The New York Experience

New York, New York big city of dreams.... BIG DREAMS! I found that
out the first night in Time Square.
"Hey Chief, where you from"?
Coming from the next big Hip Hop star(riiiight).
"Utah."
"Oh (expletive) I love Utah. John Stockton to Karl Malone. Yo, I'm
trying to be the next big thing. What's your name"?
"Justin"
"J-money(as he signs a cd). I'm just looking for any type of donation
to help me out."
I love music! As an aspiring DJ and Bassist, I thought I could help
another wannabe musician(like myself) out by donating a couple of
bucks. Biggest mistake of my life. I didn't know every New Yorker was
a rapper. Soon as I pulled out some money, I swear evey single rapper
on Manhatten could smell it.
"How bout mines? And mines."
I spent about 15 dollars on cd's I will probably never like and listen
to more than once. The worst part about it all is I can't take them to
FYE and trade em' in. I learned my lesson after that. No more
donations! About another 20 rappers came up to me and instead of
CDs, we got told to visit 20 myspace pages(because of no donations).
Time Square is crazy and it's only worse at night. We got the the city
about 7:30ish, and as soon as we stepped off the bus you enter the sea
of people. You can't walk anywhere without rubbing shoulders with
anyone else. It was dark and we had no clue on where we were going.
We decided to follow the big bright lights we saw a couple blocks
down. On the way there we saw every type of drum set you can think of,
spiderman, bboys, and an epic battle between Michael Jackson and
Batman. We finally hit the bright lights and you swear it was day again.
My whole life I've heard that New Yorkers were rude and they did not
dissapoint. I can't say all New Yorkers are rude, actually most were
pretty nice. If we had questions with the subway, everyone we asked
was pretty helpful. I would say the only rude people were the cops and
the ones working in retail. As long as you mind your own business,
they will leave you alone.
It was 11:00pm and I got a headache and no hotel for the first night.
We all thought it's the city that never sleeps and I can pull an all
nighter no problem. Everything changes when you have a headache.
Especially when a bottle of 20 ibuprofen cost 5 ducks! So I popped
some pills and thought to myself this is going to be a long night. We
decided to get tickets and chill at the HA Comedy Club. Best decision
of the night. Out of 5 acts there was about 2 1/2 funny people, but it
took us to 2:00am and my headache went away. Everything after that was
downhill. Time flew by the rest of the way. Tried to get on Good
Morning America, but the damn people from Texas and their big signs
(even the homemade signs are big in Texas) got in the way of my face.
That took us to 9:00am and we decided to try our luck with the subway.
The iPhone made our trip a whole lot easier. It mapped out every
subway we needed to take and didn't fail is once.
Check in wasn't suppose to be til' 1:00pm, but we were exhausted and
tried our luck to get an early check in. Money talks and for an extra
$35 we got our room around 9:30ish. By 10:00 we were all out. Woke up
by 4:00pm and headed to Yankee Stadium(I'll have my own post for the
baseball games later).
We get back to Brooklyn about 11ish and it's dark. I'm feeling a
little uneasy bout the walk back to the hotel. You see all the films
and hear songs about New York and it's neighborhood "stoops". You all
know what goes on on the stoops too. That is no myth, we had crowds
whistling and hollering at across the street. We didn't pay attention,
but I think we started to speed walk a little. Next night was a lot
easier cuz' we had some girls behind us and they got all the
hollering. Something about the East Coast I've noticed is that I don't
think there is an ugly girl to an east coast guy. They check out
everybody. Girls who don't even register on Gabe and Marks number
system get whistled and looked up and down like they were a 4 piece
spicy chicken meal with some sides of red beans and rice, mash
potatoes, and coleslaw from Popeyes.
Besides baseball we just walked and experienced the metropolitan city
life. We got to see ground zero. It wasn't what I expected in a sense
that I was hoping for a better view. Couldn't see much because of the
fcnces and construction of the new tower. However it was very touching
and flashbacks rolled in my head of Sept.11,2001. A senior in high
school, a day I'll never forget. We were there the 9th of Sept. Almost
8 years to the date it happened. Crazy! As of New York..... I loved
it, I love city life. I don't know if I could living there, but it's a
place I can see myself visit again and again. Which was suprising to
me. I always wanted to visit beacuse it's New York. I just thought I
wouldn't really care or enjoy it. My mind has changed and it's up
there as one of Justins greatest cities in the USofA.