Jay-Z picked an irritating time to come out with his new album, or maybe more importantly, to release his new single “Empire State of Mind,” featuring Alicia Keys. As I mentioned earlier, I was in NYC this weekend, and this song, being pretty damn good and infectiously catchy, was stuck in my head the entire time. I couldn’t walk a block without Alicia Keys’ chorus popping in my head. It took a lot of restraint not to bust out my falsetto. Those streets have never heard such beautiful music. Anyways, here’s a quick rundown of lessons I learned from my nights in the Big Apple.
You can expect to eat and drink on a budget, of sorts. NYC doesn’t have shortages of many consumer related services; restaurants and bars are no exception. Though the prices of things like gas, groceries, liquor, and housing are inflated in the city, the sheer number of restaurant/bar establishments tends to drive the average price of a beer or a meal down. It definitely wouldn’t be difficult to end up with a $10 cocktail and $20 entree — or something much more expensive for that matter — but if you’re actually looking for a good deal, finding a $4 beer or rail drink with a solid $10 meal isn’t hard.
Don’t knock the street meat. NYC is full of good stands and falafel shops, which generally run between $4-7 for a solid meal and a soda. There are plans for my return to the city for “The Great Falafel Tour of ’09,” a week of cheap meals, delicious fried balls (that’s what she said), and frequent stops to public restrooms.
You can’t expect to get in the Cash Cab. There are thousands of the standard, chrome-yellow taxis operating in New York City. Many of these are vans, so just because you see a Toyota Siena with a bald driver and what could possibly be game-show lights inside doesn’t mean you should get excited. Yelling, “Hey, its Ben Bailey,” the driver/host of Cash Cab, is a good way to get people’s attention, but a bad way to make friends.
Museums here aren’t free, a commonly known fact that evokes uncommonly angry sentiments from Washington D.C. natives. James Smithson died nailed to the periodic table to make the Smithsonian institutions free for all (is my history not correct?), so please excuse us when we lament the fact that New York has no such patron saint of museums. The entrance fee for NYC’s American Museum of Natural History is actually a suggested donation of $12, for students, which you can “pay as you please,” according to the docent at the front door. But come on, we all know that he’s practiced his various disdainful responses. When I “donated” an even half of the recommended $12 he only made me feel like half of a cheapskate. I don’t think I could have handled the concise, soul-crushing beatdown he would have given me if I told him I was giving him a measly buck.
There are of course various other observations that I made in New York City, but considering that we’re already all the way down here after just covering the bases, I’ll save them for another time. By the way, listen to that song:
tweedle dee tweedle dom 