked like a cross between Vince McMahon and Michael Buffer, and he was hilarious because you could tell that he thought he was cool as s***. I hated this guy. Secondly, there was this posse of about 6 guys who were backup dancers and it became our favorite game to decide which ones were gay and which ones were parlaying their Broadway careers into banging all of the girl performers. In the end, we decided that one guy may have been straight, but his sassy little twirl and spirit fingers during his curtain call dashed any hopes of that. And one guy was incredibly hilarious. He was bald with a chinstrap, HUGE…I mean ripped to the point that he could rip my head off with ease, and was wearing this sassy little leather vest with incredibly tight pants. The dude seriously looked like a member of Rhammstein (Du Hast!). Anyway, just seeing such a massive, ripped dude twirling around with spirit fingers on stage was extremely funny to me. Finally, one of the female performers was this sultry ass red head who was wearing a bra, thong, see through tights, and high heels. This lady was the most intense performer on stage, and I swear that throughout the whole show she was staring directly at me as she was intensely and seductively dancing on stage. I swear to this! It got to the point that I just wanted to run up on stage, tackle the s*** out of her, and have gross, dirty, nasty sex in front of the whole theatre. This would have made my Broadway experience 500% better. I’m pretty sure of this.
In retrospect, I think that NYC is an awesome city with so much to do and see. If you have the cash that is. While I’m still not sure that I could live there (driving in the City is a whole ’nother demon), I could definitely visit there…a lot. And by the end of my stay, I was actually nothing like the "tourist" that I was when I had first arrived. I was much more of a New Yorker. In fact, as we were walking to Penn Station on Sunday afternoon, some disheveled looking girl came up to me at the crosswalk and asked, "Excuse me. Can you tell me how to get to 45th and 9th Avenue???" So I calmly pointed her in the right direction. Fucking tourists...
Holler.