Empire State of Mind: Grading It.

So I spent all of Saturday and some of Sunday in New York with Cassie and Becky, here's my grade for the great city.

Tourist Life: A++
Seriously, i feel like sometimes New York is meant to be a place only for tourists. Starting with my bus ride from Baltimore (Around 3 hours total) to my first couple of hours in the city I heard conversations in about 12 different languages. People of all ages flocked to the city to enjoy it's many attractions and it seemed like a family town more than anything. Of course this opinion comes from the main heart of the city where the skyscrapers loom tall and police officers comb just about every inch; for those of you who haven't been, there are also tons of lesser parts of the city but since I didn't slum it up this trip I won't factor that into my grade. Some of the highlights of this time around for me were the Staten Island Ferry, Wall Street, visiting the site of the WTC, and then somehow Cassie finding everything from Ann Arbor in New York. There were seriously like 5 monuments that we recognized from AA including our fabled "Cube" which powers the city. During the day-time there are a great number of ways to get around and we tried all of them save buses. So overall the place to be if you want to see a city covered in movies and television, and take hundreds of pictures, NYC is a  must see.

People: A-
So NYC is filled with beautiful people, and I don't mean that there are some here and there but it is literally filled with beautiful people. I guess its kinda like the Hollywood of the east coast, even though we didn't see anyone famous. The fact that you can meet people from all walks of life really help the "A" here. I'm a real sucker for a beautiful girl speaking French or Italian or even some middle eastern language, they do flow so nicely off the tongue. The only reason for the - here is that NYC is very much a trendy city. I'm not a big fan of fashion trends or fads but since NYC is a huge fashion city people tend to dress alike. This trip we discovered that the P-coat is the jacket of choice for thousands of New Yorkers. On our three block walk to the dinner this morning we spotted 16 coats, not counting the ones inside the dinner.

Social Life:
Day Time: B+
NYC offers something for all ages. We didn't see any of this stuff but I know it's there. Daytime is the time for the jogger, causal or serious, the dog walkers, or just people wanting to get out. The various parks are kept relatively clean and plenty of activity can be found on the streets or in the stores. For some reason we happened to find a lot of skate boarders around but I guess Saturday afternoon at Battery Park will do that.

Nightlife: B
This part of the post is very subjective to me so I'm sure next time around I'll see enough to be able to give it a better grade. The main issue for me on the nightlife was just the basic gap between a lot of the bars. When you absolutely need to take a cab to get around, if you don't want an hour walk to every bar, then you really would like to get a cab quick. With the hundreds of cabs we saw, for some reason Saturday night it was nearly impossible to get one in a timely fashion. Mike D and I spent probably a total of an hour waiting for cabs Saturday night, not fun. Another downside to a big city, is yes the sheer number of people out. I know that sounds like a good thing, but when you have a hard time finding your way to the bar, wait for 10 minutes to get a drink, and then almost spill it before you reach your friends only to find out you have to stand to drink it, it gets a little annoying. So basically from the hours of 3-9 we loved it. Happy hours everywhere whom had "specials" that really just made drinks affordable, and the people were all so friendly. During the nighttime, the younger adults come out, drink prices shoot through the roof, and everyone is trying to get theirs, a  little rough. With all that said, there is a bar for everyone. You can dance, you can sing, open mic, random 3$ cover charges and all. Next time around I think it best to have some sort of plan for the night, hitting up an area like East Village which I hear good things about. To this point I found a lot of solid single bars, but no area with a lot of them. For example, our evening bar hop took us like 20+ blocks of city.


Overall Perception: B+
I love NYC, but not enough to want to live there. It's a big city which by name is not meant for everyone. It's fast paced life and terrible traffic really make for a hectic travel day but hectic can also be exciting. There are an infinite amount of things to do and impossible to do and see nearly half of it in one trip, that alone makes you want to keep going back and back. A wonderful place to visit, I look forward to many more weekend bus rides and hopefully am able to really grasp the city, but much like Chicago, or LA, it's just not a city for me. With that being said, I do owe it to all these big cities to keep going to them so any of my friends out there who reside in them feel free to plan a visit and I will do my best to comply. To Cassie, it was great seeing you as always, its just like we never left the humble times of 1502. To Becky, you were a wonderful hostess, and you seem to be taking on that big city well. To Mike D...spidaman...What else can I say besides 4 loko gets us everytime. To Chin and Wheeler...and Mike O...here's to seeing you guys sometime soon.

One last thing...."Are you gonna nuke it?" - Imagine that is a drunk Cassie voice, man we really need to start to video tape this girl.