Day 3 – NYC

New York City — By Ryan on January 21, 2010 10:40 pm

Day 3 – NYC:

Well if I thought I walked and explored yesterday it was nothing compared to what I did today. I’ll have to get an exact tally but I figured out that I marched well over 200 blocks and even if I wanted to I really don’t think I could have crammed anything else in this day. My beautiful and brilliant friend in Vancouver mentioned a concept of living days within days and after today I certainly felt I had lived weeks in days.

Last night I reached the limit of my bodily limit for sleep deprivation, as normally happens every few days of going on 2-4 hours of sleep and so by 9:30pm I had completely passed out on the couch, laptop in lap trying to get some work done. I didn’t hear Roland come in at 11 or so as I had moved myself , ½ consciously to the bed by that point. Roland told me in the morning that he thought I had gone out myself and gotten lucky, staying the night at some floozies house Sadly I had to dissapoint him that the only floozie I was staying with in NYC was him

But, my body being the smart and thoughtful one that it is, realized that I had much better things to be doing than sleeping while in Manhattan and promptly woke me up at 2:30am. Not a groggy wake up, but I was jazzed, pumped and just felt like I had slept for days. So I bolted out of bed, opened the laptop and figured I would squeeze some hours of work in before Manhattan woke up, but shortly after that I had an even better and that was to go out and explore Manhattan before it woke up. So I worked till 4am or so, hopped in the shower, made a nice hearty breakfast and then by 5 I was out wandering the streets. First stop – Times Square! As expected for 80% of the way there I was the only person in sight. I learned in Rome when on a 2am hunt for pizza, which eventually led to sneaking into the Vatican and getting thrown out on our asses by the Swiss Gaurd, that if you are in a historic beautiful city you need to hit the streets when everyone else is sleeping.. It is a beautifully unique way to see everything, so peaceful and serene.. So by 5:30am I was in Times Square and it was beautifully lit up like a christmas tree.. You could start noticing everything getting birghter and brighter the closer to it you got and then suddenly you surrounding by millions of watts of lighting. Massive moving billboards played video clips from advertising campaigns for various companies, neon signs flicked up buildings, it was a variable circle of light, I love it. The early morning TV shows were getting started at this point and talk show hosts were broadcast onto the large television screens 10 stories up sitting in their chairs getting their makeup done and whatever else they do before the show airs. The streets had also began to fill up with people, the closer I got to Times Square the more and more people were out and about starting their day. For whatever reason I figured in my head that the area down around Wall Street was going to be the hub of New York, the busiest place in town but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Times Square, and the surrounding area took that crown by leaps and bounds, it was the heart of this great city which in essence makes it the heart of our human civilization. I sat smack dab in the middle filling my lungs with air and letting that fact settle into my being. And then I started taking pictures, lots of pictures I got a great 8-10 piece panoramic shot but now it’s a matter of finding software that runs in linux to properly stich it all together. Easier said than done.

Next stop was Grand Central station, I was dying to see this place before it got swamped with traffic. It’s a pretty neat thing to be standing in all of these places that you’ve been inundated with in movies and TV your entire life. It was fairly surreal standing in certain places you’ve seen hundreds of times before but never actually seen. So a quick jaunt down 42^nd and I arrived at the grand entrance of Grand Central Station, a place certainly worthy of its name. The beauty and scale of Grant Central was marvelous, the massive tall ceilings and elegant masonry made this one of the most beautiful sights in Central Manhattan. Even at this early hour it was still a busy place with train after train dumping hundreds of people rushing off to where they needed to go. I just sat up at an upper level and took in the sights and sounds of the masses in this massive building to the sounds of Porcelein in my ears by Moby. Funny enough though the main reason I wanted to come here is because one of my favorite movies of all time: Hackers has their big climax in Grand Central station and there is this really cool scene where they are in these old beautiful phone booths hacking the planet downstairs. I crossed my fingers that they kept they antique phone booths for historic reasons and began wandering around to find my way to the lower levels. It took a few minutes but soon enough I was walking down a ramp that the hackers rollerbladed down in the movie and my heart began to get hopefull. But alas on the lower level after a few minutes of searching I realized that the large phone booths had been removed to make room for shops, although I did find another row of phones that were used in the movie so I got all giddy and took a picture of them:

It was a little sad but I was still in the exact spot that I had seen dozens of times in this cult classic film. Yay! More wandering was still in order here though as this building was too beautiful to rush through and after a few more minutes I found myself heading up an escalator into the Met life building. The place was full of security gaurds, probably a dozen or more of them just in the lobby watching all the halls, screening all the people it felt pretty weird. Clearly there must be something worth seeing in this building if there is something worth this much protection but alas I was informed that it was just offices and so I went on my merry way.

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Upon exiting the building onto the now much busier streets I go my berrings and started making my way to the next important stop of the day – The Jon Stewart Show. This was a pilgrimage of sorts as I love The Daily show and so I had no problem walking the 30-40 blocks down to the West side of Manhattan island to see where my beloved Daily show was filmed. It took a bit but finally I was standing infront of the building and feeling slightly dissapointment with what I saw. In my mind I just assumed Jon Stewart would have new God-like status in his home town and I know he has it in mine. During the last election him and Colbert were said to be the most influential people in that entire election which pretty much made them the most influential people in the world and yet for this massive power that he wields his studio was in a slightly run down neighbourhood and in an old very unimpressive building. The Jon Stewart banners were flying proudly in the crisp winter air sure, but they were in stark contrast to the rest of the neighbourhood. Alas, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.

Unfortunately if I did a bit more research I would have found out that there was an Aircraft Carrier just a few blocks away, probably one of the most impressive things I can imagine seeing but alas I was not meant to see it this trip and so I began my walk to Central Park.

It didn’t take long with good music in my ears to make it down to the beautiful entrance of Central Park, but alas the batteries of my Camera went dead and so a quick jaunt a few blocks into a pharmacy to pick up some replacements and I was good to go. The park was beautiful and wonderfully serene. It was full of these old bridges and under passes that looked like they belonged in a Charles Dickens novel. There was a small ice rink by the entrance that had a few people peacefully skating too and fro and the backdrop of the huge buildings of the city in every direction just make it that much more picturesque.

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I had a general idea of the direction I needed to go to get to the MET and so I began to walk, and walk and walk and man this park is huge. There are lakes in it, boat clubs, big squares, massive walk ways, it just goes and goes and goes, especially when you are taking the zig zagging lazy route there, stopping at every pretty statue you see and taking detours under all of these cool little bridges. 45 minutes later or so I did make it to the MET and after walking the wrong way around it finally came to the breathtaking entrance to one of America’s most impressive museums where I would spend the next 2-3 hours and not even scratch the surface. I was informed before hand that the rates posted are suggested rates and it is all by donation to get in so I gave the admission dude my sob story about being impoverished and I was able to experience the beautiful MET Museum for a whole 3 dollars, definitely worth it. From Egyption to Greek to Roman artifacts this place just went on and on and on. I could have easily spent days in here and not really appreciated it all but I skimmed through as days I did not have. There is even a cafe, actually there are 2, hidden deep within the museum that you just kind of stumble upon after going through room after room after room. Such a wicked place so I sat down and stopped to blog for a bit in one of the Cafe’s and give my poor feet a rest after 8 hours or so of straight walking.

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From here I began my meandering back to Times Square to see it once more time as it was busy and had full intentions of going to the NYC Public library but I managed to walk right by it so didn’t get to see that one Finally made it home an hour or two later and did a quick bit of work before Rolando got home from work. We chilled there for a bit, ate dinner but couldn’t linger for long as tonight was one of the main reasons for my trip into NYC, we were heading out to see the Opera Carmen at the Metropolitin Opera house, which meant us two boys had to get all dolled up and hit the town

Which we did! We left early, caught a couple subways to the Met, which I must have walked by today and just didn’t notice(there’s so much to see in this city). It was already filled up in there when we arrived to claim out tickets and people were streaming in by the minute.. They had clearly sold out the place, as they do most Opera’s I would imagine, but this was Carmen of course so it was no surprise. Our seats were interesting to say the least, on the top balcony all the way to the front. It had a wonderful feel to be leaning over the balcony to see the stage as I imagined the common folk did back in the day or during Shakespearean plays.. The opera was amazing, although I got this confused with Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana so you can imagine that my expectations were just a wee bott off of what I was imagining Regardless it was Carmen, at the Met and it was amazing, yet amazing as it was the 5 hours of sleep I had been averagine wasn’t cutting it and a few times I felt myself dozing of. But not for long as an amazing piece would pick up and then so would I. In the end the opera was amazing as to be expeted, it was a truly a thrill to see that level of talent in that place. A must see for everyone and a mere 25 bucks to do it.

We made a quick B-line to starbucks to get us some hot drinks to stave of the cold as long as possible and then adventured back down to the lower east side. As per usual Roland went to bed an hour later or so and I stayed up late and worked away.. Clack clack clack

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Tags: central park, grand central, jon stewart, museum, new york, nyc, opera, the met, times square