Echoes.

Things I learned in NYC.

1. If you’re a girl, you must wear a sundress in the summer. They don’t post a sign with this particular rule, but you pick it up when you see that only the tourists and Bernie and Laurie are wearing jeans. And I think they were wearing jeans totally to make me feel like I fit in.

2. If you do ride in a cab, make sure to stare at the tv in back of the seat or to close your eyes. Do not, no matter what, look out of the window. If you look, you will have a heart attack and die.

3. Apparently there is a magic force field that keeps cabbies on the island of Manhattan. They cannot leave or they will disappear forever. So they have learned not to even try this feat.

4. Everyone high fives in New York. They don’t really have to have a reason. It could be because it’s Tuesday, or because it’s sunny, or because they had a really good chicken Caesar wrap for lunch. But when they request a high five, you MUST hit their hand with force or be labeled a pussy forever. They don’t do thumbs up, they don’t do ‘awesome!’ and they definitely don’t do ‘yee-hah!’ It’s a high five or die.

5. Journey. I don’t know why ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ is the official song of the bar scene in NYC, but it is. There are no signs posted anywhere and no warning of this. When you hear this song, you simply must scream, start moving your body in some sort of rhythmic sway, and sing as LOUD AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN. No one can explain why this song is the Official Song, no one really seems to care. It is as accepted as the fact that cabbies disappear if they leave Manhattan.

6. New Yorkers redefine ‘bar hopping’. While you or I might travel to a few bars in the general vicinity of the first bar we stop at, they will travel blocks and blocks to visit the next bar they want to visit. I am sure that if they wanted to visit a bar in Manhattan and then a bar in California, they would make plans to do so in the same night without another thought – and with half of that travel distance being covered at a brisk walk.

7. During the day there is a mix of normal looking people. Granted, they are all shapes, sizes, nationalities – it’s wonderful. At night, New York transfers into a whole ‘nother kind of place. The beautiful people come out. I’m not really sure where they are during the day – because although there are attractive people out during the day, the sheer number that you see at night leads me to believe that they must hibernate during the day to save up all of their energy to be beautiful when the sun goes down. And because they are so beautiful, they wear as little clothing as possible so that no mere human-made item can detract from their youthful suppleness. Apparently plastic surgeons do rather well in NYC – while many breasts had a youthful hang – the majority of them were melon shaped and high on the chest, attesting to their great cost and pride of the owner. Because of all the walking, everyone’s legs are gorgeous too, highlighted by the shortest shorts I’ve ever seen in my life, which MUST be accessorized with incredibly high heels. If you choose not to wear this type of outfit, you MUST wear the shortest sundress you’ve ever seen or be branded a tourist forever.

8. When you are drunk in NYC, you are ‘drunken’. This combines the word ‘drinking’ with the word ‘drunk’ so that the people around you know that you are both drunk and continuing to drink, thus avoiding the question or whether or not your partying for the evening is completed.

9. No matter what shoes you wear, when you get finished from a day of walking in NYC, your feet will be black. And you will find a random bruise on you somewhere. I’m not sure how they manage it. I think it’s a secret scientific dust cloud that floats through the city to remind everyone that we are all equal. Equality is big in NYC and because of this, a part of everyone’s feet must be black to show that some part of us is the same.

10. Clothes fit differently in NYC. I don’t know if this is because everyone is much tighter muscle-wise than we are here in the South (think dumplings) or if because the NYC breasts are shaped differently the clothes must fit in a certain way. Either way, I apparently have the biggest boobs in the NYC world. Oh, and everyone is apparently shorter – or maybe the tops are that way to help the Beautiful People be as naked as possible on Saturday nights.

11. People don’t rush quite like I expected them to. I expected some Autobahn walking version of life, but it’s really more like rush hour. That’s fine with me, as I am a fast walker, but does make it harder to keep track of things you’d like to take photos of. I compromised by walking and photo-ing, but I’m not sure how any of those came out.

12. Shark Week is a big thing in NYC. No one really says a lot about it, but the photos are EVERYWHERE. And in every single bar we ‘hopped’ to on Saturday night, there was a TV on that was showing the Discovery Channel.

13. No one REALLY knows where they are going. They sort of stumble upon things they need to see. They may be looking for a bar and stumble across one that will do or that seems neater. They may have once been to a club and haven’t seen it for years, assumed it was closed, and then stumble across it one night. They’ll all give you an address of sorts – an intersection – but that’s the northern version of an ish – and you’ll still have to do some searching.

14. The cool-as-hell Apple Store has some of the cleanest and best public bathrooms in NYC. I didn’t even have to buy a laptop. But I would have.

15. Nintendo World really is the center of the universe.

16. Times Square really doesn’t look like Times Square unless it is nighttime. Then it’s much easier to recognize. Otherwise you just have to stumble across it – if you’re a tourist, that is.

17. There’s a reason paparazzi are behind the camera. They’re ugly.

18. Crime in NYC must be a joke. I have rarely felt more safe and comfortable in a city and it wasn’t only because Bernie would kick anyone’s ass that messed with me – even if she doesn’t say it out loud… it’s just NOT threatening. The most scared that I got was when everyone ganged up on me and made me high five them over and over…

There is more. Very much more.

There’s a life to the place… an energy.
I must say that although I enjoyed it immensely, I couldn’t imagine living there constantly. The people are much more open and welcoming than I would have thought, but also more closed off than I’m used to people being. I think that may be why you hear that they are more unfriendly – they aren’t in the least, but you simply can’t meet a good majority of 8 million people… and you can 650,000.
They don’t mind you joining their world at all, but with there being so many people in the city, they seem accustomed to staying in their own world – in a place that large, you’d have to.
I’m not really sure I could get used to that… so I think I shall use the wonderful people I met as excuses to visit instead.