Unfortunately, I was no longer able to uphold the city life. It has been said that if you live in NYC for at least 7 years you can call yourself a NYer. So I now consider myself a transplanted city girl. If you like my blog, please like my page on Facebook. See link in the right sidebar.
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Snowpacalypse is a ‘new’ word, a made up word combining ‘snow’ with apocalypse, which shows you how much they (the ones that made it up) know since they spelled it wrong. It’s also a word i hate and never wanted to use. I find it distasteful to use a word that refers to God’s judgment for a weather event. It’s a blizzard, let’s stick with that.
While i’m on my soapbox, why are we naming storms? Hurricanes are named because there are several in a season, there are five lists of names to rotate between the years and the names are in alphabetical order. That’s how you know if it was a particularly bad year, if you can a hurricane Tanya, that was a bad year. This naming of blizzards is rather haphazard. Winter Storm Jonas? Why not just ‘the January blizzard of 2016’ if you are worried there might be more. ‘The blizzard of 2015-16 winter’ if this is the only one.
I knew it had snowed before i opened my eyes, the snow plows on 2nd Avenue woke me. When i look at my windows i can see snow on my windowsills. The snow plows came by again so it must still be snowing, i haven’t looked out my windows yet. Not even when i heard some guy screaming for help, once. I hope someone helped him, or it was a joke.
Normally when it snows like this i go to the park and take pictures. Maybe tomorrow, today i’m staying in.
Today’s commute was not a CFH, in fact it was the exact opposite. I did leave 15 minutes late but then I got to the bus stop before the bus. At the subway station, train pulled in when i was at the bottom of the escalator. Queensboro plaza the train was pulling in as i got to the bottom of the stairs.
The result was, i was only 10 minutes late to work.
There is no place like New York and nothing like the NYC subway system. I have determined there are three types of people that talk to me on the subway.
There are the people who ask for money. From what they say, none of them do drugs, none of them drink, all have suffered some unimaginable tragedy and can’t get government assistance.
There are the people asking me for directions. “Do I look like Google maps?”
There are the people offering to help find your train, this is usually followed by a request for money, so they could fall into the first category. What is really annoying is some of them feel they need to lead you to the correct train and “STOP TOUCHING ME”. I should get a medal for not stabbing people.
Then there is your random crazy person, like the tall skinny black man that told me I was “a white whore and you’re going to die of AIDS and cancer.” And the woman who offered me oral sex. She was convinced I would love it and I was just, “Ew no, germs.” Like I said, I should get a medal.
It was a while ago. Not a super long time but not recent. What color is the dress? It went viral as they say, to the point that a scientist wrote an article about why some people saw one color and some saw another. Even though much attention was brought to it, I never paid it much attention.
One day this week, on the subway, I was standing next to this woman, she was talking to a girl that was sitting down looking at her phone. It looked like mother daughter, so that’s how I’ll write it. The daughter asked her mother to look at a picture on her phone, the first time it was too dark, so the girl adjusted something and showed it to her mother again. I glanced down, it was ‘the dress’. “What color is it?” the daughter asks, “Blue and black” the mother says, the daughter agrees. I looked at the exact same image as the woman, I saw a white and gold dress.
People always comment how New Yorkers don’t wait for the walk signal, we just wait for the traffic to clear and dart across the street. It’s like we are a city of rule breakers. I have to agree, let me explain.
What’s the biggest rule moms tell their kids? No not clean your room! That’s mom’s fantasy. No moms are always telling their kids, Don’t get in a car with a stranger. Right? So you live your life running away from ride offers from people you don’t know.
Then you move to NYC, and you don’t have a car because, A) it is freakishly expensive to keep a car in NYC; B) the subway and bus system is beyond compare, who needs a car? Then one day you’re in a rush, you need to get across town RIGHT NOW, so you stick out your arm, a yellow car stops and you get in. You get in a car WITH A STRANGER. BOOM, mom’s rule has been broken.
But wait, you say, it is this strangers job to transport you safely to your destination (notice I said safely, not necessarily untraumatized, but I’ll consider cabbie driving habits in another post), maybe so I say, BUT, we all watch TV, and we know there are serial killers masquerading as taxi drives just waiting for a snowstorm and an unsuspecting victim! Once you break this rule and survive, this emboldens you break other rules, like crossing against the light. It’s no wonder we all do it.
My friend Mary sent me an e-mail about an oyster crawl. It’s like a pub crawl, except you eat oysters instead of drinking. Rose also got the invitation and decided to come. It was at that point I realized I had to admit, after several times saying I liked oysters that, I had never had any. They never asked me why I said I liked oysters when I had never had them, I probably couldn’t have given them an answer.
We got these ‘badges’ in the email, with instructions to print them out or save to our phone/mobile devise. My printer is currently not working, and I was having fits trying to save it. I finally managed it, and then we didn’t need to show them.
My first stop was the bank. The second was the subway, I briefly considered stopping at Starbucks, then discarded the idea, only to regret it when I saw how long the wait for the train was. The first restaurant on the oyster crawl was Grey Lady down in SoHo, took me a while to find it. Rose was waiting for me, Mary was delayed by train problems. Rose has said to expect rain, so I brought my umbrella, but it was snow at this point.
We got two dozen oysters, I wrote down the names of the oysters, since I was planning on writing about it, but I can’t read my notes. It looks like we had ‘fisher plane'(Fisher’s Island) and ‘moom shoal'(Moon Shoal). I’m pretty sure that one of those is wrong, anyone reading this that knows their oyster names is probably laughing at me. I even checked my Instagram, and although I had posted this same exact photo, I didn’t note the names. (Name correction courtesy of Eating the First Oyster)
This is me eating my first ever oyster. Photo courtesy of NYC Photo.
After the oysters I had a shot of Lemon Vodka.
This is the second place we went on our NYC Oyster Crawl. True to form I wrote down the name of the oysters, “Blue Point”, and didn’t write down the name of the bar. I’m pretty sure it was Bait & Hook. There are two reasons I’m sure, one is the pictures look like the place we went, two the website says they have happy hour oysters: $1 Blue Point, and three it is one block over from Professor Thom’s. Which is where we went next. Not for oysters though, for loaded tots. Anyway these are my oysters. I only got 6, Mary got clam chowder, she wasn’t feeling the oyster love right then.
Rose got a full dozen. She apparently was still hungry for oysters. Of the three types of oysters I ate this day, these are my favorite. The oyster love continued to the next time I was at Fairway, standing at the seafood counter looking at the hunks of rock that supposedly hold oysters, thinking to myself, I wonder if I could shuck those.
A New Year’s Eve tradition is the ball drop in Time Square. It’s been going on since 1907 according to the New York Public Library (click here) and about a million people cram themselves into Time Square to watch it. I have been told I should go at least one time. To which I reply, “Get your head examined.” I don’t like Time Square when it’s not crowded with people, to be there when there are a million people would drive me to homicide. Going to prison for murder is not on my bucket list.
A) New York in January, outside in the middle of the night. Freezing temps, possible snow or sleet.
B) No backpacks allowed, so you can’t bring a snack in case you get hungry.
C) No bathrooms. And you can’t leave to go find one and then come back. Mainly because an hour after you get there you will be hemmed in on all sides and not able to leave if you were on fire. In fact, you could probably die there and no one would know until after the ball dropped.
D) If you don’t get there at noon, you won’t be able to see any of the “great” entertainment.
There is no way I am going to be standing for hours to watch a ball drop, I can do that in my living room, I don’t have to stand, I have food, water, and bathroom facilities.
This year Brooklyn decided they were going to have their own ball drop, I don’t want to imply that Brooklyn is slow or inferior to Manhattan, but the ball has been dropping in Time Square for a hundred years and they just now discovered they can have their own NYE party? Maybe they were too busy thinking about going for a dip (The Coney Island Polar Bear Club was founded by Bernarr Macfadden in 1903. They swim every Sunday during the winter.).
It sounded like fun, so I grabbed my party outfit, and caught the train to Coney Island. I actually bought that mask to go to Coney Island. I thought it would be fun and it served two purposes. My picture was taken a lot, and it kept my face warm. The breeze off the ocean was freshening. By freshening I mean freezing. I managed to get a spot in the front, and then left it because of the brutal assault of the wind. There was hot chocolate as promised, but they ran out before I got any. Even showing up at 9:00 p.m., when it officially started it wasn’t too crowded. It got a little crowded, and I ended up not seeing anything, which means I missed the freak show. I also missed the lights on the Parachute Drop because I was watching the fireworks. And I am still finding silly string and gold confetti around my apartment. I didn’t stay for the whole firework show. I was freezing, my back hurt, and I had to pee. As a public service announcement, if you are in Coney Island and need a bathroom, there are outside public bathrooms at Nathans. They are open until 1:00 a.m.
Yes I know I shot this video the ‘wrong’ way, it’s only 30 seconds so deal with it.
Most of the time, when I am having a commute from hell and watching over-packed train after over-packed train go by, I berate myself with the every pertinent: If you had left home on time, this wouldn’t be happening! Today as I watched one, two and then stuffed myself onto the third train I thought to myself, “Today I left on time. This is so not fair!”
Leaving on time has it’s rewards however, in that even though the trains were crowded and I couldn’t get on the train until the third one, and I couldn’t read my book because it was too crowded, I got to work on time. Or at least before my boss came in.
Last night I went to see the Staten Island Yankees. Yes I know this is not my sports blog, while the game was fun, except we lost, and I found out that Richmond County Bank Ballpark serves Honkers Ale, but we lost, and a helmet bowl serving of nachos is enough for two (maybe three) people, which I should have realized when they gave me two forks, instead of thinking, “Hey a fork for each hand!” The fireworks were nice, I watched from the pavilion next to the ferry station because I wanted to get home before midnight.
The reason I am writing this here is I wanted to write about my commute home, which was pretty bad but kind of funny at the same time. You can imagine that after eating all those nachos, which were pretty good by the way, and drinking a couple of Honkers Ales my tummy was not feeling great. Ferry ride was rather uneventful and while on the ferry I was trying to figure out how to get home. Normally I would walk from the ferry to the Green train, but that would mean walking past the park and there are rats in the park. I’ve never seen them, but people have told me they are there and while we were docking I saw one on the dock. The Red train is right by the ferry terminal. That was the train I wanted to take, I just had to figure out how to get home.
In the first car I got in was a little girl with a very loud and very shrill voice, she was accompanied by her mother who also had a very loud and very shrill voice. At the first stop I got off and got into the next car forward. Which was crowded and also pretty loud. There was one man who was especially loud, I could hear him over everyone else, and he was laughing. Sometimes I get very agitated by noise, this was one of those times. He was also smoking, which I didn’t notice at first, when I noticed the smoke I at first thought it was because someone next to me was a smoker, you know how smoker’s clothes will smell like smoke, then a woman started shouting about “The smoker on the train!” Which added to my upset frame of mind. I really don’t know why she was shouting since he was already out the door when she started yelling.
Time Square was where I planned to change trains to the Yellow train that would take me to the Green train. I got on the “Q”, which was only going to 47th Street, which I didn’t realize until after I was on and the doors closed. That meant another train change, but when the “N” train pulled in I could see the car wasn’t crowded so when I doors opened I entered and headed for an empty seat and stopped, right in front of the seat I was going to sit in was a puddle of vomit. I looked at some women sitting across from it, they both gave me the “Yes it’s vomit” smile and nod. So I stood until we got to the Green train station. The Green train was crowded. Not horribly, but uncomfortably so. New York is the city that never sleeps, so there is always people on the subway, even at midnight.
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Belleza
just a (transplanted) city girl 