New York Lullaby

Listening to: My iPod died :[

Did you know? It takes roughly 5 hours to get from Battery Park - more specifically, the dock for the Liberty Island/Ellis Island/New York ferry - through Wall Street, to the corner of 38th and 8th street (including one half an hour Big Mac and Ice Cream stop at McDonalds) on foot.

It started when my dad pointed at the sign with the three blue circles.
"That line goes to Brooklyn," I said patiently, as he insisted that we were going the wrong way, and THAT line was the one we're supposed to take.
I tried again: "Wo men dei shang yi hao de di tie!" The number one, red line subway was the only one whose tracks cut a clear line through Manhattan, straight to Battery Park.
It took one janitor and one security guard in a neon yellow jacket to persuade him that I, the one holding the map, was indeed right. Ten minutes later, we were standing outside of South Ferry, lining up to board the wrong boat.

The problem with New York is that there is too much to do, too much to see. Every second is a lost second to be on the way to the next destination. That might have been the reason that my dad started dragging us back to the boat the minute we stepped off its deck, or it could simply have been that Staten Island is no Statue of Liberty.

All of the tickets to ascend to the Statue's crown were sold out until December. That wasn't too much of a problem, since my dad chickened out of climbing even the monument's pedestal. I say climbing because, while we ordinarily would have been rising up its height in a glass elevator, the elevator was out of order that unlucky day. Thus, it was only my mom, my sister, and I who made the 156-step climb to the statue's base.
It was too dreary a day for the view to have been particularly impressive. An impending thunderstorm drifted on the horizon, casting a gray veil over the skyline and dulling the magnificence of the sparkling skyscrapers and waves. Thats why, I was only 15 shots in on my Canon when my mom pulled me off the stone railing and back into the iron fortress that was the Statue's innards, to make the descent back down to solid ground.

I liked Ellis Island better than the Statue of Liberty. Perhaps it was because the Statue seemed much smaller in life than I had hoped, but Liberty Island was to me, entirely underwhelming. Or, it could have been that I preferred the bright colors of the displays in Ellis Island's museum to the mottled green that adorned Lady Liberty.

Neither of these, however, matched my appreciation for Wall Street. From the ornate stone decorations crowning every building to the gilded gold letters announcing each business, even the sign before the statue of George Washington that proclaimed the place where Washington was first sworn into office as President, Wall Street was the one place (besides Times Square) that made my determination to see New York worthwhile. Not that I would ever hope to work within its belly, of course, but a girl can dream.

Cradling the obligatory Starbucks coffees and coursing our way north, my family and I headed towards what used to be the World Trade Center. Unfortunately for my dad, the commemorative museum had closed half an hour before we arrived, slightly lost and sore from all the walking.

Then, came the conundrum.

End our day prematurely and return via subway(for New York, which, like Vegas is a city that never sleeps, 6:30pm is dawn for the social-minded), or lose ourselves in the subculture of Manhattan? For a family too frugal to spend $2.25 per person on subway tickets, the latter won.

Which is how I found myself, three hours later, passing the thirtieth Duane-Reade and wondering whether my feet were stronger than I thought and were actually carrying me fifty blocks back to the hotel, or whether they had simply gone numb. By then, I was carrying not only my own purse, but my dad's backpack (which I had taken in hopes that he would walk a bit faster without the extra weight), and a couple books we bought for the bus to DC the next day. The sky had already darkened, and the Empire State Building shone in the distance as a mockery to our weary feet (always moving away, like the mountains move so you never seem to get any closer). Occasionally, the rumbling laugh of the subway drifted from the grates lining the sidewalks, mixing with the stink of garbage.

When we finally returned to the hotel, there was no comfort to be found there either. Images of the patch of mold my mom had found on the back of her pillow floated freshly in my mind, as did memories of the crumbs of rust covering the back of the hotel towels. Didn't the cleaning lady do her job, my mom wondered, half annoyed, half sickened, as I maneuvered the bathroom on tiptoes, trying not to touch the walls.

Which leads me to a few conclusions about New York:
1. Never go unless you have the money to splurge on a decent hotel, and travel accomodations to and from there, and anywhere you might feel like exploring.
2. McDonalds in New York are much more interesting than those in LA (can you say Neon ceiling lights?)
3. LA needs more hot dog stands. By hot dogs, I mean bacon wrapped hot dogs. With a side of kebabs.
4. I do like New York, and very much so. But only the very very expensive parts of New York.
5. Mexicans are to LA, as black people are to New York.