Twenty-four hours in New York

I was staying in Boston so decided to go to New York for 24 hours and visit our Tripbod person there. The Peter Pan bus was great apart from the 8am stop to get something to eat when all there was was burger or pizza. To my suprise the other passengers all returned with greasy parcels in their hands. 8am.

I arrived in NY and met Scott. We walked around the city centre down to Madison Square where we saw a queue of around 50 people for what is apparently one of the best places to get burger in all of NY and it was just a kiosk. We passed the New York library - the famous location of Ghostbusters.

We walked through the farmers' market in Union Square. Apparently NY state is so much bigger than people realise and they have a lot of their own produce, including wine. I didn't realise how small Manhatten was until my sister showed me the map. I said, 'that can't seriously be a real map'. It had far too many straight lines.

We passed a closed-up building where Scott (a political student) had recently held an occupation against its closure and the policies of his University President. They got arrested and now face hefty legal fees. So they throw warehouse parties to raise the fees. The parties regularly get shut down by the police and they face more legal fees so have more parties. That's the life of anarchist for you.



We took the Statten Island ferry and I felt a sense of the people who first arrived here once upon a time. Anyone with a name that couldn't be pronounced got americanized. How times have changed. Some parts of New York should stay on the big screen, like the Statue of Liberty. Or else someone should give it a clean and get rid of the green rust.

They have just built their first Ikea in NY and there is a special ferry that runs from the store to a wealthy NY district. For reasons unknown, the opening of an Ikea store always needs a mention.


There were some interesting characters on the boat. A couple of guys were wearing peruvian style wooly hats in 28 degrees centigrade. This appears to be NY fashion of today. Another guy was sporting NY fashion of several years back. He was wearing a full multicoroured shell suit, had a Fresh Prince of Bel Air hair cut and was carrying an actual boom box.

As we headed through Wall Street I saw my stereotype of a typical NY woman (that is, Sex and the City) looking pristine in her well-cut suit, cashmere sweater, heels and pearls looking impatient with one arm full of large box shopping bags and one arm flagging down a taxi. She could have been made from wax from where I were standing.

We heading out towards Brooklyn as it was time for a pint of water and a pint of beer. There was a great bar serving local beers such as Blue Top and with 3pm-8pm happy hour we sweated the early evening away in the concrete beer garden out back.


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In the evening we walked in to Williamsburg and down Bedford Ave there are loads of great places to eat, drink and hang out. Its full of young lively people sitting outside shops, on benches eating icecream, talking loudly and playing guitars. I saw something I dubbed a 'Highcyle' - basically a bicycle with 2 frames stacked on top of one another so it looked double decker. We stopped at Dumont Burger for something to eat which was pretty good.


The next day it was raining so much that we decided to give Central Park a miss and have brunch in a place Scott's girlfriend used to work at called Noho Star. The owner is almost a celebrity. Once a well respected doctor, he opened this place 20-25 years ago. Now he has many different restaurants all over the place. He famously once offered $5,000 if someone could find out the recipe for a tuna sandwich from another restaurant. This place has a lot of charismatic regulars. One guy always has to have a full glass of ice next to him or else he starts banging his glass on the table. He orders ice cream after every meal and if you put the spoon down before the ice cream, he throws the spoon at the waitress. Bright red lipstick is part of the uniform here. They get paid only $2/hr which means they even have to pay tax out of their tips. Many of the NY hostesses are models and a headshot is always required.


The NY subway is in a bad condition. It is infrequent and regularly delayed. It wasn't as scary as my images of it from the movie Ghost but it was not convenient. The transport department are expanding the service to the wealthier areas and even repainting stations there instead of improving services down town. They are also increasing fares to support this work. Scott and his girlfriend are not happy about this at all.

So my time was up and I ran to the bus station as I found out I'd booked my ticket for the wrong day and had to buy a whole new ticket. I hate it when budget travel ends up costing you a fortune. My trip to NY was great but too short. My biggest regret - not trying a slice of NY pizza. I'll have to go back with more time and a bigger appetite next time.