I arrived in New York City tonight for the first time since 1986.
I took the infamous Chinatown bus which, for a paltry 17.50, will take you from Chinatown in DC to the one in NY, with a few stops in between. It's a great deal because the tolls alone to get to the city will run you about 13 or 14 bucks. It's 6 bucks alone to go under the Lincoln Tunnel.
The bus dropped me off on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway which is insane place to start a venture into the city, especially on a Saturday night when ziillions of tourists are zipping around Times Square. As I walking to get to a subway station, I was thinking what would happen if you took a Samoan out of a tiny village in kua and dropped him in the middle of Times Square. He'd probably have a coronary.
I found my subway (the C train) and made my way uptown to where my old friend Josh has been living for the last two years. The subway is astonishing clean. Much more so than I remember from my days of visiting the city as a child, when much of city was a complete dump. And the people are so well dressed with only the ocassional homeless person wandering through the car asking for money.
Of course, when I get to his apartment, one of these massive 20 story buildings on Central Park West, he's not home. I went to a diner down the street and had an egg cream, one of the most delicious drinks on the planet. An egg cream has no egg nor any cream. It's just seltzer, flavored syrup, usually chocolate, but sometimes vanilla, as my my case, and and milk.
About an hour later, I went back to Josh's place, and there he was. We went out to a place around the corner called "The Dive Bar" to watch the Yankee game. I was secretly supporting the Marlins, and when it because obvoious that Josh Beckett was pitching one of the great gems of World Series history, the crowd in the bar disappeared.
We wandered down Broadway towards Columbus Circle and then back up to 97th along Amerstam. It was great for me just to get out and people watch, and look at all the shops and restaurants, the variety of which truly boggles the mind.
I started to seriously think about finding a way to move here.
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