Holy crap, I'm leaving New York in 11 days!

I'm leaving New York and flying to Paris in 11 days.  I'll maybe have $500 (approximately twelve Euro) to live off of for 23 days in Paris, and I have to pay to ship some shit back to Colorado, pay more to ship my bike with me to Paris or ship it back to CO as well, and pay for a train ride from Amsterdam to Paris.  According to my calculations, this should leave me with $12 (approximately -1,400 Euro).  Oh well.  Paris is cheap.  Right?

I really wish that I could stick around here in New York for another couple of months.  I feel like I'm finally close to "making it" on several fronts.  Breakaway is hiring, apparently, so I could maybe get another bike job that pays me 1.5x what I make now.  God knows how much work I could get done on my 13th step in a couple of months.  I almost have friends.  I almost have money.  I almost have a place.  I almost fit in.  But I'm almost out.  11 days.  Just long enough to put my purple bike in a box.

Oh well.  I still maintain that New York City isn't really the place for me.  I'm glad as hell to have seen it.  I'm happy to have finally worked as a bike messenger (even if only for a short time).  My cult brethren here are fucking badass, and I think that I'll be able to use their magickal spells and incantations with great success for the rest of my life.

4 months.  New York City and Paris.  Purple bike.  Bike messenger.  Riding from Paris to Amsterdam.  Paris makeout pact.  I don't really have anything to complain about.

Newburyport, Mass.

This is where I am right now.

I decided that since I'm on the East Coast where there are Chinatown Buses, I should travel a little.  So I decided to take the Fung Wah bus to Boston to see my Uncle Swifty.

Swifty isn't my actual uncle, though.  Actually, Swifty isn't his real name.  And he doesn't actually live in Boston.  He lives about an hour north in this adorable little brick and clapboard New England hamlet.  

It's been really nice.  I spent the day (after the four-hour bus ride) driving around Boston with Swifty.  We went to the south side and saw a bunch of very white people with very red faces pre-gaming it before tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day parade (holy shit, man, I can't wait to see THAT pukestorm tomorrow!).  Then we drove on one of Boston's underground tunnelways over to Cambridge to see Harvard and MIT.  Harvard has a lot of really cool buildings, and I'm sure that the campus is oretty awesome, but I was surprisingly underwhelmed by the standard-college-town-looking restaurant-bar-stores-people around it.  I guess I just thought that everyone would be really distinguished looking or something.  Everyone just looked sort of normal.

Then again, New York has probably fucked my perspective..

Anyway, then we drove to Newburyport and I spent the night with Swifty and his girlfriend who's this very nice schoolteacher.  They were both incredibly welcoming.  And we talked about my family and their families.  Man, it was really nice.  I really needed something like that to break up the ungroundedness of NYC.  Then we're going to go sea kayaking tomorrow!

Man, this blog is pretty square.  But I've had a damn fine time up in this cute lil port town from 1756.  So be it.

Well, now everything totally rules..

Listen, dudes: I overreacted about New York. It wasn't trying to kill me. My life didn't suck. I just needed to wait it out a minute, and good things were bound to come.

And here they are:

I'm working as a bike messenger. Being a bike messenger in NYC is a pretty big leapfrog up the street-cred totem pole.

Felony conviction: check.
Bike messenger in NYC: check.
Methamphetamine smoke-off against Gary Busey: pending.

The funny thing is (and what a lot of Youtube-watching bike fags from the suburbs (aka me) might not know) that New York is probably the easiest city on earth to get a job as a bike messenger. There's HUGE demand (even now) for messengers be they walkers or bikers or motorcyclist. It's a comission-based job, so it's really not sweat off the employer's back if you're slow. They'll just give you less runs. And at least half of the dudes on the streets doing it are old alcoholics from the projects riding around on shitty mountain bikes. The impeccible hipster asteed a perfect pink-Phil-hubbed Velospace show bike is a myth out here. There are a few rad bikes, but most are pretty beat up.
The job is very unglamorous. I have to walk into the back or side of most buildings, typically at a loading dock or some nondescript brown double-doors. Then I have to go underground or take a slow-ass freight elivator or sometimes get my ID scanned and a visitor's pass issued. Finally I get to where I drop the package off or pick it up, typically the messenger center. There, I must interact face-to-face with a messenger's arch-enemy (other than cab drivers): the blank-faced hoodrat at the desk.
"Just print here, please," I try.
They don't even look up from text messaging for at least 30 seconds.
"Print here, please."
"Who dis from? You needa write who it from. Yo, Darrel, hey, come sign for this."
"Just print here, please."
"Hode awn, hode awn."
Meanwhile they haven't moved.
"Please print here please."
finally they slowly reach out for the package, then look at it with contempt, trying to concoct any excuse to not accept it and save themselves the work of putting it IN A FUCKING BOX!

Anyway, it isn't really that bad. Usually. But most of the time lost as a messenger is in locating the messenger center, then geting through security, then riding an elevator, then dealing with people in messenger centers (who obviously aren't on comission). These snags add up when you have to do it 30 times a day.

The job is not all bad, though. For a lot of the day, I get to ride my bike at breakneck speed through the insane traffic of Manhattan. You can tell that death is inevitable if you do this long enough, but it's REALLY fun. An eight-hour shift can go by in like fifteen minutes if you're busy all day. My dispatch is in the Viacom building in Times Square (MTV, Nickelodeon), which seemed really cool until I had to ride through 8 million pedestrians a day for a few days. And sometimes I get to go to famous buildings like the Flatiron or 30 Rock or the Letterman Show or the Waldorf Astoria.

I've already gotten SO MUCH better at the job in three-and-a-half weeks. I'm familiar with most of the buildings I go to, so I save a shitload of time knowing exactly which door of the skyscraper to ride up to and which stairs/elevator/maze of hallways to go down. Also, I can more-or-less ride down an avenue without ever having to stop, whether the lights are red or green, traffic or not. But I'm still not baller enough to ride into the major crosstown streets and figure out how to get through like the dude in the Pittsburgh hat who text-messages through red lights at 42nd st or the guy in a one-piece Carhart suit who rides with no hands between buses while rapping and gesticulating, going as fast as I can on an open avenue. But I'm creeping up working my way toward baller status.

Actually, this video explains it better than I ever could:


Othen than the job, everything else rules. I'm hangin' out with a sexy lady who I probably shouldn't talk about any more here.

I've met more people. I'm busy as hell. I'm never really bored. I'm still poor as fuck, but at least I get paid every week so now I can buy apple cider at Union Square pretty much whenever I want (apples are REALLY cheap here), or go out to dinner once in a while, or drink coffee, or brunch, or buy mixtapes or stretchy gloves, or earrings off the street if the mood strikes me.

I wish I had a camera to document how fucking ridiculous this city is, but you've seen it on TV. For instance, I ride down this street, through all these cabs and buses, through this guy at least 10 times a day:
Anyway, I'm gonna miss this huge, insane, hell-hole.

Don't worry!

Shit, dudes, I haven't updated this since everything started going well in NYC.  I'm a bike messenger.  I went on a date to Jackson Heights, Queens and we were the only non-Indians at the restaurant.  Grace and Sylvan came and stayed for 5 days each.  It got way the fuck less cold.  The AA rules.  Everything is ok now.  So ok, in fact, that I don't have any time to blog at all.

Heavy Month, NYC

I'm sort of sick of answering the question "how's NYC?"  It's rough.  And it isn't New York's fault.  I'm the one who came to the epicenter of the worst recession in decades with 300 bucks and one pair of pants, expecting everything to go off without a hitch.

I'm here.  I'm going door to door fundraising for queers.  Get used to it.

Oh also, I could very well get fired from my canvassing job if I don't make a shitload of money tomorrow.  I'm not sure whether to root FOR or AGAINST getting fired.  More on that when it happens.

I'm broke, lonely, and destitute, that's true.  But I'm learning a lot about New York.

(I just looked at Craigslist jobs for 30 minutes and now I'm back (I found a place that's hiring bike messengers))

Anyway, New York is big.  I'm seeing a shitload of it.  I know way more about America than I did 1.5 months ago.  I only have $8.  But I'll survive.  I'm going to get enough money to eat and go to Paris somehow.  I'm going to see a bunch of awesome shows and art and the Statue of Liberty before I leave.  I'll make more friends, and get new pictures of myself tagged on Facebook.  I'm going to be really glad I did this one day.

Just, for Christ's sake, wait until I give some sort of sign that I'm having a fucking blast before asking me how New York is.  It's a little depressing to have to admit that it's so hard.

New York City, Week Three

Welp, here we are after week three in New York.  

It's been sort of a slow week, I guess.  I feel like I'm just part of the daily grind.  But things happened.

I started my shitty job on Monday and, unsurprisingly, it sucks.  Still, though, there's really no good way to psychologically prepare for something that's going to suck as bad as canvassing door to door trying to get people to give money to a gay rights organization.  And day one was brutal. Everyone around here is pretty unanimously "pro-gay-rights" but that doesn't mean they wanted to give me any money - and who's to blame them?

It turns out, though, that people DO give money to some dude "from the Human Rights Campaign," and day two I made a bunch of money.  Making this money was nice because it meant I wasn't going to be fired and because I will apparently make commission on some of it.  I canvassed in Hoboken, NJ and it's a really nice place - and very different from NYC.  It was like Main Street, USA, just that everybody is fairly rich and everyone lives in brownstones (very well-maintained brownstones).  The amateur demographing that I get to do is definitely the highlight of our job.  Our office is in midtown Manhattan.  Every day we come in to work and find out what our "turf" is, then we eat lunch, then we hop on a train and ride to Park Slope or Hoboken or Jersey City or Clinton Hill or White Plains - anywhere with people who are doing alright for themselves and have doors you can knock on (or ring a buzzer for).  

This job's saving grace that it is very interesting to a resident tourist and that I only work three days a week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.  By Wednesday I was already ready for the week to end.  It snowed in the morning, then sleeted, then rained on the snow and sleet all day and I had to walk around in it, not making very much money for the campaign for five hours.  This job really makes my unpaid internship seem like an unpaid vacation by comparison.

I didn't really bro down too hard with anyone this week, other than Elena's friend Mara and her biffer (Brigeeta?  Bridgetta?  Bree-gee-tuh?).  Mara lives in this rad loft in Williamsburg that she;s moving out of this weekend, and it's a real bummer for me, because I really liked being able to go there.  But oh well.

I met Kate's ultra-friend India, and she's pretty awesome.  Unfortunately we didn't have anything to do so we sat at this diner and drank obnoxiously overpriced milk shakes, then walked around the frozen ice-land of Williamsburg to the bridge, then across the bridge at like 2am to Manhattan.  We're both sort of unhappy about being in New york and we talked about what it would be like to jump off the bridge.  It's probably 150 feet above the water, so we figured that you'd die when you hit the water.  But imagine somehow surfacing in a shipping lane, hundreds of feet from land in the 30 degree East River and realizing that you still aren't dead yet?  We decided just to keep walking.

The internship has been totally awesome in its somewhat hard-to-gauge-the-progress type of way.  I look at the internet.  I find interesting things.  I write about them on the blog.  I clean stuff.  I go get food.  I transfer html from one website to another.  I watch psychedelic movies about India.  I listen to the Budos Band and podcasts of extremely obscure psychedelic garage rock.  It's fun.  If something like that could be your job, that would be totally awesome.  It must be like what the dot com explosion was like, except without the fear of how to replace your almost-ruined pants when you only have $9 to last you the next week.

The money thing really is pretty fucked up.  I think I've maybe spent a total of $725 since I left Colorado and $375 has gone to rent.  So I've spent $350 in three weeks.  It's an expensive city, you know.  Probably sixty bucks or so has gone to the subway.  And I have whatever the opposite of agoraphobia is called, so I feel perpetually compelled to sit at coffee shops so that at least I'm looking at my Macbook in a room full of other people looking at their Macbooks.  So my coffee bill must be somewhere around $100.  So that leaves $190 left for food, entertainment and whatever unexpected costs (laundry soap, the AA basket, papaya chips every night at 2am) I've had to pay this last three weeks.  So it hasn't exactly been a luxury cruise.

Now I have nine dollars with a few coming my way and I don't get paid from the canvassing job until next Friday, and that will only be for three days with no commission, so maybe $200.  It's a tough situation out here, bros.  And I'll definitely need to keep this job that every cell in my body tells me to quit so that in three weeks I can have a decent paycheck and start feeling ok enough to buy a new pair of pants, in five weeks I can finally go to a record store, and in seven weeks I'll have one final paycheck to say fuck all y'all so I can take my last week in NYC off, then go to Paris for three weeks with 350 Euro.

I'm sure some of people who have accidentally read this far in this blog are probably thinking: "man, I wish I didn't have to be in school/work/whatever right now so I could go on my own foolhardy "trip" to (choose your extravagant city), but take heed: moving to a place where you don't have any serious bros, with virtually no money, in the middle of winter is tough.  Really tough.  

The next time I semi-move somewhere during a massive recession, I'm going to try to be better funded and have a house full of really tight bros to move in with.

I don't know, dudes.  I don't want to bum people out.  I've seen all this wild, impossible shit that I haven't taken pictures of because I don't have a camera because I'm poor, and it's been pretty awesome.  I have done things I'd have never done in my entire life if I never came here.  I'm going to make it out alive.  And I'm going to get some serious gumption and backbone and grit from this whole experience that will make me a lot more depression-resistant when EVERYONE is as broke as me next year.  But at this point, living at my Dad's house over the summer in beautiful, quaint, clean Boulder, CO sounds like a fucking vacation to me..

Oh!  Shit!  Listen to this:

So last Thursday I went to karaoke with these girls who work at the Brooklyn Label, except I was actually invited by their friend.  She was really nice, as they all were.  One is from Oregon and I totally have a huge crush one her (probably because she's from Oregon and I think Oregoneons and Coloradoans relate pretty well to one another once you get to a place like Brooklyn).  One is from Hawaii and is super adorable and has this really nice house that I went to and ate dinner with the crew before Karaoke.  And the girl who invited me is From Utah, is really hilarious, and was sort of flirting with me throughout the night (although i got the impression that a dude who was with us was wishing she would stop).  Anyway, I ended up going home by myself, of course, and wasn't able to see any of them all this week because I was busy riding on the weekend and working during the week.  Also, I was sort of hesitant to call the girl who had invited me because i wasn't sure what was up with her and that other dude and also I sort of didn't want to just hang out with just her as much as I wanted hang out with her crew.

Finally i made it into the Brooklyn Label after work today and Erica (the girl from Hawaii) was there and was like, "did you hear about ____ (girl who invited me to Karaoke)?"

"No."

"Look at this."

Erica typed in a name on her laptop and the first hit was the Salt Lake City Police Department Most Wanted page.

"____ ____.  $60,000 in warrants including: forgery, bad checks, and retail theft."

Apparently the girl is on the run.  She'd told Erica and her friends that she had cancer.  She's had several boyfriends whom she ripped off by having them cash bad checks or through identity theft.  She's a scam artist.  And she must be pretty successful.  She's been telling everyone that she works for a concert festival promoter and does shit like Bonaroo.  She has an iPhone.  And she gave Erica money to pay the dentist and didn't want it back, just said "I have to do SOMETHING with this money."

Anyway, it would have been a much better story if I'd have slept with her.  I don't really have an identity worth stealing or any access to any money to get ripped off, so I wouldn't have been in any danger.  But I could have said I slept with a girl who was on a most wanted list..

Well, that about sums 'er up.  I finally rode Prospect Park.  it's a really fun 3.2 mile loop with a decent 100-or-so-ft climb and some barely-rolling hills on the high side.  It's a beautiful park, even in the winter.  Unfortunately it was so cold that my toes froze and were swollen and had no feeling for a few hours afterward.  But at least now I see how roadies keep in shape in this urban wasteland.  There are 2.5 million people in Brooklyn alone.  I saw maybe 20 on bikes at Prospect park that day (TWO BMCs!).  Unfortunately, none of them was a match for the purple track bike..

Shit Story on the web

As far as I know, this isn't on the internet anywhere, so here are the pages from the Fort Collins Rabbit:

New York City, Week Two

Well, I'm relieved to say that week two living in New York has been immensely less freaked-out-being-ly.  I did get yet another fucking ticket from NYPD - this time for fare evasion ($100! (I think it was my cosmic punishment for talking shit in my last blog; also the cop was really nice this time (also, I actually paid (anyway, getting back to the point)))) - but other than that it's been a great week.

I'm still riding solo on Sandy's bike, but I don't really feel lonely anymore.  I met some dudes at the cult meetings that I go to and they brought me to a WAY BIGGER cult meeting that was totally fucking awesome and filled with like 200 cult hipsters.  Then I've been hanging around going to all these ritual slaughters with all these badass brethren and supermodel-ass sistren (if you're confused, just don't ask).

I sort of burned some bridges of my own last Thursday with my blog, but I managed to put the fires out and my internship seems to be coming together nicely this week.  Now I actually feel like I'm contributing something.

I've been broing down pretty hard with some people I've met that are normal, non-cult-affiliated folks and that's been fun.  I hung went to Frnky'z brthdy and hung out with Mara at her totally bitchin apartment that I sort of wish she'd let me live in since she never stays there anyway (I've been desperately missing having a window).  Tonight I broed down with the crew that mans the Brooklyn Label, this awesome coffee shop/restaurant that I've been frequenting because it's a) right next to my internship, b) they have Stump Town Coffee there, and c) the girls who I hung out with tonight work there.  We sang Karaoke.  I ended up making snow angels on the barroom floor during an 8 bar break.  Now I have twice as many Brooklyn bros as I had yesterday...

I've been making some serious headway on the job hunt this week.  I had the bike shop guy seeming interested.  i gave a bunch of people my phone number because they know a guy who knows a guy who can get me art handling or production assistant work.  I went to this American Apparel "open call" thing where they give you a two-minute interview and take your picture.  I got an interview at Trader Joe's.  I have an interview scheduled tomorrow for the ski department at some sporting goods store..  But then today at the internship, this girl told me that there was this job she'd done canvassing for the Human Rights Campaign that is ALWAYS hiring.  And sure enough they were.  I called them at 2pm.  Scheduled the interview for 6.  And had the job by 7.  So I'm going to go door to door in liberal neighborhoods asking people for money to help with gay rights advocacy.  It should be interesting.  And they pay well enough.  I ought to be able to hack it until I get a job at American Apparel so I can finally get a new pair of pants and a hot NYC squeeze with a window in her room.

Anyhoo, that's the deal.  Life is going well.  It seems like I've been here for two months.  I have a job.  I can pay rent for next month.  I'm not going to die of starvation or loneliness.

I'm making it in New York City.  It was just a little shaky at first.

New York City, Week One

Well, here I am.  New York City.  I don't even know where to start.  New York City is fucking BIG!  There are a lot of things happening.  But for a little guy like me with no money and just a couple of friends, it can seem a little too big.  I'm out of shock mode.  I can believe what i see.  I can ride my bike on the streets ok.  I'm starting to understand that although a lot of people are dressed very fancy, they're all just people like me.  And a lot of the people in the hip parts of Brooklyn, I'm coming to realize, are very much like me.  They're all from Indiana or New Mexico or Minnesota or wherever.  And when I talk to them, they understand where I'm coming from and wish the best for me.  I just need a foothold.

First up, let me lay out the circumstances:  I graduated on December 20th from Colorado State University.  I'd been planning to 

go to Paris in April for months, where my very good friend Aaron Hegert is living.  My friend Brandon Trujillo would fly from San Francisco, I'd fly from Colorado, and we'd convene in Paris for some vacation and a little bike tour.  

But I wasn't sure what to do during January, February, and March, though.  I knew I wanted to leave Fort Collins right away.  It wasn't because I hated it - in fact I was really beginning to love it by the end.  I think that I just wanted to be moving on.  I'd been planning to move away after getting my degree from the start.  So I guess I had to go, right?  

I'd planned on going to Denver, even though I wasn't entirely enthusiastic about it.  My time in Denver was the worst time of my life.  And Denver just seems to have this heavy, grey energy for me - even though it's usually sunny out.  

Then my friend Alea offered me a place in Brooklyn for $285 a month - which she assured me was an incredible deal.  She even called me a couple of days later and offered me the place for $250.

I've always thought that New York was the sort of place that I didn't really have any interest in living.  It's just this fucking gigantic mess, right?  With no end.  No mounta

ins.  No grass.  Not a nice ci

ty like Portland or San Francisco where you can ride your bike out of town and go on a picnic.  Just this giant, vague idea of a jumble of skyscrapers somewhere on the East Coast.

But I was in this really awesome mindset of possibility and confidence.  I was graduating college.  I wasn't locked into anything.  I'd just quit my job.  New York City is this cultural center.  The capital of America!  And above all, I wanted to be cool and live in Brooklyn, the cool thing to do.  

"Yeah, I lived in Brooklyn for awhile," I'll say one day, nonchalantly, when I'm back living in a smaller town where I can be a comparatively bigger fish.  "It was ok.."

OK, here it is in real life.  I'm here in Brooklyn.  I have $50.  I'm having a very tough time getting a job.  I'm very uncomfortable.  I have this sense of being in over my head.  I'm afraid that I'm not cool enough.  I'm afraid that I'll never get a job.  I'm afraid I'm gonna fuck Alea and her roommate over.  I'm afraid that this is a harbinger of the rest of my life.  This is real life.  Now I just get fucked.

Alright, alright.  I gotta chill out, man.  Let's get started about New York:

I live in the neighborhood of Brooklyn called Bushwick.  I heard that Bushwick was a "cool" neighborhood where "hipsters" lived, but when I first got there, it sure didn't seem like it.  I rode in on a bus from downtown Brooklyn and I was the only white person on the bus.  I had a hige backpack on my back and a smaller one, German tourist-style, on my front.  I had a Macbook, an ipod, and $270 cash on me, and I was visibly sweating it.  Things just got ghettoer as I got near my house, and I remembered Elena's refrain: "stay off Myrtle Avenue."  I was riding down Myrtle.

The funny thing is that since then, my neighborhood hasn't ever seemed nearly as menacing.  But I direct my travel away from downtown and toward the downtown for white people in Brooklyn: Williamsburg.  Here's what it looks like:

You have to see and understand Williamsburg and then East Williamsburg before you can understand my neighborhood, and what's going to happen to it.  I live a ways from Williamsburg, but not that far.  It takes maybe 20 minutes on a bike.  And the L train - which runs out of the East Village in Manhattan one stop to Bedford and 7th, the center of Willia

msburg - continues East further into Brooklyn, dotting the neighborhoods with new hipster outposts.

It's interesting to see the gentrification happening, practically before my eyes.  Since I moved into Bushwick from the "wrong" direction and didn't know what was happening right away, I am seeing these signs of white people/hipsters popping up everywhere as I commute between Bushwick and the Williamsburg/Greenpoint hipster highway of Brooklyn.

Here's what my neighborhood looks like, by the way (and we AIN'T near any waterway):

Anyway, there are several stops on the L line before the area near me and each has more and more coffee shops and interesting restaurants.  My house is not close to the L line, though.  We're on the J-M-Z line.  Genitrification rides the L, not the J-M-Z.

But I found that if I ride my bike up Knickerbocker across Flushing for about 20 blocks, I get to the very first outpost of East Williamsburg.  It's in this warehouse area next to the Morgan exit of the L line.  "Mainstreet Morgntown," they call it.  Bogart St.  (JP, if you're reading this, this is where you'll be riding your bike to to get coffee)

Anyway, it's wild to see shit like this just popping into a dead block in the middle of stuff that looks exactly like the last photo.  But there it is - and thank God for a nice, white college boy like myself.

Another rad thing about New York is the internship that I'm working.  It's in the pencil building in Greenpoint, a building that's literally bioling over with artists and ganja smoke.  

The team of interns and our boss Will are working on making the Arthur website good enough that it can sort of stand in for the magazine until the funds to publish it again show up.  Working for Will has been fun, although it takes a lot of my time that I would be otherwise using to find a job that pays me in money.  I might have to bail out on them if that's what it takes to get a job, but for now it's something interesting to do - even though it's strange that I'm blogging for them about events in New York when I just got here...

The people here in New York have been surprising in a variety of ways.  First: I expected people to sort of look like the hipsters anywhere else, just way more extreme and unrealistic.  But that wasn't really the case at all.  In fact, everyone here is mostly just sort of fancy.  It's strange.  The "hipsters" aren't very bohemian, not ore they very "artsy" looking.  They mostly just look sort of rich.  This is a bad generalization, but it has a lot of weight to it.  I'm looking really shabby out here.  Everyone is sort of dressed in black with sort of fancyish leather shoes.  And glasses.  It's interesting.  I kind of feel like I showed up at a restaurant with a dress code that I didnt know about, and they let em stay but we were all a little uncomfortable.

Oh man, there's SO MUCH more.

I'm just sort of spending my time riding my bike around and going to coffee shops and looking at the internet.  it isn't really what I wanted, but I had unrealistic expectations.  I need a job and some friends (and maybe a girl to spoon with) and I'll be back on top.  Anyway, I really miss Colorado and question my sanity for coming here at all.  I don't think it's really the right place for me, but it's only been a week.  This is quite the experience no matter how it goes.

Oh, also I got a ticket for riding on the sidewalk (NYC cops are total assholes, make no secret about being corrupt bullies, and are almost reason enough to never come here.  I mean, you'll get your ass thrown in jail for some TOTALLY unreasonable shit!)

New York City

Well, it's been a long day.  I'm writing this at 11:30 pm Eastern Time in the East Village, Manhattan.

I woke up at 7:08 Rocky Mountain Time in Boulder, CO.  I got on the bus to DIA and drank some God-awful coffee on the way.  Had to pay Delta $15 for my one checked bag which made the flight more expensive than United (which would have given me miles and a free lunch).  

The flight was cool, though.  There were the video screens with the maps so I could tell where i was.  I'm such a geek about always knowing where I am while I'm on an airplane.  When we crossed the Mississippi River, a bunch of half-frozen tendrils stringing through a gigantic flood plane, I almost cheered aloud, but everyone else just kept watching CNN or sleeping in those geeky neck pillows.  Lake Michigan made people take a second look, though.  I flew over Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and up and down Long Island all in four hours.

New York City is NO FUCKING JOKE, is about all I have to say so far.  I felt this sense of fear and sadness right when I got here.  Alea has to work until 1.  Sandy couldn't hang out tonight.  And I don't really know anyone else.

I have practically no money.  Like seriously.  I don't have enough to pay rent even.  And I have to pay to apply to the New School.  And I have to pay the dude who's driving my bike to me.  And I have to eat.  Then I have to somehow go to Paris and stay alive for three weeks there.  I'm fucked, basically.  Everything is conspiring against me getting bailed out of this.  I couldn't sell a bike.  I didn't get any graduation money.  My dad only gave me $100 (for which I'm very grateful).  I'm not a religious man, but I think that if there is some sore of deity, he/she/it is telling me not to pull this kind of relying-on-other-people's-sympathy bullshit again.  And I'm listening.

So I have to get a job immediately.

Anyway, so I got here, felt really scared and bummed out.  I know it sounds racist, but I've never been anywhere where I'm the only white dude, or at least in the extreme minority.  I was really uncomfortable in Bushwick, so I immediately hopped on a bus with my laptop and went to Williamsburg, assuming from all I'd heard of it on the internet that there would be a million white people like me.

It turns out that the internet is right - partially.  There are a SHITLOAD of white people in Williamsburg.  Very white people.  But they're different from me insofar as that they seem to be doing just fine for money.  That and they all wear black.  And they're all sort of fancy rather than being very Bohemian.  It was fucking weird.  I have a lot to say about my fashion/demographic observations of New York so far, but I'll save that for later.  All I know is that for the supposed "hipster capital of the world," Williamsburg was filled with some pretty boring looking bros.

Hipsters, though, unquestionably.  The most surreal experiance was next when I got on the subway at Bedford and 7th to discover that it was a subway station populated ENTIRELY by hipsters.  Seriously.  100 fucking percent!  Well, there was a down-on-his-luck guy playing the digereedoo for money, but other than that there wasn't anyone I could describe as "square."  Also, the median age appeared to be 21.  It just sort of made me feel insecure and bitter (because no one seemed to be making eyes at me).

Then I rode the sibway to the East Village and this is my first experience in Manhattan.  It's really hopping.  It's almost midnight and it's fucking happening as hell.  And I'll bet that there are other places that are busier at night than here.  Also, everything is still open.  Also, the availability of cigarettes, chips, advil, and magazines in incredible.  How could they sell this much.  Like a corner store every 20 feet.  I gotta go, I'm getting kicked out of this restaurant.