{broadway and times square and a dangerous diner}

We got these cheap tickets for a Broadway show called Newsies. The whole thing started off slow, but then there was tap-dancing and cool choreography and pretty decent high notes, and then the story sucked me in and I fully took up the cause of the paperboys in my heart and felt absolutely destroyed about it when the one kid got beat up and maybe even cried just a little sobbed through that one song, and somewhere in the middle I went from "hooked" to "I WANT TO BE A BROADWAY STAR MORE THAN I'VE EVER WANTED ANYTHING ELSE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE."

"EVER."

I get all caught up in stuff like that. If something's awesome, I feel this intense need to be part of it. Like those phases that teenagers go through, but it's no longer cute or justified since I'm 25 now. It's just alarming, probably, to those around me.

Nonetheless, I made it safely through my Broadway Star Phase, and don't really miss it all that much.

After the show, it was maybe 11 PM, and we decided to go for supper before searching for something else to do. Because, you'll remember, I was hanging out with a bunch of college kids. And even though 25 isn't really that much older than 21, if your bedtime inches forward even 15 seconds every day, that's 365 minutes every four years, which is something like six hours, altogether {right?}. So, you know, they didn't feel the need to go to bed till like four in the morning, where my friends back home usually bow out around ten. Because of that dang 15 second rule and, I guess, because of jobs and families and stuff like that that we didn't have to worry about four years ago.

And it was fun. I liked it. I took it for granted when I was in it that for the rest of my life I'd be able to run on two hours of sleep and a fifteen-minute nap, so this was kind of a weird little opportunity to turn back the clock and be 21 again for a week. If you ever have a chance to jump on a plane with a bunch of college kids and go to a city where everything stays open all night, absolutely go.

Anyway. We wandered through Times Square to see if there was anyplace good to eat. It was the middle of the night but it was as bright as day. I was leery of the adult-sized, grungy-looking Elmo walking around, the naked cowboy playing guitar, the flashing billboards, and the complete lack of personal space, but there is something, I guess, about being in Times Square. Which is funny, because aside from the giant ferris wheel in the Toys R Us, there really isn't that much going on in the square itself...just a lot of walking and yelling and picture-taking and advertising. A lot of hype. 
We finally found this place called Ellen's Stardust Diner where the waiters and waitresses sing to you while you eat. It sounds great, but it was pretty loud and our server was an angry guy who kept slamming stuff on the table and yelling at people and never smiling, and he got into this weird fight with a waitress and sprayed ketchup all over her and then she threw a handful of silverware at him. Right in front of our table. He never refilled my water, either.

The whole thing was a tad unprofessional, I thought. It might have even affected my tip, if 20% gratuities weren't included in the bill already. I wanted to write something snarky on the bill like, "The sweet potato fries were good, but totally not worth a fork in the face."

{DUMBO & the Bridge}

My favourite spot in New York is a funny little place with a funny little name: DUMBO. I was told it stands for "Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass", but I feel sorry for it anyway.
However.

Despite its strange title, it is really the most adorable and wonderful place ever. Which, I guess, makes some sense since Dumbo was the most adorable and wonderful elephant ever, even if he was a tad fictitious (he's real in my heart). If I were an author (and wouldn't that be great?) and I had some sort of book to write (because that is what authors do) and I also had the means to spend my afternoons anywhere in the whole world to write this book (we're talking teleportation, probably), I would pick DUMBO. I would bring nothing but a box of fruit snacks and a notebook and my favourite black pen and my iPhone with a bunch of tragic music on it.
All of the characters in my book would probably end up dead or dying and with broken hearts, because beautiful scenery and tragic music and fruit snacks are not all that conducive to happy endings.

Anyway. One of the best parts, besides the carousel, is that DUMBO is right beside the Brooklyn Bridge, which you can walk right over after you've written a novel or before you've written a novel or while you're suffering from intense writer's block. The view from there is unreal. I went once during the day, with my sister and her drama people, and once later on in the week at night with Barclay. Because city lights and romance and fireworks over the Statue of Liberty. You know. Like that song.

{touristing}

I love when I'm talking to someone about travelling and they get all serious and give me a furrowed brow and take a sip of their extra-sweet latte before saying something like, "Well, I'm not really into touristy stuff. I like going places that other people don't normally end up."

Two thoughts:

This is Earth. And if you want to 'go where other people don't normally end up', we're probably talking about taking a vacation to someplace like this, and you'll probably die, and they probably don't have extra-sweet lattes there. 

The second is about how the dictionary definition of "tourist" is, and I quote: "A person who is travelling, especially for pleasure." So basically, you could go to those boring sand dunes down in southwest Saskatchewan and be the only one there, and you're still a tourist. You're just not having as much fun as the tourists in France who are there expressly to see the Eiffel Tower. 

I'm not mad or anything, I just think it's a funny thing to say. 

And I know that what they mean to say is, "I'm too cool to hit up souvenir shops and gawk at impressive architecture and wear my camera around my neck," or maybe, "I hate large crowds." (Which is just a different thing altogether.)

I think tourist attractions are kind of like cliches--those things that get said over and over and over until we're all sick of hearing them and start to think they're untrue or inapplicable simply because they're overused. 

But I would argue that cliches often end up being cliches because they're just the straight-up truth. And tourist attractions end up being tourist attractions because they're just straight-up fun to look at/experience/know the history of/hang around. And that's why I have no problem with being that tourist. The one who wears my camera and gawks and points and squeals and, yes, visits maybe one little kitschy tourist shop per vacation.

But I also like asking locals where some good, quieter, lesser-known places to visit would be. I like visiting in the off season so that I'm the only one on the bus sometimes. I like having an experience that I feel is almost just for me and no one else. And that's ok too. (But it's still tourism.)

Anyway. All that to say that our first day in New York was pure and extreme tourism in the most widely understood sense of the word to the max. The kind of tourism with crowds and landmarks and pointing and squealing. We walked down through Manhattan to the Statue and over to Wall Street and searched for places we remembered from movies and stopped to talk to interesting people and tried to look in all directions at all times so we wouldn't miss anything.

And I loved it.