My four-day New York City expedition was half done. By this time, I'd really started to feel at home in this city. Wake up, walk down some narrow flights of stairs into a narrow Manhattan street, and from there to a subway station and onto a train like it was second nature.

Sunday, September 5, 2021

As I woke up that morning, I really wanted to just walk down the street to Adam's Deli and get another sausage and egg bagel like I had the morning before, but I had a friend's restaurant recommendation to check out: Katz's Delicatessen. I'd never heard of this place before, but after a little internet research discovered it was an iconic New York location. Countless scenes in famous TV shows and movies, like When Harry Met Sally, were filmed there. To get there I had to ride the subway to the 2 Av station.

They had an unusual ordering procedure that involved getting a ticket at the front door...I don't remember exactly how it worked. What I do remember was the price of my lox & cream cheese on a bagel, which was $15.95. Sure, it was quite delicious and I can't say it wasn't worth it, but still, $15.95? Any corner bodega, like Adam's in Chelsea, could've served me something just as good for half the price. Clearly they're milking their fame for all it's worth.

The Katzes made this slogan famous during WWII, when they would ship their food to customers' family members who were soldiers deployed to Europe or East Asia. They even copyrighted it.

After my tasty but rather overpriced breakfast, I rode some subway trains over to Queens. This was a borough I hadn't explored yet, and I wanted to see what was there. Much like Brooklyn, Queens was made up of many neighborhoods which at one time or another had been separate cities and towns and still felt like it on some level. The first such neighborhood I visited was Astoria.

The New York City Bagel and Coffee House in Astoria, Queens. Here I had a great Americano.

Back on the subway I headed westward toward Flushing to find a famous city park. This took a long time on, I think, two different lines. During this time, I saw a lot of scenery go by...

This looks like any big city's downtown, doesn't it? But this isn't what's considered downtown New York, because that's in Lower Manhattan; this is Long Island City, Queens. There are parts of Brooklyn that look like this, too. New York City, I think, is more polycentric than most people realize.

Eventually I stepped off the 7 train at the Mets-Willets Point station to get to my next destination: Corona Park. This place I wanted to see because it was where the 1964 World's Fair happened, and there are some famous landmarks there which are left over from it.

There were quite a few people heading for this same destination. They were all here for the US Open tennis tournament which was happening at this venue. Also, it just started raining as I stepped off the train.

To get to the park, I had to walk past the stadium, where there were spaces cordoned off for people to line up to get in, and a Long Island Railroad (LIRR) station. At that station I bought a westbound ticket to Woodside, also in Queens, leaving in an hour.

Corona Park was pretty big and it was a nice place to walk through. It would've been even nicer if the sun had been out. There was one field where a soccer match was going on. In another place, I walked past a mariachi band.

This, the Unisphere, is a legacy of the 1964 World's Fair. It's been seen in movies and TV since then; you may remember seeing an alien spacecraft crashing into it in Men in Black.

This was the New York State Pavilion. It's not getting a whole lot of use these days. At this time it was roped off and only accessible to construction workers.

After my stroll through the park, I headed back to the LIRR station, where after a short wait I boarded a LIRR train. It was only about a ten minute ride from Corona Park to Woodside. There, I found a great place to have a coffee: Bee Café. Here I got a mocha with almond milk, and an avocado salad for lunch. The coffee was good enough that I bought some beans there to take home.

Ain't that the truth!

Heading back into the festival...on this last day I opted to walk across the RFK Bridge from Harlem to Randall's Island. On the bridge I got a good photo, too...

This would be the Harlem River, looking south from the RFK Bridge, with Manhattan Island on your right and Randall's Island on your left. That long arched bridge slightly left of center is the Hell Gate Bridge, a railway bridge connecting Randall's Island with Queens. The bridge you see to the right of that is a continuation of the RFK Bridge, the same one I'm standing on here, leading south from Randall's Island to Queens.

Soon after I entered the festival, I had a shocking idea that I'm still amazed I had. That whole day I hadn't had anything to drink, and I really didn't have any desire for any of the Amstel or Heineken or White Claw being sold there, so I thought I'd do something incredibly uncharacteristic and not drink the whole night.

Back in a bygone era, I used to live in Bellevue, Nebraska, where on weekends my friends and I would often go dance ourselves sweaty in an after-hours club in downtown Omaha. Being after-hours, there was no alcohol being served, just water, but we still relished every minute there. So, I thought, if I could have a great night while being stone-cold sober back then, why shouldn't I still be able to now?

I was at the main stage when Galantis was on. I'd seen them once before in 2017 at Middlelands. They're two producers from Sweden who may not be anyone I've followed too closely but have put out a lot of catchy tunes I've liked over the last few years. Their most well-known song is probably "Peanut Butter Jelly." Great set, though nothing too unforgettable.

After Galantis, Illenium took over the main stage and I headed over to Sunday School to finish the night with Duke Dumont. I probably enjoyed that one a little more, though after three days of walking all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, my feet were finally starting to get tired and I had to sit down for a while.

Everyone dancing to Duke Dumont at the Sunday School stage.

And now, except for the next day's aftershow, Electric Zoo was over. Overall, I'd say it wasn't bad but it wasn't great. Sure, I loved being able to experience live music once again after the pandemic, and I thoroughly enjoyed what I experienced, but still I felt like there was something missing. Maybe it was because there was no camping, or because entering late every day I'd missed so many artists I like, or because the crowd there seemed to be less wook-ish and more bro-ish...it just left me feeling a little unsatisfied. There would be two more fests in my future this year, ACL and Hulaween, and thankfully there I found whatever I was looking for here.

Monday, September 6, 2021

My last day in New York City, and I really didn't want to leave yet. Waking up, I knew exactly what I wanted for breakfast: I walked down the street from the hostel to Adam's Deli and got myself another delicious sausage and egg on a bagel.

After breakfast, I just kept walking west from Adam's until I got to the Hudson River waterfront. This part of the waterfront was a recently-developed neighborhood known as Hudson Yards. From here I got some great photogenic views...

Across the Hudson River from New York City you can see Jersey City, New Jersey. The world-famous Statue of Liberty can be seen off in the distance on the left. I've never visited this city yet, except for Liberty State Park, and that was back in the summer of 2001.

And then all I had to do was turn around and see this great view of Hudson Yards.

I needed a second cup of coffee for the moment so I got it at Think Coffee near the intersection of 10th Avenue and 30th Street. It was good enough that I bought a bag of coffee grounds to take home.

Walking back to the hostel I passed by a number of buildings adorned with ghost signs. If you've never heard of ghost signs, they're decades-old--often more than a century old--advertisements which were painted on the sides of buildings in ages past and are now faded and peeling. I've been fascinated by these for years, because they're like a window into another time period. Often by reading these signs you can tell what businesses were occupying a building in some former era before anyone alive today was ever born, and generations of successive tenants simply never thought it was worth it to paint over the sign.

"The American Book Bindery Building," it says. Today this building is the SUNY (State University of New York) Fashion Institute of Technology.

The one that's still fully legible says "Pennsylvania Exchange Bank - 8th Avenue at 26th Street." This building isn't at that location, so I checked Google Maps Street View. There's no bank there by that name anymore.

I took this picture a day earlier of a building at 666 6th Avenue, not too far from my hostel. What was the Bazar Français? Is there anyone alive who remembers? I thought. Eventually I just googled it. Apparently it was a cookware store which closed relatively recently, in 1975. If you go there now, you'll find a Japanese restaurant called Mazete.

Back at Chelsea International Hostel, I checked out of my room, but like any good hostel they let me store my baggage in a room near the lobby so I wouldn't have to lug it around the city for the rest of the day's adventures.

Next it was time to find something for lunch, and I had an idea of what I wanted. Some years ago I saw some TV Food Network show about New York pizzerias, all of which claimed to be the original pizzeria that invented pizza as we know it, all with "Ray's" in the name. One of them was called Famous Original Ray's, which I recognized when I happened to walk past it earlier in this trip...

Not bad, though not really mind-blowing either. I had a big slice of pepperoni and mushroom pizza. What I remember most about it was that the crust, while quite thin, was hard and stiff and didn't fall apart whenever I picked up the slice by the edge. That's different from every other "New York pizzeria" I've ever been to, even in New Jersey, in which the crust is really soft and flimsy and trying to pick up a whole uneaten slice will result in it falling apart.

I didn't have too much more time left to burn, but enough to go check out another Manhattan neighborhood...Greenwich Village. It's most famous for having long been a very artsy and bohemian kind of place. Not only was it a center of the 1950s Beat movement, but also was a hub of 1960s counterculture, the East Coast answer to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury. Today it's still got the hippie vibes, but because it's so popular and iconic, today only a millionaire can afford to actually live there.

Unfortunately I found that, at that time, a great deal of establishments in the Village were closed. Among the places that were open were Washington Square Diner, where I had a glass of Sam Adams, and Rosecrans, a café that looks like it's also a flower shop where I got a coffee to go.

And now, there was one last event to attend in this city, Electric Zoo's Monday afternoon closing after-party, which I'd made a reservation for. This was going to be in a rooftop club called Superior Ingredients, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Another subway ride, probably on the L, took me there.

I liked this party. I liked the atmosphere just a little better than the festival itself. It was the middle of a sunny afternoon on a rooftop bar in Brooklyn with an impressive view of the iconic Manhattan skyline, DJs spinning house beats, and a light crowd that was less of the "EDM bros" of the festival and more urban yuppie-ish.

The night before I'd proven to myself that I don't need to drink to have a good time. So, now that I knew I wasn't dependent on it, I had a few beers from the bar at Superior Ingredients. They had a pretty good selection, a lot wider than at the festival, and that included Modelo.

I could've stayed there all day but I had a train to catch. I zipped back to Chelsea on the subway to collect my baggage from the hostel, and then walked to Penn Station. Before entering the station I got my dinner from a food cart. It was another falafel wrap. The cook in this particular cart couldn't make them right. The first mistake was putting jalapeños in it. I'd expect middle-Eastern food to be spicy, but jalapeños just don't fit. And even worse, he almost put a bunch of green olives in it before I noticed and stopped him. Olives of any kind are one of the very few foods I can't tolerate the taste of. The wrap tasted great...with the jalapeños picked off it.

And after that, into the station where I had to leave the city, not wanting to leave so soon, and not knowing whenever I'd be back. There still weren't many operational vendors in the Moynihan Train Hall, but there was one stand, a local business called Healing Home Foods, selling granola of which I bought a couple bags. Pretty soon I was on Amtrak's southbound Vermonter on the way to BWI, not to return for the foreseeable future...

In the last decade I've visited so many cities, in the US and around the world, like Seattle, Austin, Houston, Montréal, Toronto, Liverpool, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Prague, Budapest, and most recently Baltimore, Philadelphia, and DC, staying in hostels in some and Airbnbs in others, riding around on their trains, trams, and buses, and eating and drinking in the places the locals know. Then I went into NYC to experience it like I did all those others, and WOW, it's just something else entirely. Calling New York a "big city" is like calling the Atlantic Ocean a lake. Not just because of how much area it covers but because of what and how much is in it. There's five boroughs to explore and I didn't even get around to entering two of them. There are so many neighborhoods in each borough, most of them used to be towns and cities in their own right, and they still feel that way when you walk down their streets.

The data-inhaling folks at FiveThirtyEight recently made these interesting maps dividing the city into five "political boroughs" based on their voting patterns, and they also break down each of these divisions' ethnic and educational demographics. To me their analysis shows how big and diverse the city is. It's all one city but many parts of it culturally feel like they're in different states.

And so, finally, I really love this city and it's definitely my favorite I've ever visited. It would be a little premature to declare it the "greatest city in the world," since I haven't been to Tokyo or Rio yet, but if it isn't, it sure comes close. There's still so much to see and do, and I'll have to keep coming back again and again and again.