Snippets From 24 Hours In New York City

I flew out to NYC on a Thursday morning, and was back home in California by Friday night. It was one of those blink-and-you-miss-it type ordeals, but it was also pretty much as in-your-face-hello! as you can get.

I counted this as the first time I spent time in a big city by myself. Or any city, really. 

And that fact made itself real apparent after the cab driver wheedled me into letting him switch shifts somewhere in the middle of Queens; you could straight up tell I was a NYC newbie.

// On the flight to NYC, there was particularly bad turbulence. It was up, down, all around, thrown into a MagicBullet blender. As per my usual flying routine, my nose was stuck deep in the latest issue of Cosmo, somewhere in between Khloe Kardashian's interview and the stories about Craigslist killers and obscure diseases. So, you know, those parts. With the saucy pictures.

There I am flipping away casually - I look to my left, and the older gentleman sitting in the aisle seat is praying. Hands clasped on the tray table, eyes closed, whispering to the big man upstairs.

At first, I thought he was praying for my soul. 

But then, I realized. The turbulence.

// After throwing all of my stuff in the hotel room in SoHo, I decided to take the subway into Midtown - both to map out my route for my interview, and also because I needed to hit up The Halal Guys, whose chicken & rice is something akin to petting fluffy puppies and threading rainbows through my hair for me.

I Citymapper-ed the route extensively and found that I had to take the 1 train Uptown. So I arrive at the dot that marked the station, look up, and find only the 1 train Downtown. I go down anyway, realize that something doesn't look right, go up back the stairs, wander a few feet further, find another staircase labeled Downtown, go down that one, still find it wrong, and come back up. This homeless guy was watching me the entire time, probably thinking that I'm the reason all is wrong with the world.

Uber, it was. But I quoted the price, saw it was ~$25 to get to Midtown, and scoffed. No way in hell was I going to spend a quarter of a hundred dolla dolla bills when the stupid. underground. choo. choo. train could get me there for less than $3.

At this point, I started walking back to the hotel in frustration, thinking - I'LL JUST STARVE (I really wouldn't have because there was a Chipotle right across the street and I'd been dying to go anyway). Randomly, I glance across the street and there it was. 1 Uptown. 

a magical Golden Hour spent en route to California

// After my interview, I was waiting for my Uber car to come and whisk me off to the airport. I was surrounded by tourists. How dare they be so curious and be taking pictures of such iconic sights. How dare they wear walking shoes and mutter amongst themselves excitedly about every black car pulling up next to us. Be cool, dammit.
Then, as I started walking up the street a tad to distance myself from them, my heel got stuck in a grate. It was the typical Cameron Diaz in a romcom moment, except for the rom part. And the com part, because I sure as heck was not laughing then.
Stranded there, I flailed about for a solid thirty seconds, before I managed to yank out the shoe - the new shoe. I'm sure those tourists documented the entire thing. Karma's a beezy.