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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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.
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Belleza
just a (transplanted) city girl 