Warp20 New York buddy needed for silly Australian

[sinicalypse]

sini's guide to new york city:

 

i live around the mecca of civilization known as chicago, and whilst i profess ignorance to the southside (basically, once you go beyond comiskey park/35th street i'm ignorant. anything north of that i know pretty damn well) i know the city well and had much experience there in all walks of life (wide-eyed suburbanite kid, savvy weekender with cool friends to show me interesting places, homeless guy sleeping on the trains, jaded well-post-hipster fed up with teh yuppification of everything he enjoyed ~8-12 years ago, etc etc) so going to new york was an interesting juxtaposition with all that i thought that i knew about metropolises.

 

manhattan island is a trip. it's like downtown/whatever-they-call-where-the-big-buildings-are-in-your-city but it's bigger and it's everywhere and there's all of these neighborhoods slightly different but all feature cruella devilles walking around and model/actresses going there to be in the mecca of civilization and it's so damn formal and this and that it's laminated. manhattan is genetically engineered to take your money, especially if you're more touristy, cuz like, odds are that you're not going to want to deal with teh subways when you've got a bunch of cash and can drop $10 on a cab and not deal with it. hell, the subways occasionally do fun things like not really mention they're running on another train's line until you're already on it, then by the time you find out you're like 16 blocks away from where you're going so you get the fun of paying for a train AND a cab and it's yeah.

 

everything is expensive as shit, especially at "convenience" stores and the like. cigarettes were $9-10+/pack long before places like illinois added absurd taxes, a sixer of 16oz budweiser cans will run you that same $9-10, and just about everything you can think of costs a little bit more. there's all kinds of restaurants and bars and things everywhere and beautiful people abound but barring a few slick places that i'm sure you can look up or find someone else to tell you about, you're going to pay for it all. so basically it's a whoa-inducing-place even to someone with big city experience the first time there, and much like brooklyn it's this mix of people who were born and raised and live there versus like, the coolest motherfucker from armpit idaho or maybe a beautiful girl from cornhole ohio who decided to escape their nowheres and come to the place where they can MAKE A NAME FOR THEMSELVES. as such, especially on manhattan, everyone is full of themselves and love talking about new york city like it's the greatest thing ever because it is and you don't question it because where do you think everything your city does came from?!@ (tell them europe and look at the looks on their faces: priceless) and yeah, it's a very crowded place why if you want to swim through a sea of humans go by penn station (34th st/7th-8th aves) around 5pm and just walk around aimlessly. it's a bonafide trip cuz this place is mega-crowded.

 

i didnt have as much experience with brooklyn, tho i got to spend some time in williamsburg which is your typical post-industrial hipster breeding grounds... there things are cheaper and dingier and thriftier but like anywhere there's nice areas, and many people often try to live in brooklyn since it's cheaper than manhattan, where you pay shit-tonnes of money for a big ol box in the sky and rah rah rah so on and so forth, and as such there's more hipsteriffic bars (as opposed to the glorious yuppie/post-yuppie/trust-fund-kid/wall-streeter bars around manhattan) and that's where you get more of your idm/artistic-snob-type-peoples and it's the same fun mix of indigenous people and those who came from toecheese, indiana and now cop and ego like they're the greatest thing in the history of the world because they made it to new york where on the surface they succeed wildly but in reality are having more problems than they'd ever want you to know and somehow survive despite alwyas being close to moving back home.

 

in terms of music and art and things, oh yeah it's a mecca there's tonnes of shit there and it's a notch up and better from a place like chicago, where being in the midwest can work against it when some westcoast artists do tours and dont make it this far, same with the eastcoasters... basically any national tour will go there, there's prolly more local acts per capita than just about any city short of maybe a london paris or LA or something, and you'll always find ways to entertain yourself.

 

it's just to me not the be-all end-all of civilization, like someone said before it's the mcdonalds/disney/hipster version of what you thought it was, and i suppose your mcdonalds/disney side will be the really touristy parts of manhattan, and the hipster parts are more brooklyn... i've never been to staten island but i hear it's guidoiffic, i like harlem for what it is, and short of yankee stadium i havent really been up around the bronx, as i'm saving it for next time, cuz in all of my trips out there i either stayed in suburban long island or lower manhattan, or once in queens, so well, i've been focused on manhattan and brooklyn as destinations...

 

basically go tehre be on your pimpgame talk yourself up praise new york nail a model/actress or jaded late 20s/early 30something who is successful yet somewhat lonely and miserable, what with your promise of infinite potential cuz you havent been there long enough to have realize your dreams are naive fantasies and yeah you'll be ok.

 

wow this was pointless and stupid i'm ignorant =D

[jeremymacgregor87]

Thanks man, that was actually really cool and informative.

 

I plan on going there as level-headed as possible. It looks like I'll be staying in NYC (mainly Brooklyn) for about a week. I'm sure a lot of the yuppie persona trickles down to most parts of the world; Sydney, for one, is much that way. It looks like I'll be going to Nashville for a few days with my folks for a big reunion thing, then going to Pittsburgh for another few days, then Cleveland before a break off from the family and do my own thing for a good two weeks. Probably going to hang around Toronto for two nights, then to Montreal, before heading to NYC. [Depending on when Warp20 happens (please god, before the 15th!) I may have to shuffle the three.]

 

A good mate of mine has offered to lend me her SLR, so I'm just interested in seeing what all these places have to say and document the adventure - I live in Brisbane, Queensland; and while you may have had your share of discouraging experiences from your travels, I assure you: Brisbane is dull as fuck and has almost nothing to offer in the way of live music/clubs (other than filthy fluorescent house-mush).

 

Thanks again