Point I: New York City

Arrive at DTW: 12:30 PM EST

Depart DTW: 6:50 PM EST

Arrive at LGA: 8:02 PM EST

Arrive at final destination: 10:04 PM EST

Miles driven: none miles
Miles of subway traveled on: 482

James CARville was a little but bummed out about not coming on this leg of the trip, but honestly, he's better for it. I won't waste this space to repeat New York traffic cliches but I will reveal a little known secret about one of my special talents: I am conversant in cargalese, the language of cars (It's mandatory in the state of Michigan to take cargalese classes each semester from 2nd-12th grade). Some of the honking I was privileged to overhear today was deeply illuminating.  

"You, sir, are violating the sacred right-of-way of vehicles which have received permission to proceed."

"Milady, I fear that you may have entered into the thoroughway of motorized vehicles where it is presently a grave danger for pedestrians to venture."

"I will CUT YOU if you pause for more than half a second after this light changes to green, motherfu---" 

I took a few days off from blogging because there is so much fun to be had in New York that I pretty much didn't sleep the whole time I was there. Except the time I fell asleep on the subway and missed my stop on the way to the airport. Or the other time I fell asleep on the subway and woke up in Brighton Beach at 6 AM. Or the time I fell asleep on the bus to my interview and my face was still puffy when I got there. If it's in motion, imma fall asleep on it. My New York friends thought it was hardcore that I passed out as often as I did in public and didn't die or get robbed or eaten by subway rats. Ain't nothin' but a G(train) thing, baby.

Do you see the rats? Did they scurry away faster than I can take a picture? No, they're there. Trust me. I counted at least 87 separate rats on this rail alone in the time it took to retrieve my phone from my pocket, unlock it, point and snap. They move so fast. 

New York is soooooooooooooo great. I know that cities bum me out pretty hard because concrete is ugly and skyscrapers make me feel like I'm a louse about to be brushed off the scalp of the earth by an over-eager teacher's aide using a comb made out of 400-foot-tall buildings (that's a normal feeling, right?!?!), and the number of people is overwhelming because how are you going to find out everyone's favorite flavor of cupcake if you see 800,000 of them every day and that's not even all the people in the city and is it even possible to make friends when there are so many people to choose from that you might pick the one person who likes the poop-flavored cupcakes and then you're like "Crap! I invested so much time into getting to know this one person instead of the other 799,999 people I could have befriended and she likes the grossest cupcakes in the world! How is that even a thing and why didn't I know that poop cupcakes existed? What kind of market supports that? I mean, other than my new bestie." 

The same market that spends four hours in line for a cronut supports it. That's who.
(Actually this is a really delicious gingerbread, chocolate thing from the Dominique Ansel Bakery served to me by the nicest barista on the planet because I was wayyyyyyyy too late for cronuts or the kouign amann but whateva, I wanted to see why people are going so insane over pastries)

But New York is so big and so cool, that you forget that anything exists outside of the city and it becomes your reality and you realize that all other cities in the world are second-rate pretenders that try and fail to be New York and this is the reason why people want to live in a city. Because all of the things are here.

There are some real good noms in New York. I didn't eat at any of the $300-per-person-and-everything-on-the-menu-is-a-concept-rather-than-a-dish places but I had some delightful culinary experiences in Hell's Kitchen (cheese!!!!) and Brooklyn (meat!!!!) and found my favorite little chocolate croissants in a bakery in Williamsburg that previously I had thought were only available in metro stations in Budapest. Also, I coat-checked a lamb kebab at the MoMA because you don't throw away Zagat-rated leftovers just because you can't eat your lunch in front of Starry Night.

Not pictured here: angry coat check people who had to smell goat meat for five hours

Can we talk about MoMA for a hot minute? That museum is AWESOME. And I was lucky enough to be there at the same time as a really great Rene Magritte exhibit, so I got to see The Luvuhs and The Train Coming Out of a Fireplace and Trippy Drug Dreams #487: Girl Eats A Raw Bird. Unfortunately, I Have An Apple for a Face was not on display (My honors art history prof is going to be soooooooo proud of me for remembering all the titles of these seminal works). All the who's-whos were there: Seurat, Dali, Ernst, Klimt, Monet, O'Keefe, Johns, that guy who splatters paint on canvasses, Mondrian, that other guy who paints the canvass one color, Kahlo, Picasso, that girl who broke up the Beatles...the list goes on and on.

In Death Candy, the artist's very fine rendition of the UFO-shaped wafer candies with the tart sugar inside rejects the ephemeral nature of childhood and subverts the paradigm that dictates that all perishable comestibles must be subsumed by the eater in a timely manner before the inevitable decay that returns all organic matter to the elements renders it inedible. In this piece, the artist has immortalized the candy, demonstrating that the triumphant cardboard-like-nuggets can, in fact, consume the child, by turning the edges of the work into razor-sharp blades that decimate everything in its path.
Donated by the Arthur T. Slugworth Foundation for Art that Kills Children

After MoMA, I trekked across the vast wildlands of Central Park, battling cat-sized squirrels, aggressive sellers of refrigerator magnets, and frostbitten brides wielding bouquets like weapons and broken bottles of champagne. I emerged, unscathed at the other side to the American Museum of Natural History, because...dinosaurs.

What, that's it? That's not going to be able to eat a lawyer on a toilet.

Turns out, the dioramas were the COOLEST.

Serving as the inspiration for J. Crew window displays since 1869

Let's forget the problems with hunting endangered wildlife for trophies. Let's forget exoticizing and exploiting communities of indigenous peoples to demonstrate the triumph of civilized nations. Let's forget that displaying human remains is at best problematic and at worst, a crime against the burial rights of the deceased. This museum, problems and all, is still the COOLEST museum I've ever been to. And I didn't even make it through the whole thing before the guards were like "I hate Ben Stiller. Robin Williams is not Teddy Roosevelt. If any of you idiots thinks you can hide in the bathroom and wait for the exhibits to come alive, I will stab you. I'm not even kidding. Bloomberg made it a law that says I can stab you. Now GTFO before I stab you."

But there's a giant piece of copper from Calumet, Michigan that I need to figure out how to touch before I can leave

Other cool things I did in New York:

Walked about 20 miles in one day because the subway is confusing and there are rats

Went to part of a mass at St. Patrick's but left when I remembered I'm not Catholic

Did not tell a stupid white guy to eat it when he bemoaned the presence of "stupid white people from the Midwest" at Rockefeller Plaza

Got complimented on my dress by fashionable New York ladies at a party that Reggie Watts came to

Played a bunch of free skeeball while eating free meatballs

Refused to hug a creepy Elmo at Times Square

Walked behind Hoda and Kathie Lee and didn't wave at the cameras like an idiot 

Forgot to eat street meat

Went to a second-hand store that was selling $175 coats

Got lost and followed the Hasidic Jews to Williamsburg 

Ate a cupcake at Magnolia Bakery (Trophy Cupcakes is better)

...and more

New York is the shizznit. I wish my interview had been in New York instead of Harford. (What's that, readers? Foreshadowing? You get another blog post today!)