Picking up where we left off yesterday, let’s talk a bit about the New York City subway system. See, you might think that you are pretty adept at navigating a city’s rail system, based on the fact that you had no problem with the metro systems of Washington, D.C. and multiple European cities*, not to mention the bus systems of Washington, D.C. and Reykjavik. You might think that, but you still might not be prepared for the rainbow-hued, alphabet-soup, spaghetti-like clusterf*ck that is the New York City subway. See, from the map, it looked easy: hop on at the nearest station in Queens, about five blocks away, take the only line running out of that station (the purple one) to Grand Central, then take the green line going towards Brooklyn for 2 or 3 stops (I forget at the moment), and presto! You’re two blocks from your new hotel!
I didn’t account for two words, because I had no idea they were an issue: “local” versus “express.” We did eventually get to the hotel, and were able to reflect on how this was, on the scale of vacation f***ups, pretty close to the bottom.
From here, we began the walking. Oh, how we walked. I kept expecting my exercise tracker to ask who I was and why I stole an exercise tracker from a guy who takes an average of 3,000 steps a day.
We had lunch at a delightful (I have a hard time coming up with adjectives for restaurants) French restaurant. Apparently Anthony Bourdain got his start at a different location of the same restaurant. Amid all the fancy and (to me) unpronounceable haute French dishes—which included something involving pigeon—I ordered a cheesburger, because America.
Planning our day was a bit of a challenge. We had tickets to Hedwig and the Angry Inch at 8:00, as well as tickets that gave us a chance to see the taping of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, provided we lined up outside the studio by 5:00. So from the general area of 29th Street and Park Avenue (don’t worry, I don’t really know what that means, either), we set out on foot for the Highline Park, with a quick detour to walk past the Empire State Building.
Now, our plan was to walk the Highline to its northern end, which would put us not too far from Wilmore’s Place (as I call it), but our Empire State Building detour put us north of the entire Highline, so blah blah subway ride blah, and we’re in the Meatpacking District.
There, we saw what was probably a commercial shoot. We watched this woman do about fifty takes in which she walked 2-3 steps and tossed her hair.
We also saw a bit of art criticism on the Chelsea Market building.
We walked the Highline for a while, which, with all the new buildings and their fancy architecture, would make quite the scifi setting.
We abruptly realized that we only had about twenty minutes to get to Wilmore’s Place at 54th Street and 10th Avenue. Blah blah subway ride blah lots of walking blah, and we stood in line for nearly an hour and did not get in to see the show.
It’s not the greatest system, really, at all: you get a free ticket that only gives you the right to stand in line to maybe get in. As long as people keep standing in line in greater numbers than the studio can hold, though, why would they change their system? We see the same prinicple at work with all the insanely-long lines for SXSW events in Austin. By taking a stand and saying that I won’t jump through hoops for your arbitrary bullshit, all I’m doing is making room for someone who will.
We were only ten people away from getting in. One of the panelists was Neil deGrasse Tyson. Grrrr.
We had a quick bite to eat at Medi Wine Bar. Get the zucchini/mozzarrella appetizer.
At this point, there was no time to go back to our hotel to change for the theater. I was only wearing a t-shirt, and NYC in April is not Austin in April. after buying a weird turtleneck/hoodie hybrid from some store in Times Square, we descended on the Belasco Theater dressed like a couple of hipster vagabonds, and it was glorious.
* I didn’t want to brag in the main text, but I’ve ridden the metro rails in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Milan, Munich, Berlin, and Moscow. But who’s counting?
