New York

I dove into New York with very little forward planning.  I had a general feeling that I’d been spending too much money so far on my trip, but after having free accommodation in Seattle and Chicago, was willing to let loose a bit more in New York.  As is generally the case with travel however, not booking ahead, especially somewhere like New York, is a costly mistake.  Therefore, when I landed in New York, I ended up with only one night’s accommodation in a hostel in Brooklyn, which was going to cost me about double that of a similar hostel in San Francisco.

Landing at the airport, I quickly discovered that my public transport options were limited and cumbersome, therefore decided on a taxi.  As it turns out, many taxis don’t know their way around Brooklyn and despite me giving my Indian cab-driver the exact address, our mission was still drawn out and frustrating.  Having no map or clue as to where he was going, I found myself being driven around Brooklyn for the first time after midnight for at least an hour while the taxi driver made numerous attempts to find my hostel.  Much to my annoyance, this often involved getting out of the taxi while it was still running, hopping into a convenience store to ask for directions, all while leaving the taxi illegally parked.

In the end I made it to my accommodation and checked in, luckily the hostel turned out to be spacious, clean and internet enabled.  I didn’t know how long I was going to be staying in New York for but was determined to make the most of it.  There was no question in my mind where I was going the first day – it had to be Manhattan.  I first took advantage of the free breakfast supplied by the hostel and despite my travel-weariness soon found myself striking up a conversation with the other random travelers at my breakfast table.  One of them, Damon, was visiting from Canada and as it turns out was an aspiring stand-up comic who was going to be performing that night.

We decided to hang out and hit the city to check out Ground Zero, grab some burgers from a New York fast-food restaurant (not the best I’ve had, but not half bad either) and duck into The Empire State Building for a quick photo (we were both feeling too cheap to actually pay to go up the top).  In the evening I joined Damon at The Laugh Factory, a comedy club on the East Side, to see him and some other amateur stand-ups perform.  It was a great night and for amateurs, the quality definitely exceeded my expectations, there were a few flops, but nothing too devastating.

Talking with some of the performers afterwards was also interesting, none of them were yet at the stage where they could make a living solely as comedians, so many were struggling to make ends meet by working in hospitality so they could afford to live in a city like New York.  They all wanted to succeed as comics, but looking at the sheer number of them performing that night, which was only one of the three shows at that particular comedy club, its easy to see how much competition there was.  Also of note that night was an encounter with some girls from New Jersey and whilst none were as despicable as the characters on the terrible Jersey Shore, it was very easy to spot the Jersey accent on one of them!  How there can be a difference between the “New York” and “New Jersey” accents, when only a river separates the two areas is quite astounding!

The direct train from Brooklyn to Manhattan from my hostel wasn’t running over the weekend, so the next day I took it easy exploring a bit of the Brooklyn area.  That night consisted of a trip to nearby Williamsberg with another assortment of random party goers from the hostel, including an interesting but highly entertaining long-haired Californian called PJ who always carried a Ghostbusters bag on him.  After another big night out, that was it for my first New York experience, since the expensive hostel was draining my money and I was having no luck couchsurfing the area, I decided to take the bus up to Boston, the last planned stop on my U.S. itinerary to hang out with my cousin Ariel and her boyfriend Steve!