It has been a long time since I have been able to entertain you with the written word, and for that, I apologize. But I'm back from a weekend trip to New York and a 10-day tour of Israel and fully ready to blow your minds. So sit back, relax (not too relaxed, you will need your wits about you to scroll through the post) and enjoy.
My best friend from the moment my infant eyes could distinguish people from objects recently moved to Brooklyn and since my brother and I were scheduled to take off from Newark for Israel on a Monday, we decided a weekend trip in New York was perfect. It had been 16 years since I was last in The Big Apple, and my most vivid memories were of FAO Schwarz and the smell of homeless people and wet coins. I went into this trip wanting to replace FAO Schwarz with a more mature memory but knew the latter would remain because, as we all know, homeless people and wet coins are the smell of life and/or hustle and bustle.
My goal for this trip was to appear to be a local. I mean, what could be more cliché than visiting New York from LA for the weekend. I had also developed a fiery rivalry between New York and LA in my mind, (this could be a real rivalry, but I did not pursue any leads for fear of blowing my cover and getting caught in a crossfire of coastal battle cries) so I did not want to be labeled as an Angeleno in New York almost as much as I don't want to be labeled as an Angeleno period.
Unfortunately, my attempts to seem like a real New Yorker didn't even last the full cab ride from the airport to Brooklyn. I didn't think it was humanly possible to have traffic conditions that competed with LA, so while idling on the highway, I called my friend and told her I thought our cab driver was taking advantage of us. I outed myself as a non New Yorker by questioning the normal traffic flow and insinuating there was some lack of basic New Yorker knowledge that a cab driver would pick up on and exploit. The jig was up, I was a tourist. Honestly, it was a relief to drop the facade. I didn't have the energy to suppress the energy the city was giving me.
I was surprised by how much I loved New York. I kept catching myself tilting my head to the sky and saying, “NEW YORK CITAAY!” in a sing-song, Broadway voice as I tossed my hands to my sides, as if awaiting a theatrical embrace from the streets. If I didn't actually do this it's only because the decision making part of my brain moves faster than the imagination part of my brain, because that is exactly what I saw myself doing in my mind. I had decided to own the fact that I was an “LA/really Colorado girl in New York for the weekend,” and own it I did. I took pictures of everything.
Oh is that a tall building in the background? Great, let's get one with every possible combination of people in our group.
What's that? A subway? Let's take a picture of this foreign mode of public transportation.
Pizza? Well I've had that before but never in this city, picture it is!
I treated common, every day sites as if they were new revelations, things I thought only existed in Seinfeld episodes and google images.
I was a little concerned about how I would interact with the locals. People had told me that New Yorkers are a pushy and fast-paced kind of people. They are the kind of busy where “thank you,” “excuse me,” and “I love you,” can all be told with an exhale and shove. But the truth is... I would have no idea. I was far too busy noticing how a Staples was built on top of a Ross.
I loved New York and I can't wait to return, especially since most of the people from my Israel trip live there and I have friend/girl crushes on all of them. I know this seems like the perfect segueway to discussing my trip to Israel, and I know I lured you into reading this whole post with the faulty promise of some real good jew recaps but I need to break these trips into two separate posts. So I will leave you now with a brief update on my life outside of travel:
Educated, the sitcom pilot that was posted on the online fundraising site, Kickstarter, has been fully funded. We raised over double what our goal was, so thank you for everyone who donated! I'm still nannying and currently the child will only take orders from me if I am holding a stuffed giraffe and speak in an accent which sounds like Cleveland from Family Guy meets an old southern housewife. I think that's pretty much it now, stay tuned and alert for another post of a wild trip to the Home Land! I promise it won't take me weeks to write....
